July

Sunshine and shadow play amid the trees
In bosky groves, while from the vivid sky
The sun’s gold arrows fleck the fields at noon,
      Where weary cattle to their slumber hie.
How sweet the music of the purling rill,
Trickling adown the grassy hill!
While dreamy fancies come to give repose
When the first star of evening glows.

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“July” appeared in Poems (The Grafton Press, 1910).

Henrietta Cordelia Ray was born in New York City in 1849. She authored two collections of poetry, Sonnets (Press of J. J. Little & Co., 1893), and Poems (The Grafton Press, 1910). In 1876, Ray’s poem “Lincoln” was read at the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C. Ray died in 1917.