Poetry Sunday: June

James Whitcomb Riley, American poet of the late 19th and early 20th century, wrote several poems about the month of June. One intuits that it must have been his favorite month. 

This one is simply called "June" and it lauds the month as the "Peerless Goddess of the Year." Anyone who has experienced a perfect June day might agree.

June

by James Whitcomb Riley

Queenly month of indolent repose!
I drink thy breath in sips of rare perfume,
As in thy downy lap of clover-bloom
I nestle like a drowsy child and doze
The lazy hours away. The zephyr throws
The shifting shuttle of the Summer's loom
And weaves a damask-work of gleam and gloom
Before thy listless feet. The lily blows
A bugle-call of fragrance o'er the glade;
And, wheeling into ranks, with plume and spear,
Thy harvest-armies gather on parade;
While, faint and far away, yet pure and clear,
A voice calls out of alien lands of shade:--
All hail the Peerless Goddess of the Year! 

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