Poems (Trask)/June

by Clara Augusta Jones Trask

For works with similar titles, see June.

JUNE.

A radiant wealth of golden stills,
 A tender azure sky,
A wind whose touch is sweet and soft
 As breaths of Araby;
Nights luminous with twinkling stars,—
 Heaven's lamps of crystal bright,—
While over all the moon pours down
 Her flood of silver light.

The clover-blooms on meadow-lands
 Scent all the ambient air,
And crimson roses lavish forth
 Their odors sweetly rare;
The 'chestnut-trees droop heavily
 With weight of verdant leaves,
And through the cool shade of their boughs
 The west wind's spirit breathes.

A white mist shrouds the distant lake
 In a soft, fleecy veil,
And hides the lilies floating there,
 The lilies pure and pale;
The crickets chant beneath the grass
 A lonesome, weird refrain,
Like the slow beating on the turf
 Of the autumnal rain.

The sleepy whip-poor-will pours forth
 His melancholy song,
So like the wailing, sorrowing note
 Of some immortal wrong;
And on the shingly shore the waves
 Make music sad and low,
As they toss up their foamy wreaths,
 White as the drifted snow.

Oh, June! rare month of love and hope!
 Sweet time of birds and flowers,
Of golden hushes, royal calms,
 And long, bright, sunny hours!
Methinks at this full flush of life
 Grand instincts spring to birth,
And that in June sweet heaven seems
 A little nearer earth.