Early manuscript in HM 6480. 

Appeared in the OCM, 1856, October, 644, without a title. Also included in The Defence of Guenevere, 1858, 246 with the title, "Summer Dawn."

OCM, 644

Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips,
          Think but one thought of me up in the stars.
The summer night waneth, the morning light slips,
           Faint and grey `twixt the leaves of the aspen,
                    betwixt the cloud-bars,
That are patiently waiting there for the dawn
          Patient and colourless, though Heaven’s gold
Waits to float through them along with the sun.
Far out in the meadows, above the young corn,
          The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold
The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dim;
Through the long twilight they pray for the dawn,
Round the lone house in the midst of the corn.
          Speak but one word to me over the corn,
          Over the tender, bow’d locks of the corn.

Defence of Guenevere, 1858 ed.

Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips,
          Think but one thought of me up in the stars.
The summer night waneth, the morning light slips,
          Faint and grey 'twixt the leaves of the aspen,
                    betwixt the cloud-bars,
That are patiently waiting there for the dawn:
          Patient and colourless, though Heaven’s gold
Waits to float through them along with the sun.
Far out in the meadows, above the young corn,
          The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold
The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun;
Through the long twilight they pray for the dawn.
Round the lone house in the midst of the corn.
          Speak but one word to me over the corn,
          Over the tender, bow’d locks of the corn.

Notes:

Editorial note to The Defence of Guenevere

"Summer Dawn" first appeared, with no title, in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine for October 1856. If the chief criteria for a sonnet are fourteen lines and a final couplet, then this poem qualifies. But its rhyme scheme, enjambment, and four stressed anapests--not to mention the extra phrase added to line 4--put this poem quite outside either the Italian or the English sonnet tradition.

"Summer Dawn" might also be related to the Provencal alba, which was usually a daybreak dialogue between two lovers but in some later versions was addressed to the Virgin Mary. The only prosodic requirement for an alba is that each of its stanzas end with the word "alba," which means "dawn." Note that Morris ends lines 5 and 11 (in the original version) with "dawn."

4. cloud-bars, cf. "barred clouds," Keats' "To Autumn," line 25.