Ballade Of Midsummer Days And Nights by William Ernest Henley

With a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams
The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise,
And the winds are one with the clouds and beams –
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze,
While the West from a rapture of sunset rights,
Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise –
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
The wood’s green heart is a nest of dreams,
The lush grass thickens and springs and sways,
The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams –
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways,
All secret shadows and mystic lights,
Late lovers murmur and linger and gaze –
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
There’s a music of bells from the trampling teams,
Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze,
The rich, ripe rose as with incense steams –
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
A soul from the honeysuckle strays,
And the nightingale as from prophet heights
Sings to the Earth of her million Mays –
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
Envoy
And it’s O, for my dear and the charm that stays –
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
It’s O, for my Love and the dark that plights –
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!

—————

The End

And that’s the End of the Poem

© Poetry Monster, 2021.

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