8

THE

POETRY OF SUMMER.

THE POETRY OF SUMMER.

REPOSE IN SUMMER.

(FROM "THE TALKING OAK.")

HER eyelids dropped their silken eaves,
I breathed upon her eyes,

Through all the summer of my leaves,
A welcome mixed with sighs.

Sometimes I let a sunbeam slip
To light her shaded eye;

A second fluttered round her lip,

Like a golden butterfly.

TENNYSON.

SUMMER REVERIE.

I STOOD tiptoe upon a little hill,

The air was cooling, and so very still,

That the sweet buds which with a modest pride
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,
Their scanty-leaved, and finely-tapering stems,
Had not yet lost their starry diadems
Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.
The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn,
And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept
On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept
A little noiseless noise among the leaves,
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves;
For not the faintest motion could be seen
Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green.
There was wide wandering for the greediest eye,
To peer about upon variety;

Far round the horizon's crystal air to skim,
And trace the dwindled edgings of its brim;

To picture out the quaint and curious bending
Of a fresh woodland alley never-ending:

Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves,

Guess where the jaunty streams refresh themselves.

SUMMER REVERIE.

61

I gazed awhile, and felt as light and free
As though the fanning wings of Mercury
Had played upon my heels: I was light-hearted,
And many pleasures to my vision started;
So I straightway began to pluck a posy
Of luxuries bright, milky, soft, and rosy.

A bush of May-flowers with the bees about them;
Ah, sure no tasteful nook could be without them!
And let a lush laburnum oversweep them,

And let long grass grow round the roots, to keep them
Moist, cool, and green; and shade the violets,
That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.

A filbert-hedge with wild-brier overtwined,
And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind
Upon their summer thrones; there too should be
The frequent-chequer of a youngling tree,

That with a score of light green brethren shoots
From the quaint mossiness of aged roots:
Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters,
Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters,
The spreading blue-bells: it may haply mourn
That such fair clusters should be rudely torn
From their fresh beds, and scattered thoughtlessly

By infant hands, left on the path to die.