In July

WHY do I make no poems? Good my friend

Now is there silence through the summer woods,

In whose green depths and lawny solitudes

The light is dreaming; voicings clear ascend

Now from no hollow where glad rivulets wend,

But murmurings low of inarticulate moods,

Softer than stir of unfledged cushat* broods,            [ring-dove]

Breathe, till o'erdrowsed the heavy flower-heads bend.

Now sleep the crystal and heart-charmed waves

Round white, sunstricken rocks the noontide long,

Or 'mid the coolness of dim lighted caves

Sway in a trance of vague deliciousness;

And I,--I am too deep in joy's excess

For the imperfect impulse of a song.

Edward Dowden

In September

SPRING scarce had greener fields to show than these

Of mid September; through the still warm noon

The rivulets ripple forth a gladder tune

Than ever in the summer; from the trees

Dusk-green, and murmuring inward melodies,

No leaf drops yet; only our evenings swoon

In pallid skies more suddenly, and the moon

Finds motionless white mists out on the leas.

Dear chance it were in some rough wood-god's lair

A month hence, gazing on the last bright field,

To sink o'er-drowsed, and dream that wild-flowers blew

Around my head and feet silently there,

Till Spring's glad choir adown the valley pealed,

And violets trembled in the morning dew.

Edward Dowden