Midsummer

After the May time and after the June time
Rare with blossoms and perfume sweet,
Cometh the round world's royal noon time,
The red midsummer of blazing heat,
When the sun, like an eye that never closes,
Bends on the earth its fervid gaze,
And the winds are still, and the crimson roses
Droop and wither and die in its rays.
Unto my heart has come this season,
O, my lady, my worshiped one,
When, over the stars of Pride and Reason,
Sails Love's cloudless, noonday sun.
Like a great red ball in my bosom burning
With fires that nothing can quench or tame,
It glows till my heart itself seems turning
Into a liquid lake of flame.
The hopes half shy and the sighs all tender,
The dreams and fears of an earlier day,
Under the noontide's royal splendor,
Droop like roses, and wither away.

[...] Read more

poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Strawberry Queen

Strawberries fresh or made into trifle
A popular fruit from days of the Bible.
Nutrition at hand and pride of the land
Crimson in colour ~ naturally sweet
Beautiful flavour, the children's treat
Bringing delight with Devonshire cream
A Sonnet entitled A Midsummer Day Dream
Written with care by the Strawberry Queen.

poem by Joyce Hemsley
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Ignition

Like a butterfly pinned
in a collage, fluttering.
Death makes a deal.

I was appalled
standing on the edge
watching the withering body.

The lake drowns me.
Seagulls were waiting
for a renaissance.

It is not even midsummer.
The planting of the kiss
remains incomplete.

No sex was involved
in baring midriff.
Moon ignites the legs.

poem by Satish Verma
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Two Lacquer Prints

The Emperor's Garden

ONCE, in the sultry heat of midsummer,
An Emperor caused the miniature mountains in his garden
To be covered with white silk,
That so crowned,
They might cool his eyes
With the sparkle of snow.

Meditation

A wise man,
Watching the stars pass across the sky,
Remarked:
In the upper air the fireflies move more slowly.

poem by Amy Lowell
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The Slayer

Midsummer afternoon
of all things broken
right at your door
I guess It's a guy thing
but is a scent of a woman

I'm always judged
as the last frontier
aboard this wagon train
it's a inferno with 5 voices
stranded into this madness

But the mirror always carries 2 faces
frighted by some but always embraced by many
to a never ending war
struggled from within
this darkness

poem by Shai Cherry
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Midsummer Midnight Skies

Midsummer midnight skies,
Midsummer midnight influences and airs,
The shining, sensitive silver of the sea
Touched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn;
And all so solemnly still I seem to hear
The breathing of Life and Death,
The secular Accomplices,
Renewing the visible miracle of the world.

The wistful stars
Shine like good memories. The young morning wind
Blows full of unforgotten hours
As over a region of roses. Life and Death
Sound on--sound on . . . And the night magical,
Troubled yet comforting, thrills
As if the Enchanted Castle at the heart
Of the wood's dark wonderment
Swung wide his valves, and filled the dim sea-banks
With exquisite visitants:
Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desires

[...] Read more

poem by William Ernest Henley
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An Intercepted Valentine

Little Bo-Peep, will you be mine?
I want you for my Valentine.
You are my choice of all the girls,
With your blushing cheeks and your fluttering curls,
With your ribbons gay and your kirtle neat,
None other is so fair and sweet.
Little Bo-Peep, let's run away,
And marry each other on Midsummer Day;
And ever to you I'll be fond and true,

Your faithful Valentine,
LITTLE BOY BLUE.

poem by Carolyn Wells
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They Who Prepare My Evening Meal Below

They who prepare my evening meal below
Carelessly hit the kettle as they go
With tongs or shovel,
And ringing round and round,
Out of this hovel
It makes an eastern temple by the sound.

At first I thought a cow bell right at hand
Mid birches sounded o'er the open land,
Where I plucked flowers
Many years ago,
Spending midsummer hours
With such secure delight they hardly seemed to flow.

poem by Henry David Thoreau
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Most of you have been where I am tonight. The crash site of unrequited love. You ask yourself, How did I get here What was it about Was it her smile Was it the way she crossed her legs, the turn of her ankle, the poignant vulnerability of her slender wrists What are these elusive and ephemeral things that ignite passion in the human heart That's an age-old question. It's perfect food for thought on a bright midsummer's night.

quote by Sybil Adelman
Added by Lucian Velea
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Emilia

last night shall be the last kiss
we made love
and we were like inside that Shakespearean play
the midsummer's night
too elusive
and...

we were acting love like it is true
i sense it when you close your eyes and shut yourself inside that darkness
it was another man's face inside your mind
and your heart uttered his name

i left earlier this morning
and you knew it

i will not come back anymore and i knew it
you are like a bird freed now from your own cage.

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Untitled 4

last night shall be the last kiss
we made love
and we were like inside that Shakespearean play
the midsummer's night
too elusive
and...

we were acting love like it is true
i sense it when you close your eyes and shut yourself inside that darkness
it was another man's face inside your mind
and your heart uttered his name

i left earlier this morning
and you knew it

i will not come back anymore and i knew it
you are like a bird freed now from your own cage.

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Even Reading Goes Slower On a 'Fast Day

Even Reading goes slower on a 'Fast Day'
How can there be a Poem
From a mind so languid?

In the midsummer heat of Eretz Yisrael
I think again-
Of the years of exile
So many lives I know so little about –

We have returned
We are here
This is the great thing –

I will soon walk up the hill to Mincha
Do we need the Sorrow still,
When there is the Gratitude of being here again?

A Poem perhaps for this day also
And still eight hours until the fast ends.

poem by Shalom Freedman
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Moonrise

I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning:
The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle,
Or paring of paradisaical fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless,
Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark Maenefa the mountain;

A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, entangled him, not quite utterly.
This was the prized, the desirable sight, unsought, presented so easily,
Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, eyelid and eyelid of slumber.

poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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Midsummer day

In Sweden people today celebrate
a pagan feast
on the midsummer day
and snaps and beer,
are taken from early on
as one of the rites of May.

Unmarried girls sleep
with bouquets of seven different flowers
under their pillows
and hope to dream,
of their future spouse
or lover.

It is thought that magic
is at its most powerful today
and tonight rituals are performed,
to look into the future
.
a Pole is raised

[...] Read more

poem by Gert Strydom
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Oh baby

Oh baby baby
Thinking of you makes me high
Take my hand and fly up up up into the sky
Oh baby baby
Thinking of you makes my world shine so bright
Hold me tight in this midsummer night
Oh baby baby
Thinking of you rocks me like a typhoon
Touch me now under the moon, baby, I'm not immune
Oh baby baby
Please let me explain
You have slain my pain
Oh baby baby
Our love entwined has made you mine
You are my lifeline
Oh baby baby you’ve had my heart, from the start
I can't deny, for it's no lie
I strive to survive for my baby boo
I love you!

poem by Victor Robertson
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Love In A Mist

Light love in a mist, by the midsummer moon misguided,
Scarce seen in the twilight garden if gloom insist,
Seems vainly to seek for a star whose gleam has derided
Light love in a mist.

All day in the sun, when the breezes do all they list,
His soft blue raiment of cloudlike blossom abided
Unrent and unwithered of winds and of rays that kissed.

Blithe-hearted or sad, as the cloud or the sun subsided,
Love smiled in the flower with a meaning whereof none wist
Save two that beheld, as a gleam that before them glided,
Light love in a mist.

poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Pan

This Pan is but an idle god, I guess,
Since all the fair midsummer of my dreams
He loiters listlessly by woody streams,
Soaking the lush glooms up with laziness;
Or drowsing while the maiden-winds caress
Him prankishly, and powder him with gleams
Of sifted sunshine. And he ever seems
Drugged with a joy unutterable-- unless
His low pipes whistle hints of it far out
Across the ripples to the dragon-fly
That like a wind-born blossom blown about,
Drops quiveringly down, as though to die--
Then lifts and wavers on, as if in doubt
Whether to fan his wings or fly without.

poem by James Whitcomb Riley
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A Life in the Theater

There are faces in the darkness

There to see and not be seen.

We are players acting out

“A Midsummer night's Dream”

I am a minor player-

An inconsequential part

Think of me as of a wall

Between two loving hearts

[...] Read more

poem by John F. McCullagh
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It's All Right

It's all right
To wish upon a falling star on a midsummer night

It's all right
To love old movies, even in black and white

It's all right
To jump at nighttime noises that give you a fright

It's all right
To scoot up next to me and hold me tight

It's all right
To pinch pennys when the cookie jar money is tight

It's all right
To go to our future nuptials a little upright

It's all right
To be a little giddy on our wedding night

[...] Read more

poem by Charles Hancock
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April In September

WHAT song is in the sap of this brave oak-tree
That to the north-star faces,
Ravened each June by caterpillar masses
Till all its leaves are laces,
Poor shreds whose very shadow grieves the grasses?
I leave it then, but roses and the smoke-tree
Look from the lawn below it
And watch for that gold witch, Midsummer Weather,
With magic breath to blow it
Free of its foes, whose wings make mirth together.
Vital as Igdrasil, immortal folk-tree,
When I return, its losses
Are all restored, its fresh, soft foliage gleaming
With peach and citron glosses,
A Druid that is never done with dreaming.

poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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