Summer Poems

Some short ones for the start of summer.

Traditional Middle English Lyric

(appx. 1250)

Svmer is icumen in

Lhude sing cuccu!

Groweþ sed and bloweþ med

and springþ þe wde nu.

Sing cuccu!

Awe bleteþ after lomb,

lhouþ after calue cu,

Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ.

Murie sing cuccu!

cuccu, cuccu,

Wel singes þu cuccu.

ne swik þu nauer nu!

Sing cuccu nu, Sing cuccu!

(translation here)

from A Midsummer Nights Dream (III, I)

by William Shakespeare

...

Out of this wood do not desire to go:

Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.

I am a spirit of no common rate;

The summer still doth tend upon my state;

And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;

I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,

And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,

And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;

And I will purge thy mortal grossness so

That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.

The Schoolboy

by William Blake

...

I love to rise in a summer morn,

When the birds sing on every tree;

The distant huntsman winds his horn,

And the skylark sings with me:

O what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn,

--O it drives all joy away!

Under a cruel eye outworn,

The little ones spend the day

In sighing and dismay.

Ah then at times I drooping sit,

And spend many an anxious hour;

Nor in my book can I take delight,

Nor sit in learning’s bower,

Worn through with the dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy

Sit in a cage and sing?

How can a child, when fears annoy,

But droop his tender wing,

And forget his youthful spring!

O father and mother if buds are nipped,

And blossoms blown away;

And if the tender plants are stripped

Of their joy in the springing day,

By sorrow and care’s dismay,

--How shall the summer arise in joy,

Or the summer fruits appear?

Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,

Or bless the mellowing year,

When the blasts of winter appear?