What is it to them that the seaside landlady crouches awaiting her prey?
What is it to them that 'Arry is preparing to make night hideous? They
are bound for their rest, and the surcease of toil is the only thing
that suggests poetry to them. Spring the season for poets! We wipe away
that treasonable suggestion just as we have wiped out the solstice. We
holiday makers are not going to be tyrannized over by literary and
scientific persons, and we insist on taking our own way. Our blood beats
fully only at this season, and not even the extortioners' bills can
daunt us. Let us break into poetry and flout the maudlin enthusiasts who
prate of spring.
With a ripple of leaves and a twinkle of streams
The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise,
And the winds are one with the clouds and beams--
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
The dusks grow vast in a purple haze,
While the West from a rapture of sunset rights,
Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise--
Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights!
* * * * *
The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams,
The lush grass thickens and springs and sways,
The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams--
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
In the stilly fields, in the stilly way,
All secret shadows and mystic lights,
Late lovers, murmurous, linger and gaze--
Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights!
* * * * *
There's a swagger of bells from the trampling teams,
Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze,
The rich ripe rose as with incense steams--
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
A soul from the honeysuckle strays,
And the nightingale, as from prophet heights,
Speaks to the Earth of her million Mays--
Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights!
And it's oh for my Dear and the charm that stays--
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
And it's oh for my Love and the dark that plights--
Midsummer nights! O Midsummer nights!
There is a burst for you! And we will let the poets of spring, with
their lambkins and their catkins and the rest, match this poem of
William Henley's if they can.
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