A July Noon
The sumachs, noiseless, by the still, hot road
Stand up as guards, with blood-red soldier plumes.
How light the hill-blue, clear of cloudy glooms!
How lone the land, with summer overflowed!
Dry crickets grate; a bee takes larger load
With low, pleased muttering, where the wild-rose blooms;
The bovine breath of sleeping fields perfumes
Warm air, with drifts of wayside spicery sowed.
Good earth, how glad a thing it is to be
Part of this full, yet placid life of thine,
Close to thy heart as humblest creatures press!
To claim our kinship with the clod,— resign,
One sunny hour, the spiritual stress
That leads, though lifts, our lives away from thee!
~~
Helen Gray Cone (1859-1934)
from Through the Year with the Poets: July, 1886
[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]
Nxr-at, Maize fields in July, Oststeiermark, 2009. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
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