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August
- LEAVE me alone, for August’s sleepy charm
- Is on me, and I will not break the spell;
- My head is on the mighty Mother’s arm:
- I will not ask if life goes ill or well.
- There is no world!—I do not care to know
- Whence aught has come, nor wither it shall go.
- I want to wander over pastures still,
- Where sheared white sheep and mild‐eyed cattle graze;
- To climb the thymy, clover‐covered hill,
- To look down on the valley’s hot blue haze;
- And on the short brown turf for hours to lie
- Gazing straight up into the clear, deep sky.
- I want to walk through crisp gold harvest fields,
- Through meadows yellowed by the August heat;
- To loiter through the cool dim wood, that yields
- Such perfect flowers and quiet so complete—
- The happy woods, where every bud and leaf
- Is full of dreams as life is full of grief.
- I want to think no more of all the pain
- That in the city thrives, a poison‐flower—
- The eternal loss, the never‐coming gain,
- The lifelong woe—the joy that lives an hour,
- Bright, evanescent as the dew that dawn
- Shows on this silent, wood‐encircled lawn.
- I want to pull the honey‐bud that twines
- About the blackberries and gold‐leaf sloes;
- To part the boughs where the rare water shines,
- Tread the soft bank whereby the bulrush grows—
- I want to be no more myself, but be
- Made one with all the beauty that I see.
- Oh, happy country, myriad voiced and dear,
- I have no heart, no eyes, except for you;
- Yours are the only voices I will hear,
- Yours is the only bidding I will do:
- You bid me be at peace, and let alone
- That loud, rough world where peace is never known.
- Yet through your voices comes a sterner cry,
- A voice I cannot silence if I would;
- It mars the song the lark sings to the sky,
- It breaks the changeful music of the wood.
- ‘Back to your post—a charge you have to keep—
- Freedom is bleeding while her soldiers sleep.’
- Oh, heart of mine I have to carry here,
- Will you not let me rest a little while?—
- A space ’mid doubtful fight and doubtful fear—
- A little space to see the Mother’s smile,
- To stretch my hands out to her, and possess
- No sense of aught but of her loveliness?
- Ah, just this power to feel how she is fair
- Means just the power to see how foul life is.
- How can I linger in the sacred air
- And taste the pure wine of the dear sun’s kiss
- When in the outer dark my brothers moan,
- Nor even guess the joys that I have known?
- Back the least soldier goes! To jar and fret,
- To hope uncrowned—faith fried—love wounded sore—
- To prayers that never have been answered yet,
- To dreams that may be dreams for evermore;
- To all that, after all, is far more dear
- Than all the joys of all the changing year.
1886
