(From Lenau.)
So late, and yet a nightingale?
Long since have dropp’d the blossoms pale,
The summer fields are ripening,
And yet a sound of spring?
O tell me, didst thou come to hear,
Sweet Spring, that I should die this year;
And call’st across from the far shore
To me one greeting more?
Amy Levy (1861 – 1889) was a Victorian era poetess and prose author who wrote in English in the second half of the 19th century, a Jewess, she also wrote on feminist and Jewish themes. She suffered from an acute depression, was likely a lesbian, and is now remembered as a acquaintance of Oscar Wilde. The poetess exterminated herself, that is committed suicide, by inhaling carbon monoxide at her beloved parents’ home. She was the first Jewess to be cremated in England and her ashes are burried in Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery in London.