Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights!
There is a burst for you! And we will let the poets of spring, with their lambkins and their catkins and the rest, match this poem of William Henley's if they can. The royal months are ours, and we love the reign of the rose.
When the burnished tints of bronze shine on the brackens, and the night-wind blows with a chilly moan from the fields of darkness, we shall have precious days to remember, and, ah, when the nights are long, and the churlish Winter lays his fell finger on stream and grass and tree, we shall be haunted by jolly memories! Will the memories be wholly pleasant? Perchance, when the curtains are drawn and the lamp burns softly, we may read of bright and beautiful things. Out of doors the war of the winter fills the roaring darkness. It may be that
Hoarsely across the iron ground
The icy wind goes roaring past,
The powdery wreaths go whirling round
Dancing a measure to the blast.
The hideous sky droops darkly down
In brooding swathes of misty gloom,
And seems to wrap the fated town