THE afternoon of summer folds Its warm arms round the marigolds, And, with its gleaming fingers, pets The watered pinks and violets That from the casement vases spill, Over the cottage window-sill, Their fragrance down the garden walks Where droop the dry-mouthed hollyhocks. How vividly the sunshine scrawls The grape-vine shadows on the walls! How like a truant swings the breeze In high boughs of the apple-trees! The slender "free-stone" lifts aloof, Full languidly above the roof, A hoard of fruitage, stamped with gold And precious mintings manifold. High up, through curled green leaves, a pear Hangs hot with ripeness here and there. Beneath the sagging trellisings, In lush, lack-luster clusterings, Great torpid grapes, all fattened through With moon and sunshine, shade and dew, Until their swollen girths express But forms of limp deliciousness -- Drugged to an indolence divine With heaven's own sacramental wine. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THIRD BOOK OF AIRS: SONG 26. FIRST LOVE by THOMAS CAMPION BALLAD OF HECTOR IN HADES by EDWIN MUIR LAST AND WORST by FRANCES EKIN ALLISON WRITTEN IN BUTLER'S SERMONS by MATTHEW ARNOLD |