The oriole sings in the greening grove

As if he were half-way waiting,

The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green,

Timid and hesitating.

The rain comes down in a torrent sweep

And the nights smell warm and piney,

The garden thrives, but the tender shoots

Are yellow-green and tiny.

Then a flash of sun on a waiting hill,

Streams laugh that erst were quiet,

The sky smiles down with a dazzling blue

And the woods run mad with riot.

About This Poem Today is the first full day of summer. Summer was a topic to which Dunbar returned often, hailing it in another poem as the “time of rapture! time of song!”

Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on June 27, 1872. The child of freed slaves, Dunbar achieved national acclaim for his poetry, which appeared in periodicals ranging from The New York Times to Harper’s Weekly. Dunbar died in 1906.