A July Dawn / John Francis O'Donnell

A July Dawn

We left the city, street and square,
    With lamp lights glimmering through and through,
And turned us toward the suburb, where –
    Full from the east – the fresh wind blew.

One cloud stood overhead the sun –
    A glorious trail of dome and spire –
The last star flickered, and was gone;
    The first lark led the matin choir.

Wet was the grass beneath our tread,
    Thick-dewed the bramble by the way;
The lichen had a lovelier red,
    The elderflower a fairer grey.

And there was silence on the land,
    Save when, from out the city's fold,
Stricken by time's remorseless wand,
    A bell across the morning tolled.

The beeches sighed through all their boughs;
    The gusty pennons of the pine
Swayed in a melancholy drowse,
    But with a motion sternly fine.

One gable, full against the sun,
    Flooded the garden-space beneath
With spices, sweet as cinnamon,
    From all its honeysuckled breadth.

Then crew the cocks from echoing farms,
    The chimney tops were plumed with smoke,
The windmill shook its slanted arms,
    The sun was up, the country woke!

And voices sounded mid the trees
    Of orchards red with burning leaves,
By thick hives sentineled by bees –
    From fields which promised tented sheaves;

Till the day waxed into excess,
    And on the misty rounding grey –
One vast, fantastic wilderness,
    The glowing roofs of London lay.

~~

John Francis O'Donnell (1837-1874) 

from Poems, 1891 

John Francis O'Donnell biography

John Constable (1776-1837), Dawn, ca. 1831. Google Art Project, Wikimedia Commons.