With a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams <br />The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise, <br />And the winds are one with the clouds and beams - <br />Midsummer days! Midsummer days! <br />The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze, <br />While the West from a rapture of sunset rights, <br />Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise - <br />Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! <br /> <br />The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams, <br />The lush grass thickens and springs and sways, <br />The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams - <br />Midsummer days! Midsummer days! <br />In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways, <br />All secret shadows and mystic lights, <br />Late lovers murmur and linger and gaze - <br />Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! <br /> <br />There's a music of bells from the trampling teams, <br />Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze, <br />The rich, ripe rose as with incense steams - <br />Midsummer days! Midsummer days! <br />A soul from the honeysuckle strays, <br />And the nightingale as from prophet heights <br />Sings to the Earth of her million Mays - <br />Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! <br /> <br />Envoy <br /> <br />And it's O, for my dear and the charm that stays - <br />Midsummer days! Midsummer days! <br />It's O, for my Love and the dark that plights - <br />Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!<br /><br />William Ernest Henley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ballade-of-midsummer-days-and-nights/
