Michael Drayton (1563-1631). A Summer's Day. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1907. The Book of Elizabethan Verse

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

A Summer’s Day

By Michael Drayton (1563–1631)


CLEAR had the day been from the dawn,
All chequer’d was the sky,
The clouds, like scarfs of cobweb lawn,
Veil’d heaven’s most glorious eye.

The wind had no more strength than this,	5
—That leisurely it blew—
To make one leaf the next to kiss
That closely by it grew.

The rills, that on the pebbles play’d,
Might now be heard at will;	10
This world the only music made,
Else everything was still.

The flowers, like brave embroider’d girls,
Look’d as they most desired
To see whose head with orient pearls	15
Most curiously was tyred.

And to itself the subtle air
Such sovereignty assumes,
That it receiv’d too large a share
From Nature’s rich perfumes.	20