The aim of the article is to present some aesthetic and ideological relationships between different cultural texts - the painting of Józef Chełmoński entitled Babie lato (Indian Summer, 1875) and its poetic ekphrasis with the same title written by Michalina Chełmońska-Szczepankowka (1937). The article describes cultural axiology and poetic sense of the perception of the painting which focuses on the visual theme of Indian summer. The presented interpretation demonstrates that the ideological message of the poem comprises the symbols of the Indian summer inspired by the poetics of the painting, namely praise of freedom, imagination and creative artistic thrust, which people derive directly from both the beauty of their native land and the truth about the order of life imposed by the natural law of the motherland, irrespective of its social and economic situation as well as its historical conditions.