Drouth

The hot sunflowers by the glaring pikeLift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops,Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spikeAgainst the furious sunlight. Field and copseAre sick with summer: now, with breathless stops,The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beatTheir castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,--Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,--An empty wagon rattles through the heat.

Where now the blue wild iris? flowers whose mouthsAre moist and musky? Where the sweet-breathed mint,That made the brook-bank herby? Where the South'sWild morning-glories, rich in hues, that hintAt coming showers that the rainbows tint?Where all the blossoms that the wildwood knows?The frail oxalis hidden in its leaves;The Indian-pipe, pale as a soul that grieves;The freckled touch-me-not and forest rose.

Dead! dead! all dead beside the drouth-burnt brook,Shrouded in moss or in the shriveled grass.Where waved their bells, from which the wild-bee shookThe dewdrop once,--gaunt, in a nightmare mass,The rank weeds crowd; through which the cattle pass,Thirsty and lean, seeking some meager spring,Closed in with thorns, on which stray bits of woolThe panting sheep have left, that sought the cool,From morn till evening wearily wandering.

No bird is heard; no throat to whistle awakeThe sleepy hush; to let its music leakFresh, bubble-like, through bloom-roofs of the brake:Only the green-gray heron, famine-weak,--Searching the stale pools of the minnowless creek,--Utters its call; and then the rain-crow, too,False prophet now, croaks to the stagnant air;While overhead,--still as if painted there,--A buzzard hangs, black on the burning blue.