Our anthology of poems for the summer season begins with a selection of classics:
- Li Po,
“In the Mountains on a Summer Day” (c. 950, trans. Arthur Waley, 1919)
- Anonymous medieval lyric (usually sung as a round),
“Sumer Is Icumen In” (c. 1250)
- Thomas Nashe,
“Fair Summer Droops,” from Summer’s Last Will and Testament (1600)
- William Shakespeare,
Sonnet 18 - “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (1609)
- Alexander Pope,
“Summer,” from The Second Pastoral (1709)
- William Blake,
“To Summer,” from Poetical Sketches (1783)
- William Blake,
“The Schoolboy,” from Songs of Experience (1794)
- Henry David Thoreau,
“The Summer Rain” (1842)
- John Greenleaf Whittier,
“The Barefoot Boy” (1855)
- John Clare,
“Summer” (1865)
- Walt Whitman,
“Warble for Lilac-Time” (1871)
- Walt Whitman,
“A Summer Invocation” (1881)
- Robert Louis Stevenson,
“Summer Sun” from A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885)
- Emily Dickinson,
“A something in a summer’s day” (#122)
- Emily Dickinson,
“A Drop Fell on the Apple Tree —” (#794)
- Emily Dickinson,
“Summer — we all have seen —” (#1386)
- Paul Laurence Dunbar,
“In Summer” (1899)
- Paul Laurence Dunbar,
“Summer in the South” (1903)
- James Russell Lowell,
“Prelude to Part First, The Vision of Sir Launfal” (1908)
- Amy Lowell,
“Summer” (1912)
- Carl Sandburg,
“Back Yard” (1916)
- Gerard Manley Hopkins,
“Epithalamion” (1918)
- Edna St. Vincent Millay,
“I know I am but summer to your heart” (1922)
To which we’ve added a few of the poems on summer themes we’ve received from contemporary poets:
- Ken Blackburn, “Joy Is Measured”
- Ross Clark, “Just After Rain”
- Dorothea Grossman, “Summer: Three Ways”
- Heather Haley, “Habitat”
- Mary Hamrick, “Hot Summer Nights”
- Dale Harris, “Red Grain Moon”
- Wayne Jarus, “Sweet Summer”
- Christine Klocek-Lim, “Cicadas”
- Joseph Pacheco, “Dejection on a Florida Summer Afternoon”
- Jack Peachum, “Cottonwood Summer”
- Jack Peachum, “Julep Season”
- Robert Savino, “Idle Seesaw”
- Lisa Shields, “Wisteria Woman”
Enjoy these poems of the season!
