| |
| NOT a sound disturbs the air, | |
| There is quiet everywhere; | |
| Over plains and over woods | |
| What a mighty stillness broods! | |
| All the birds and insects sleep; | 5 |
| Where the coolest shadows sleep; | |
| Even the busy ants are found | |
| Resting in their pebbled mound; | |
| Even the locust clingeth now | |
| Silent to the barky bough: | 10 |
| Over hills and over plains | |
| Quiet, vast and slumbrous, reigns. | |
| |
| Only there ’s a drowsy humming | |
| From you warm lagoon slow-coming: | |
| ’T is the dragon-hornet—see! | 15 |
| All bedaubed resplendently | |
| Yellow on a tawny ground— | |
| Each rich spot not square nor round, | |
| Rudely heart-shaped, as it were | |
| The blurred and hasty impress there | 20 |
| Of a vermeil-crusted seal | |
| Dusted o’er with golden meal. | |
| Only there ’s a droning where | |
| You bright beetle shines in air, | |
| Tracks it in its gleaming flight | 25 |
| With a slanting beam of light | |
| Rising in the sunshine higher, | |
| Till its shards flame out like fire. | |
| |
| Every other thing is still, | |
| Save the ever-wakeful rill, | 30 |
| Whose cool murmur only throws | |
| Cooler comfort round repose; | |
| Or some ripple in the sea, | |
| Of leafy boughs, where, lazily, | |
| Tired summer, in her bower | 35 |
| Turning with the noontide hour, | |
| Heaves a slumbrous breath ere she | |
| Once more slumbers peacefully. | |
| |
| Oh, ’t is easeful here to lie | |
| Hidden from noon’s scorching eye, | 40 |
| In this grassy cool recess | |
| Musing thus of quietness. | |
| |
