Summer can be a time full of busyness and being outside enjoying warmer weather, but it is also good to slow down. Provide some beautiful poems (Catholic or not explicitly so) for meditation in the summer time.

The long, hot days of summer are upon us! Whether you are soaking up the weather or hiding in the air conditioning, perhaps one of these summer-themed poems will give you ample material to reflect upon during these long evenings.

No list of any kind of literature regarding nature could be complete, in my mind, without the inclusion of Lucy Maud Montogomery.  L. M. Montogomery may be most famous for her portrayal of an orphan girl coming of age, but, personally, her work always makes me remember how much meaning having an intimate love for nature brings to our lives. It makes me wistful for something it seems like so many of us have lost: a deep, personal connection to the land we live on—a love for the creation God has given us. 

A Summer Day
by Lucy Maude Montgomery

I

The dawn laughs out on orient hills
And dances with the diamond rills;
The ambrosial wind but faintly stirs
The silken, beaded gossamers;
In the wide valleys, lone and fair,
Lyrics are piped from limpid air,
And, far above, the pine trees free
Voice ancient lore of sky and sea.
Come, let us fill our hearts straightway
With hope and courage of the day.

II

Noon, hiving sweets of sun and flower,
Has fallen on dreams in wayside bower,
Where bees hold honeyed fellowship
With the ripe blossom of her lip;
All silent are her poppied vales
And all her long Arcadian dales,
Where idleness is gathered up
A magic draught in summer’s cup.
Come, let us give ourselves to dreams
By lisping margins of her streams.

III

Adown the golden sunset way
The evening comes in wimple gray;
By burnished shore and silver lake
Cool winds of ministration wake;
O’er occidental meadows far
There shines the light of moon and star,
And sweet, low-tinkling music rings
About the lips of haunted springs.
In quietude of earth and air
‘Tis meet we yield our souls to prayer.

Another easy inclusion, Shakespeare’s eighteenth sonnet probably does not need an introduction or explanation for being on a list of summer poems. 

Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day?
by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Joyce Kilmer was a Catholic convert, poet, speaker, husband, father, and soldier. He was killed while fighting in World War I and felt strongly that they were fighting for a righteous cause, mentioning in a letter that remembering his mother singing hymns to him in their kitchen brought home to him the importance and simplicity of what he was fighting for. His most famous poem, “Trees,” is a simple ode to the beauty of a God-made tree, something that shines during the summer! 

Trees

By Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Finally, a poem from one of the most well-known Catholic poets. In this poem, Hopkins uses the natural world as a way of encountering God. Meeting the beauty of nature, particularly the end of summer, drives an immediate, visceral reaction and response from the poet: 

Hurrahing in Harvest

By Gerald Manly Hopkins

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet give you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic - as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! -
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

May you enjoy these poems with a side of watermelon and gratitude for the beauty God has gifted us! 

And a bonus! If you have children, they will love this poem that so completely captures the feeling of missing out that accompanies those who have to retire before the sun has set!

Bed in Summer

By Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night  
And dress by yellow candle-light.  
In summer, quite the other way,  
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see         
The birds still hopping on the tree,  
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet  
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,  
When all the sky is clear and blue,  
And I should like so much to play,  
To have to go to bed by day?