Midsummer

I     The mellow smell of hollyhocks     And marigolds and pinks and phlox     Blends with the homely garden scents     Of onions, silvering into rods;     Of peppers, scarlet with their pods;     And (rose of all the esculents)     Of broad plebeian cabbages,     Breathing content and corpulent ease. II     The buzz of wasp and fly makes hot     The spaces of the garden-plot;     And from the orchard, - where the fruit     Ripens and rounds, or, loosed with heat,     Rolls, hornet-clung, before the feet, -     One hears the veery's golden flute,     That mixes with the sleepy hum     Of bees that drowsily go and come. III     The podded musk of gourd and vine     Embower a gate of roughest pine,     That leads into a wood where day     Sits, leaning o'er a forest pool,     Watching the lilies opening cool,     And dragonflies at airy play,     While, dim and near, the quietness     Rustles and stirs her leafy dress. IV     Far-off a cowbell clangs awake     The noon who slumbers in the brake:     And now a pewee, plaintively,     Whistles the day to sleep again:     A rain-crow croaks a rune for rain,     And from the ripest apple tree     A great gold apple thuds, where, slow,     The red cock curves his neck to crow. V     Hens cluck their broods from place to place,     While clinking home, with chain and trace,     The cart-horse plods along the road     Where afternoon sits with his dreams:     Hot fragrance of hay-making streams     Above him, and a high-heaped load     Goes creaking by and with it, sweet,     The aromatic soul of heat. VI     "Coo-ee! coo-ee!" the evenfall     Cries, and the hills repeat the call:     "Coo-ee! coo-ee!" and by the log     Labor unharnesses his plow,     While to the barn comes cow on cow:     "Coo-ee! coo-ee!" - and, with his dog,     Barefooted boyhood down the lane     "Coo-ees" the cattle home again.