Explore "To the Locust" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Thou pulse of hotness, who, with reed-like breast, / Makest meridian music, long and loud, / Accentuating summer! -- dost thy best / To make the sunbeams fiercer, and to crowd / With lonesomeness the long, close afternoon / When Labor leans, swart-faced and beady browed, / Upon his sultry scythe -- thou tangible tune / Of heat, whose waves incessantly arise / Quivering and clear beneath the cloudless skies.
Thou singest, and upon his haggard hills / Drouth yawns and rubs his heavy eyes and wakes; / Brushes the hot hair from his face; and fills / The land with death as sullenly he takes / Downward his dusty way: 'midst woods and fields / At every pool his burning thirst he slakes: / No grove so deep, no bank so high it shields / A spring from him; no creek evades his eye; / He needs but look and they are withered dry.