Poetry Collection: 5 poems about summer
Five classic poems about summer to leave you inspired, energized, and eager to embrace warmer weather and longer days.
Shakespeare- “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Appearing in a collection of sonnets, this romantic Shakespeare poem is one of his most famous. He makes good use of his trademark Shakespearean sonnet form to compare his love’s beauty and allure to the beauty and allure a “summer’s day” brings.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Emily Dickinson- “I Know a Place Where Summer Strives”
Dickinson is a classic American poet from the 1800s. Published posthumously, her collections often include elements and themes of nature within them to elaborate on life’s virtues of love, happiness, contentment, and peace.
I know a place where summer strives
With such a practised frost,
She each year leads her daisies back,
Recording briefly, "Lost."
But when the south wind stirs the pools
And struggles in the lanes,
Her heart misgives her for her vow,
And she pours soft refrains
Into the lap of adamant,
And spices, and the dew,
That stiffens quietly to quartz,
Upon her amber shoe.
Longfellow- “A Day of Sunshine”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet of the Romantic era. The poets of this period and school of thought sought to highlight natural beauty and life’s wonders. Emotions are conveyed with intensity, and scenes within romantic poems are written with vivid imagery. In “A Day of Sunshine,” Wadsworth is reveling in nature being brought to life by warmer days, and because of this, he feels renewed as well. In the poem, he celebrates his love of living.
O gift of God! O perfect day:
Whereon shall no man work, but play;
Whereon it is enough for me,
Not to be doing, but to be!
Through every fibre of my brain,
Through every nerve, through every vein,
I feel the electric thrill, the touch
Of life, that seems almost too much.
I hear the wind among the trees
Playing celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.
And over me unrolls on high
The splendid scenery of the sky,
Where though a sapphire sea the sun
Sails like a golden galleon,
Towards yonder cloud-land in the West,
Towards yonder Islands of the Blest,
Whose steep sierra far uplifts
Its craggy summits white with drifts.
Blow, winds! and waft through all the rooms
The snow-flakes of the cherry-blooms!
Blow, winds! and bend within my reach
The fiery blossoms of the peach!
O Life and Love! O happy throng
Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!
O heart of man! canst thou not be
Blithe as the air is, and as free?
For a deep dive into Longfellow’s poem, check out the Classically Cultured analysis of “A Day of Sunshine.”
John Donne- “The Rising Sun”
An English poet who became a prominent figure in the “metaphysical poets” movement which focused on philosophical exploration within their works, John Donne cleverly writes about an annoying intruder in this poem who is rousing he and his wife (unwillingly) from bed in the morning. The intruder? The summer sun :)
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.
She's all states, and all princes, I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus.
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.
William Blake- “To Summer”
In this celebratory poem, William Blake offers an “ode” to summer. He relates summer’s brilliant season to both success and joy, two values he often covered in his works because of their personal importance to him.
O Thou who passest thro’ our vallies in
Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat
That flames from their large nostrils! thou, O Summer,
Oft pitched’st here thy golden tent, and oft
Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld
With joy, thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.
Beneath our thickest shades we oft have heard
Thy voice, when noon upon his fervid car
Rode o’er the deep of heaven; beside our springs
Sit down, and in our mossy vallies, on
Some bank beside a river clear, throw thy
Silk draperies off, and rush into the stream:
Our vallies love the Summer in his pride.
Our bards are fam’d who strike the silver wire:
Our youth are bolder than the southern swains:
Our maidens fairer in the sprightly dance:
We lack not songs, nor instruments of joy,
Nor echoes sweet, nor waters clear as heaven,
Nor laurel wreaths against the sultry heat.
*All poems are listed in Public Domain
Original spelling has been kept for integrity of poems