Page 13 - Poetry-Country

Summer Noon

The dust unlifted lies as first it lay,
When dews of early morning dried away;
The spider’s web stirs not with gentlest gale,
Nor thistle-down may from its mooring sail.

Only by spastic shutting of their wings
We know the butterflies are living things;
The grasshoppers with grating armor prone,
Vault low and aimlessly from stone to stone.

If blooms of mead or orchard lure the bee,
He journeys thither buzzing drowsily;
At last the humming-bird is pleased to rest
All but the shifting brilliance on its breast.

The fern-leaves curl, the wild rose sweetness spends
Rich as at eve the honeysuckle lends;
While scattered pines and clustered spruces deep
Within grave boughs their exhalations keep.

Absorbed in sole fruition of the cool,
The heron steadfast eyes the reeded pool;
While overhead the hawk, ‘till lost from sight,
Pursues the failing circles of its flight.

The rabbit brown peeps panting from the hedge,
The fawn-hued field-mouse from the haycock’s edge;
The creeping cattle feed far up the hill,
The birds have hid, and field and wood are still.

— John Vance Cheney (Century Magazine, 1882)

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