And summer's lease . . .

The storm has carried away millions of tiny seeds, blowing them through every door and window, over my clothes, into the bookshelf, and on to the floor. Seeds now form a carpet over the concrete of the carport. I pause to study them, and carve out a heart shape. They are beautiful: tiny gold stars, studded with leaves and petals.
It's the last day of January, but this seed spread brings up a feeling of the season passing all too soon.
On this theme, no-one is more eloquent than Shakespeare. I pick up my well-loved book of his sonnets. Once a warm red, the cover is now faded at the spine. But his words never fade, and who is to say which is more beautiful: that original cover, or the spine with its history of many summers on the shelf.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
And summer's lease hath all too short a date . . . 
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrim'd . . .