Our summer libraryA selection of poems that we think are perfect to read in summer
A Scherzo
With the wasp at the innermost heart of a peach, On a sunny wall out of tip-toe reach, With the trout in the darkest summer pool, With the fern-seed clinging behind its cool Smooth frond, in the chink of an aged tree, In the woodbine’s horn with the drunken bee, With the mouse in its nest in a furrow old, With the chrysalis wrapt in its gauzy fold; With things that are hidden, and safe, and bold, With things that are timid, and shy, and free, Wishing to be; With the nut in its shell, with the seed in its pod, With the corn as it sprouts in the kindly clod, Far down where the secret of beauty shows In the bulb of the tulip, before it blows; With things that are rooted, and firm, and deep, Quiet to lie, and dreamless to sleep; With things that are chainless, and tameless, and proud, With the fire in the jagged thunder-cloud, With the wind in its sleep, with the wind in its waking, With the drops that go to the rainbow’s making, Wishing to be with the light leaves shaking, Or stones on some desolate highway breaking; Far up on the hills, where no foot surprises The dew as it falls, or the dust as it rises; To be couched with the beast in its torrid lair, Or drifting on ice with the polar bear, With the weaver at work at his quiet loom; Anywhere, anywhere, out of this room! Dora Greenwell (1821-1882) A Red, Red Rose
O my Luve is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June; O my Luve is like the melody That’s sweetly played in tune. So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry. Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run. And fare thee weel, my only luve! And fare thee weel awhile! And I will come again, my luve, Though it were ten thousand mile. Robert Burns (1754-1796). A Water-Colour
Low hidden in among the forest trees An artist’s tilted easel, ankle-deep In tousled ferns and mosses, and in these A fluffy water-spaniel, half asleep Beside a sketch-book and a fallen hat– A little wicker flask tossed into that. A sense of utter carelessness and grace Of pure abandon in the slumb’rous scene,– As if the June, all hoydenish of face, Had romped herself to sleep there on the green, And brink and sagging bridge and sliding stream Were just romantic parcels of her dream. James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916) Hoydenish : wild and boisterous At Meissen
Beneath the lime trees in the garden High above the town, The scent of whose suspended bloom Entranced the air with warm perfume I stood, and watched the river flowering, Flowing smooth and brown. The heat of all the summer sunshine Centred in the skies, Beneath its spell the city’s towers Grew dreamy, and the climbing flowers Upon the balconies hung limply Down, with closing eyes. Some drowsy pigeons cooed together On the nearer eaves, Gnats danced, and one big foolish bee Grown honey-drunk, bumped into me, And ere he buzzed a lazy protest Fell amid the leaves. A bell began to chime, I watched it Swinging to and fro, It made a solemn, pious sound, While flippant swallows, darting round To peer within the ancient belfry Soared now high, now low. Time passed, and still I stayed to ponder Through the afternoon, Within my brain the golden haze Wrought magic musings, and my gaze Bent inward could behold no image Save the form of June. Radclyffe Hall (1880—1940) Balade of Midsummer Days and Nights
With a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise, And the winds are one with the clouds and beams-- Midsummer days! Midsummer days! The dusk grows vast; in purple haze, While the West from a rapture of sunset rights, Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise-- Midsummer nights! Midsummer nights! The wood’s green heart is a nest of dreams, The lush grass thickens and springs and sways The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams-- Midsummer days! Midsummer days! In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways, All secret shadows and mystic lights, Late lovers murmur and linger and gaze-- Midsummer nights! Midsummer nights! There’s a music of bells from the trampling teams, Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze, The rich, ripe rose as with incense steams– Midsummer days! Midsummer days! A soul from the honeysuckle strays, And the nightingale as from prophet heights Sings to the Earth of her million Mays-- Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! Envoy And it’s O, for my dear and the charm that stays-- Midsummer days! Midsummer days! It’s O, for my Love and the dark that plights-- Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! W E Henley (1849 – 1903) Dusk in June
Evening, and all the birds In a chorus of shimmering sound Are easing their hearts of joy For miles around. The air is blue and sweet, The few first stars are white, – Oh let me like the birds Sing before night. Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) From Sabbath Bells
I’ve often on a Sabbath day Where pastoral quiet dwells Lay down among the new mown hay To listen distant bells That beautifully flung the sound Upon the quiet wind While beans in blossom breathed around A fragrance o’er the mind A fragrance and a joy beside That never wears away The very air seems deified Upon a Sabbath day So beautiful the flitting wrack Slow pausing from the eye Earth’s music seemed to call them back Calm settled in the sky The ear it lost and caught the sound Swelled beautifully on And fitful melody around Of sweetness heard and gone I felt such thoughts I yearned to sing The humming air’s delight That seemed to move the swallow’s wing Into a wilder flight The butterfly in wings of brown Would find me where I lay Fluttering and bobbing up and down And settling on the hay The waving blossoms seemed to throw Their fragrance to the sound While up and down and loud and low The bells were ringing round John Clare (1793–1864) From Sussex
…Yea, Sussex by the sea! No tender-hearted garden crowns, No bosomed woods adorn Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs, But gnarled and writhen thorn-- Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim, And, through the gaps revealed, Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim, Blue goodness of the Weald. … I will go out against the sun Where the rolled scarp retires, And the Long Man of Wilmington Looks naked toward the shires; And east till doubling Rother crawls To find the fickle tide, By dry and sea-forgotten walls, Our ports of stranded pride. I will go north about the shaws And the deep ghylls that breed Huge oaks and old, the which we hold No more than Sussex weed; Or south where windy Piddinghoe’s Begilded dolphin veers And red beside wide-bankèd Ouse Lie down our Sussex steers. God gives all men all earth to love, But since man’s heart is small, Ordains for each one spot shall prove Beloved over all. Each to his choice, and I rejoice The lot has fallen to me In a fair ground—in a fair ground-- Yea, Sussex by the sea! Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936) From The Winter’s Tale
Here’s flowers for you; Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram; The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun, And with him rises. William Shakespeare (1564–1616) It Is Not Growing Like A Tree
It is not growing like a tree In bulk doth make Man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be. Ben Jonson (1574-1637). Paths
Crushing in my hand The bay as I pass, Drinking in its fragrance With the sea’s scent, While gull-wings write Poems white and fast On the blue sky That is soft with content; Crushing in my hand The bay and the juniper, While I record Each line the gulls write, I go by sea paths Down to the sea’s edge, I go by hearts paths Deep into delight. Simple is my joy As the little sandpiper’s, Who follows beside me With silvery song; Blither than the breeze, That skims great billows Nor knows how deep Is their flow – or strong. Simple is my joy, A sunny sense-sweetness, Full of bird-bliss, Bay-warmth, spray-leap. Mysteries there are And miseries beneath it, But sunk, like wrecks, Far down in the deep. Cale Young Rice (1872-1943) She Has Made Me Wayside Posies
She has made me wayside posies: here they stand, Bringing fresh memories of where they grew. As new-come travellers from a world we knew Wake every while some image of their land, So these whose buds our woodland breezes fanned Bring to my room the meadow where they blew, The brook-side cliff, the elms where wood-doves coo– And every flower is dearer for her hand. Oh blossoms of the paths she loves to tread, Some grace of her is in all thoughts you bear: For in my memories of your homes that were The old sweet loneliness they kept is fled, And would I think it back I find instead A presence of my darling mingling there. Augusta Webster (1837–94) The Glory
The glory of the beauty of the morning, - The cuckoo crying over the untouched dew; The blackbird that has found it, and the dove That tempts me on to something sweeter than love; White clouds ranged even and fair as new-mown hay; The heat, the stir, the sublime vacancy Of sky and meadow and forest and my own heart: - The glory invites me, yet it leaves me scorning All I can ever do, all I can be, Beside the lovely of motion, shape, and hue, The happiness I fancy fit to dwell In beauty's presence. Shall I now this day Begin to seek as far as heaven, as hell, Wisdom or strength to match this beauty, start And tread the pale dust pitted with small dark drops, In hope to find whatever it is I seek, Hearkening to short-lived happy-seeming things That we know naught of, in the hazel copse? Or must I be content with discontent As larks and swallows are perhaps with wings? And shall I ask at the day's end once more What beauty is, and what I can have meant By happiness? And shall I let all go, Glad, weary, or both? Or shall I perhaps know That I was happy oft and oft before, Awhile forgetting how I am fast pent, How dreary-swift, with naught to travel to, Is Time? I cannot bite the day to the core. Edward Thomas (1878-1917) The Moat
Around this lichened home of hoary peace, Invulnerable in its glassy moat, A breath of ghostly summers seems to float And murmur mid the immemorial trees. The tender slopes, where cattle browse at ease, Swell softly, like a pigeon's emerald throat; And, self-oblivious, Time forgets to note The flight of velvet-footed centuries. The very sunlight hushed within the close, Sleeps indolently by the Yew's slow shade; Still as a relic some old Master made The jewelled peacock's rich enamel glows; And on yon mossy wall that youthful rose Blooms like a rose that never means to fade. Mathilde Blind (1841-1896) Wind on the Corn
Full often as I rove by path or stile, To watch the harvest ripening in the vale, Slowly and sweetly, like a growing smile-- A smile that ends in laughter—the quick gale Upon the breadths of gold-green wheat descends; While still the swallow, with unbaffled grace, About his viewless quarry dips and bends-- And all the fine excitement of the chase Lies in the hunter's beauty: In the eclipse Of that brief shadow, how the barley's beard Tilts at the passing gloom, and wild-rose dips Among the white-tops in the ditches rear'd: And hedgerow's flowery breast of lacework stirs Faintly in that full wind that rocks the outstanding firs. Charles Tennyson Turner (1808 -1879) Winged Words
As darting swallows skim across a pool, — Whose tranquil depths reflect a tranquil sky, So, o'er the depths of silence, dark and cool, — Our winged words dart playfully, And seldom break — The quiet surface of the lake, As they flit by. Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861-1907) |
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