Late Summer
By Daniel Leach
Late summer, and the silvery undersides
Of the leaves shimmer in the hazy air,
And the cicadas’ song wells up in tides
That wash over my soul, and everywhere
The world seems as if in an opium dream,
Or born along on some enchanted stream.
Soon will these leaves feel autumn’s first cold bite,
And lie in brittle heaps upon the ground,
But they, and I, care not—the coming night
Will find us dreaming still, the drowsy sound
Of crickets will the dream-song’s vigil keep,
And lull us like innocent babes to sleep.
It was a day like this, long, long ago,
A boy lay dreaming on a grassy hill,
And felt all wisdom he could ever know,
Was in that moment—and that boy is still
Dreaming, still to that sacred song awake,
Though worlds of men and time itself forsake.
Daniel Leach is a poet living in Houston, Texas. He has spent much of his life fighting for the ideals of classical culture and poetry. His latest volumes of poetry are Voices on the Wind and Places the Soul Goes.
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I found myself in communion with Mr. Leach's poem. The piece, in well crafted rhyming sextets, invites the reader into the universal bond and musical aura of a contemporary pastoral which is well rooted in tradition. This is a fine poem that easily could have been sung to soothe Polyphemus, Galataea and their brethren.
“Late Summer” is another wondrously timeless and transcendent poem by Daniel Leach. In reading this poem, one thing that stands out to me is Leach’s great skill with rhyme and meter. Although he consistently uses “perfect rhymes” throughout this piece, the lines possess great musicality without sounding “sing-songy.” I have found that many so-called “classical” and “new formalist” poets are such slaves to all the rules of prosody and yet are so lacking in any real skill that everything they come up with sounds like a bad stilted nursery rhyme. It puts one in mind of the Pharisees of Biblical times who blindly worshipped the letter of the law but were unable to discern the true spirit of it. This is not so with Daniel Leach and other poets of his caliber.