Home Pastorals Ballads and Lyrics Author:Bayard Taylor Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AUGUST. J)ead is the air, and still! the leaves of the locust and walnut Lazily hang from the boughs, inlaying their intricate outlines Rather on space ... more »than the sky, — on a tideless expansion of slumber. Faintly afar in the depths of the duskily withering grasses Katvdids chirp, and I hear the monotonous rattle of crickets. Dead is the air, and ah ! the breath that was wont to refresh me Out of the volumes I love, the heartful, whispering pages, Dies on the type, and I see but wearisome characters only. Therefore be still, thou yearning voice from the garden in Jena,— Still, thou answering voice from the park-side cottage in Weimar, — Still, sentimental echo from chambers of office in Dresden, — Ye, and the feebler and farther voices that sound in the pauses! Kach and all to the shelves I return ; for vain is your commerce Xow, when the world and the brain are numb in the torpor of August. Over the tasselled corn, and fields of the twice-blossomed clover, Dimly the hills recede in the reek of the colorless hazes: Dull and lustreless, now, the burnished green of the woodlands; Leaves of blackberry briers are bronzed and besprinkled with copper; Weeds in the unmown meadows are blossoming purple and yellow, Roughly entwined, a wreath for the tan and wrinkles of Summer. Where shall I turn ? What path attracts the indifferent footstep, Eager no more as in June, nor lifted with wings as in May-time ? Whitherward look for a goal, when buds have exhausted their promise, Harvests are reaped, and grapes and berries are waiting for Autumn ? Wander, my feet, as ye list! I am careless, to-day, to direct you. Take, here, the path by the pines, the russet carpet of needles Stretching from wood to wood, and hid...« less