Thick lay the dust, uncomfortably white,
In glaring mimicry of Arab sand.
The woods and mountains slept in hazy light;
The meadows looked athirst and tawny tanned;
The little rills had left their channels bare,
With scarce a pool to witness what they were;
And the shrunk river gleamed ’mid oozy stones,
That stared like any famished giant’...
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Who has not dreamed a world of bliss
On a bright sunny noon like this,
Couched by his native brook’s green maze,
With comrade of his boyish days,
While all around them seemed to be
Just as in joyous infancy?
Who has not loved, at such an hour,
Upon that heath, in birchen bower,
Lulled in the poet’s dreamy mood,
Its wild... -
AH! my heart is weary waiting,
Waiting for the May,—
Waiting for the pleasant rambles
Where the fragrant hawthorn-brambles,
With the woodbine alternating,
Scent the dewy way.
Ah! my heart is weary waiting,
Waiting for the May.Ah! my heart is sick with longing,
Longing for the May,—
... -
They come! the merry summer months of beauty, song, and flowers;
They come! the gladsome months that bring thick leafiness to bowers.
Up, up, my heart! and walk abroad; fling cark and care aside;
Seek silent hills, or rest thyself where peaceful waters glide;
Or, underneath the shadow vast of patriarchal tree,
Scan through its leaves the cloudless sky in... -
Up the dale and down the bourne,
O’er the meadow swift we fly;
Now we sing, and now we mourn,
Now we whistle, now we sigh.By the grassy-fringèd river,
Through the murmuring reeds we sweep;
Mid the lily-leaves we quiver,
To their very hearts we creep.Now the maiden rose is blushing
At the frolic things we... -
O Perfect Light, which shaid away
The darkness from the light,
And set a ruler o’er the day,
Another o’er the night—Thy glory, when the day forth flies,
More vively doth appear,
Than at mid day unto our eyes
The shining sun is clear.The shadow of the earth anon
Removes and drawis by,
While in the... -
O Gentle, gentle summer rain,
Let not the silver lily pine,
The drooping lily pine in vain
To feel that dewy touch of thine,—
To drink thy freshness once again,
O gentle, gentle summer rain!In heat the landscape quivering lies;
The cattle pant beneath the tree;
Through parching air and purple skies
The earth... -
How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;... -
UNTREMULOUS in the river clear,
Toward the sky’s image, hangs the imaged bridge;
So still the air that I can hear
The slender clarion of the unseen midge;
Out of the stillness, with a gathering creep,
Like rising wind in leaves, which now decreases,
Now lulls, now swells, and all the while increases,
The huddling trample of a... -
I Love at eventide to walk alone,
Down narrow glens, o’erhung with dewy thorn,
Where from the long grass underneath, the snail,
Jet black, creeps out, and sprouts his timid horn.
I love to muse o’er meadows newly mown,
Where withering grass perfumes the sultry air;
Where bees search round, with sad and weary drone,
In vain, for flowers...