JUNE GLADNESS
JUNE comes to train the roses
About the cottage door,
To teach the little rills to sing
Far sweeter than before.
June comes a fairy artist,
To deck the hills and plains;
Her pencil is the golden sun,
Her brush the summer rains.
June comes in skylark's carol,
In robin's song of glee,
In bluebird's trill so beautiful,
So tender and so free.
June comes in rippling waters,
In laughing streams and brooks,
In gurgling rills that hide away
In grassy clover nooks.
June brings the sweetest music
That ever charmed the ear,
The woodland choir of singing birds
That echo far and near.
June tells her tales of gladness,
And drives away all grief;
She writes her lessons in the woods,
On blossom and on leaf.
June touches softly, lightly,
The wheat tops and the rye,
The barley and the clover blooms
That on the meadows lie.
June builds the fairest dwellings,
With every dainty rife,
For butterfly and honey-bee,
And all the insect life.
Selected.