MUSIC OF SUMMER

Thou sit'st among the sunny silences

Of terraced hills and woodland galleries,

Thou utterance of all calm melodies,

Thou lutanist of Earth's most affluent lute,—

Where no false note intrudes

To mar the silent music,— branch and root,—

Charming the fields ripe, orchards and deep woods,

To song similitudes

Of flower and seed and fruit.

Oft have I seen thee, in some sensuous air,

Bewitch the broad wheat-acres everywhere

To imitated gold of thy deep hair:

The peach, by thy red lips’ delicious trouble,

Blown into gradual dyes

Of crimson; and beheld thy magic double —

Dark-blue with fervid influence of thine eyes —

The grapes’ rotundities,

Bubble by purple bubble.

Deliberate uttered into life intense,

Out of thy soul's melodious eloquence

Beauty evolves its just preëminence:

The lily, from some pensive-smitten chord

Drawing significance

Of purity, a visible hush stands: starred

With splendor, from thy passionate utterance,

The rose writes its romance

In blushing word on word.

As star by star Day harps in Evening,

The inspiration of all things that sing

Is in thy hands and from their touch takes wing:

All brooks, all birds,— whom song can never sate,—

The leaves, the wind and rain,

Green frogs and insects, singing soon and late,

Thy sympathies inspire, thy heart's refrain,

Whose sounds invigorate

With rest life's weary brain.

And as the Night, like some mysterious rune,

Its beauty makes emphatic with the moon,

Thou lutest us no immaterial tune:

But where dim whispers haunt the cane and corn,

By thy still strain made strong,

Earth's awful avatar,— in whom is born

Thy own deep music,— labors all night long

With growth, assuring Morn

Assumes with onward song.