Thou hast no need of us,

Or pipe or wire;
Thou hast the golden bee

Ripened with fire;
And
many

thousand more
Songsters, that thee adore,
Filling earth's grassy floor

With new desire.

Thou hast thy mighty herds,

Tame and free-livers;
Doubt not, thy music too

In the deep rivers;
And the whole plumy flight
Warbling the day and night-
Up at the gates of light,
See, the lark quivers!

Edward Hovell-Thurlow (1781-1829)

MAY

COME walk with me along this willowed lane,

Where, like lost coinage from some miser's store,

The golden dandelions more and more Glow, as the warm sun kisses them again! For this is May! who with a daisy chain

Leads on the laughing Hours; for now is o'er

Long winter's trance. No longer rise and roar His forest-wrenching blasts. The hopeful swain, Along the furrow, sings behind his team;

Loud pipes the redbreast-troubadour of spring,

And vocal all the morning copses ring; More blue the skies in lucent lakelets gleam;

And the glad earth, caressed by murmuring showers, Wakes like a bride, to deck herself with flowers!

Henry Sylvester Cornwell (1831-1886)

Summer Longings

1319

A SPRING LILT

THROUGH the silver mist

Of the blossom-spray
Trill the orioles: list

To their joyous lay!
"What in all the world, in all the world," they say,
"Is half so sweet, so sweet, is half so sweet as May?”

“June! June! June!”

Low croon
The brown bees in the clover.
“Sweet! sweet! sweet!”

Repeat
The robins, nested over.

Unknown

SUMMER LONGINGS

Ah! my heart is weary waiting,
Waiting for the May,

-
Waiting for the pleasant rambles
Where the fragrant hawthorn-brambles,
With the woodbine alternating,

Scent the dewy way.
Ah! my heart is weary waiting,

Waiting for the May.

Ah! my heart is sick with longing,

Longing for the May,-
Longing to escape from study
To the young face fair and ruddy,
And the thousand charms belonging

To the summer's day.
Ah! my heart is sick with longing,

Longing for the May.

Ah! my heart is sore with sighing,

Sighing for the May,-
Sighing for their sure returning,
When the summer beams are burning,

Hopes and flowers that, dead or dying,

All the winter lay.
Ah! my heart is sore with sighing,

!
Sighing for the May.

Ah! my heart is pained with throbbing,

Throbbing for the May,
Throbbing for the seaside billows,
Or the water-wooing willows;
Where, in laughing and in sobbing,

Glide the streams away.
Ah! my heart, my heart is throbbing,

Throbbing for the May.

Waiting sad, dejected, weary,

Waiting for the May:
Spring goes by with wasted warnings, -
Moonlit evenings, sunbright mornings,-
Summer comes, yet dark and dreary

Life still ebbs away;
Man is ever weary, weary,
Waiting for the May!

Denis Florence MacCarthy (1817-1882]

MIDSUMMER

AROUND this lovely valley rise
The purple hills of Paradise.

O, softly on yon banks of haze,
Her rosy face the Summer lays!

Becalmed along the azure sky,
The argosies of cloudland lie,
Whose shores, with many a shining rift,
Far off their pearl-white peaks uplift.

Through all the long midsummer-day
The meadow-sides are sweet with hay.
I seek the coolest sheltered seat,
Just where the field and forest meet, -

Midsummer

1321

Where grow the pine-trees tall and bland,
The ancient oaks austere and grand,
And fringy roots and pebbles fret
The ripples of the rivulet.

I watch the mowers, as they go
Through the tall grass, a white-sleeved row.
With even stroke their scythes they swing,
In tune their merry whetstones ring.
Behind the nimble youngsters run,
And toss the thick swaths in the sun.
The cattle graze, while, warm and still,
Slopes the broad pasture, basks the hill,
And bright, where summer breezes break,
The green wheat crinkles like a lake.

The butterfly and humblebee
Come to the pleasant woods with me;
Quickly before me runs the quail,
Her chickens skulk behind the rail;
High up the lone wood-pigeon sits,
And the woodpecker pecks and flits.
Sweet woodland music sinks and swells,
The brooklet rings its tinkling bells,
The swarming insects drone and hum,
The partridge beats its throbbing drum.
The squirrel leaps among the boughs,
And chatters in his leafy house.
The oriole flashes by; and, look!
Into the mirror of the brook,
Where the vain bluebird trims his coat,
Two tiny feathers fall and float.

As silently, as tenderly,
The down of peace descends on me.
O, this is peace! I have no need
Of friend to talk, of book to read:
A dear Companion here abides;
Close to my thrilling heart He hides;

The holy silence is His Voice:
I lie and listen, and rejoice.

John Townsend Trowbridge (1827

A MIDSUMMER SONG

O, FATHER's gone to market-town, he was up before the

day, And Jamie's after robins, and the man is making hay, And whistling down the hollow goes the boy that minds the

mill, While mother from the kitchen-door is calling with a will:

"Polly!—Polly!—The cows are in the corn!

O, where's Polly?”

a

From all the misty morning air there comes a summer

soundA murmur as of waters from skies and trees and ground. The birds they sing upon the wing, the pigeons bill and coo, And over hill and hollow rings again the loud halloo:

“Polly!—Polly!—The cows are in the corn!

O, where's Polly?"

Above the trees the honey-bees swarm by with buzz and

boom, And in the field and garden a thousand blossoms bloom. Within the farmer's meadow a brown-eyed daisy blows, And down at the edge of the hollow a red and thorny rose.

But Polly!—Polly!—The cows are in the corn!

O, where's Polly?

How strange at such a time of day the mill should stop its

clatter! The farmer's wife is listening now and wonders what's the

matter. O, wild the birds are singing in the wood and on the hill, While whistling up the hollow goes the boy that minds the

mill.
But Polly!— Polly!—The cows are in the corn!
0, where's Polly?

Richard Watson Gilder (1844-1909)