Summer's heat drags on, slow rolling days
beneath the sun
Holding on for autumn's chill
The nights feel cool, there is still
a chance to find a place to stay
Some where deep in, sweet memories
of childhood dreams
With endless skies, carefree hills
Innocence held there until
we wake out of our reverie
Feel the fall wind chill, gray rolling clouds
across the sun
Leaves that change and change will leave
things behind we once believed
Dreams our youthful faith allowed
Fade slow in winter, frost on glass
in morning sun
Still, we live in paradise
Heaven lies beneath the skies
In reckless love while ages pass
For August, be your dwelling thirty towers Within an Alpine valley mountainous, Where never the sea-wind may vex your house,
But clear life separate, like a star, be yours.
There horses shall wait saddled at all hours, That ye may mount at morning or at eve: On each hand either ridge ye shall perceive,
A mile apart, which soon a good beast scours.
So alway, drawing homewards, ye shall tread Your valley parted by a rivulet Which day and night shall flow sedate and smooth.
There all through noon ye may possess the shade, And there your open purses shall entreat The best of Tuscan cheer to feed your youth.
~~ Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?) translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) from The Early Italian Poets, 1861
Fragrant odor of the dawn,
Sweet incense to waking souls,
While the fresh dew spreads the lawn,
And your spirit day controls,
Let me, underneath this tree
Standing, be possessed of thee.
See the robin in a dream
Poising on a grassy bank;
Hear, beneath, the singing stream,
In a meadow dewy-dank;
See the mother-pearly tips
Of the pink-white sorrel's lips.
Now adown the hilly slope
Like a father steps the sun,
And the pretty blossoms ope
Wide their eyelids, one by one;
And they seem to stir and say
Lisped prayers unto the day.
He who sleeps at dawn is dead
To more wonders than he knows;
Let me forth and early tread
Where the sunlit water flows,
Where the elm at dewy dawn
Flings his shadow down the lawn.
Let me feel, and yet be still;
Let me take, and yet not give;
Drink, till I have drunk my fill;
Then anew go forth and live.
Man has little honeyed pleasure
Unmixed in his manhood's measure.
~~
James Herbert Morse (1841-1923)
from Summer Haven Songs, 1886
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, In the sun that is young once only, Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air And playing, lovely and watery And fire green as grass. And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars Flying with the ricks, and the horses Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all Shining, it was Adam and maiden, The sky gathered again And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, In the sun born over and over, I ran my heedless ways, My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs Before the children green and golden Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
~~ Dylan Thomas (1914-1954) from Deaths and Entrances, 1946
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the European Union]
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