Sonnet Liii. August.

FAR Off among the fields and meadow rills The August noon bends o'er a world of green. In the blue sky the white clouds pause, and lean To paint broad shadows on the wooded hills And upland farms. A brooding silence fills The languid hours. No living forms are seen Save birds and insects. Here and there, between The broad boughs and the grass, the locust trills Unseen his long-drawn, slumberous monotone. The sparrow and the lonely phœbe-bird, Now near, now far, across the fields are heard; And close beside me here that Spanish drone, The dancing grasshopper, whom no trouble frets, In the hot sunshine snaps his castanets.