Summer Morning: A Poem

Morning again breaks through the mines of Heaven,

And shakes her jewelled kirtle on the sky,

Heavy with rosy gold. Aside are driven

The vassal clouds, which bow as she draws nigh,

And catch her scattered gems of orient dye,

The pearlèd-ruby which her pathway strews;

Argent and amber, now thrown useless by.

The uncoloured clouds wear what she doth refuse,

For only once does Morn her sun-dyed garments use.

No print of sheep-track yet hath crushed a flower;

The spider’s woof with silvery dew is hung

As it was beaded ere the daylight hour:

The hookèd bramble just as it was strung,

When on each leaf the Night her crystals flung,

Then hurried off, the dawning to elude;

Before the golden-beakèd blackbird sung,

Or ere the yellow-brooms, or gorses rude,

Had bared their armèd heads in lowly gratitude.

From Nature’s old cathedral sweetly ring

The wild-bird choirs—burst of the woodland band,

Green-hooded nuns, who ’mid the blossoms sing;

Their leafy temple, gloomy, tall, and grand,

Pillared with oaks, and roofed with Heaven’s own hand.

Hark! how the anthem rolls through arches dun:—

“Morning again is come to light the land;

The great world’s Comforter, the mighty Sun,

Has yoked his golden steeds, the glorious race to run.”

Those dusky foragers, the noisy rooks,

Have from their green high city-gates rushed out,

To rummage furrowy fields and flowery nooks;

On yonder branch now stands their glossy scout.

As yet no busy insects buzz about,

No fairy thunder o’er the air is rolled:

The drooping buds their crimson lips still pout;

Those stars of earth, the daisies white, unfold,

And soon the buttercups will give back “gold for gold.”

“Hark! hark! the lark” sings ’mid the silvery blue;

Behold her flight, proud man! and lowly bow.

She seems the first that does for pardon sue,

As though the guilty stain which lurks below

Had touched the flowers that drooped above her brow,

When she all night slept by the daisies’ side;

And now she soars where purity doth flow,

Where new-born light is with no sin allied,

And pointing with her wings Heaven-ward our thoughts would guide.