SUMMER.
The spring’s gay promise melted into thee,
Fair summer! and thy gentle reign is here;
The emerald robes are on each leafy tree;
In the blue sky thy voice is rich and clear;
And the free brooks have songs to bless thy reign—
They leap in music midst thy bright domain.
The gales that wander from the unclouded west
Are burden’d with the breath of countless fields;
They teem with incense from the green earth’s breast,
That up to heaven its grateful odor yields,
Bearing sweet hymns of praise from many a bird,
By nature’s aspect into rapture stirr’d.
In such a scene the sun-illumin’d heart
Bounds like a prisoner in his narrow cell,
When through its bars the morning glories dart,
And forest anthems in his hearing swell;
And like the heaving of the voiceful sea,
His panting bosom labors to be free.
Thus, gazing on thy void and sapphire sky,
O summer! in my inmost soul arise
Uplifted thoughts, to which the woods reply,
And the bland air with its soft melodies;
Till basking in some vision’s glorious ray,
I long for eagle’s plumes to flee away.
I long to cast this cumbrous clay aside,
And the impure, unholy thoughts that cling
To the sad bosom, torn with care and pride;
I would soar upward, on unfetter’d wing,
Far through the chambers of the peaceful skies,
Where the high fount of summer brightness lies!
Willis Gaylord Clark, 1810–1841.