In Summer Time- Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More

View Cart \| Log In
Subscribe \| More Info

Advanced Search >

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Laurence Dunbar

One of the first African-American poets to gain national recognition, Paul Laurence Dunbar is the author of many books of poetry...
More >

Want more poems?
Subscribe to our
Poem-A-Day emails.


	FURTHER READING


		Poems for Summer
		Tempest, Act V, Scene I [Where the bee sucks, there suck I] by William Shakespeare

		A Boat, Beneath a Sunny Sky by Lewis Carroll

		A Boy and His Dad by Edgar Guest

		A Green Crab's Shell by Mark Doty

		A Lesson for This Sunday by Derek Walcott

		A Path Between Houses by Greg Rappleye

		After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard by Charles Wright

		Aftermath by Tony Connor

		Alice at Seventeen: Like a Blind Child by Darcy Cummings

		Anastasia & Sandman by Larry Levis

		And You Thought You Were the Only One by Mark Bibbins

		Arms by Richard Tayson

		August by Algernon Charles Swinburne

		Back Yard by Carl Sandburg

		Bed in Summer by Robert Louis Stevenson

		Daffy Duck In Hollywood by John Ashbery

		Fat Southern Men in Summer Suits by Liam Rector

		Fishing on the Susquehanna in July by Billy Collins

		For Once, Then, Something by Robert Frost

		Ground Swell by Mark Jarman

		I know I am but summer to your heart (Sonnet XXVII) by Edna St. Vincent Millay

		I see the boys of summer by Dylan Thomas

		I, Up they soar by Inger Christensen

		Idyll by Siegfried Sassoon

		If You Get There Before I Do by Dick Allen

		In Summer by Paul Laurence Dunbar

		In the Mountains on a Summer Day by Li Po

		Jack by Maxine Kumin

		Jet by Tony Hoagland

		June Light by Richard Wilbur

		Let Birds by Linda Gregg

		Long Island Sound by Emma Lazarus

		Making the Bed by Burt Kimmelman

		Midsummer by William Cullen Bryant

		Mint by Elaine Terranova

		Miracles by Walt Whitman

		Muffin of Sunsets by Elaine Equi

		My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer by Mark Strand

		On 52nd Street by Philip Levine

		On Summer by George Moses Horton

		On the Grasshopper and the Cricket by John Keats

		Poem at Thirty by Michael Ryan

		Poem for Adlai Stevenson and Yellow Jackets by David Young

		Psychoanalysis: An Elegy by Jack Spicer

		Rhode Island by William Meredith

		Sally's Hair by John Koethe

		Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Sonnet 18) by William Shakespeare

		Solstice by Ellen Dudley

		Sonnet 7 [The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings] by Petrarch

		South by Jack Gilbert

		Summer by Amy Lowell

		Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina by Jack Gilbert

		Summer Holiday by Robinson Jeffers

		Summer Images by John Clare

		Summer in the South by Paul Laurence Dunbar

		Summer Night, Riverside by Sara Teasdale

		Summer Nights and Days by Rachel Hadas

		Summer Past by John Gray

		Summer Song by William Carlos Williams

		Summer Stars by Carl Sandburg

		Summer X-Rays by Nina Cassian

		Swimming in the Presence of Lurid Opposition by Sawako Nakayasu

		The Abduction by Stanley Kunitz

		The Family Photograph by Vona Groarke

		The Fishermen at Guasti Park by Maurya Simon

		The Fly by William Blake

		The Idea of Order at Key West by Wallace Stevens

		The Last Slow Days of Summer by Phillip Lopate

		The Philosopher in Florida by C. Dale Young

		The Summer House by Tony Connor

		The White Room by Charles Simic

		They'll spend the summer by Joshua Beckman

		This Lime Tree Bower My Prison by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

		Three Songs at the End of Summer by Jane Kenyon

		Vacation by Rita Dove

		Vertumnal [excerpt] by Stephen Yenser

		Vespers by Louise Glück

		Warm Summer Sun by Mark Twain

		Wildflower by Stanley Plumly

Sponsor a Poet Page | Add to Notebook | Email to Friend | Print

In Summer Time
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

When summer time has come, and all The world is in the magic thrall Of perfumed airs that lull each sense To fits of drowsy indolence; When skies are deepest blue above, And flow'rs aflush,—then most I love To start, while early dews are damp, And wend my way in woodland tramp Where forests rustle, tree on tree, And sing their silent songs to me; Where pathways meet and pathways part,— To walk with Nature heart by heart, Till wearied out at last I lie Where some sweet stream steals singing by A mossy bank; where violets vie In color with the summer sky,— Or take my rod and line and hook, And wander to some darkling brook, Where all day long the willows dream, And idly droop to kiss the stream, And there to loll from morn till night— Unheeding nibble, run, or bite— Just for the joy of being there And drinking in the summer air, The summer sounds, and summer sights, That set a restless mind to rights When grief and pain and raging doubt Of men and creeds have worn it out; The birds' song and the water's drone, The humming bee's low monotone, The murmur of the passing breeze, And all the sounds akin to these, That make a man in summer time Feel only fit for rest and rhyme. Joy springs all radiant in my breast; Though pauper poor, than king more blest, The tide beats in my soul so strong That happiness breaks forth in song, And rings aloud the welkin blue With all the songs I ever knew. O time of rapture! time of song! How swiftly glide thy days along Adown the current of the years, Above the rocks of grief and tears! 'Tis wealth enough of joy for me In summer time to simply be.

Larger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy