July / Michael Field

July

There is a month between the swath and sheaf
          When grass is gone
And corn still grassy,
                    When limes are massy
     With hanging leaf
And pollen-coloured blooms whereon
          Bees are voices we can hear,
      So hugely dumb
This silent month of the attaining year.
The white-faced roses slowly disappear
From field and hedgerow, and no more flowers come:
                    Earth lies in strain of powers
                    Too terrible for flowers:
And would we know
     Her burthen we must go
Forth from the vale, and, ere the sunstrokes slacken,
     Stand at a moorland's edge and gaze
     Across the hush and blaze
Of the clear-burning, verdant summer bracken;
          For in that silver flame
          Is writ July's own name —
          The ineffectual, numbed sweet
          Of passion at its heat.

~~
Michael Field
from Underneath the Bough, 1893

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Michael Field biography