Summer / Richard Chenevix Trench

Thomas Sidney Cooper (1803-1902), Heat Showers in August, 1857. Wikimedia Commons.

from The Seasons

Summer

Now seems all nature to conspire,
As to dissolve the world in fire,

Which dies among its odorous sweets,
A Phoenix on its funeral pyre.

Simoom breathes hotly from the waste,
The green earth quits its green attire;

Floats o'er the plain the liquid heat,
Cheating the traveller's fond desire —

Illusion fair of lake and stream,
Receding as he draweth nigher.

Ice is more precious now than gold,
Snow more than silver men desire.

'Tis far to seek unfailing wells
For tender maid or aged sire;

Men know the worth of water now,
And learn to prize God's blessing higher;

The shallow pools have disappeared,
Caked into iron is the mire.

Through clouds of dust the crimson sun
Glares on the earth in lurid ire;

The parchéd earth with thirsty lips
Is gasping, ready to expire.

Oh happy, who by liquid streams
In shady gardens can retire,

Where murmuring falls and whispering trees
Sweet slumber to invite conspire;

Or where he may deceive the time
With volume sage, or pensive lyre.

~~

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1866)
from Poems, 1865

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Richard Chenevix Trench biography

"The Seasons" by Trench, read by Sonia for LibriVox. Courtesy Rhodoclassics.

("Summer" begins at 2:51.)

In August / Ethelwyn Wetherald

In August

Now when the grove is stifled to the core,
    And all the parchéd grass is summer-killed,
    I think of vehement March, and how she filled
These arid roadsides with a murmurous pour
Of rushing streams from an exhaustless store.
    This breathless air to tropic slumber stilled,
    Recalls those early passionate winds that thrilled
The spirit, blending with the water’s roar.

Just as in rich and dusty-leavéd age
    The soul goes back to brood on swelling buds
    Of hope, desire, and dream, in childhood's clime,
So I turn backward to the spring-lit page,
    And hear with freshening heart the deep-voiced floods,
    That to the winds give their melodious rhyme.

~~
Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1940)
from Tangled in Stars, 1902

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Ethelwyn Wetherald biography

Patrick Roper, Dry fields during heatwave, August 2018. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

"The Orient, Half Morocco, 8vo" / Ruth Comfort Mitchell

"The Orient, Half Morocco, 8v0"

Courtesy Internet Archive.

She bought a book, once, with the butter money —

A wild, undreamed of, reckless thing to do!
(So much to manage for the winter schooling;
That split in Hannah Mary's Sunday shoe. . . .)

The cover bravely flaunted gold and scarlet,—
Gave hint and promise of the hidden feast,
Fine-grained and limber, sleek beneath the fingers,
Frankly symbolic of the gorgeous east.

She wrapt it up and laid it in the bureau;
She knew she wouldn't get to read it soon,—
Not while she had the harvesters to cook for,
Tho' maybe ... of a Sunday afternoon. . . .

How often, then, her thoughts went winging to it,
Thro' all the cumbered days she had to wait,
Till, in a scanty hour of hard-won leisure,
She entered shyly thro' the latticed gate:

Dim harims . . . sultans . . . yashmaks . . . cloudy nargillehs,—
Strange sounding words from far-off story lands;
The farm-house fades; the Wishing Carpet bears her
To Kairowan, across the golden sands.

Since then, thro' all the somber woof of living,
For her the mystic Orient weaves its spells;
Faintly, at dawn, down thro' the dairy pasture,
She seems to hear the chime of temple bells.

Now she can see across the piles of mending —
(There is a window in her prison tower!)
Beyond the baking and the baby tending 

The Mueddin calls across the sunset hour.

When the fierce August sun in grudging mercy,
Threatening worse torments for the morrow, sets,
The battered barns, the tanks, the gilded hay cocks,
Are distant domes and towers and minarets.

The sullen farmer, summoned in to supper,
Weary and silent as he slouches down,
To her fresh eyes becomes a mighty Caliph
Whose minions tremble at his slightest frown.

Subtlest of all — of course they do not mark it —
She in herself is gently touched with grace —
The swifter carriage of her toil-warped figure,
The ghost of girlhood in her furrowed face.

Sometimes they have to call her twice, and sharply;
(They see her, and they think that she is there!)
Thro' all the homely clamor, she is hearing
Oh, very near and clear, The Call to Prayer!

~~
Ruth Comfort Mitchell (1882-1954)
from The Night Court, and other verse, 1916

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Ruth Comfort Mitchell biography

The Upstairs Room / Weldon Kees

The Upstairs Room

It must have been in March the rug wore through.
Now the day passes and I stare
At warped pine boards my father's father nailed,
At the twisted grain. Exposed, where emptiness allows,
Are the wormholes of eighty years; four generations' shoes
Stumble and scrape and fall
To the floor my faher stained,
The new blood streaming from his head. The drift
Of autumn fires and a century's cigars, that gun's
Magnanimous and brutal smoke, endures.
In March the rug was ragged as the past. The thread
Rots like the lives we fasten on. Now it is August,
And the floor is blank, worn smooth,
And, for my life, imperishable.

~~
Weldon Kees (1914-1955)
from Poetry, August 1948

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Photo: Jonathan Haeber, Upstairs room. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Weldon Kees biography

"The Upstairs Room" courtesy PoemsBeingRead.

(Poem begins at 1:00)

A Summer Night / Robert Hillyer

A Summer Night

The night is a shrill rhythm of insects,
The lighted windows that showed through the leaves
One hy one go out. “Goodnight,”
A voice murmurs in the shadow of vines,
“Goodnight,” and for ever is in the voice.
An old violinist crosses the Fenway
And watches the lights go out. He can almost 

Hear the sigh of the weary bodies.
A freight train puffs ponderously, far
Away to the eastward, and down the highway
A belated motor crowded with singing
Revelers careless of slumber passes
With raucous shout that ribbons to silence.
If only God would step from the stars
And lead his own composition, if only
An old violinist might put his bow
And his violin away for ever.
He hears from under his arm where he clutches
The case, the twang of a plucked string;
The damp of the Fens is chill on the sinews
Of old men and old violins.
But the crickets and treetoads make sweet din
In the meadows, the fireflies spiral downward
Like dropping fragments of moonlight. Strange,
These small accompaniments of desire
Outlive desire itself and its memory.
The city would wholly sleep but for me,
He says, but for me and the arc-lights buzzing
And twitching uneasily in their globes
Like thoughts in a mind when the sun has gone.
He draws from his pocket a thick gold watch
And holds it up. It is half-past two.
Foolish for one to consult the time
On a golden dial this summer night 

Who might more wisely be counting the leaves
Of seventy scattered calendars.

~~

Robert Hillyer (1895-1961)

from The Gates of the Compass, 1930

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Robert Hillyer biography

Eden, Janine and Jim, Night on Third Avenue, 2020. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Love-in-Idleness / Jane G. Austin

Love-in-Idleness

A time for everything? O yes,
And August is the time, I guess,
To gather Love-in-idleness.
Am I not right? Fair one, confess!

Where shall we find it? Everywhere;
It floats upon the sultry air,
It glows through all the garden fair,
Tangles our feet in rosy snare.

How shall we know it? O most sweet,
Thou'lt know it by thy pulses' beat,
Thou'lt know it by the fragrance fleet
What time its flower and fading meet.

It fades so soon? Is not that best?
It dies ere use has dimmed its zest,
It dies in all its grace confessed,
Its hour of glory is its rest.

Hail, August monarch! Lo thy slaves bow down
And weave of Love-in-Idleness thy crown.

~~
Jane G. Austin (1831-1894)
from Through the Year with the Poets: August, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Bob Collowan, A tub of love-in-idleness (viola tricolor) 

[detail], 2013. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

[January]

Jane G. Austin biography

Bus Ride on a Summer Night / George J. Dance

Bus Ride on a Summer Night

Bus crammed, I squeeze and stumble to a seat,
Loathing the heat, rank sweat, and noise, so I
Avert my gaze, stare at a cobalt sky
And miles of matching boxes on the street,

Screen shot from YouTube.

Which cut to a new picture suddenly –
Black velvet crossed by lines of red and white
Clear shining beads, bright rosaries of light,
Stretching past the horizon towards infinity . . .

I see the threads that run through every bead,
Each prayer and fear, each joy and agony,
Entangling into one humanity:
One flesh, one blood, from one uncommon seed –

It's passed; I shift, relax into my seat,
And breathe in human life, so warm, so sweet.

~~
George J. Dance, 2007
from Doggerel, and other doggerel, 2015

[All rights reserved - used with permission]

George J. Dance biography