In August / Ethelwyn Wetherald

In August

Now when the grove is stifled to the core,
    And all the parchéd grass is summer-killed,
    I think of vehement March, and how she filled
These arid roadsides with a murmurous pour
Of rushing streams from an exhaustless store.
    This breathless air to tropic slumber stilled,
    Recalls those early passionate winds that thrilled
The spirit, blending with the water’s roar.

Just as in rich and dusty-leavéd age
    The soul goes back to brood on swelling buds
    Of hope, desire, and dream, in childhood's clime,
So I turn backward to the spring-lit page,
    And hear with freshening heart the deep-voiced floods,
    That to the winds give their melodious rhyme.

~~
Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1940)
from Tangled in Stars, 1902

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

Ethelwyn Wetherald biography

Patrick Roper, Dry fields during heatwave, August 2018. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.