July is a beautiful month in the Lakes, there is such greenery and lushness on the fells. Hardwicke Rawnsley sums up the "peculiar beauty of July." The long summer's days, the beauty of the sunset and the subtle changes in the season as the summer really gets into its stride.
If one is asked what is the peculiar beauty of July, one replies the effects of sunlight on the fells at eventide. There is then, owing to the green richness from base to sky-line, a sense of prodigal life and fertility which 'neath the westering sun loses its heaviness of tone, and the white flocks sparkle on the mountain's breast, and the deep blue shadows grow and move...
July from Sonnets at the Lakes
If one is asked what is the peculiar beauty of July, one replies the effects of sunlight on the fells at eventide. There is then, owing to the green richness from base to sky-line, a sense of prodigal life and fertility which 'neath the westering sun loses its heaviness of tone, and the white flocks sparkle on the mountain's breast, and the deep blue shadows grow and move...
July from Sonnets at the Lakes
Clad in her ferny green from head to feet,
Queen for a single moontime, comes along
July - half jealous, stills the thicket's song,
And bids the cuckoo's voice no more repeat
Its herald echo; hushes every bleat
Where on the fells with milkier fleeces throng
The careless dams; yet ties she not the tongue
Of hurrying streams that loud her coming greet.
And in her hand she bears the red new leaf
Of Oak and Beech, with those vermilion keys
The Sycamore hangs out, and from the leas
Foxglove and purple Betony; but chief
Where the large scythe the northern mowers wield
Mound its green waves, she haunts the daisied field.