June Apples / Ethelwyn Wetherald

June Apples

Green apple branches full of green apples
     All around me unfurled,
Here where the shade and the sunlight dapples
     A grass-green, apple-green world.

Little green children stirred with the heaving
     Of the warm breast of the air,
When your old nurse, the wind, is grieving
     Comfortlessly you fare.

But now an old-time song she is crooning,
     Nestle your heads again,
While I dream on though the golden nooning,
     Or look for the first red stain

On some round cheek that the sunshine dapples,
     Near me where I lie curled
Under green trees athrong with green apples,
     In a grass-green, apple-green world.

~~
Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1940)
from The House of the Trees, and other poems, 1895

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

Ethelwyn Wetherald biography