| |
| CAN freckled Auguest,—drowsing warm and blonde | |
| Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead, | |
| In her hot hair the oxeyed daisies wound,— | |
| O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heed | |
| To thee? when no plumed weed, no feather’d seed | 5 |
| Blows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond, | |
| That gleams like flint between its rim of grasses, | |
| Through which the dragonfly forever passes | |
| Like splintered diamond. | |
| |
| Drouth weights the trees, and from the farmhouse eaves | 10 |
| The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day, | |
| Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leaves | |
| Limp with the heat—a league of rutty way— | |
| Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay | |
| Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves. | 15 |
| Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain, | |
| In thirsty heaven or on burning plain, | |
| That thy keen eye perceives? | |
| |
| But thou art right. Thou prophesiest true. | |
| For hardly hast thou ceased thy forecasting, | 20 |
| When, up the western fierceness of scorched blue, | |
| Great water-carrier winds their buckets bring | |
| Brimming with freshness. How their dippers ring | |
| And flash and rumble! lavishing dark dew | |
| On corn and forestland, that, streaming wet, | 25 |
| Their hilly backs against the downpour set, | |
| Like giants vague in view. | |
| |
| The butterfly, safe under leaf and flower, | |
| Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art; | |
| The bumble-bee, within the last half-hour, | 30 |
| Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart; | |
| While in the barnyard, under shed and cart, | |
| Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power, | |
| Barometer of the birds,—like August there,— | |
| Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair, | 35 |
| Like some drenched truant, cower. | |
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