from The Twelve Months
July
Proud, on the bosom of the river.
White-winged the vessels come and go,
Dropping down with ingots to deliver,
Drifting up stately on the flow.
Mirrored in the sparkling waters under,
Mightily rising to the sky,
Kings of the sunshine and the thunder,
Come they and go they, in July.
Quiet, in the reaches of the river,
Blooms the sea-poppy all alone;
Hidden by the marshy sedges ever,
Who knows its golden cup is blown?
Who cares if far-distant billows,
Eocking the great ships to sea,
Underneath the tassels of the willows
Rocks the sea-poppy and the bee?
Rocks the marsh-blossom with its burden,
Onlv a worker bee at most!
Working for nothinQ- but the guerdon
To live on its honey in the frost.
The outward-bound ye watch, and the incomer;
The bee and the blossom none espy!
But these have their portion in the summer.
In the glad, gold sunshine of July.
Proud, on the bosom of the river.
White-winged the vessels come and go,
Dropping down with ingots to deliver,
Drifting up stately on the flow.
Mirrored in the sparkling waters under,
Mightily rising to the sky,
Kings of the sunshine and the thunder,
Come they and go they, in July.
Quiet, in the reaches of the river,
Blooms the sea-poppy all alone;
Hidden by the marshy sedges ever,
Who knows its golden cup is blown?
Who cares if far-distant billows,
Eocking the great ships to sea,
Underneath the tassels of the willows
Rocks the sea-poppy and the bee?
Rocks the marsh-blossom with its burden,
Onlv a worker bee at most!
Working for nothinQ- but the guerdon
To live on its honey in the frost.
The outward-bound ye watch, and the incomer;
The bee and the blossom none espy!
But these have their portion in the summer.
In the glad, gold sunshine of July.
~~
Edwin Arnold (1832-1904)
from Poems: National and non-oriental, 1906
[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]
Christopher Hilton, Sea poppy on the seashore, Southchurch, 2012.
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