X. In the Open
August Nights and August Days
At each new turning season I ask myself what annual phrase in the great epic of the year most pricks the senses: the stir of sap in the maples, the earliest robin coldly foraging across a bare lawn, crocuses or cowslips or trailing arbutus in the muddy wood-lot, grass appearing along a hundred borders, willow bark suddenly ripe for whistles, garden soil warm and dry enough to risk seed in it, apple blossoms and lilacs lifting the soul like music with their fragrance—the bright, young, green procession from March’s equinox to June’s accomplished solstice; or the higher pomps of summer, red and yellow—berries luxuriant on the hills, wheat in the head, corn haughty with the pride of its stature, meadow-larks that cry continually as cherubim, evenings spangled with fireflies and alive with shrill bats and angry night-hawks and repining frogs, the spare smell of mown hay, keen acrid dust flung through light air by the lean hands of drouth; or golden, purple, imperial autumn—the incredible blue of fringed gentians, apples compliant to hungry hands, grapes dewy and fresh on tingling mornings, gardens bequeathing their wealth to ready cellars, birch fires crackling on a hearth which had nearly forgotten them, leaves so scattered underfoot that every pedestrian sounds like a marching army, wild geese off for the south with eager bugles, a frost transmogrifying the world in a night; or white and black and dusky winter—sounds heard muffled over deadening snow, the gorgeous privacy of long nights, the sweet, bitter coldness of cheeks when the blast strikes them, blood triumphantly warmed by exercise even in zero weather, the crisp flesh of fruit dug from pits hid deep underground, the ringing blades of skates, the malicious whine of sleigh runners, fat companionable snow-birds with an eye on the pantry window, barns warm with the breath of ever-ruminant cows: which is best? Is there any choosing? Should we all vote for the nearest? Perhaps that is what I do when in this season I make my choice for the sundowns of August, which, by some keenness in the winds that then waken, clearly though not too brusquely prophesy, in the midst of a consoling splendour, that the epic has an end: August of the blazing noons, August of the cool nights.
The most blazing August on the heels of the most pitiless July has no terrors for the man or woman who knows Herrick and can turn from torrid cities to the meadows and brooks and hawthorn-guarded cottages of Herrick’s dainty Devon. He rises for ever with the dawn and summons his perennial Corinna, “sweet Slug-a-bed,”
To come forth, like the Spring-time, fresh and greene;
And sweet as Flora.
Love itself cannot inflame his morning worshippers: they walk through the early streets to the woods of May, courting one another exquisitely with all the forms of a ceremonial which Horace might have sung or Watteau painted. Here, in one bright season, are daffodils and violets, primroses and gilliflowers,
Millions of Lillies mixt with Roses, tulips, pansies, marigolds, daisies, the cherry and the oak, laurels and cypresses, grapes and strawberries, spring standing side by side with purple harvest and cozy winter. Here are all exquisite scents, new rain on turf and tree, the smoke of quaint poetical sacrifices;
The smell of mornings milk, and cream;
Butter of Cowslips mixt with them;
Of rosted warden, or bak’d peare;
“the flowre of blooming Clove,” “Essences of Jessimine,” honey just brought in by bees, spiced wines, incomparable possets; the perfumes of youth and love and joy. Here, too, are delicate forms and precious colours, smooth narratives of a hundred rural customs chosen because they fit fine verses, and whimsical pious little odes and graces before meat and thanksgivings and creeds and prayers such as no other poet ever uttered. Nowhere else has adoration better lent itself to union with politeness than in this counsel to children:
Honour thy Parents; but good manners call
Thee to adore thy God, the first of all.
Surely something ran in Herrick’s veins which was calmer than the hot blood of his kind in general. He laughs at Julia, Sapho, Anthea, Electra, Myrha, Corinna, Perilla, and at himself for having had and lost them; he tricks out his raptures of devotion with the blithest figures of speech:
Lord, I am like to Misletoe,
Which has no root, and cannot grow,
Or prosper, but by that same tree
It clings about; so I by Thee;
he takes his ease in his country Zion as if it would last eternally and yet amuses himself with cheerful epitaphs for himself and with advice to his pretty mourners. He could be passionate enough about his calling; but he saw his world as images of marble, as pictures of gold set in silver, as charming ancient stories come to life again yet still with the dignity of remembered perfectness about them. It is a defence against August to remember the happy commentary upon Herrick which Dryden wrote when he imitated the lines to Perilla—
Then shall my Ghost not walk about, but keep
Still in the coole, and silent shades of sleep—
in that admirable invitation to another cool world:
When, tired with following nature, you think fit
To seek repose in the cool shades of wit.