Classic Poem

When winter came the land was lean and sere:
There fell no snow, and oft from wild and field
In famished tameness came the drooping deer,
And licked the waste about the troughs congealed.

And though at spring we ploughed and proffered seed,
It lay ungermed, a pillage for the birds:
And unto one low dam, in urgent need,
We daily drove the suppliant, lowing herds.

But now the fields to barren waste have run,
The dam a pool of oozing greenery lies,
Where knots of gnats hang reeling in the sun
Till early dusk, when tilt the dragon-flies.

All night the craw-fish deepens out her wells,
As shows the clay that freshly curbs them round;
And many a random upheaved tunnel tells
Where ran the mole across the fallow ground.

But ah! the stone-dumb dullness of the dawn,
When e'en the cocks too listless are to crow,
And lies the world as from all life withdrawn,
Unheeding and outworn and swooning low!

There is no dew on any greenness shed,
The hard-baked earth is cracked across the walks;
The very burrs in stunted clumps are dead
And mullein leaves drop withered from the stalks.

Yet, ere the noon, as brass the heaven turns,
The cruel sun smites with unerring aim,
The sight and touch of all things blinds and burns,
And bare, hot hills seem shimmering into flame!

On either side the shoe-deep dusted lane
The meagre wisps of fennel scorch to wire;
Slow lags a team that drags an empty wain,
And, creaking dry, a wheel runs off its tire.

No flock upon the naked pasture feeds,
The sheep with prone heads huddle near the fence;
A gust runs crackling through the brittle weeds,
And then the heat still waxes more intense.

On outspread wings a hawk, far poised on high,
Quick swooping screams, and then is heard no more:
The strident shrilling of a locust nigh
Breaks forth, and dies in silence as before.

No transient cloud o'erskims with flakes of shade
The landscape hazed in dizzy gleams of heat;
A dove's wing glances like a parried blade,
And western walls the beams in torrents beat.

So burning low, and lower still the sun,
In fierce white fervor, sinks anon from sight,
And so the dread, despairing day is done,
And dumbly broods again the haggard night.