Fighting the Current

"And what is so rare as a day in June?"

And what is so rare as a day in June?
         Then if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
         And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a sitr of might,
         An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And groping, blindly above it for light,
         Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
         Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
         The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
         To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
         Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
         With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings,
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,--
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?

- from Prelude to Part First of "The Vision of Sir Launfal", James Russell Lowell

I love that poem. I have an elderly neighbor who loves to garden (but can't anymore, so we do it with her dictating, lol) and every summer day that's nice and sunny she recites that. Her memory's going but it always seems to get better in the summer. For the longest time she didn't know what the name was, so she told my mom a few lines and we went to work. We found it in a book of mine. I have a collection of about 6 or 7 books of a lot of the well-known poems from American, English, Irish, and several other countries' literature. It's actually my great-grandfather's, so it's not exactly new, but it's one of my favorite books.