This is the voice of high midsummer’s heat.
The rasping vibrant clamour soars and shrills
O’er all the meadowy range of shadeless hills,
As if a host of giant cicadae beat
The cymbals of their wings with tireless feet,
Or brazen grasshoppers with triumphing note
From the long swath proclaimed the fate that smote
The clover and timothy-tops and meadowsweet.
The crying knives glide on; the green swath lies.
And all noon long the sun, with chemic ray,
Seals up each cordial essence in its cell,
That in the dusky stalls, some winter’s day,
The spirit of June, here prisoned by his spell,
May cheer the herds with pasture memories.
BURNT LANDS
On other fields and other scenes the morn
Laughs from her blue,—but not such fields are these,
Where comes no cheer of summer leaves and bees,
And no shade mitigates the day’s white scorn.
These serious acres vast no groves adorn;
But giant trunks, bleak shapes that once were trees,
Tower naked, unassuaged of rain or breeze,
Their stern grey isolation grimly borne.
The months roll over them, and mark no change.
But when Spring stirs, or Autumn stills, the year,
Perchance some phantom leafage rustles faint
Through their parched dreams,—some old-time notes ring strange,
When in his slender treble, far and clear,
Reiterates the rain-bird his complaint.
THE CLEARING
Stumps, and harsh rocks, and prostrate trunks all charred,
And gnarled roots naked to the sun and rain,—
They seem in their grim stillness to complain,
And by their plaint the evening peace is jarred.
These ragged acres fire and the axe have scarred,
And many summers not assuaged their pain.
In vain the pink and saffron light, in vain
The pale dew on the hillocks stripped and marred!
But here and there the waste is touched with cheer
Where spreads the fire-weed like a crimson flood
And venturous plumes of golden-rod appear;
And round the blackened fence the great boughs lean
With comfort; and across the solitude
The hermit’s holy transport peals serene.
THE SUMMER POOL
This is a wonder-cup in Summer’s hand.
Sombre, impenetrable, round its rim
The fir-trees bend and brood. The noons o’erbrim
The windless hollow of its iris’d strand
With mote-thick sun and water-breathings bland.
Under a veil of lilies lurk and swim
Strange shapes of presage in a twilight dim,
Unwitting heirs of light and life’s command.