Skip to content

Scottish Poetry Library

Register/Sign in
Shopping Bag Shopping Bag
Bringing people and poems together
  • Home
  • Poetry
    • Poets
    • Poems
    • Burns Night
    • Scotland’s Makar
    • Podcasts
    • Best Scottish Poems
  • Library
    • Become a borrower
    • Catalogue
    • Collections
    • Ask a librarian
    • Copyright enquiries
  • Learning
    • Nat 5 and Higher poems
    • Dyslexia-friendly lesson plans
    • Poems in Scots for schools
    • Rannan Chloinne / Children’s Verses
    • Nua-Nòs Gaelic Resources
    • Poems in English for schools
    • Scots poems for bairns
    • Posters
  • Events
    • What’s On
    • Organising a cultural event at the SPL
    • Meeting rooms and venue hire
  • Shop
    • SPL Shop
  • About us
    • Our story
    • Our people
    • Our projects
    • FAQs
    • Company papers
    • Jobs & Volunteering
    • Find us
    • Contact us
    • Making a complaint
  • Support us
    • Become a Friend
    • Donate
  • Blog
Shopping BagShopping Bag
Ask a librarian
  • Home
  • >
  • Poetry
  • >
  • summer
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

summer

Islander - by W. N. Herbert

{ Poem }

A few treeless meadows awaited your text
amid the overtones of Rackwick where next
to scriptory herds, you sermonised to shoals
how poetry’s an archipelago of souls:

Summer - by Alexander McCall Smith

{ Poem }

Where heather and Scots pines
Remind us of evenings past
When the world was less a place of wrong,

excerpt from Farm by the Shore - by Thomas A. Clark

{ Poem }

small oats rye bere barley
ripe harvest in late summer
a shallow ploughing
grazing and fallow in rotation

A Bush Night - by Will H. Ogilvie

{ Poem }

I remember the pale summer lightning that flashed on the purple
horizon,
Full-sweep like the sword-play of giants, the dark to bedeck
and bedizen
With gold for the path of the planets

Sainless - by Douglas Young

{ Poem }

I hae stuid an hour o the lown midsimmer nicht
/ til twal o the knock i the leelang glamarie-licht
/ by…

Last Bus Ride in July – a Mother Speaks (Genocide – Srebrenica, July, 1995; Karadzic captured – Belgrade, July, 2008) - by Gerda Stevenson

{ Poem }

Summer grass is shoulder high once more, / higher than my sons will ever be.

Embro to the Ploy - by Robert Garioch

{ Poem }

The auld Assembly-rooms, whaur Scott
foregethert wi his fiers,
nou see a gey kenspeckle lot
ablow the chandeliers.

‘Summer’ - by John Clare

{ Poem }

Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come,
For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom,
And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest,
And love is burning diamonds in my true lover’s breast.

The Swing - by Robert Louis Stevenson

{ Poem }

How do you like to go up in a swing,
/ Up in the air so blue?
/ Oh, I do…

Summer - by Abai Kunanbaev

{ Poem }

Summer climbs the mountains.
Flowers overcolour and blanch.
Men leave the sun and sit,
tree-tented, by the cold creek.

Midday - by Ak Welsapar

{ Poem }

Midday, just look around:
the heat raises the sand to a boil.
Life is nothing more than a myth
when summer comes to this land.

from and then night fell - by Anonymous

{ Poem }

the crickets
/
/ one by one
/ whirring out
/
/ like flakes of light
/ from heaven
/
/ flickered at the
/ trees and grass
/
/ and sat
/ and sang
/
/ and something moved
/ something changed
/
/ the…

1 2 Next
  • Newsletter signup
  • Accessibility
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy (UK)
Scottish Poetry Library
5 Crichton's Close, Canongate
Edinburgh EH8 8DT
Tel: +44 (0)131 557 2876
© Scottish Poetry Library 2026.
The Scottish Poetry Library is a registered charity (No. SCO23311).
City of Edinburgh logo Green Arts Initiative logo Creative Scotland logo
Scottish Poetry Library
Manage Consent

To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.

We use privacy-focused tracking technologies to help us understand and improve the experience of our visitors. We track activity, not users, but you can still object to this tracking via our cookie policy.

Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
  • Manage options
  • Manage services
  • Manage {vendor_count} vendors
  • Read more about these purposes
View preferences
  • {title}
  • {title}
  • {title}