The Splendor of the Days / Jean Blewett

The Splendor of the Days

Sweet and shrill the crickets hiding in the grasses brown and lean
Pipe their gladness – sweeter, shriller – one would think the world was green.
O the haze is on the hilltops, and the haze is on the lake!
See it fleeing through the valley with the bold wind in its wake!
            Mark the warm October haze!
            Mark the splendor of the days!
And the mingling of the crimson with the sombre brown and grays!

See the bare hills turn their furrows to the shine and to the glow;
If you listen you can hear it, hear a murmur soft and low —
"We are naked," so the fields say, "stripped of all our golden dress."
"Heed it not," October answers, "for I love ye none the less.
            Share my beauty and my cheer
            While we rest together here,
In these sun-filled days of languor, in these late days of the year."

All the splendor of the summer, all the springtime's light and grace,
All the riches of the harvest, crown her head and light her face;
And the wind goes sighing, sighing, as if loath to let her pass,
While the crickets sing exultant in the lean and withered grass.
            O the warm October haze!
            O the splendor of the days!
O the mingling of the crimson with the sombre brown and grays!

~~
Jean Blewett (1872-1954)
from The Cornflower, and other poems, 1906

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

Jean Blewett biography

James Ryen, Autumn Haze, 2014. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

September / Edward Bliss Reed

September

Crickets are making
    The merriest din,
All the fields waking
    With shrill violin.

Now all the swallows
    Debate when to go;
In the valleys and hollows
    The mists are like snow.

Dahlia are glowing
    In purple and red
Where once were growing
    Pale roses instead.

Piled up leaves smoulder,
    All hazy the noon,
Nights have grown colder,
    The frost will some soon.

Early lamps burning,
    So soon the night falls,
Leaves, crimson turning,
    Make bright the stone walls.

Summer recalling
    At turn of the year,
Fruit will be falling,
    September is here.

~~
Edward Bliss Read (1872-1940)
from Sea Moods, and other poems, 1917

[Poem is in the public domain]

Edward Bliss Read biography

Ulisse Albiati, "Sight VI". CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

The Year Hath Reached Its Afternoon / Samuel Minturn Peck

The Year Hath Reached Its Afternoon

The laughing flights of song are still
    That charmed the springtide air;
Down rivulet and grassy rill    
    No wayward perfumes fare;
Upon her throne Queen August lies
With languor in her dreamful eyes.

The idle clouds that stray the blue
    Their mission now forget;
A blended note the wood-doves coo
    Of passion and regret;
The sparrows flute a faded tune;
The year hath reached its afternoon.

The cricket clears his dusty throat
    To sing an eerie strain;
And as he pipes with rusty note
    Of beauty soon to wane,
The red rose trembles on the tree
With prescience of the fate to be.

Samuel Minturn Peck (1854-1938)

from Through the Year with the Poets, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Samuel Minturn Peck biography

Jerzy Siemiginowski-Eleuter (1660–1711), Allegory of Autumn (detail), Wikimedia Commons.

To the Grasshopper and the Cricket / Leigh Hunt

To the Grasshopper and the Cricket

Green little vaulter in the sunny grass,
Catching your heart up at the feel of June,
Sole voice that’s heard amidst the lazy noon,
When ev'n the bees lag at the summoning brass;
And you, warm little housekeeper, who class
With those who think the candles come too soon,
Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune
Nick the glad silent moments as they pass;

O sweet and tiny cousins, that belong,
One to the fields, the other to the hearth,
Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong
At your clear hearts; and both seem giv'n to earth
To ring in thoughtful ears this natural song —
In doors and out, summer and winter, Mirth.

~~
Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
from Poetical Works, 1832

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Leigh Hunt biography

Nayanjan1306, Katydid (Bush cricket or Long-horned grasshopper), 2015. 

CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. 

See also: "On the Grasshopper and the Cricket," by John Keats

An August Cricket / Arthur Goodenough

An August Cricket

When August days are hot and long,
    And the August hills are hazy,
And clouds are slow and winds also,
    And brooks are low and lazy.

When beats the fierce midsummer sun,
    Upon the drying grasses;
A modest minstrel sings his song
    To any soul that passes.

A modest, yet insistent bard
    Who while the landscape slumbers;
And Nature seems, herself asleep,
    Pours out his soul in numbers.

His song is in a tongue unknown,
    Yet those, methink, who hear it
Drink in its healing melody
    Renewed in frame and spirit.

His life is brief as is the leaf
    To summer branches clinging!
But yet no thought of death or grief,
    He mentions in his singing.

No epic strain is his to sing;—
    No tale of loss or glory;—
He has no borrowed heroines;
    His heroes are not gory.

He is no scholar; all he knows
    Was taught by his condition,
He never studied synthesis,
    Nor simple composition.

His lays are all of rustic themes;
    Of summer's joys and treasure
Yet scarce could Homer's masterpiece,
    Afford us keener pleasure.

~~
Arthur Goodenough (1871-1936)

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Arthur Goodenough biography

Night for Adventures / Victor Starbuck

Night for Adventures

Sometimes when fragrant summer dusk comes in with scent of rose and musk
  And scatters from their sable husk the stars like yellow grain,
Oh then the ancient longing comes that lures me like a roll of drums
  To follow where the cricket strums his banjo in the lane.

And when the August moon comes up and like a shallow silver cup
  Pours out upon the fields and roads her amber-colored beams,
A leafy whisper mounts and calls from out the forest’s moss-grown halls
  To leave the city’s somber walls and take the road of dreams.

A call that bids me rise and strip, and naked all from toe to lip
  To wander where the dewdrops drip from off the silent trees,
And where the hairly spiders spin their nets of silver, fragile-thin,
  And out to where the fields begin, like down upon the breeze.

Into a silver pool to plunge, and like a great trout wheel and lunge
  Among the lily bonnets and the stars reflected there;
With face upturned to lie afloat, with moonbeams rippling round my throat,    
  And from the slimy grasses plait a chaplet for my hair.

Then, leaping from my rustic bath, to take some winding meadow-path;
  Across the fields of aftermath to run with flying feet,
And feel the dewdrop-weighted grass that bends beneath me as I pass,
  Where solemn trees in shadowy mass beyond the highway meet.      

And, plunging deep within the woods, among the leaf-hung solitudes
  Where scarce one timid star intrudes into the breathless gloom,
Go leaping down some fern-hid way to scare the rabbits in their play,
  And see the owl, a phantom gray, drift by on silent plume.

To fling me down at length and rest upon some damp and mossy nest,      
  And hear the choir of surpliced frogs strike up a bubbling tune;
And watch, above the dreaming trees, Orion and the Hyades
  And all the stars, like golden bees around the lily-moon.

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Then who can say if I have gone a-gipsying from dusk till dawn
  In company with fay and faun, where firefly-lanterns gleam?      
And have I danced on cobwebs thin to Master Locust’s mandolin —
  Or have I spent the night in bed, and was it all a dream?

~~
Victor Starbuck (1887-1935)
from Poetry, August 1916

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

Victor Starbuck biography

Heat / Archibald Lampman

Heat

From plains that reel to southward, dim,
  The road runs by me white and bare;
Up the steep hill it seems to swim
  Beyond, and melt into the glare.
Upward half-way, or it may be
  Nearer the summit, slowly steals
A hay-cart, moving dustily
  With idly clacking wheels.

By his cart's side the wagoner
  Is slouching slowly at his ease,
Half-hidden in the windless blur
  Of white dust puffing to his knees.
This wagon on the height above,
  From sky to sky on either hand,
Is the sole thing that seems to move
  In all the heat-held land.

Beyond me in the fields the sun
  Soaks in the grass and hath his will;
I count the marguerites one by one;
  Even the buttercups are still.
On the brook yonder not a breath
  Disturbs the spider or the midge.
The water-bugs draw close beneath
  The cool gloom of the bridge.

Where the far elm-tree shadows flood
  Dark patches in the burning grass,
The cows, each with her peaceful cud,
  Lie waiting for the heat to pass.
From somewhere on the slope near by
  Into the pale depth of the noon
A wandering thrush slides leisurely
  His thin revolving tune.

In intervals of dreams I hear
  The cricket from the droughty ground;
The grasshoppers spin into mine ear
  A small innumerable sound.
I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze:
  The burning sky-line blinds my sight:
The woods far off are blue with haze:
  The hills are drenched in light.

And yet to me not this or that
  Is always sharp or always sweet;
In the sloped shadow of my hat
  I lean at rest, and drain the heat;
Nay more, I think some blessed power
  Hath brought me wandering idly here:
In the full furnace of this hour
  My thoughts grow keen and clear.

~~
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), 1887
from Among the Millet, and other poems, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Archibald Lampman biography

On the Grasshopper and Cricket / John Keats

 
On the Grasshopper and Cricket

The poetry of earth is never dead:
      When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
      And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's — he takes the lead
      In summer luxury, — he has never done
      With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
      On a lone winter evening, when the frost
            Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
      And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
            The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

---
John Keats (1795-1821)
from Poems, 1817

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Keats biography

"On the Grasshopper and Cricket", from Keats: The Musical, sung by Natalie Oak. Courtesy YouTube.

See also: "To the Grasshopper and the Cricket," by Leigh Hunt