The Summer's Call

Come away! The sunny hours
Woo thee far to founts and bowers!
O’er the very waters now,
In their play,
Flowers are shedding beauty’s glow--
Come away!
Where the lily’s tender gleam
Quivers on the glancing stream,
Come away!

All the air is fill’d with sound,
Soft, and sultry, and profound;
Murmurs through the shadowy grass
Lightly stray;
Faint winds whisper as they pass--
Come away!
Where the bee’s deep music swells
From the trembling foxglove bells,
Come away!

In the skies the sapphire blue
Now hath won its richest hue;
In the woods the breath of song
Night and day
Floats with leafy scents along--
Come away!
Where the boughs with dewy gloom
Darken each thick bed of bloom,
Come away!

In the deep heart of the rose
Now the crimson love-hue glows;
Now the glow-worm’s lamp by night
Sheds a ray,
Dreamy, starry, greenly bright--
Come away!
Where the fairy cup-moss lies,
With the wild-wood strawberries,
Come away!

Now each tree by summer crown’d,
Sheds its own rich twilight round;
Glancing there from sun to shade,
Bright wings play;
There the deer its couch hath made--
Come away!
Where the smooth leaves of the lime
Glisten in their honey-time,
Come away--away!

‘Have you not seen the nightingale,
A pilgrim cooped into a cage,
How doth she chant her wonted tale
In that her lonely hermitage?
Even there her charming melody doth prove,
That all her boughs are trees, her cage a grove.’”

Roger L’Estrange.