June
Indeed I feel as if I came too soon
To round your young May moon
And set the world a-gasping at my noon.
Yet come I must. So here are strawberries
Sun-flushed and sweet, as many as you please;
And here are full-blown roses by the score,
More roses, and yet more.
(May, eating strawberries, withdraws among the flower beds. June seats herself in the shadow of a laburnum.)
Or if I’m lulled by note of bird and bee,
Or lulled by noontide’s silence deep,
I need but nestle down beneath my tree
And drop asleep.
(June falls asleep; and is not awakened by the voice of July, who, behind the scenes, is heard, half singing, half calling.)
July
(Behind the scenes)
Blue flags, yellow flags, flags all freckled,
Which will you take? yellow, blue, speckled!
Take which you will, speckled, blue, yellow,
Each in its way has not a fellow.
(Enter July, a basket of many-coloured irises slung upon his shoulders, a bunch of ripe grass in one hand, and a plate piled full of peaches balanced upon the other. He steals up to June, and tickles her with the grass. She wakes.)