Here you will find the Poem Mid-August of poet Duncan Campbell Scott
From the upland hidden, Where the hill is sunny Tawny like pure honey In the August heat, Memories float unbidden Where the thicket serries Fragrant with ripe berries And the milk-weed sweet. Like a prayer-mat holy Are the patterned mosses Which the twin-flower crosses With her flowerless vine; In fragile melancholy The pallid ghost flowers hover As if to guard and cover The shadow of a shrine. Where the pine-linnet lingered The pale water searches, The roots of gleaming birches Draw silver from the lake; The ripples, liquid-fingered, Plucking the root-layers, Fairy like lute players Lulling music make. O to lie here brooding Where the pine-tree column Rises dark and solemn To the airy lair, Where, the day eluding, Night is couched dream laden, Like a deep witch-maiden Hidden in her hair. In filmy evanescence Wraithlike scents assemble, Then dissolve and tremble A little until they die; Spirits of the florescence Where the bees searched and tarried Till the blossoms all were married In the days before July. Light has lost its splendour, Light refined and sifted, Cool light and dream drifted Ventures even where, (Seeping silver tender) In the dim recesses, Trembling mid her tresses, Hides the maiden hair. Covered with the shy-light, Filling in the hushes, Slide the tawny thrushes Calling to their broods, Hoarding till the twilight The song that made for noon-days Of the amorous June days Preludes and interludes. The joy that I am feeling Is there something in it Unlike the warble the linnet Phrases and intones? Or is a like thought stealing With a rapture fine, free Through the happy pine tree Ripening her cones? In some high existence In another planet Where their poets cannot Know our birds and flowers, Does the same persistence Give the dreams they issue Something like the tissue Of these dreams of ours? O to lie athinking-- Moods and whims! I fancy Only necromancy Could the web unroll, Only somehow linking Beauties that meet and mingle In this quiet dingle With the beauty of the whole.