Poetry Sunday: Summer Magic by Leslie Pinckney Hill

Here's a poem about summer by a poet that I was not familiar with. He was an African-American born in Virginia in 1880. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard with a bachelor's degree in 1903 and a master's degree a year later and in 1922 he wrote this poem about summer. It seems to describe the season well, don't you think?

     She hung aloft the rounding moon,

  She poured her sunshine on the earth,
She drove the sap and broke the bud,
  She set the crimson rose afire.

Here's the poem in its entirety:

Summer Magic

by Leslie Pinckney Hill

So many cares to vex the day,  

So many fears to haunt the night,

My heart was all but weaned away

  From every lure of old delight.
Then summer came, announced by June,
  With beauty, miracle and mirth.
She hung aloft the rounding moon,
  She poured her sunshine on the earth,
She drove the sap and broke the bud,
  She set the crimson rose afire.
She stirred again my sullen blood,
  And waked in me a new desire.
Before my cottage door she spread
  The softest carpet nature weaves,
And deftly arched above my head
  A canopy of shady leaves.
Her nights were dreams of jeweled skies,
  Her days were bowers rife with song,
And many a scheme did she devise
  To heal the hurt and soothe the wrong.
For on the hill or in the dell,
  Or where the brook went leaping by
Or where the fields would surge and swell
  With golden wheat or bearded rye,
I felt her heart against my own,
  I breathed the sweetness of her breath,
Till all the care of time had flown,
  And I was lord of life and death.