Summer⁠[4]

By sea and by land, In the water-wooed marshes or meadows wide-reaching and bland, The summer is regal and rich, the summer on every hand Spills largesses splendid to mortals, to women and men. For when Is the breeze sweeter fraught with the breath of the hay, Is the thrush-note more calm or the robin’s loud lay More blithe, or the rose more the queen of the day? Now say, What month is more bounteous in beauties, in balms, In lyrics, in psalms, In gold-heart fair fancies of sunset, and calms Of twilight, or after-glows wondrously clear? One may hear The booming of bees and the brook’s lulled refrain, The stream’s liquid epic, the grasshopper’s plain, The frog’s bass reiterant languor at night, The day-long and dark-long sound-woof, interplight With dreamings and memories somber or bright. A very miracle, I saw a moment gone: A honeysuckle, vine and bloom, Lustrous green and coral red, I glimpsed above my head Shedding a rapt perfume. And then this marvel fell That I would dwell upon: A bird—nay, rather say an airy sprite Compact of color, light, And a most ravishing power of flight, Darted from nowhere, somewhere, And alighted there, And sat at gaze a moment or twain, And then was off again. Not Wordsworth’s cuckoo were a dearer guest Unto my quest, So insubstantial, spirit small And fleetsome in his call; Ah, ye know well It was the humming-bird whereof I tell. This mother-month of Summer holds her place Not only by the grace Attending on her many winsome ways,⁠— Her flower-gifts, her bird-lays, Her bridal form and face,—But by what went before and cometh after; April tears, May blooms and laughter, September’s blazonry, and then October Fruit-ripe and hushed and most imperially sober With sense of harvest dignity and worth. Thus, memory and expectation, Spring-gleams, fruitions of the fall, Encircle June and give unto her station A reverend look, a light historical; Child, maiden, matron, she is each and all.