TO THE LOCUST

Thou pulse of hotness, who, with reed-like breast,

Makest meridian music, long and loud,

Accentuating summer!— dost thy best

To make the sunbeams fiercer, and to crowd

With lonesomeness the long, close afternoon

When Labor leans, swart-faced and beady browed,

Upon his sultry scythe — thou tangible tune

Of heat, whose waves incessantly arise

Quivering and clear beneath the cloudless skies.

Thou singest, and upon his haggard hills

Drouth yawns and rubs his heavy eyes and wakes;

Brushes the hot hair from his face; and fills

The land with death as sullenly he takes

Downward his dusty way:‘ midst woods and fields

At every pool his burning thirst he slakes:

No grove so deep, no bank so high it shields

A spring from him; no creek evades his eye;

He needs but look and they are withered dry.

Thou singest, and thy song is as a spell

Of somnolence to charm the land with sleep;

A thorn of sound that pierces dale and dell,

Diffusing slumber over vale and steep.

Sleepy the forest, nodding sleepy boughs;

The pastures sleepy with their sleepy sheep;

Sleepy the creek where sleepily the cows

Stand knee-deep: and the very heaven seems

Sleepy and lost in undetermined dreams.

Art thou a rattle that Monotony,

Summer's dull nurse, old sister of slow Time,

Shakes for Day's peevish pleasure, who in glee

Takes its discordant music for sweet rhyme?

Or oboe that the Summer Noontide plays,

Sitting with Ripeness‘ neath the orchard-tree,

Trying repeatedly the same shrill phrase,

Until the musky peach with drowsiness

Drops, and the hum of bees grows less and less?