Sommers

“ The kindly summer that gives the flower to the bee, the sun to the flower, the blue sky to the sun, and all the earth to joy. Surely—and but a mile away Judith slept, dreaming, but not of song. And over the waters that quickened with insect life, through the air all astir with the scents and savours of spring, athwart the earth that was quivering with the growth of all things green—summer came one day nearer. ”

“ WHEN SUMMER COMES.
When summer comes, then you are near to me,
⁠I feel your phantom presence on my heart.
In every wind the dead year speaks again,
⁠And every scene springs up to take its part.
Twas such a day, as sweet a wind arose.
⁠To kiss with perfumed lips your blown hair;
With brow perplexed and that odd smile you had,
⁠I wondered what you thought of, standing there. ”

“ In summer, the season in which we were there, the sky is clear, with but little rain: if fogs and mists are at any time driven in by the south wind, they are instantaneously dissipated, and at once it becomes serene and bright again. The sea is calm, not boisterous, and its waves are gentle. ”

“ But, to come back to the larger things of the out-of-doors, you should see the mist some summer morning very early or some summer evening, sheeted and still over a winding stream or pond, especially in the evening when the sun has gone down behind the hill, the flame has faded from the sky, and over the rim of the circling slopes pours the soft, cool twilight, with a breeze as soft and cool, and a spirit that is prayer. ”

“ In the dreamy summer stillness, we sit with, content, looking at those distant hills, listening to the lapping of the waves, watching the sun sink lower toward the sea. The afternoon sunlight makes a glade across the waters,—seeming to one from a western sea-board like some strange disarrangement in the day. ”

“ It is the late afternoon of the year, when life, refreshed by the siestas of summer, resumes its activity, and the heavens no less than the face of the earth greet the eye with a smile of divine beauty.
To every season its flowers—and to every season its stars. The gardens of the sky are not the same in autumn as in summer, either in their arrangement or in the peculiarities of their bloom. There is less parade of flaming beauty, but the richness of the coup d’œil is not inferior. ”

“ Rarely did the dull gray of the sky dim the glory of a whole day, and the short summer showers, freshening the beauty of the landscape and abating the fervid heat of mid-summer, seemed only too infrequent. And above all, the pure, free, upland air, that gives vigor and health to the body, joy and lightness to the heart, almost annihilates distance to the eye; and in breathing which, one drinks into the lungs the very wine of life. ”

“ But any day the wind might come down from the north, keen and thick and white about the summits, and leave the flowers and the cony slide covered deep beneath a drift.
Spring, summer, and autumn are all one season, all crowded together—a kind of peak piercing for a few short weeks the long, bleak, unbroken land of winter here on the roof of the world. ”

“ The red midsummer of blazing heat.
When the sun, like an eye that never closes,
Bends on the earth its fervid gaze,
And the winds are still, and the crimson roses
Droop and wither and die in its rays. ”

“ The wind blew south; the noon of day
Was warm as June's; and save that snow
Flecked the low mountains far away,
And that the vernal-seeming breeze
Mocked faded grass and leafless trees,
I might have dreamed of summer as I lay,
Watching the fallen leaves with the soft wind at play. ”

“ On invisible feet slips the stately autumn into summer’s place. Something has come to the air, a hint of change, some glory which cannot be defined into the sky and the leaves. Perhaps it has rained, and the languid, burning heat of the day before has now a sparkle in it; as hot, it may be, but alive, vivid. ”

“ Winter and summer they pass and repass, now through the midnight sleet and fury of a great northeaster, now through August quiet and the reddish-golden radiance of an old moon rising after midnight from the sea, now through a world of rain shaken with heavy thunder and stabbed through and through with lightning. And always, always alone. Whenever I rise at earliest dawn, I find the beach traced and retraced with footprints that vanish in the distances, each step a chain forged anew each night in the courageous service of mankind. ”

“ There is scarcely a smile of Spring or a sigh of Autumn that is not reflected here, scarcely a phase of the large benedictions of Summer; even of Winter he gives us clear glimpses sometimes, albeit mournfully, remembering Spring.
"In the red west the twisted moon is low,
[Pg 10] And on the bubbles there are half-lit stars,
Music and twilight: and the deep blue flow
Of water: and the watching fire of Mars.
The deep fish slipping through the moonlit bars
Make death a thing of sweet dreams,—"
What a Summer's evening is here. ”

“ I resolved that I would give my summer discourse only if external nature, in her soft luxuriant beauty, looked summer-like: a sweet pervading accompaniment to my poor words, giving them a force and meaning far beyond their own. What talk concerning summer skies is like the sapphire radiance, so distant and pure, looking in through the church windows? You do not remember how blue and beautiful the sky is, unless when you are looking at it: nature is better than our remembrance of her. ”

“ Then all at once summer returned, coming like a thief in the night, for when it was morning the sun rose in splendour and power in a sky without a cloud on its vast azure expanse, on a calm sea with no motion but that scarcely perceptible rise and fall as of one that sleeps. ”

“ The chilly wind that sighed in long heavy gusts over moor and fell and wild grass-covered mountain, the damp rawness of the air, the heavy clouds that lay detached in strange-shaped masses upon the edge of the distant horizon, all told that the sweet season of the summer was come to a close, and that the world was dropping into the old age of the year. ”

“ There is sun and glory of summer, the day of which is not only twelve hours, but lasts continuously, day and night, for three months—a warm, bright, fragrance-laden summer, with an infinite wealth of color and changing beauty. ”

“ I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime. ”

“ Other summers remind me of fields of clover, or of birch-woods, or of apple-trees and berry bushes, but that summer took its character from the climbing-roses. The bright, delicate buds, that could resist neither wind nor rain, the light, waving, pale-green shoots, the soft, bending stems, the exuberant richness of blossoms, the gaily humming hosts of insects, all follow me and rise up before me in their glory, when I think of that summer, that rosy, delicate, dainty summer. ”

“ The spring does not stand coaxing and beckoning the shy summer to the woods and fields as in our country, but while winter yet seems lord of the [569] ascendant, and his white robes are still covering land and water, suddenly the summer looks down upon the earth from the cloudless sky, and, as by magic, the ice melts, the snow evaporates, the trees are clothed with green, the woods are full of flowers, and the whole world breaks out into a hallelujah of warmth, beauty, and blossoming like mid-July in our deliberate climate. ”

“ As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each wave an invisible portion, and brings to those on shore the ethereal essence of ocean, so the air lingering among the wood and hedges—green waves and billows—became full of fine atoms of summer. ”

“ It is not that summer atmosphere, full of alternations of haze and fervent clearness, as if Nature were calling into life every day some influence for its myriad children; sometimes in showers, and sometimes with coercive heat upon root and leaf; and, like a universal [113] task-master, was driving up the hours to accomplish the labors of the year.
3. No! In these autumn days there is a sense of leisure and of meditation. The sun seems to look down upon the labors of its fiery hands with complacency. ”

“ The journeying summer creeps from south to north
With wearied feet, resting in many a vale;
Its length cloth tire the seasons to o'ercome,
Its widening breadth doth make the sea?breeze pause
And spend its breath against the mountain's side:
Still serene Summer paints the southern fields,
While the stern Winter reigns on northern hills. ”

“ The scorching heat of a midsummer day beat mercilessly upon the earth. Travelers on the dusty roads, toilers in the fields, and others exposed to the rays of the sun, thought yearningly of cooling winds and running streams. ”

“ The dews of spring fall, summer's vapours fade away, and it is the pure atmosphere of autumn which clearly reveals the distant landscape, and then finally earthly existence is swallowed in the night of winter. ”

“ It was a beautiful summer afternoon, at that delicious period of the year when summer has just burst forth from the growth of spring; when the summer is yet but three days old, and all the various shades of green which Nature can put forth are still in their unsoiled purity of freshness. ”

“ It was early summer, or perhaps latter spring, and the most genial weather that either spring or summer ever brought, possessing a character, indeed, as if both seasons had done their utmost to create an atmosphere and temperature most suitable for the enjoyment and exercise of life. To one accustomed to a climate where there is seldom a medium between heat too fierce and cold too deadly, it was a new development in the nature of weather. ”

“ The great heats of summer are now past, showers of rain have already fallen, and the driving up of clouds at one time from the north, and at another from the south, betoken the approach of those copious showers, which the earth, parched by a whole summer's sun, so much requires, and which man and beast need to refresh their exhausted system. ”

“ The height of summer here is the weird, the oppressive, the ghastly season of the year; rarely even has the sunset beauty, the red rayless ball too often lends but a red, dull hectic to the sun and sky. ”

“ The midsummer clouds were piling up upon the south horizon,
Mountains of drifting translucence in the larkspur-fields of the sky:
Ascending and toppling in crumbled ravines, dribbling down chasms
of silence,
Reassembling in crowded multitudes, massive forms one above another. ”

“ Is not Spring, at times, the gladdest, gayest, gentlest, mildest, meekest, modestest, softest, sweetest, and sunniest of all God's creatures that steal along the face of the earth? So are we. So much for our similitude—a staring and striking one—to Spring. But were you to stop there, what an inadequate idea would you have of our character! For only ask your senses, and they will tell you that we are much liker Summer. Is not Summer often infernally hot? So are we. Is not Summer sometimes cool as its own cucumbers? So are we. Does not Summer love the shade? ”

“ Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic summer.
How much more living is the life that is in nature, the furred life which still survives the stinging nights, and, from amidst fields and woods covered with frost and snow, sees the sun rise. ”

“ Though I like the early summer best, yet I can admire the clear winter sky, and the dazzling expanse of white that robes the whole earth as if in ermine, and even the autumnal storm with its fierce blast, loaded with sleet, and hail, and withered leaves. ”

“ As Men, the Heavens have their Hypocrisie?
Herrick.
Summer in the penniless can stir the frozen prayer,
Summer sends a golden glow through needy bones a-while;
Bright and breezy is the dawn, and soft the balmy air;
[89] Summer, 'tis the breath of Heaven, 'tis God's own gracious smile. ”

“ We can yet enjoy a broken Summer. It would do your heart good to see us hobbling with our crutch along the Highland hills, sans great-coat or umbrella, in a summer-shower, aiblins cap in hand that our hair may grow, up to the knees in the bonny blooming heather, or clambering, like an old goat, among the cliffs. ”

“ Summer decks the ripening plain,
Autumn sings amid his cares,
Guiding home the loaded wain.
Winter with his snowy vest,
Revels in their blended spoil,
Lulls the wearied earth to rest,
Braces man for future toil. ”

“ All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer—one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going—one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doings, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world. ”

“ Although late in the autumn, the season was mild and genial, and the sea calm and waveless, save along the shore, where, even in the stillest weather, the great breakers come tumbling in with a force, independent of storm, and listening to their booming thunder, I have dreamed away hour after hour unconsciously. ”

“ The afternoon was drawing to a close, and still the rain came down in steady and persevering drops, every drop falling in a decided and obstinate way, as if conscious, though it might be ever so unwelcome, no one had a right to oppose its coming. A rainy day in midsummer is a glorious thing. The grass looks up so green and grateful under the life-giving moisture ”