June

Long, long ago, it seems, this summer mornThat pale-browed April passed with pensive treadThrough the frore woods, and from its frost-bound bedWoke the arbutus with her silver horn;And now May, too, is fled,The flower-crowned month, the merry laughing May,With rosy feet and fingers dewy wet,Leaving the woods and all cool gardens gayWith tulips and the scented violet.

Gone are the wind-flower and the adder-tongueAnd the sad drooping bellwort, and no moreThe snowy trilliums crowd the forest's floor;The purpling grasses are no longer young,And summer's wide-set doorO'er the thronged hills and the broad panting earthLets in the torrent of the later bloom,Haytime, and harvest, and the after mirth,The slow soft rain, the rushing thunder plume.

All day in garden alleys moist and dim,The humid air is burdened with the rose;In moss-deep woods the creamy orchid blows;And now the vesper-sparrows' pealing hymnFrom every orchard closeAt eve comes flooding rich and silvery;The daisies in great meadows swing and shine;And with the wind a sound as of the seaRoars in the maples and the topmost pine.

High in the hills the solitary thrushTunes magically his music of fine dreams,In briary dells, by boulder-broken streams;And wide and far on nebulous fields aflushThe mellow morning gleams.The orange cone-flowers purple-bossed are there,The meadow's bold-eyed gypsies deep of hue,And slender hawkweed tall and softly fair,And rosy tops of fleabane veiled with dew.

So with thronged voices and unhasting flightThe fervid hours with long return go by;The far-heard hylas piping shrill and highTell the slow moments of the solemn nightWith unremitting cry;Lustrous and large out of the gathering drouthThe planets gleam; the baleful ScorpionTrails his dim fires along the droused south;The silent world-incrusted round moves on.

And all the dim night long the moon's white beamsNestle deep down in every brooding tree,And sleeping birds, touched with a silly glee,Waken at midnight from their blissful dreams,And carol brokenly.Dim surging motions and uneasy dreadsScare the light slumber from men's busy eyes,And parted lovers on their restless bedsToss and yearn out, and cannot sleep for sighs.

Oft have I striven, sweet month, to figure thee,As dreamers of old time were wont to feign,In living form of flesh, and striven in vain;Yet when some sudden old-world mysteryOf passion fired my brain,Thy shape hath flashed upon me like no dream,Wandering with scented curls that heaped the breeze,Or by the hollow of some reeded streamSitting waist-deep in white anemones;

And even as I glimpsed thee thou wert gone,A dream for mortal eyes too proudly coy,Yet in thy place for subtle thought's employThe golden magic clung, a light that shoneAnd filled me with thy joy.Before me like a mist that streamed and fellAll names and shapes of antique beauty passedIn garlanded procession with the swellOf flutes between the beechen stems; and last,

I saw the Arcadian valley, the loved wood,Alpheus stream divine, the sighing shore,And through the cool green glades, awake once more,Psyche, the white-limbed goddess, still pursued,Fleet-footed as of yore,The noonday ringing with her frighted peals,Down the bright sward and through the reeds she ran,Urged by the mountain echoes, at her heelsThe hot-blown cheeks and trampling feet of Pan.