I really love summer, especially the earliest part, and I know that I’m not alone. The grass is green, the trees and flowers are blooming, birds are singing, bugs are buzzing. And a favorite poem that reminds me of these things.
Pied Beauty
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
The sun rises early and sets late, and the puppy and kitty don’t let me sleep in!
What A Morning
faleshia murphy
I wake up to a fly buzzing in my ear
The birds are chirping
The ducks begin to quack
As you can hear the dogs barking
Here comes the cats who meow in this musical
The wind blows and make the chimes ring
Welcome to the sweet sounds of summer morning
Then there are the summer nights …
Back Yard
Carl Sandburg, 1878 – 1967
Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.
An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion.
A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month;
to-night they are throwing you kisses.
An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a
cherry tree in his back yard.
The clocks say I must go—I stay here sitting on the back porch drinking
white thoughts you rain down.
Shine on, O moon,
Shake out more and more silver changes.
Summer is vacation time, and fishing time …
A Boy and His Dad
Edgar Guest, 1881 – 1959
A boy and his dad on a fishing-trip—
There is a glorious fellowship!
Father and son and the open sky
And the white clouds lazily drifting by,
And the laughing stream as it runs along
With the clicking reel like a martial song,
And the father teaching the youngster gay
How to land a fish in the sportsman’s way.
I fancy I hear them talking there
In an open boat, and the speech is fair.
And the boy is learning the ways of men
From the finest man in his youthful ken.
Kings, to the youngster, cannot compare
With the gentle father who’s with him there.
And the greatest mind of the human race
Not for one minute could take his place.
Which is happier, man or boy?
The soul of the father is steeped in joy,
For he’s finding out, to his heart’s delight,
That his son is fit for the future fight.
He is learning the glorious depths of him,
And the thoughts he thinks and his every whim;
And he shall discover, when night comes on,
How close he has grown to his little son.
A boy and his dad on a fishing-trip—
Builders of life’s companionship!
Oh, I envy them, as I see them there
Under the sky in the open air,
For out of the old, old long-ago
Come the summer days that I used to know,
When I learned life’s truths from my father’s lips
As I shared the joy of his fishing-trips.
And memories of special summers, long ago.
A Special Time
Jessie Ziegle
Once upon a time in summer
Twas on the farm at Grandma’s place
Two children came to spend some time there,
To run and play and freedom taste.
In their swinging under the big tree,
They talked and fought as children do;
Upside down and down side up
In their swings as the summer flew.
They explored their cave and hideouts
Peering out at the enemy
Living in a private world,
Happy and completely free.
A living picture in my mind
Of happy sounds of glee
Their faces mirroring the thought
In all the world, just you and me.
It was such a special season
With children playing on the lawn
But joy was mixed with sadness
Summer ended and they were gone.
For children, each day is like an open book
With exciting pages to be lived.
How privileged to be a guide
And teach a child – God really is.
There are questions to be answered,
So many things to know and do.
What fun it is to guide them
Into learning something new.
When a child looks up in wonder
Looking at the rainbow high
Asks the question, “did God make it?”
Can you satisfy that why?
Oh, it costs us some living
But God knows how to bless.
I am just a babe at giving
He fills my cup with happiness.
Stella's Place 
Another keeper for me from Jessie. She just perfectly captured how I feel with my grandchildren. I want to be better at pointing out the small, more obscure beauties to them.
A sincere thank you Pat, for the beauty of the poetry, and the guidance from a beautiful and wise soul.
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I’m glad you enjoy them, Menagerie. Like so many times, I’m reading through her poems, and weeping; most are happy tears.
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Good morning all! In Alaska we know summer is approaching not because of heat (though it DID get up to 60 yesterday!) but because of how many migratory birds we have around and how incredibly long the days are. We are in the time when it never truly gets dark. Sunrise is officially now at 4:30 am and sunset is at 11:30 pm; but civil twilight (where you can nearly read a newspaper without a flashlight) covers most of the 5 hours between those times. It’s never completely dark, even at 2 am. When I first moved to Alaska, I had to cover my bedroom window in aluminum foil to block all light in order to sleep! But I’ve adapted, and now I love it. In another 3 weeks, sunset won’t happen until 1 am.
Here is my favorite seasonal poem, memorized in 2nd grade and delivered in school assembly:
When the earth has turned to spring,
The worms are fat as anything.
Birds come flying from all around
To pick them up from off the ground.
And they like worms as much as I
Like bread and milk and apple pie.
Once when I was very young,
I put a worm right on my tongue.
I didn’t like the the taste of it,
And so I didn’t swallow it.
But oh! how it makes my mama squirm
Because she thinks I ate that worm!
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Thank you Tundra for your perspective on summer in the North Country!
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Thank you for the lovely poems, Stella! It provided a much needed sweet respite from things going on in the world.
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Spring/Summer is my favorite part of the year and it’s usually one season here, even when it’s hot I still love it.
No matter how old I get I will always miss summer when I was a kid visiting my grandparents.
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My daughter says that too! My grandparents were dead by the time I was born, so I missed out.
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We need a summer recipe post. I’m craving summer salads with chopped vegetables. Maybe fruit dishes as well. We get so many delicious fresh fruits and vegetables and I’m looking for new ides on how to fix them.
Maybe that could be one of your summer posts, maybe even combine it with stories. I don’t have lots of memories from my childhood, but I do remember cookouts, family reunions, a few church events, trips to my friend’s grandmother’s house for a big family lunch after church, then all the kids played outside for hours. Churning ice cream. Watermelons that my dad kept cold in his big walk in freezers at the farmers market. Selling peaches on a stall at the market when I was about ten or twelve. The excitement of the first days when the truck farmers would show up with their pickup beds full of corn, panel trucks loaded with all kinds of homegrown vegetables.
The farmers and their sons would often stay in their trucks until they sold all their produce, occasionally even their wives and a small child or two would stay too.
I guess summer will always take me back to the farmers market I grew up on.
Sorry, I got off on a trip back in time.
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Family reunions? My aunt Flossie’s baked beans, my mother’s potato salad, cole slaw made with pineapple and cream.
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Forgot to say – good idea!
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My grandparents both died in my early teens, but I am grateful I had them for the time I did.
I never knew my paternal grandfather, he died years before I was born and my paternal Grandmother was not a nice woman, so I had to be forced to visit her.
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My mother had me in her early forties – she was a widow who remarried at 35, and my grandmother died seven years before I was born. My maternal grandfather died when my mother was 18. I don’t know when my paternal grandfather died – he “disappeared” after 1930. My paternal grandmother killed herself when I was about 3 months old (I just recently discovered this). The parents of my mother’s first husband were sort of grandparents, but it wasn’t the same.
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My Granny and Poppa’s house still stands, nobody has lived in it for years, but anytime I go to visit family(not many of them left these days) I see their house and the tears come. I guess it’s silly since they’ve been gone so many years, but it still happens.
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The family farm is still there. It was purchased by a neighbor and, eventually, passed to the girl next door and her husband. They have lovingly made it their family home, and it is better than ever! The pine trees that my daughter and cousin planted when they were little kids are huge, beautiful trees, and the lilac bush (our play space when I was little, and my daughter’s too) is more lovely than ever.
Their daughter just graduated from high school. Life goes on.
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Different cousins have lived in their house over the years, but nobody has lived in it for at least 15 years.
It’s really not safe anymore, but my uncle could never bring himself to tear it down. He’s gone now so his kids may tear it down, I don’t know.
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I remember having to memorize and recite that poem in college freshman English. It is such an intimate, yet soaring “hymn” to creation.
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My favorite is The Windhover, but I like this one too! He was a gifted poet.
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