Some flowers are withered and some joys have died; The garden reeks with an East Indian scent From beds where gillyflowers stand weak and spent; The white heat pales the skies from side to side; But in still lakes and rivers, cool, content, Like starry blooms on a new firmament, White lilies float and regally abide. In vain the cruel skies their...Learn More

Silence again. The glorious symphony Hath need of pause and interval of peace. Some subtle signal bids all sweet sounds cease, Save hum of insects' aimless industry. Pathetic summer seeks by blazonry Of color to conceal her swift decrease. Weak subterfuge! Each mocking day doth fleece A blossom, and lay bare her poverty. Poor middle-aged summer!...Learn More

O Winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire, What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire The streams than under ice. June could not hire Her roses to forego the strength they learn In sleeping on thy breast. No fires can burn The bridges thou dost lay where men...Learn More

Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white; And reigns the winter's pregnant silence still; No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill, And willow stems grow daily red and bright. These are days when ancients held a rite Of expiation for the old year's ill, And prayer to purify the new year's will: Fit days, ere yet the spring rains...Learn More

O golden month! How high thy gold is heaped! The yellow birch-leaves shine like bright coins strung On wands; the chestnut's yellow pennons tongue To every wind its harvest challenge. Steeped In yellow, still lie fields where wheat was reaped; And yellow still the corn sheaves, stacked among The yellow gourds, which from the earth have wrung Her...Learn More

O month whose promise and fulfillment blend, And burst in one! it seems the earth can store In all her roomy house no treasure more; Of all her wealth no farthing have to spend On fruit, when once this stintless flowering end. And yet no tiniest flower shall fall before It hath made ready at its hidden core Its tithe of seed, which we may count...Learn More

O Month when they who love must love and wed! Were one to go to worlds where May is naught, And seek to tell the memories he had brought From earth of thee, what were most fitly said? I know not if the rosy showers shed From apple-boughs, or if the soft green wrought In fields, or if the robin's call be fraught The most with thy delight. Perhaps...Learn More

The month of carnival of all the year, When Nature lets the wild earth go its way, And spend whole seasons on a single day. The spring-time holds her white and purple dear; October, lavish, flaunts them far and near; The summer charily her reds doth lay Like jewels on her costliest array; October, scornful, burns them on a bier. The winter hoards...Learn More

No days such honored days as these! While yet Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide For some fair thing which should forever bide On earth, her beauteous memory to set In fitting frame that no age could forget, Her name in lovely April's name did hide, And leave it there, eternally allied To all the fairest flowers Spring did beget. And when...Learn More

The lakes of ice gleam bluer than the lakes Of water 'neath the summer sunshine gleamed: Far fairer than when placidly it streamed, The brook its frozen architecture makes, And under bridges white its swift way takes. Snow comes and goes as messenger who dreamed Might linger on the road; or one who deemed His message hostile gently for their...Learn More

This is the treacherous month when autumn days With summer's voice come bearing summer's gifts. Beguiled, the pale down-trodden aster lifts Her head and blooms again. The soft, warm haze Makes moist once more the sere and dusty ways, And, creeping through where dead leaves lie in drifts, The violet returns. Snow noiseless sifts Ere night, an icy...Learn More

Month which the warring ancients strangely styled The month of war,--as if in their fierce ways Were any month of peace!--in thy rough days I find no war in Nature, though the wild Winds clash and clang, and broken boughs are piled As feet of writhing trees. The violets raise Their heads without affright, without amaze, And sleep through all the...Learn More