Classic Poem

At last the toil encumbered days are over,
And airs of noon are mellow as the morn;
The blooms are brown upon the seeding clover,
And brown the silks that plume the ripening corn.

All sounds are hushed of reaping and of mowing;
The winds are low; the waters lie uncurled;
Nor thistle-down nor gossamer is flowing,
So lull'd in languid indolence the world.

And mute the farms along the purple valley,
The full barns muffled to the beams with sheaves;
You hear no more the noisy rout and rally
Amongst the tenant-masons of the eaves.

A single quail, upstarting from the stubble,
Darts whirring past and quick alighting down
Is lost, as breaks and disappears a bubble,
Amid the covert of the leafy brown.

The upland glades are flecked afar in dapples
By flocks of lambs a-gambol from the fold;
The orchards bend beneath the weight of apples,
And groves are bright in crimson and in gold.

But hark! I hear the pheasant's muffled drumming,
The water murmur from a distant dell;
A drowsy bee in mazy tangles humming;
The far, faint tinkling tenor of a bell.

And now from yonder beech trunk sheer and sterile,
The rat-tat-tat of the wood-pecker's bill;
The sharp staccato barking of a squirrel,
A dropping nut, and all again is still.