June

Long, long ago, it seems, this summer morn     That pale-browed April passed with pensive tread     Through the frore woods, and from its frost-bound bed     Woke the arbutus with her silver horn;     And now May, too, is fled,     The flower-crowned month, the merry laughing May,     With rosy feet and fingers dewy wet,     Leaving the woods and all cool gardens gay     With tulips and the scented violet.     Gone are the wind-flower and the adder-tongue     And the sad drooping bellwort, and no more     The snowy trilliums crowd the forest's floor;     The purpling grasses are no longer young,     And summer's wide-set door     O'er the thronged hills and the broad panting earth     Lets in the torrent of the later bloom,     Haytime, and harvest, and the after mirth,     The slow soft rain, the rushing thunder plume.     All day in garden alleys moist and dim,     The humid air is burdened with the rose;     In moss-deep woods the creamy orchid blows;     And now the vesper-sparrows' pealing hymn     From every orchard close     At eve comes flooding rich and silvery;     The daisies in great meadows swing and shine;     And with the wind a sound as of the sea     Roars in the maples and the topmost pine.     High in the hills the solitary thrush     Tunes magically his music of fine dreams,     In briary dells, by boulder-broken streams;     And wide and far on nebulous fields aflush     The mellow morning gleams.     The orange cone-flowers purple-bossed are there,     The meadow's bold-eyed gypsies deep of hue,     And slender hawkweed tall and softly fair,     And rosy tops of fleabane veiled with dew.     So with thronged voices and unhasting flight     The fervid hours with long return go by;     The far-heard hylas piping shrill and high     Tell the slow moments of the solemn night     With unremitting cry;     Lustrous and large out of the gathering drouth     The planets gleam; the baleful Scorpion     Trails his dim fires along the droused south;     The silent world-incrusted round moves on.     And all the dim night long the moon's white beams     Nestle deep down in every brooding tree,     And sleeping birds, touched with a silly glee,     Waken at midnight from their blissful dreams,     And carol brokenly.     Dim surging motions and uneasy dreads     Scare the light slumber from men's busy eyes,     And parted lovers on their restless beds     Toss and yearn out, and cannot sleep for sighs.     Oft have I striven, sweet month, to figure thee,     As dreamers of old time were wont to feign,     In living form of flesh, and striven in vain;     Yet when some sudden old-world mystery     Of passion fired my brain,     Thy shape hath flashed upon me like no dream,     Wandering with scented curls that heaped the breeze,     Or by the hollow of some reeded stream     Sitting waist-deep in white anemones;     And even as I glimpsed thee thou wert gone,     A dream for mortal eyes too proudly coy,     Yet in thy place for subtle thought's employ     The golden magic clung, a light that shone     And filled me with thy joy.     Before me like a mist that streamed and fell     All names and shapes of antique beauty passed     In garlanded procession with the swell     Of flutes between the beechen stems; and last,     I saw the Arcadian valley, the loved wood,     Alpheus stream divine, the sighing shore,     And through the cool green glades, awake once more,     Psyche, the white-limbed goddess, still pursued,     Fleet-footed as of yore,     The noonday ringing with her frighted peals,     Down the bright sward and through the reeds she ran,     Urged by the mountain echoes, at her heels     The hot-blown cheeks and trampling feet of Pan.