Oh, how I love this aspect of the experience of summer as I have known it,
in my youth and now in my older years…
The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
-Wallace Stevens
Gladsome Lights 
That’s me — reading in the summer!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Summer and Night, equated to truth in a calm world – how interesting!! A summer night, calm truth – maybe that’s another reason I love summer. (the night sounds, the fireflies, the night breezes, the stillness: they all represent something. as does everything in nature)
LikeLiked by 1 person
A beautiful poem!
LikeLiked by 1 person
A lovely poem for this season of my life as well as the month. I like the picture you chose to accompany it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
beautiful, lovely
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s me, too! I love reading during quiet summer evenings. That picture is perfection!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I know, isn’t it? I looked at a hundred other possible illustrations but this was the one – even though I couldn’t find a large file to use.
LikeLike
Love that painting by T.F. Simon. It’s a perfect picture about the joy of summertime reading. Like you, Gretchen, It is how I have known it in my youth and in my current years. Thank you!
LikeLiked by 1 person