Madison Julius Cawein
Days and Dreams: Poems

O lyrist of the lowly and the true,
The song I sought for you
Hides yet unsung. What hope for me to find,
Lost in the dædal mind,
The living utterance with lovely tongue!
To say, as erst was sung
By Ariosto of Knight-errantry, —
Through lands of Poesy,
Song's Paladin, knight of the dream and day,
The wizard shield you sway
Of that Atlantes power, sweet and terse,
The skyey-builded verse:
The shield that dazzles, brilliant with surprise,
Our unanointed eyes. —
Oh, had I written as 't were worthy you,
Each line, a spark of dew, —
As once Ferdusi shone in Persia, —
Had strung each rosy spray
Of the unfolding flower of each song;
And Iran's bulbul tongue
Had sobbed its heart out o'er the fountain's slab
In gardens of Afrasiab.

ONE DAY AND ANOTHER

PART I

1

He waits musing

Herein the dearness of her is:
The thirty perfect days of June
Made one, in beauty and in bliss
Were not more white to have to kiss,
To love not more in tune.

And oft I think she is too true,
Too innocent for our day;
For in her eyes her soul looks new —
Two crowfoot-blossoms watchet-blue
Are not more soft than they.

So good, so kind is she to me,
In darling ways and happy words,
Sometimes my heart fears she may be
Too much with God and secretly
Sweet sister to the birds.

2

Becoming impatient

The owls are quavering, two, now three,
And all the green is graying;
The owls our trysting dials be —
There is no time for staying.

I wait you where this buckeye throws
Its tumbled shadow over
Wood-violet and the bramble-rose,
Long lady-fern and clover.

Spice-seeded sassafras weighs deep
Rough rail and broken paling,
Where all day long the lizards sleep
Like lichen on the railing.

Behind you you will feel the moon's
Gold stealing like young laughter;
And mists – gray ghosts of picaroons —
Its phantom treasure after.

And here together, youth and youth,
Love will be doubly able;
Each be to each as true as truth,
And dear as fairy fable.

The owls are calling and the maize
With fallen dew is dripping —
Ah, girlhood, through the dewy haze
Come like a moonbeam slipping.

3

He hums

There is a fading inward of the day,
And all the pansy sunset hugs one star;
To eastward dwindling all the land is gray,
While barley meadows westward smoulder far.

Now to your glass will you pass
For the last time?
Pass,
Humming that ballad we know? —
Here while I wait it is late
And is past time —
Late,
And love's hours they go, they go.

There is a drawing downward of the night;
The wedded Heaven wends married to the Moon;
Above, the heights hang golden in her light,
Below, the woods bathe dewy in the June.

There through the dew is it you
Coming lawny?
You,
Or a moth in the vines?
You! – at your throat I may note
Twinkling tawny,
Note,
A glow-worm, your brooch that shines.

4

She speaks

How many smiles in the asking? —
Herein I can not deceive you;
My "yes" in a "no" was a-masking,
Nor thought, dear, once to grieve you.
I hid. The humming-bird happiness here
Danced up i' the blood … but what are words
When the speech of two souls all truth affords?
Affirmative, negative what in love's ear? —
I wished to say "yes" and somehow said "no";
The woman within me knew you would know,
For it held you six times dear.

He speaks

So many hopes in a wooing! —
Therein you could not deceive me;
The heart was here and the hope pursuing,
Knew that you loved, believe me. —
Bunched bells o' the blush pomegranate – to fix
At your throat; three drops of fire they are;
And the maiden moon and the maiden star
Sink silvery over yon meadow ricks.
Will you look? – till I hug your head back, so —
For I know it is "yes" though you whisper "no," —
And my kisses, sweet, are six.

5

She speaks

Could I recall every joy that befell me
There in the past with its anguish and bliss,
Here in my heart it has whispered to tell me,
These were no joys to this.

Were it not well if our love could forget them,
Veiling the was with the dawn of the is?
Dead with the past we should never regret them,
These were no joys to this.

When they were gone and the present stood speechful,
Ardent with word and with look and with kiss,
What though we know that their eyes are beseechful,
These were no joys to this.

Is it not well to have more of the spirit,
Living high futures this earthly must miss?
Less of the flesh with the past pining near it? —
Such is the joy of this.

6

She sings

We will leave reason,
Dear, for a season;
Reason were treason
Since yonder nether
Foot-hills are clad now
In nothing sad now;
We will be glad now,
Glad as this weather.
Heart and heart! in the Maytime, Maytime,
Youth and Love take playtime, playtime …
I in the dairy; you are the airy
Majesty passing; Love is the fairy
Bringing us two together.

He sings

Starlight in masses
Of mist that passes,
Stars in the grasses;
Star-bud and flower
Laughingly know us;
Secretly show us
Earth is below us
And for the hour
Soul has soul. In the Maytime, Maytime,
Youth and Love take playtime, playtime …
You are a song; a singer I hear it
Whispered in star and in flower; the spirit,
Love, is the power.

7

He speaks

And say we can not wed us now,
Since roses and the June are here,
Meseems, beneath the beechen bough
'T is just as sweet, my doubly dear,
To swear anew each old love vow,
And love another year.

When breathe green woodlands through and through
Wild scents of heliotrope and rain,
Where deep the moss mounds cool with dew,
Beyond the barley-blowing lane,
More wise than wedding, is to woo —
So we will woo again.

All night I lie awake and mark
The hours by no clanging clock,
But in the dim and dewy dark
Far crowing of some punctual cock;
Until the lyric of the lark
Mounts and Morn's gates unlock.

And would you be a nun and miss
All this delightful ache of love?
Not have the moon for what she is?
Love's honey-horn God holds above —
No world, for worlds are in a kiss
If worlds are good enough.

So say we can not wed us now,
Since roses and the June are here
We 'll stroll beneath the doddered bough,
Heaven's mated songsters singing near,
To swear anew each old love vow,
And love another year.

8

He opens his heart

And had we lived in the days
Of the Khalif Haroun er Reshid,
We had loved, as the story says,
Did the Sultan's favorite one
And the Persian Emperor's son
Ali ben Bekkar, he
Of the Kisra dynasty.

Do you know the story well
Of the Khalif Haroun's sultana? —
When night on the palace fell,
A slave through a secret door,
Low-arched on the Tigris' shore,
By a hidden winding stair
Ben Bekkar brought to his fair?

Then there was laughter and mirth,
And feasting and singing together,
In a chamber of marvellous worth;
In a chamber vaulted high
On columns of ivory;
Its dome, like the irised skies,
Mooned over with peacock eyes;
And the curtains and furniture,
Damask and juniper.

Ten slave-girls – so many blooms —
Stand sconcing tamarisk torches,
Silk-clad from the Irak looms;
Ten handmaidens serve the feast,
Each like to a star in the East;
Ten singers, their lutes a-tune,
Each like to a bosomed moon.

For her in the stuff of Merv
Blue-clad, unveiled, and jewelled,
No metaphor made may serve;
Scarved deep with her own dark hair,
The jewels like fire-flies there —
Blossom and moon and star,
The Lady Shemsennehar.

The zone embracing her waist, —
The ransom of forty princes, —
But her form more priceless is placed;
Carbuncles of Istakhar
In her coronet burning are —
Though gems of the Jamshid race,
Far rarer the gem of her face.

Tall-shaped like the letter I,
With a face like an Orient morning;
Eyes of the bronze-black sky;
Lips, of the pomegranate split,
With the light of her language lit;
Cheeks, which the young blood dares
Make blood-red anemone lairs.

Kohled with voluptuous look,
From opaline casting-bottles,
Handmaidens over them shook
Rose-water, and strewed with bloom
Mosaics old of the room;
Torch-rays on the walls made bars,
Or minted down golden dinars.

Roses of Rocknabad,
Hyacinths of Bokhara; —
Not a spray of cypress sad; —
Narcissus and jessamine o'er
Carved pillar and cedarn door;
Pomegranates and bells of clear
Tulips of far Kashmeer.

And the chamber glows like a flower
Of the Tuba, or vale of El Liwa;
And the bronzen censers glower;
And scents of ambergris pour
With myrrh brought out of Lahore,
And musk of Khoten, and good
Aloes and sandal-wood.

Rubies, a tragacanth-red,
Angered in armlet and anklet
Dragon-like eyes that bled:
Bangles and necklaces dangled
Diamonds, whose prisms were angled,
Over veil and from coiffure, each
Or apricot-colored or peach.

And Ghoram now smites her lute,
Sings loves of Mejnoon and Leila,
Or amorous ghazals may suit: —
And the flambeaux snap and wave
Barbaric on free and slave,
Rich fabrics and bezels of gems,
And roses in anadems.

Sherbets in ewers of gold,
Fruits in salvers carnelian;
Flagons of grotesque mold,
Made of a sapphire glass,
Stained with wine of Shirâz;
Shaddock and melon and grape
On plate of an antique shape:

Vases of frost and of rose,
An alabaster graven,
Filled with the mountain snows;
Goblets of mother-of-pearl,
One filigree silver-swirl;
Vessels of gold foamed up
With spray of spar on the cup. —

When a slave bursts in with the cry:
"The eunuchs! the Khalif's eunuchs!
With scimitars bared draw nigh!
Wesif and Afif and he,
Chief of the hideous three,
Mesrour! the Sultan 's seen
'Mid a hundred weapons' sheen!"…

We, never had parted, no!
As parted those lovers fearful;
But kissing you so and so,
When they came they had found us dead
On the flowers our blood dyed red;
Our lips together and
The dagger in my hand.

9

She speaks, musing

O cities built by music! lyres of love
Strung to a songful sea! did I but own
One harp chord of one broken barbiton
What had I budded for our life thereof?

In docile shadows under bluebell skies
A home upon the poppied edge of eve,
Beneath lone peaks the splendors never leave,
In lemon orchards whence the egret flies.

Where pitying gray the pitiless eyes of Death
Blight no slight bud unfostered, I have thought;
Deep, lily-deep, pearl-pale daturas, fraught
With dewy fragrance like an angel's breath.

Sleep in the days; the twilights tuned and tame
Through mockbirds throating to attentive stars;
Each morn outrivalling each in opal bars;
Eves preaching beauty with rose-tongues of flame.

O country by the undiscovered sea!
The dream infolds thee and the way is dim —
With head not high, what if I follow him,
Love – with the madness and the melody?

10

He, after a pause, lightly

An elf there is who stables the hot
Red wasp that stings o' the apricot;
An elf who rowels his spiteful bay,
Like a mote on a ray, away, away;
An elf who saddles the hornet lean
To din i' the ear o' the swinging bean;
Who hunts with a hat cocked half awry
The bottle-blue o' the dragon-fly: —
O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.

An elf there is where the clover tips
A horn whence the summer leaks and drips,
Where lanthorns of mustard-flowers bloom,
In the dusk awaits the bee's dull boom;
Gay gold brocade from head to knee,
Who robs the caravan bumble-bee;
Big bags of honey bee-merchants pay
To the bandit elf of the Fairy way, —
O ho, O hey! I have heard them say.

Another ouphen the butterflies know,
Who paints their wings like the buds that blow;
Flowers, staining the dew-drops through,
Seals their colors in tubes of dew;
Colors to dazzle the butterflies' wing —
The evening moth is another thing:
The butterfly's glory he got at dawn,
The moon-moth's got when the moon was wan;
He it is, that the hollyhocks hear,
Who dangles a brilliant i' each one's ear;
Teases at noon the pane's green fly,
And lights at night the glow-worm's eye: —
O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.

But the dearest elf, so the poets say,
Is the elf who hides in an eye of gray;
Who curls in a dimple and slips along
The strings of a lute or a lover's song;
Shines in a scent, or wings a rhyme,
And laughs in the bells of a wedding chime;
Hides unhidden, where none may know,
In her bosom's blossom or throat's blue bow —
O ho, O ho! – a friend or foe?

11

She, seriously

Who the loser, who the winner,
If the Fancy fail as preacher? —
None who loved was yet beginner
Though another's love-beseecher;
Love's revealment 's of the inner
Life and deity, the teacher.

Who may falsify the feeling
To the lover who is loser?
Has she felt: – the mere revealing
Of the passion 's his accuser;
She conceals it; the concealing
Is her own love's self-abuser.

One hath said, no flower knoweth
Of the fragrance it revealeth;
Song, its soul that overfloweth,
Never nightingale's heart feeleth —
Such the love the spirit groweth,
Love unconscious if it healeth.

12

He

Handsels of anemones
The surrendered hours
Pour about the sweet Spring's knees —
Crowding babies of the breeze,
Her unstudied flowers.

When 't is dawn, bestowing Day
Strews with coins of golden
Every furlong of his way —
Like a Sultan gone to pray
At a Kaaba olden.

Warlock Night, when dips the dark,
Opens, tire on tire,
Windows of an heavenly ark,
Whence the stars swarm, spark on spark,
Butterflies of fire.

With the night, the day, the spring, —
Godly chords of beauty, —
We the instrument will string
Of our lives and love shall sing
Songs of truth and duty.

13

She

How it was I can not tell,
For I know not where nor why,
And the beautiful befell
In a land that does not lie
East or West where mortals dwell —
But beneath a vaguer sky.

Was it in the golden ages,
Or the iron, that I heard,
In prophetic speech of sages,
How had come a snowy bird
'Neath whose wing lay written pages
Of an unknown lover's word?

I forget; you may remember
How the earthquake shook our ships;
How our city, one huge ember,
Blazed within the thick eclipse;
When you found me – deep December
Sealed on icy eyes and lips.

I forget. No one may say
Pre-existences are true:
Here 's a flower dies to-day,
Resurrected blooms anew:
Death is dumb and Life is gray —
Who shall doubt what God can do!

14

He

As to this, nothing to tell,
You being all my belief;
Doubt may not enter or dwell
Here where your image is chief,
Royal, to quicken or quell,
Swaying no sceptre of grief.

Wise with the wisdom of Spring —
Dew-drops, a world in each prism,
Gems from the universe ring: —
Free of all creed and all schism,
Buds that are speechless but bring
God-uttered God aphorism.

See how the synod is met
There of the planets to preach us —
Freed from the frost's oubliette,
Here how the flowers beseech us —
Were it not well to forget
Winter and night as they teach us?

Dew-drop, a bud, and a star,
These – each a separate thought
Over man's logic how far! —
God to a unit hath wrought —
Love, making these what they are,
For without love they were naught.

Millions of stars; and they roll
Over your path that is white,
Here where we end the long stroll. —
Seen of the innermost sight,
All of the love of my soul
Kisses your spirit. Good-night.

PART II

1

She delays, meditating

Sad skies and a foggy rain
Dripping from streaming eaves;
Over and over again
Dead drop of the trickling leaves;
And the woodward winding lane,
And the hill with its shocks of sheaves,
One scarce perceives.

Must I go in such sad weather
By the lane or over the hill?
Where the splitting milk-weed's feather
Dim, diamond-like rain-drops fill?
Or where, ten stars together,
Buff ox-eyes rank the rill
By the old corn-mill?

The creek by this is swollen,
And its foaming cascades sound;
And the lilies, smeared with pollen,
In the race look dull and drowned; —
'T is the path we oft have stolen
To the bridge, that rambles round
With willows crowned.

Through a bottom wild with berry
Or packed with the iron-weeds,
With their blue combs washed and very
Purple; the sorghum meads
Glint green near a wilding cherry;
Where the high wild-lettuce seeds
The fenced path leads.

A bird in the rain beseeches;
And the balsams' budding balls
Smell drenched by the way which reaches
The wood where the water falls;
Where the warty water-beeches
Hang leaves one blister of galls,
The mill-wheel drawls.

My shawl instead of a bonnet!..
Though the wood be soaking yet
Through the wet to the rock I 'll run it —
How sweet to meet in the wet! —
Our rock with the vine upon it,
Each flower a fiery jet – …
He won't forget!

2

He speaks, rowing

Deep are the lilies here that lay
Lush, lambent leaves along our way,
Or pollen-dusty bob and float
White nenuphars about our boat
This side the woodland we have reached;
Two rapid strokes our skiff is beached.

There is no path. Heaped foxgrapes choke
Huge trunks they wrap. This giant oak
Floods from the Alleghanies bore
To wedge here by this sycamore;
Its wounded bulk, heart-rotted white,
Lights ghostly foxfire in the night.

Now oar we through this willow fringe
The bulging shore that bosks, – a tinge
Of green mists down the marge; – where old,
Scarred cottonwoods build walls of shade
With breezy balsam pungent; bowled
Around vined trunks the floods have made
Concentric hollows. On we pass.

As we pass, we pass, we pass,
In daisy jungles deep as grass,
A bubbling sparrow flirts above
In wood-words with its woodland love:
A white-streaked woodpecker afar
Knocks: slant the sun dashed, each a star,
Three glittering jays flash over: slim
The piping sand-snipes skip and skim
Before us: and a finch or thrush —
Who may discover where such sing? —
The silence rinses with a gush
Of mellow music gurgling.

On we pass, and onward oar
To yon long lip of ragged shore,
Where from yon rock spouts, babbling frore
A ferny spring; where dodging by
Rests sulphur-disced that butterfly;
Mallows, rank crowded in for room,
'Mid wild bean and wild mustard bloom;
Where fishers 'neath those cottonwoods
Last Spring encamped those ashes say
And charcoal boughs. – 'T is long till buds! —
Here who in August misses May?

3

He speaks, resting

Here the shores are irised; grasses
Clump the water gray that glasses
Broken wood and deepened distance:
Far the musical persistence
Of a field-lark lingers low
In the west where tulips blow.

White before us flames one pointed
Star; and Day hath Night anointed
King; from out her azure ewer
Pouring starry fire, truer
Than true gold. Star-crowned he stands
With the starlight in his hands.

Will the moon bleach through the ragged
Tree-tops ere we reach yon jagged
Rock, that rises gradually?
Pharos of our homeward valley.
Down the dusk burns golden-red;
Embers are the stars o'erhead.

At my soul some Protean elf is:
You 're Simaetha, I am Delphis;
You are Sappho and her Phaon —
I. We love. There lies a ray on
All the dark Æolian seas
'Round the violet Lesbian leas.

On we drift. He loves you. Nearer
Looms our island. Rosier, clearer
The Leucadian cliff we follow,
Where the temple of Apollo
Lifts a pale and pillared fire —
Strike, oh, strike the Lydian lyre;
Out of Hellas blows the breeze
Singing to the Sapphic seas.

4

He sings

Night, Night, 't is night. The moon before to love us,
And all the moonlight tangled in the stream:
Love, love, my love, and all the stars above us,
The stars above and every star a dream.

In odorous purple, where the falling warble
Of water cascades and the plunged foam glows,
A columned ruin heaps its sculptured marble
Curled with the chiselled rebeck and the rose.

She sings

Sleep, Sleep, sweet Sleep sleeps at the drifting tiller,
And in our sail the Spirit of the Rain —
Love, love, my love, ah bid thy heart be stiller,
And, hark! the music of the harping main.

What flowers are those that blow their balm unto us?
Bow white their brows' aromas each a flame?
Ah, child, too kind the love we know, that knew us,
That kissed our eyes that we might see the same.

He

Night! night! good night! no dream it is to vanish,
The temple and the nightingale are there;
The thornless roses bruising none to banish,
The moon and one wild poppy in thy hair.

She

Night! night! good night! and love's own star before thee,
And love's star-image in the starry sea;
Yes, yes, ah yes! a presence to watch o'er thee —
Night! night! good night and good the gods to thee!

5

Homeward through flowers: she speaks

O simple offerings of the common hills;
Love's lowly names, that make you trebly sweet!
One Johnny-jump-up, but an apron-full
Of starry crowfoot, making mossy dells
Dim with heaven's morning blue; dew-dripping plumes
Of waxen "dog-mouths"; red the tippling cups
Of gypsy-lilies all along the creek,
Where dull the freckled silence sleeps, and dark
The water runs when, at high noon, the cows
Wade knee-deep and the heat hums drowsy with
The drone of dizzy flies; – one Samson-flower
Blue-streaked and crystal as a summer's cloud;
White violets, milk-weed, scarlet Indian-pinks,
All fragile-scented and familiar as
Pink baby faces and blue infant eyes.

O fair suggestions of a life more fair!
Love's fragrant whispers of an untaught faith,
High habitations 'neath a godlier blue
Beyond the sin of Earth, in heavens prepared —
What is it? – halcyon to utter calm,
Faith? such as wrinkled wisdom, doubting, has
Yearned for and sought in miser'd lore of worlds,
And vainly? – Love? – Oh, have I learned to live?

6

He speaks

Would you have known it seeing it?
Could you have seen it being it?
Waving me out of the budding land
Sunbeam-jewelled a bloom-white hand,
Wafting me life and hope and love,
Life with the hope of the love thereof,
Love.

– "What is the value of knowing it?" —
Only the worth of owing it;
Need of the bud contents the light;
Dew at dawn and nard at night,
Beauty, aroma, honey at heart,
Which is debtor, part for part,
Heart?

Thoughts, when the heart is heedable,
Then to the heart are readable;
I in the texts of your eyes have read
Deep as the depth of the living dead,
Measures of truth in unsaid song
Learned from the soul to haunt me long,
Song.

Love perpends each laudable
Thought of the soul made audible,
Said in gardens of bliss or pain:
Moonlight rays in drops of rain,
Feels the faith in its sleep awake,
Wish of the silent words that shake
Sleep.

7

She hums and muses

If love I have had of thee thou hadst of me,
No loss was in giving it over;
Could I give aught but that I had of thee,
Being no more than thy lover?

And let it cease. When what befalls befalls,
You cannot love me less,
Loving me much now. Neither weeks nor walls,
With bitterest distress,

Shall all avail. Despair will find reprieve,
Though dark the soul be tossed,
In past possession of that love you grieve,
The love which you have lost.

Ponder the morning, or the midnight moon,
The wilding of the wold,
The morning slitting from night's brown cocoon
Wide wings of flaxen gold:

The moon that, had not darkness been before,
Had never shone to lead;
And think that, though you are, you are not poor,
Since you have loved indeed.

From flower to star read upward; you shall see
The purposes of loss,
Deep hierograms of gracious deity,
And comfort in your cross.

8

She speaks

Sunday shall we ride together?
Not the root-rough, rambling way
Through the woods we went that day,
In the sultry summer weather,

Past the Methodist Camp-Meeting,
Where religion helped the hymn
Gather volume, and a slim
Minister with textful greeting

Welcomed us and still expounded.
From the service on the hill
We had rode three hills and still
Far away the singing sounded.

Nor that road through weed and berry
Drowsy days led me and you
To the old-time barbecue,
Where the country-side made merry.

Dusty vehicles together;
Darkies with the horses by
'Neath the soft Kentucky sky,
And a smell of bark and leather;

When you smiled, "Our modern tourney:
Gallantry and politics
Dinner, dance and intermix."
As we went the homeward journey

'Twixt hot chaparrals and thickets,
Heard brisk fiddles, scraping still,
Drone and thump the quaint quadrille,
Like a worried band of crickets. —

Neither road. The shady quiet
Of that way by beech and birch,
Winding to the ruined church
On the Fork that sparkles by it.

Where the silent Sundays listen
For the preacher whom we bring,
In our hearts to preach and sing
Week-day shade to Sabbath glisten.

9

He, at parting

Yes, to-morrow; when the morn,
Pentecost of flame, uncloses
Portals that the stars adorn,
Whence a golden presence throws his
Fiery swords and burning roses
At the wide wood's world of wall,
Spears of sparkle at each fall;

Then together let us ride
Down deep-wood cathedral places,
Where the pilgrim wild-flowers hide,
Praying Sabbath in their faces;
Where in truest untaught phrases,
Worship in each rhythmic word,
Sings no migratory bird…

Pearl on pearl the high stars dight
Jewels of divine devices
'Round the Afric throat of Night;
Where yon misty glimmer rises
Soon the white moon crystallizes
Out of darkness, like a spell. —
Late, 't is late. Till dawn, farewell.

PART III

1

Now rests the season in forgetfulness,
Careless in beauty of maturity;
The ripened roses 'round brown temples, she
Fulfils completion in a dreamy guess:
Now Time grants night the more and day the less;
The gray decides; and brown
Dim golds and reds in dulling greens express
Themselves and broaden as the year goes down.
Sadder the croft where, thrusting gray and high
Their balls of seeds, the hoary onions die,
Where, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie:
Deeper each wilderness;
Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along
The lonesome west; sadder the song
Of the wild red-bird in the leafage yellow,
Deeper and dreamier, aye!
Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky
Above lone orchards where the cider-press
Drips and the russets mellow.

Nature grows liberal; under woodland leaves
The beech-nuts' burs their little pockets poke,
Plump with the copper of the nuts that choke;
Above our bristling way the spider weaves
A glittering web for which the Dawn designs
Thrice twenty rows of sparkles. By the oak,
That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines,
The acorn thimble, smoothly broke,
Shines by its saucer. On sonorous pines
The far wind organs; but the forest here
To no weak breeze hath woke;
Far off the wind, but crumbling near and near, —
Each tingling twig expectant, and the gray
Surmise of heaven pilots it the way,
Rippling the leafy spines,
Until the wildwood, one exultant sway,
Booms, and the sunlight, arrowing through it, shines
Visible applause you hear.

How glows the garden! though the white mists keep
The vagabond in flowers reminded of
Decay that comes to slay in open love,
When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep,
Unheeding such their cardinal colors leap
Gay in the crescent of the blade of death;
Spaced innocents in swaths he weeps to reap,
Waiting his scythe a breath,
To gravely lay them dead with one last sweep. —
Long, long admire
Their splendors manifold: —
The scarlet salvia showered with spurts of fire;
Cascading lattices, dark vines that creep,
Nightshade and cypress; there the marigold
Burning – a shred of orange sunset caught
And elfed in petals that eve's goblins brought
From elfland; there, predominant red,
The dahlia lifts its head
By the white balsams' red-bruised horns of honey,
In humming spaces sunny.
The crickets singing dirges noon and night
For morn-born flowers, at dusk already dead,
For dusk-dead flowers weep;
While tired Summer white,
Where yonder aster whispering odor rocks, —
The withered poppies knotted in her locks, —
Sighs, 'mong her sleepy hollyhocks asleep.

2

The hips were reddening on the rose,
The haws hung slips of fire;
We went the woodland way that goes
Up hills of branch and briar.
The hooked thorn held her gown and seemed
Imploring her be staying
The sunlight of herself that beamed
Beside it gently swaying.

Low bent the golden saxifrage;
Its yellow bells like bangles
The foxglove fluttered. Like a page —
From out the rail-fence angles —
With crimson plume the sumach, hosed
In Lincoln green, attended
My lady of the elder, posed
In blue-black jewels splendid.

And as we mounted up the hill
The rocky path that stumbled
Spread smooth; and all the day was still
And odorous with umbled
Tops of wild-carrots drying gray;
And there, soft-sunned before us,

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