June

“ Let her beware--the world full soon Like me shall tearless turn away, And woo, instead of thine, O May! The brown, bright, joyous eyes of June. O June! forgive the long delay, My heart's deceptive dream is o'er-- Where I believe I will adore, Nor worship June, yet kneel to May.
SUNNY DAYS IN WINTER. Summer is a glorious season Warm, and bright, and pleasant; But the Past is not a reason To despise the Present. So while health can climb the mountain, And the log lights up the hall, There are sunny days in Winter, after all! Spring, no doubt, hath faded from us, Maiden-like in charms ”

“ Then let us welcome pleasant spring,
And still the flowery tribute bring,
And still to thee our carol sing,
O lovely May!
Mrs. Hemans.
JUNE.
Come, June! and with beauty fill the earth.
Long have we waited for thy clear blue sky;
Though May is sweet she lacks thy constancy,
And chilly winds oft break the glad world's mirth. ”

“ Of June is over the earth,
And the birds are singing together
In a wild, mad strain of mirth,
As the skies of June can be,
I would like to have the summons
Sent down from God to me.
I would not wait for the furrows--
For the faded eyes and hair;
But pass out swift and sudden,
Ere I grow heart-sick with care;
I would break some morn in my singing--
Or fall in my springing walk,
As a full-blown flower will sometimes
Drop, all a-bloom, from the stalk. ”

“ June is the month of roses. It is then that the wild rose wreathes our hedgerows with its bloom. It is everywhere lovely, and the sweetbriar exhales one of the most delicious of fragrances. It was a custom in England for girls to gather a rose on Midsummer Eve, wear it all day, and then place the petals in a Prayer Book and note whether it lost its hue before New Year’s Day, and take omen thereby. ”

“ And now home again and The Home Stretch mine!
June, and writing this to you as I sit in the old sweet place under the old sweet trees, under the hickories we loved so, and afar off is the flush of old gold above the violet of the western hills.
And the same June sounds come over to me: the call of an ewe to an errant lamb; the neigh of a mare and the answering whinny of her colt; the distant staccato clatter of binders amid the wheat.
And a wood-thrush deep in our laurel thicket rinsing clear the air around with her liquid notes.... ”

“ Yet what a day it was in which to live and love, and motor over perfect roads through that radiant summer-land which the Ligurians loved, the Romans conquered, and the modern world comes from afar to see.
Though it was early in April, with Easter but a few days behind us, the sky, the air, the flowers, belonged to June—a rare, rich June to praise in poetry or song. Billows of roses surged over old pink and yellow stucco walls, or a soaring flame of scarlet geranium ran along their tops devouring trails of ivy with a hundred fiery tongues. ”

“ Well, it is June to-day—an afternoon in June; a day to make one feel life in every limb—a day when but to exist is a luxury. The roses are bending their heads in the sweet sunshine, for there is not a cloud in Heaven’s blue. The butterflies are chasing each other among the flowers on the lawn, where we recline among the daisies, and the big velvety bees go droning and humming from clover blossom to clover blossom.
“Strange, is it not, my dear Ben,” I said, “that on such a day as this, and in the midst of sunshine, I should bethink me of some night-scenes at sea and on land? ”

“ And read sweet poems the whole day long:
Unseen as we lie in our haybuilt home.
O life is delight when June is come.
[Pg 142]
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The pinks along my garden walks
Have all shot forth their summer stalks,
Thronging their buds ’mong tulips hot,
And blue forget-me-not.
Their dazzling snows forth-bursting soon
Will lade the idle breath of June:
And waken thro’ the fragrant night
To steal the pale moonlight.
The nightingale at end of May
Lingers each year for their display;
Till when he sees their blossoms blown,
He knows the spring is flown. ”

“ They manage to look down upon the many of us who prefer the daisy fields to the time “when hills take on the noble lines of death.” But whims of the worshiper steal no splendor from the god. June has nothing to place beside a moonlit November night, whose shadow dance of multiform boughs is never seen through leaves, while shadows on the snow are hard of outline, unlike the illusive phantoms running over autumn’s brown grass. June has no flowers so quaint, pathetic, and austere as the trembling weeds of November. What does the goldenrod, white with age, care for frost? ”

“ When you are within doors, knowing that out-of-doors it is June, the urge to be out there with it is resistless. But though you wade in green, steep in sun, breast wind, and glory in them all, still the day itself eludes you. It would seem, in June, that there should be a specific for the malady of being oneself, so that one might get to be a June day outright. However, if one were oneself more and more, might not one finally become a June day?... ”

“ On such a night in June,
[84] With the beautiful soft half-moon,
And all these innocent blisses?
On such a night as this is!
Wordsworth.
When the wind's in the south
The rain's in its mouth.
No weather is ill
If the wind be still.
Old saying.
All through the sultry hours of June,
From morning blithe to golden noon,
And till the star of evening climbs
The gray-blue East, a world too soon,
There sings a thrush within the limes.
God's poet, hid in foliage green,
Sings endless songs, himself unseen;
Right seldom come his silent times.
Linger, ye summer hours serene! ”

“ Days in June—joyous days with all nature brimful with laughter—days when the air is a caress, the sky a film of pearl and silver, and the eager mob of bud, blossom, and leaf, having burst their bonds, are flaunting their glories, days like these are always to be remembered the world over. ”

“ But there was no sign, neither angry motion in the air nor hint of January mist. June—fields of June, sky of June, songs of June. Grass of June beneath him, grass of June over the tragedy he had deemed immortal. A bird called out of the dell: “Rickie!”
A bird flew into the dell.
“Did you take me for the Dryad?” she asked. She was sitting down with his head on her lap. He had laid it there for a moment before he went out to die, and she had not let him take it away.
“I prayed you might not be a woman,” he whispered.
“Darling, I am very much a woman. ”

“ In brief, to my kindled fancy, her youth and loveliness appeared the exquisite human embodiment of the June morning, with its alternations of sunshine and shadow, its roses and their fragrance, of its abounding yet untarnished and beautiful life. ”

“ If June is the most flowery of months, May is certainly the most musical. The days are drawing near when there will settle on the green world of woods and lanes and meadows the silence of the summer. The grey dawn is still almost as full as ever of sweet sounds. The songs of thrush and blackbird are still glorious in the evening twilight. Wren and robin still sing to us at intervals from dawn to sunset. But through the long hours of daylight we miss already the notes of many a wandering singer, for whom June is the limit of the season. Already the cuckoo's voice is breaking. ”

“ BEAUTIFUL-BOSOMED, O NIGHT I Beautiful-bosomed, O Night, in thy noon
Move with majesty onward! soaring, as lightly
As a singer may soar the notes of an exquisite tune,
The stars and the moon
Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls:
Under whose sapphirine walls,
June, hesperian June,
Robed in divinity wanders. Daily and nightly
The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star,
The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are,
Fill the land with languorous light and perfume.—
Is it the melody mute of burgeoning leaf and of bloom? ”

“ Farther south the withering heat hints of July; farther north there may be an edge of cold to the air; but in Georgia it is always perfectly June in June, all softness, fragrance, filled with the fearless growth and bloom of every living thing—the sort of day that seems to hum to itself with the wings of a thousand bees; adolescent weather, fragrant, soft, filled with the growth and yearning of every living thing from the frailest flower that blooms to the oldest tree and the oldest man. ”

“ Blossoms Time's flower, the steadfast amethyst.
"Here's pansies, they're for thoughts"—weak thoughts though fair;
June sees their opening, June their swift decay.
But those stone bourgeons stand for thoughts more rare,
Whose patient crystals colored day by day.
Might I so cut my flowers within the rock,
And prison there their sweet escaping breath;
Their petals then the winter's frost should mock,
And only Time's slow chisel work their death. ”

“ One of those perfect days that come early in June when the woods are flower-filled, and the trees full-leaved. The air was tangy with smells, the honeysuckle and balm o’ Gilead dripped perfume, the clover was bursting with sweetness, and the wild roses were faintly odorous; all the “buds and bells” of June were dewy and clean-scented. The nutty flavor of yarrow was in the air—Achillea millefolium—the plant which Achilles is said to have used in an ointment to heal his myrmidons wounded in the siege of Troy. ”

“ To this sapphire sea and sky,
To the mountains towering o'er
Vales where shimmering harvests lie;
To this joyous land and free,
To my flowers, and to my heart,
Sing a jocund jubilee—
June is sweet, and life is short. ”

“ June came and went, followed by July and August, with their burning splendor of sunlight and heat. Many of the flowers bloomed in sweetness for a little while, and then dropped their leaves and died to earthly things, and passed away to the heaven where flowers bloom forever. Others, fragrant and fresh and fair, came to take their places, and so the whole world was sweet until the autumn came. ”

“ When May has spent its little song, And richer comes the June, Through former eyes the heart will long For May again in tune; Though large with promise hope may be, By future visions cast, Our memoried thoughts will yearn to see The happy little past. ”

“ And the beautiful days of June were bright
With the Rose on the Garden-wall.
Our hearts are like the Roses of June,
They can live for one and all,
Giving their love as a blessed boon,
From a palace or cottage wall. ”

“ It is the time of the bloom of the first June rose; and here, by the margin of the wood, all the ground by fast falling blossom is littered. Every blade teems with life, and the air is instinct with the very breath of being. ”

“ In these warm June days, when all the earth is languorous and glad with its own beauty, time slips from us unannounced, and the minutes from morn to eventide, and from the gloaming till nightfall, melt into one another, until all seem one sweet, lengthened hour. ”

“ They were right,--those old German Minnesingers,--to sing the pleasant summer-time! What a time it is! How June stands illuminated in the Calendar! The windows are all wide open; only the Venetian blinds closed. Here and there a long streak of sunshine streams in through a crevice. We hear the low sound of the wind among the trees; and, as it swells and freshens, the distant doors clap to, with a sudden sound. The trees are heavy with leaves; and the gardens full of blossoms, red and white. ”

“ Even at this long distance of time, when June is abroad, if I catch the odor of locust blossoms, my mind and heart travel back on the wings of a moment, and I hear the buzzing of the wild bees, the song of the meadow-lark, the whistle of bob-white, and the gurgling of the creek—all blended into one sweet refrain like the mingling tones of a perfect orchestra by the soft-voiced babble of my wee girl-baby friend. ”

“ There is that in June which has a time-defying magic: May has her sweet affinities with Spring in the human heart: in April are the flutes of Pan: March is stormy with the clarions of the winds: October can be wild with all wildness or be the calm mirror of the passing of the loveliness of the green-world. ”

“ The early days of June often exhibit the coyness of her sister, May; and while the leaves are broadly expanding, and the buds are every where bursting into blossom, in full exuberance, cool breezes from the North, or chilling vapors from the East, sometimes remind those who are riding or walking, of the breath of Winter. It is not safe permanently to employ the thin dress fabrics of flowing summer before the middle of the month. ”

“ Meanwhile their callow young lie panting under the sweet gale and rose-bushes in the swamp, waiting for their parents to fetch them food.
June is an up-country month when our air and landscape is most like that of a mountainous region, full of freshness, with the scent of fern by the wayside. ”

“ The meadow grass was heavy with dew, and the birds were chattering together in every tree at the edge of the field. Whoever thinks that a summer dawning is a time of peace should get up and go out into the wet, warm, sweet, talkative world for an hour—then he would know better.
Some one beside the small girl was abroad that delicious morning of the very first day in June—a woman, tall and graceful, dressed in filmy white, and carrying a rose-red parasol, against the menace of the coming sun. ”

“ Be this as it may, the month of June is a segment of heaven annually bestowed on those whose eyes and ears have been opened to beauty in sight and sound. Indeed, what sense in man is not gratified to the point of imaginary perfection during this early fruition of the varied promise of spring? Even to the sense of touch, how exquisite is the "feel" of the fragrant rose-petals, the soft young foliage that has transformed the world, and the queer downy fledglings in innumerable nests! ”