Our anthology of poems for the summer season begins with a selection of classics:
- Anonymous medieval lyric (usually sung as a round),
Sumer Is Icumen In (c. 1250)
- Thomas Nashe,
Fair Summer Droops, from Summers Last Will and Testament (1600)
- Alexander Pope,
Summer, from The Second Pastoral (1709)
- 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)
- Robert Louis Stevenson,
Summer Sun from A Childs Garden of Verses (1885)
- Emily Dickinson,
A something in a summers day (#122)
- Emily Dickinson,
Summer we all have seen (#1386)
- Paul Laurence Dunbar,
Summer in the South (1903)
- Amy Lowell,
Summer (1912)
- Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Epithalamion (1918)
To which weve added a few of the poems on summer themes weve 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!