Explore "Ritual for Summer Dead" by Helen Gray Cone on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THE QUIET DAYS
August turns autumnal now: / Scarlet the sudden maple-bough / At the turn of the wood-road gleams; / On the hearth the gray log sings / Sleepy songs of vanished things -- / Babbling, bubbling John-a-Dreams. / August is autumn now.
Find the field where, dead and dry, / Under the broad still noontide sky, / Bleached in the flow of the bright-blue weather, / Stalks of the milkweed stand together. / Take the pale-brown pod in hand, / Packed with seeds of silvery feather; / Wander dreaming through the land. / Let each silken plumelet sift / Through the fingers, drift and drift, / Touched with the sun to rainbow light -- / Float -- and float -- and out of sight!
So might incense drift away. / Golden Summer is dead to-day. / As a pious thurifer / Swing the censer meet for her.