When, broad and bright, the summer sun rides high,
And lowly bend the heads of bearded wheat,
And garden ways with lily-blooms are sweet,
And fleecy clouds lie in the western sky,
Then where the low breeze through the leaves doth sigh,
The locust makes a cool and safe retreat,
And all the sultry day his chimes repeat
Their monotone, and meet a quick reply.
There is a weary sameness in his song,
Caught from his seventeen dark years of sleep
In the cold silence of neglected fields.
How brief a day for night so drear and long!
What sombre music earth holds buried deep,
If this be all the harvest that it yields!