August

Dust on thy mantle! dust,
Bright Summer, on thy livery of green!
A tarnish, as of rust,
Dims thy late-brilliant sheen:
And thy young glories — leaf, and bud, and flower —
Change cometh over them with every hour.
Thee hath the August sun
Look'd on with hot, and fierce, and brassy face;
And still and lazily run,
Scarce whispering in their pace,
The half-dried rivulets, that lately sent
A shout of gladness up, as on they went.
Flame-like, the long midday,
With not so much of sweet air as hath stirr'd
The down upon the spray,
Where rests the panting bird,
Dozing away the hot and tedious noon,
With fitful twitter, sadly out of tune.
Seeds in the sultry air,
And gossamer web-work on the sleeping trees;
E'en the tall pines, that rear
Their plumes to catch the breeze,
The slightest breeze from the unfreshening west,
Partake the general languor, and deep rest.
Happy, as man may be,
Stretch'd on his back, in homely bean-vine bower,
While the voluptuous bee
Robs each surrounding flower,
And prattling childhood clambers o'er his breast,
The husbandman enjoys his noonday rest.
Against the hazy sky
The thin and fleecy clouds, unmoving, rest.
Beneath them far, yet high
In the dim, distant west,
The vulture, scenting thence its carrion-fare,
Sails, slowly circling in the sunny air.
Soberly, in the shade,
Repose the patient cow, and toil-worn ox;
Or in the shoal stream wade,
Shelter'd by jutting rocks:
The fleecy flock, fly-scourged and restless, rush
Madly from fence to fence, from bush to bush.
Tediously pass the hours,
And vegetation wilts, with blister'd root,
And droop the thirsting flowers,
Where the slant sunbeams shoot:
But of each tall, old tree, the lengthening line,
Slow-creeping eastward, marks the day's decline.
Faster, along the plain,
Moves now the shade, and on the meadow's edge:
The kine are forth again,
The bird flits in the hedge.
Now in the molten west sinks the hot sun.
Welcome, mild eve! — the sultry day is done.
Pleasantly comest thou,
Dew of the evening, to the crisp'd-up grass;
And the curl'd corn-blades bow,
As the light breezes pass,
That their parch'd lips may feel thee, and expand,
Thou sweet reviver of the fever'd land.
So, to the thirsting soul,
Cometh the dew of the Almighty's love;'
And the scathed heart, made whole,
Turneth in joy above,
To where the spirit freely may expand,
And rove, untrammel'd, in that "better land."