Master for Webs

On this first official day of summer, we look at what the Bard termed eternal summer and the Beach Boys popularized as endless summer. Let's put the appeal of surfing aside and look at some words from the Bard and other writers who have written about those warm, hazy days ahead.

In the same sonnet in which William Shakespeare declared that his love's "eternal summer shall not fade," he also described her as "more lovely and more temperate [than a] summer's day."

Just how lovely is a summer's day? This thought from Edith Wharton comes to us courtesy of Henry James: "Summer afternoon -- summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."

Everyone knows that beauty is in

the eye of the beholder, and the Roman poet Virgil advised farmers to "pray that your summers be wet." Farmers and other grown-ups may glory in the beauty of a summer rain, but children are more inclined to see things the way Emily Dickinson did. She wrote of "reeling -- through endless summer days." And anyone over the age of 15 can appreciate these words from the poet May Swenson. She wrote "The summer that I was ten--/Can it be there was only one/ summer that I was ten?"

Enjoy those "mad naked summer nights" (we can thank Walt Whitman for that one!) and drop us a line if you can. Our e-mail address is wftw@aol.com. Our street address is Word for the Wise, 318 Central Avenue, Albany, New York 12206.

Shawn Dudley is our audio engineer. Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and CD's including The Merriam-Webster Book of Quotations.

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