A Summer Mood / Hamlin Garland

A Summer Mood

Oh, to be lost in the wind and the sun,
  To be one with the wind and the stream!
With never a care while the waters run,
  With never a thought in my dream.
To be part of the robin’s lilting call
  And part of the bobolink’s rhyme.
Lying close to the shy thrush singing alone,
  And lapped in the cricket’s chime!

Oh, to live with these beautiful ones!
  With the lust and the glory of man
Lost in the circuit of springtime suns —
  Submissive as earth and part of her plan;
To lie as the snake lies, content in the grass!
  To drift as the clouds drift, effortless, free,
Glad of the power that drives them on,
  With never a question of wind or sea.

~~
Hamlin Garland (1860-1940)
from Prairie Songs, 1893

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

Hamlin Garland biography