A Calendar of Sonnets | Page 2

joys have died;?The garden reeks with an East Indian scent?From beds where gillyflowers stand weak and spent;?The white heat pales the skies from side to side;?But in still lakes and rivers, cool, content,?Like starry blooms on a new firmament,?White lilies float and regally abide.?In vain the cruel skies their hot rays shed;?The lily does not feel their brazen glare.?In vain the pallid clouds refuse to share?Their dews; the lily feels no thirst, no dread.?Unharmed she lifts her queenly face and head;?She drinks of living waters and keeps fair.
August
Silence again. The glorious symphony?Hath need of pause and interval of peace.?Some subtle signal bids all sweet sounds cease,?Save hum of insects' aimless industry.?Pathetic summer seeks by blazonry?Of color to conceal her swift decrease.?Weak subterfuge! Each mocking day doth fleece?A blossom, and lay bare her poverty.?Poor middle-agèd summer! Vain this show!?Whole fields of golden-rod cannot offset?One meadow with a single violet;?And well the singing thrush and lily know,?Spite of all artifice which her regret?Can deck in splendid guise, their time to go!
September
O golden month! How high thy gold is heaped!?The yellow birch-leaves shine like bright coins strung?On wands; the chestnut's yellow pennons tongue?To every wind its harvest challenge. Steeped?In yellow, still lie fields where wheat was reaped;?And yellow still the corn sheaves, stacked among?The yellow gourds, which from the earth have wrung?Her utmost gold. To highest boughs have leaped?The purple grape,--last thing to ripen, late?By very reason of its precious cost.?O Heart, remember, vintages are lost?If grapes do not for freezing night-dews wait.?Think, while thou sunnest thyself in Joy's estate,?Mayhap thou canst not ripen without frost!
October
The month of carnival of all the year,?When Nature lets the wild earth go its way?And spend whole seasons on a single day.?The spring-time holds her white and purple dear;?October, lavish, flaunts them far and near;?The summer charily her reds doth lay?Like jewels on her costliest array;?October, scornful, burns them on a bier.?The winter hoards his pearls of frost in sign?Of kingdom: whiter pearls than winter knew,?Or Empress wore, in Egypt's ancient line,?October, feasting 'neath her dome of blue,?Drinks at a single draught, slow filtered through?Sunshiny air, as in a tingling wine!
November
This is the treacherous month when autumn days?With summer's voice come bearing summer's gifts.?Beguiled, the pale down-trodden aster lifts?Her head and blooms again. The soft, warm haze?Makes moist once more the sere and dusty ways,?And, creeping through where dead leaves lie in drifts,?The violet returns. Snow noiseless sifts?Ere night, an icy shroud, which morning's rays?Will idly shine upon and slowly melt,?Too late to bid the violet live again.?The treachery, at last, too late, is plain;?Bare are the places where the sweet flowers dwelt.?What joy sufficient hath November felt??What profit from the violet's day of pain?
December
The lakes of ice gleam bluer than the lakes?Of water 'neath the summer sunshine gleamed:?Far fairer than when placidly it streamed,?The brook its frozen architecture makes,?And under bridges white its swift way takes.?Snow comes and goes as messenger who dreamed?Might linger on the road; or one who deemed?His message hostile gently for their sakes?Who listened might reveal it by degrees.?We gird against the cold of winter wind?Our loins now with mighty bands of sleep,?In longest, darkest nights take rest and ease,?And every shortening day, as shadows creep?O'er the brief noontide, fresh surprises find.
End of Project Gutenberg's A Calendar of Sonnets, by Helen Hunt Jackson
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