Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare, And left the flushed print in a poppy there.

Thompson personifies Summer as a lover who kisses the earth—“earth’s bosom bare”—and the “flushed print” of that kiss becomes a poppy. The image compresses an entire seasonal process (heat, ripening, flowering) into an intimate, sensual metaphor, typical of Thompson’s luxuriant late-Victorian diction and his tendency to fuse physical nature with heightened emotional and almost sacramental suggestion. The poppy’s redness reads as both the blush of passion and the visible mark of summer’s intensity, turning a common field-flower into evidence of nature’s ardor and transience.