Swallows and Summer's Serenity

One of the great joys of summer at Merry Mount is watching the swallows glide across the pasture as we mow on the zero-turn, as we sit observing them at “happy hour”, or as we follow their silhouettes across a sunset.

Barn Swallow: Class: Aves, Family: Hirundinidae, Genus: Hirundo

The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America states, "swallows are aerial songbirds with very short legs and bills and relatively long and pointed wings. They feed almost exclusively on flying insects captured in graceful swooping flight. The Barn Swallow has a blue-black upperside, whitish to orange underside, and a dark rufous throat. It's song is quiet and lilting with a husky squeaky quality."

Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.

-Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

O boundless, boundless evening

O boundless, boundless evening.

Soon the glow of long hills on the skyline will be gone,

Like clear dream country now, rich-hued by sun.

O boundless evening where the cornfields throw

The scattered daylight back in an aureole.

Swallows high up are singing, very small.

On every meadow glitters their swift flight,

In woods of rushes and where tall masts stand in brilliant bays.

Yet in ravines beyond

Between the hills already nests the night.

English Translation Christopher Middleton (b. 1926)

Original German Text by Georg

"scattered daylight back in an aureole"

CPW