June 7th

"The Lane"

The lane runs deep in rabbit-riddled banks.
How many hundred years of wheel and hoof
And plodding feet that good cowhide makes proof
Have grooved this rut, which lurks and winds and thanks
The burly stools of oak, the lissom ranks
Of maple and spindlewood for eaves of roof
So large they almost fend high noon aloof?
Up in the hedge the wind may play his pranks;

Here the dead-calms of the after-sunset hour
Hold every scent afloat, immobilised,
Along the leafy-margin'd air-lagoon.
Briarbush and honeysuckle and elderflower --
Each in his turn, you capture, analysed
In such retort, the essential sweets of June.

--John Swinnerton Phillimore (1909)

(admittedly, it's a bit rich--'the leafy-margin'd air-lagoon"?--but there you go).