JULY 



Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof 



Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. 

 Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy roadway 



Sometimes pipes a chaffinch ; loose droops the blue. 

 Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river, 



Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. 

 Nowhere is she seen ; and if I see her nowhere, 



Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky. 



GEORGE MEREDITH, Love in the Valley. 



In early summer moonlight I have strayed 

 Down pass and wildway of the wooded hill, 

 With wonder as again the sedge-bird made 

 His old, old ballad new beside the mill. 

 And I have stolen closer to the song 

 That, lisped low, would swell and change to shrill, 

 Thick, chattered cheeps that seemed not to belong 

 Of right to the frail elfin throat that threw 

 Them on the stream, their waker. There among 

 The willows I have watched as over flew 

 A noctule making zigzag round the lone, 

 Dark elm whose shadow clipt grotesque the new 

 Green lawn below. On softest breezes blown 

 From some far brake, the cruising fern-owl's cry 

 Would stay my steps ; a beetle's nearing drone 

 Would steal upon my sense and pass and die.' 



RALPH HODGSON, The Sedge- Warbler. 





THE COUNTRY CALENDAR 



JULY has been called, along with August, one of the ' mute months.' 

 The birds are silent, but the insects are noisy. It is rather one of 



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