As August Comes / Clinton Scollard

As August Comes

In dull monotony of heat
    The hazy hills and lowlands lie,
And billow till they blend and meet
    With lurid amplitudes of sky.

The locust's shrilly fife-note cleaves
    The fervid air, a knife of sound,
As August comes with poppy leaves
    Around his swarthy temples bound.

~~
Clinton Scollard (1860-1932)
from  Old and New World Lyrics, 1888 

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

Clinton Scollard biography

Charles J. Sharp, Garden locust (Acanthacris ruficornis). CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.