A Wet August

NINE drops of water bead the jessamine, And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles: —’Twas not so in that August—full-rayed, fine— When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles.

Or was there then no noted radiancy Of summer? Were dun clouds, a dribbling bough, Gilt over by the light I bore in me, And was the waste world just the same as now?

It can have been so: yea, that threatenings Of coming down-drip on the sunless gray, By the then possibilities in things Were wrought more bright than brightest skies to-day.

1920.