University of Virginia Library


140

SUMMER RAIN

The flowers with dust disgraced
Droop in garth and plain;
But the summer tempests haste
With lustral rain.
The banded vapour rolls,
Shadowing hill and town;
Anon the thunder tolls,
The showers come down.
Margents where the salt winds pass,
The freshened sea-pinks fret;
The roses change to hippocras
The heaven's pearly sweat;

141

And the flowers all shine and all the grass
Like jewels newly set,
Sapphire bright and chrysolite,
And emeralds dripping wet.
Like smoke from a happy hearth,
Out of the meads and the bowers,
The spicy dust of the moistened earth
And the rainy scent of the flowers
Translate to silence sweet the mirth
Of the silvery ringing showers.