A WET AUGUST

Nine drops of water bead the jessamine,

And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles:

-‘ Twas not so in that August — full-rayed, fine —

When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles.

Or was there then no noted radiancy

Of summer? Were dun clouds, a dribbling bough,

Gilt over by the light I bore in me,

And was the waste world just the same as now?

It can have been so: yea, that threatenings

Of coming down-drip on the sunless gray,

By the then possibilities in things

Were wrought more bright than brightest skies to-day.