the deepening ground

By the calendar, summer has yet to fold back the cluttered page of Spring. By the end of the school year, summer has spread out like endless fields before me. As I wrap up grading student essays for the AP English Literature exam tomorrow (it’s been a prose year for me…but I’ve enjoyed it), let these words of Paul Laurence Dunbar (who wrote the immortal We Wear the Mask) be like that early-morning birdsong that awakens me at 4:30 AM in anticipation of the sunrise. Despite the cares of the world, the grief of recent loss, and the evil that seems to abound, sing the song of summer!

In Summer by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Oh, summer has clothed the earth
In a cloak from the loom of the sun!
And a mantle, too, of the skies' soft blue,
And a belt where the rivers run.

And now for the kiss of the wind,
And the touch of the air's soft hands,
With the rest from strife and the heat of life,
With the freedom of lakes and lands.

I envy the farmer's boy
Who sings as he follows the plow;
While the shining green of the young blades lean
To the breezes that cool his brow.

He sings to the dewy morn,
No thought of another's ear;
But the song he sings is a chant for kings
And the whole wide world to hear.

He sings of the joys of life,
Of the pleasures of work and rest,
From an o'erfull heart, without aim or art;
'T is a song of the merriest.

O ye who toil in the town,
And ye who moil in the mart,
Hear the artless song, and your faith made strong
Shall renew your joy of heart.

Oh, poor were the worth of the world
If never a song were heard,—
If the sting of grief had no relief,
And never a heart were stirred.

So, long as the streams run down,
And as long as the robins trill,
Let us taunt old Care with a merry air,
And sing in the face of ill.

From The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1913)