Coolly.

Gainsborough, Cornard Wood, near Sudbury, Suffolk, 1748

JULY

Loud is the Summer's busy song,

The smallest breeze can find a tongue,

While insects of each tiny size

Grow teasing with their melodies,

Till noon burns with its blistering breath

Around, and day lies still as death

The busy noise of man and brute

Is on a sudden lost and mute;

Even the brook that leaps along,

Seems weary of its bubbling song,

And, so soft its waters creep,

Tired silence sinks in sounder sleep;

The cricket on its bank is dumb;

The very flies forget to hum;

And, save the wagon rocking round,

The landscape sleeps without a sound.

The breeze is stopped, the lazy bough

Hath not a leaf that danceth now;

The taller grass upon the hill,

And spider's threads, are standing still;

The feathers, dropped from moorhen's wing

Which to the water's surface cling,

Are steadfast, and as heavy seem

As stones beneath them in the stream;

Hawkweed and groundsel's fanny downs

Unruffled keep their seedy crowns;

And in the over-heated air

Not one light thing is floating there,

Save that to the earnest eye

The restless heat seems twittering by.

Noon swoons beneath the heat it made,

And flowers e'en within the shade;

Until the sun slopes in the west,

Like weary traveler, glad to rest

On pillowed clouds of many hues.

Then Nature's voice its joy renews,

And chequered field and grassy plain

Hum with their summer songs again,

A requiem to the day's decline,

Whose setting sunbeams coolly shine;

As welcome to day's feeble powers

As falling dews to thirsty flowers.

John Clare