IN SUMMER DEEPS
Through sunny spaces overhead
A gray hawk’s lazy pinions spread,
And poppies open wide and red
Where golden harvests grew.
In rosy wreaths upon the swales
And fallow fields the bindweed trails,
And late-sown buckwheat swiftly pales
To blossoming anew.
The pond within the pasture land
Reflects the cattle as they stand
In depths of dipping sedges and
Of tangled meadow-rue.
In silver splashes through the green,
Fine, filmy spider-webs are seen,
And crumpled cockle-flowers between
Are rifts of tender blue.
On stately stalks of standing corn
A wealth of cresting plumes are borne,
And tawny tasseled tufts adorn
The ripened barley, too.
So, steeping nature far and wide,
Deep sweeps the flood of summer-tide,
Till all things that therein abide
Are richly tinctured through.