A New England June

These things I remember

Of New England June,

Like a vivid day-dream

In the azure noon,

While one haunting figure

Strays through every scene,

Like the soul of beauty

Through her lost demesne.

Gardens full of roses

And peonies a-blow

In the dewy morning,

Row on stately row,

Spreading their gay patterns,

Crimson, pied and cream,

Like some gorgeous fresco

Or an Eastern dream.

Nets of waving sunlight

Falling through the trees;

Fields of gold-white daisies

Rippling in the breeze;

Lazy lifting groundswells,

Breaking green as jade

On the lilac beaches,

Where the shore-birds wade.

Orchards full of blossom,

Where the bob-white calls

And the honeysuckle

Climbs the old gray walls;

Groves of silver birches,

Beds of roadside fern,

In the stone-fenced pasture

At the river's turn.

Out of every picture

Still she comes to me

With the morning freshness

Of the summer sea,—

A glory in her bearing,

A sea-light in her eyes,

As if she could not forget

The spell of Paradise.

Thrushes in the deep woods,

With their golden themes,

Fluting like the choirs

At the birth of dreams.

Fireflies in the meadows

At the gate of Night,

With their fairy lanterns

Twinkling soft and bright.

Ah, not in the roses,

Nor the azure noon,

Nor the thrushes’ music,

Lies the soul of June.

It is something finer,

More unfading far,

Than the primrose evening

And the silver star;

Something of the rapture

My beloved had,

When she made the morning

Radiant and glad,—

Something of her gracious

Ecstasy of mien,

That still haunts the twilight,

Loving though unseen.

When the ghostly moonlight

Walks my garden ground,

Like a leisurely patrol

On his nightly round,

These things I remember

Of the long ago,

While the slumbrous roses

Neither care nor know.