IN SUMMER DEEPS

Through sunny spaces overhead

A gray hawk’ s lazy pinions spread,

And poppies open wide and red

Where golden harvests grew.

In rosy wreaths upon the swales

And fallow fields the bindweed trails,

And late-sown buckwheat swiftly pales

To blossoming anew.

The pond within the pasture land

Reflects the cattle as they stand

In depths of dipping sedges and

Of tangled meadow-rue.

In silver splashes through the green,

Fine, filmy spider-webs are seen,

And crumpled cockle-flowers between

Are rifts of tender blue.

On stately stalks of standing corn

A wealth of cresting plumes are borne,

And tawny tasseled tufts adorn

The ripened barley, too.

So, steeping nature far and wide,

Deep sweeps the flood of summer-tide,

Till all things that therein abide

Are richly tinctured through.