Summer POEMS!
Summer poems hold a special place in literature because they capture the essence of a fleeting, emotional season—a time of light, freedom, growth, and reflection. Just like summer itself, these poems are often filled with warmth, color, and energy, but they also hint at change, impermanence, and the passage of time.
Poetry encourages us to slow down and observe. Summer poems invite readers to pause, notice the season’s details, and be present in the moment—whether it’s watching fireflies, walking barefoot on grass, or gazing at a summer sky.
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Summary:
Shakespeare compares his beloved to a summer’s day, ultimately concluding that the beloved is superior and that their beauty will be eternally preserved through the poem itself. The poem explores the themes of beauty, and the power of art to transection of time and nature.
Warm Summer Sun
BY MARK TWAIN
Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here,
Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here.
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.
It will be Summer eventually — (195)
Emily Dickinson
1830 –
1886
It will be Summer eventually —
Ladies with parasols,
Sauntering gentlemen with canes,
And little girls with dolls
Will tint the pallid landscape
As’t were a bright bouquet,
Though drifted deep in Parian
The village lies to-day.
The lilacs, bending many a year,
Will sway with purple load ;
The bees will not despise the tune
Their forefathers have hummed ;
The wild rose redden in the bog,
The aster on the hill
Her everlasting fashion set,
And covenant gentians frill,
Till Summer folds her miracle
As women do their gown,
Or priests adjust the symbols
When Sacrament is done.
I’m sorry for the Dead to-day,
It’s such congenial times
Old neighbors have at fences
At time o’ year for hay —
When broad sun-burned acquaintances
Discourse between the toil
And laugh, a homely species,
That makes the meadows smile.
It seems so straight to lie away
From all the noise of fields,
The busy carts, the fragrant cocks,
The mower’s meter steals
A trouble, lest they’re homesick, —
Those farmers and their wives,
Set separate from the farming
And all the neighbors’ lives.
I wonder if the sepulchre
Is not a lonesome way,
When and boys, and larks and June
Go down the fields to hay !
To disappear enhances ;
The man who runs away
Is tinctured for an instant
With Immortality.
But yesterday a vagrant,
Today in memory lain
With superstitious merit
We tamper with again.
But never far as Honour
Removes the paltry One,
And impotent to cherish
We hasten to adorn.
Of Death the sharpest function,
That, just as a we discern,
The Excellence defies us ;
Securest gathered then
The fruit perverse to plucking,
But leaning to the sight
With the ecstatic limit
Of unobtained Delight.
A Bird Song
1830 –1894
It's a year almost that I have not seen her:
Oh, last summer green things were greener,
Brambles fewer, the blue sky bluer.
It's surely summer, for there's a swallow:
Come one swallow, his mate will follow,
The bird race quicken and wheel and thicken.
Oh happy swallow whose mate will follow
O'er height, o'er hollow! I'd be a swallow,
To build this weather one nest together.
Summer for thee, grant I may be
31
Summer for thee, grant I may be
When Summer days are flown!
Thy music still, when Whippoorwill
And Oriole—are done!
For thee to bloom, I'll skip the tomb
And row my blossoms o'er!
Pray gather me—
Anemone—
Thy flower—forevermore!