Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

Cut grass lies frail:

Brief is the breath

Mown stalks exhale.

Long, long the death

It dies in the white hours

Of young-leafed June

With chestnut flowers,

With hedges snowlike strewn,

White lilac bowed,

Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,

And that high-builded cloud

Moving at summer's pace.