The cows come gently here to browse,
Slow through the great-leafed sycamores:
You hear a dog bark from a low-roofed house
With cedars round its doors.
Then all is quiet as the wings
Of the one buzzard floating there:
Anon a woman’s high-pitched voice that sings
An old camp-meeting air.
A cock that flaps and crows; and then—
Heard drowsy through the rustling corn—
A flutter, and the cackling of a hen
Within a hay-sweet barn.
How still again! no water stirs:
No wind is heard: although the weeds
Are waved a little: and from silk-filled burrs
Drift by a few soft seeds.
So drugged with dreams the place, that you
Expect to see her gliding by,—
Hummed round of bees, through blossoms spilling dew,—
The Spirit of July.
THE RED-BIRD
Red clouds and reddest flowers,
And now two redder wings
Swim through the rosy hours;
Red wings among the flowers;
And now the red-bird sings.
God makes the red clouds ripples
Of flame that seem to split
In rubies and in dripples
Of rose where rills and ripples
The singing flame that lit.
Red clouds of sundered splendor;
God whispered one small word,
Rich, sweet, and wild and tender—
Straight, in the vibrant splendor,
The word became a bird.