Featured Poem: Summer Selection

As a special treat this week, to see out the remaining days of summer - as well as make the most of the last Bank Holiday for a few months - The Reader Online has a plethora of poetry for you to enjoy on this prolonged weekend, while hopefully you'll be getting the chance to relax and do a little more reading than usual. You may also notice that this selection gives a specific taste of summer and its associated activities - so even if the sun isn't out (which probably is the most likely case here in Britain), the following lines should bring out the rays in poetic style. 

To Summer - William Blake

Sit down, and in our mossy valleys, on
Some bank beside a river clear, throw thy
Silk draperies off, and rush into the stream:
Our valleys love the Summer in his pride.

A Boy's Summer Song - Paul Laurence Dunbar

With line and hook
By a babbling brook,
The fisherman's sport we ply;
And list the song
Of the feathered throng
That flit in the branches nigh.

I Saw From the Beach - Thomas Moore 

I saw from the beach, when the morning was shining,
A bark o'er the waters move gloriously on;
I came when the sun o'er that beach was declining,
The bark was still there, but the waters were gone.

 Where Go the Boats? - Robert Louis Stevenson

Green leaves a-floating,
Castles of the foam,
Boats of mine a-boating—
Where will all come home?

Summer Shower - Emily Dickinson

The dust replaced in hoisted roads,
The birds jocoser sung;
The sunshine threw his hat away,
The orchards spangles hung.

Before Summer Rain - Rainer Maria Rilke

Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
in total silence.

An August Midnight - Thomas Hardy

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter--winged, horned, and spined -
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;

When Summer's End Is Nighing - A.E Housman

When summer's end is nighing
And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
And all the feats I vowed
When I was young and proud.