Summer by Amy Lowell

Some men there are who find in nature all / Their inspiration, hers the sympathy / Which spurs them on to any great endeavor, / To them the fields and woods are closest friends, / And they hold dear communion with the hills; / The voice of waters soothes them with its fall, / And the great winds bring healing in their sound.

To them a city is a prison house / Where pent up human forces labour and strive, / Where beauty dwells not, driven forth by man; / But where in winter they must live until / Summer gives back the spaces of the hills.

To me it is not so. I love the earth / And all the gifts of her so lavish hand: / Sunshine and flowers, rivers and rushing winds, / Thick branches swaying in a winter storm, / And moonlight playing in a boat's wide wake; / But more than these, and much, ah, how much more, / I love the very human heart of man.

Above me spreads the hot, blue mid-day sky, / Far down the hillside lies the sleeping lake / Lazily reflecting back the sun, / And scarcely ruffled by the little breeze / Which wanders idly through the nodding ferns.

The blue crest of the distant mountain, tops / The green crest of the hill on which I sit; / And it is summer, glorious, deep-toned summer, / The very crown of nature's changing year / When all her surging life is at its full.

To me alone it is a time of pause, / A void and silent space between two worlds, / When inspiration lags, and feeling sleeps, / Gathering strength for efforts yet to come.

For life alone is creator of life, / And closest contact with the human world / Is like a lantern shining in the night / To light me to a knowledge of myself.

I love the vivid life of winter months / In constant intercourse with human minds, / When every new experience is gain / And on all sides we feel the great world's heart; / The pulse and throb of life which makes us men!