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Voice on the Wind, and Other Poems

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<h2>HEAT</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> <h4>I</h4> Now is it as if Spring had never been, And Winter but a memory and dream, Here where the Summer stands, her lap of green Heaped high with bloom and beam, Among her blackberry-lilies, low that lean To kiss her feet; or, freckle-browed, that stare Upon the dragonfly which, slimly seen, Like a blue jewel flickering in her hair, Sparkles above them there. </div> <div class="stanza"> <h4>II</h4> Knee-deep among the tepid pools the cows Chew a slow cud or switch a slower tail. Half-sunk in sleep beneath the beechen boughs, Where thin the wood-gnats ail. From bloom to bloom the languid butterflies drowse; The sleepy bees make hardly any sound; The only things the sunrays can arouse, It seems, are two black beetles rolling 'round Upon the dusty ground. </div> <div class="stanza"> <h4>III</h4> Within its channel glares the creek and shrinks, Beneath whose rocks the furtive crawfish hides In stagnant places, where the green frog blinks, And water-spider glides. [Pg 32] And water-spider glides. Far hotter seems it for the bird that drinks, The startled kingfisher that screams and flies; Hotter and lonelier for the purple pinks Of weeds that bloom, whose sultry perfumes rise Stifling the swooning skies. </div> <div class="stanza"> <h4>IV</h4> From ragweed fallows, rye fields, heaped with sheaves, From blistering rocks, no moss or lichens crust, And from the road, where every hoof-stroke heaves A cloud of burning dust, The hotness quivers, making limp the leaves, That loll like tongues of panting hounds. The heat Is a wan wimple that the Summer weaves, A veil, in which she wraps, as in a sheet, The shriveling corn and wheat. </div> <div class="stanza"> <h4>V</h4> Furious, incessant in the weeds and briers The sawing weed-bugs sing; and, heat-begot, The grasshoppers, so many strident wires, Staccato fiercely hot: A lash of whirling sound that never tires, The locust flails the noon, where harnessed Thirst, Beside the road-spring, many a shod hoof mires, Into the trough thrusts his hot head, immersed, 'Round which cool bubbles burst. </div> <div class="stanza"> [Pg 33] <h4>VI</h4> The sad, sweet voice of some wood-spirit who Laments while watching a loved oak tree die, From the deep forest comes the wood-dove's coo. A long, lost, lonely cry. Oh, for a breeze, a mighty wind to woo The woods to stormy laughter; sow like grain The world with freshness of invisible dew. And pile above far, fevered hill and plain. Vast bastions black with rain. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> [Pg 34] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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