xt754746qf1z https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt754746qf1z/data/mets.xml Cawein, Madison Julius, 1865-1914. 1887 books b92-187-30608359 English John P. Morton, : Louisville : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Blooms of the berry / Madison Julius Cawein. text Blooms of the berry / Madison Julius Cawein. 1887 2002 true xt754746qf1z section xt754746qf1z

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

MADISON J. CAWEIN.

" I fain would tune my fancy to your key."-Sir/John Suckl'ing.

LOUISVILLE:
JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS.
i887

COPYR IGiHTED
By MADISON J. CAWEIN.

x887

PROEM.

W INE-WARM winds that sigh and sing,
Led me, wrapped in many moods,
Thro' the green sonorous woods
Of belated Spring;

Till I came where, glad with heat,
Waste and wild the fields were strewvn,
Olden as the olden moon,
At my weary feet;

Wild and white with starry bloom,
One far milky-way that dashed,
When some mad wind o'er it flashed,
Into billowy foam.

I, bewildered, gazed around,
As one on whose heavy dreams
Comes a sudden burst of beams,
Like a mighty sound.

If the grander flowers I sought,
But these berry-blooms to you,
Evanescent as their dew,
Only these I brought.
JULY 3, i887.

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I.-BY WOLD AND WOOD.

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BY WOLD AND WOOD.

THE HOLLOW.

I.
FLEET swallows soared and darted
'Neath empty vaults of blue;
Thick leaves close clung or parted
To let the sunlight through;
Each wild rosa, honey-hearted,
Bowed full of living dew.

II.

Down deep, fair fields of Heaven,
Beat wafts of air and balm,
From southllmost islands driven
And continents of calm;
Bland winds by which were given
Hid hints of rustling palm.

III.
High birds soared high to hover;
Thick leaves close clung to slip;
Wild rose and snowy clover
Were warm for winds to dip,
And one ungentle lover,
A bee with robber lip.

BBOOOMS OF THE BERRY.

IV.

Dart on, 0 buoyant swallow!
Kiis leaves and willing rose!
Whose musk the sly winds follow,
Ar.d bee that booming goes;-
But in this quiet hollow
I'll walk, which no one knows.

None save the moon that shineth
At night through rifted trees;
The lonely flower that twineth
Frail blooms that no one sees;
The whippoorwill that pineth;
Th sad, sweet-swaying breeze;

VI.

The lone white stars that glitter;
The stream's complaining wave;
Gray bats that dodge and flitter;
Black crickets hid that rave;
And -ne whose life is bitter,
And one white head stone grave.

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

BY WOLD AND WOOD.

I.
G REEN, watery jets of light let through
The rippling foliage drenched with dew;
Bland glow-worm glamours warm and dim
Above the mystic vistas swim,
'Where, 'round the fountain's oozy urn,
The limp, loose fronds of limber fern
Wave dusky tresses thin and wet,
Blue-filleted with violet.
O'er roots that writhe in snaky knots
The moss in amber cushions clots;
From wattled walls of brier and brush
The elder's misty attars gush;
And, Argus-eyed, by knoll and bank
The affluient wild rose flowers rank;
And stol'n in shadowy retreats,
In black, rich soil, your vision greets
The colder undergrowths of woods,
Damp, lushy-leaved, whose gloomier moods
Turn all the life beneath to death
And rottenness for their own breath.
M ty-apples waxen-stemmed and large
With their bloom-screening breadths of targe;
Wake robins dark-green leaved, their stems
lipped with green, oval clumps of gems,

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY

As if some woodland Bacchus there
A-braiding of his yellow hair
Wit'h ivy-to] had idly tost
His thvrsus there, and so had lost.
Low blood root with its pallid bloom,
The red lift of its mother's womb
Through all its ardent pulses fine
Beating in scarlet veins of wine.
And where the knotty eyes of trees
Stare wide. like Fauns' at Dryades
That lave smooth limbs in founts of spar,
Shines mary a wild-flower's tender star.

II.

The scumnmy pond sleeps lazily,
Clid thick with lilies, and the bee
Reels boisterous as a Bassarid
Above the bloated green frog hid
In lush wa 1 calamus and grass,
Beside the water's stagnant glass.
The piebald dragon-fly, like one
A-weary of the world and sun,
Ccmes blir dly blundering along,
A pedagogue, gaunt, lean, and long,
Large-heac ed naturalist with wvise,
Great, glar'ng goggles on his eyes.
And dry aid hot the fragrant mint
Pours grateful odors without stint

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

From cool, clay banks of cressy streams,
Rare as the musks of rich hareems,
And hot as some sultana's breath
With turbulent passions or with death.
A haze of floating saffron; sound
Of shy, crisp creepings o'er the ground;
The dip and stir of twig and leaf;
Tempestuous gusts of spices brief
From elder bosks and sassafras;
Wind-cuffs that dodge the laughing grass;
Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings
That hint at untold hidden things,
Pan and Sylvanus that of old
Kept sacred each wild wood and wold.
A wily light beneath the trees
Quivers and dusks with ev'ry breeze;
Mayhap some Hamadryad who,
Culling her morning meal of dew
From frail accustomed cups of flowers-
Some Satyr watching through the bowers-
Had, when his goat hoof snapped and pressed
A brittle branch, shrunk back distressed,
Startled, her wild, tumultuous hair
Bathing her limbs one instant there.

I I

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY

ANTICIPATION.
,TINDY the sky and mad;
Surly the gray March day;
Bleak the forests and sad,
Sad for the beautiful May.

On maples tasseled with red
No blitie bird swinging sung;
The broo.c in its lonely bed
Compa.ined in an unknown tongue.

We walked in the wasted wood:
IHer face as the Spring's was fair,
Her blood was the Spring's own blood,
The Spring's her radiant hair.

And we found in the windy wild
One cowering violet,
Like a frail and tremulous child
In the 'aked leaves bowed and wet.

And I sighed at the sight, with pain
For the May's warm face in the wood,
May's pa-sions of sun and rain,
May's .-aiment of bloom and of bud.

But she slid when she saw me sad,
" Tho' the world be gloomy as fate,
And we -earn for the days to be glad,
Dear heart, we can afford to wait.

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

"For, know, one beautiful thing
On the dark day's bosom curled,
Makes the wild day glad to sing,
Content to smile at the world.

For the sinless world is fair,
And man's is the sin and gloom;
And dead are the days that were,
But what are the days to come

"Be happy, dear heart, and wait!
For the past is a memory:
Tho' to-day seem somber as fate,
Who knows what to-morrow will be"

And the May came on in her charms,
With a twinkle of rustling feet;
Blooms stormed from her luminous arms,
And honey of smiles that were sweet.

Now I think of her words that day,
This day that I longed so to see,
That finds her dead with the May,
And the March but a memory.

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

A LAMENT.

W HITE moons may come, white moons may go,
She sleeps where wildwood blossoms blow,
Nor knowF she of the rosy June,
Star-silver flowers o'er her strewn,
The pearly paleness of the moon,-
Alas! how should she know!

II.

The downs moth at evening comes
To suck thin honey from wet blooms;
Long, lazy clouds that swimming high
Brood white about the western sky,
Grow red us molten iron and lie
Above the fragrant glooms.

III.

Rare odor,, of the weed and fern,
Dry whisp rings of dim leaves that turn,
A sound o;' hidden waters lone
Frothed bubbling down the streaming stone,
And now z wood-dove's plaintive moan
Drift from the bushy burne.

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

IV.

Her garden where deep lilacs blew,
Where on old walls old roses grew
Head-heavy with their mellow musk,
Where, when the beetle's drone was husk,
She lingered in the dying dusk,
No more shall know that knew.

When orchards, courting the wan Spring,
Starred robes of buds around them fling,
Their beauty now to her is naught,
Once a sweet passion, when she fraught
Dark curls with blooms that nodding caught
Impulse from the bee's wing.

VI.

White moons may come, white moons may go,
She sleeps where wildwood blossoms blow;
Cares naught for fairy fern or weed,
White wand'rings of the plumy seed,
Of hart or hind she takes no heed;
Alas! her head lies low!

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

DISTANCE.
I.
I DREAMED last night once more I stood
Knee-deep in purple clover leas;
YVour old home glimmered thro' its wood
Of dark and melancholy trees,
Where ev'ry sudden summer breeze
That wantoned o'er the solitude
The water's melody pursued,
And slk epy hummings of the bees.
II.
And ankle-deep in violet blooms
Methovght I saw you standing there,
A lawny light among the glooms,
A crown of sunlight on your hair;
Wild songsters singing every where
Made lightning with their glossy plumes;
About ycu clung the wild perfumes
And swooned along the shining air.
III.
And then you called me, and my ears
Grew fattered with the music, led
Ir fancy sack to sweeter years,
Far sweeter years that now are dead;
And at your summons fast I sped,
Buoyant JS one a goal who nears.
Ah! lost, dead love! I woke in tears;
For as I neared you farther fled!

BLOOMfS OF THE BERRY.

ASPIRATION.

GOD knows I strive against low lust and vice,
Wound in the net of their voluptuous hair;
God knows that all their kisses are as ice
To me who do not care.

God knows, against the front of Fate I set
Eyes still and stern, and lips as bitter prest;
Raised clenched and ineffectual palms to let
Her rock-like pressing breast!

God knows what motive such large zeal insDires,
God knows the star for which I climb and crave,
God knows, and only God, the eating fires
That in my bosom rave.

I will not fall! I will not; thou dost lie!
Deep Hell! that seethest in thy simmering pit;
Thy thousand throned horrors shall not vie,
Or ever compass it!

But as thou sinkest from my soul away,
So shall I rise, rolled in the morning's rose,
Beyond this world, this life, this little day-
God knows! God knows! God knoWs!

1 7

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY

SPRING TWILIGHT.

T HE sun set late, and left along the West
One furious ruby rare, whose rosy rays
Poured in a slumb'rous cloud's pear-curdled breast,
Blossomed to peachy sprays.

The sun set late, and wafts of wind arose,
And cuffed the blossom from the blossoming quince;
Shatter red attar vials of the rose,
And made the clover wince.

By dusking forests, thro' whose fretful boughs
In flying fragments shot the evening's flame,
Adown the tangled lane the quiet cows
With dreary tinklings came.

The sun set late; but hardly had he gone
When o',r the moon's gold-litten crescent there,
Clean Phosphor, polished as a precious stone,
Pulsed in fair deeps of air.

As from faint stars the glory waned and waned,
"he fussy insects made the garden shrill;
Beyond the luminous pasture lands complained
Cone lonely whippoorwill.

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY .

FRAGMENTS.

I.
STARS.

T HE fields of space gleam bright, as if some ancient
giant, old
As the moon and her extinguished mountains,
Had dipp d his fingers huge into the twilight's sea of gold
And sprinkled all the heavens from these fountains.

IL
GHOSTS.
In soft sad nights, when all the still lagoon
Lolls in a wealth of golden radiance,
I sit like one enchanted in a trance,
And see them 'twixt the haunted mist and moon.

Lascivious eyes 'neath snow-pale sensual brows,
Flashing hot, killing lust, and tresses light,
Lose, satin streaming, purple as the night,
Night when the storm sings and the forest bows.

And then, meseeins, along the wild, fierce hills
A wthisper and a rustle of fleet feet,
As if tempestuous troops of Maenads meet
To drain deep bowls and shout and have their wills.

BL( , OF THE BERRY.

And once I see large, lustrous limbs revealed,
Moth-white and iawny, 'twixt sonorous trees;
And then a song, faint as of fairy seas,
Lulls all my senses till my eyes are sealed.

III.

MOONRISE AT SEA.

With lips that were hoarse with a fury
Of foam and of winds that are strewn,
Of s. orm and of turbulent hurry,
Tl-e ocean roared, heralding soon
A birth of miraculous glory,
Of madness, affection-the moon.

And soon from her waist with a slipping
Aid shudder and clinging of light,
With a loos'ning and pushing and ripping
Of the raven-laced bodice of Night,
With a silence of feet and a dripping
Tl-e goddess came, virginal white.

And the air was alive with the twinkle
Aild tumult of silver-shod feet,
The hurling of stars, and the sprinkle
Of loose, lawny limbs and a sweet
Murmur and whisper and tinkle
Of beam-weaponed moon spirits fleet.

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

THE RAIN.

W E stood where the fields were tawny,
WN'here the redolent woodland was warm,
And the summer above us, now lawny,
Was alive with the l)ulse winds of storm.

And we watched weak wheat waves lighten.
And wince and hiss at each gust,
And the turbulent maples whiten,
And the lane grow gray with dust.

White flakes from the blossoming cherry,
Pink snows of the peaches were blown,
And star-fair blooms of the berry
And the dogwood's flowers were strewn.

And the luminous hillocks grew sullied,
And shadowed and thrilled with alarm,
When the body of the blackness was gullied
With the rapid, keen flame of the storm.

And the birds to dry coverts had hurried,
And the musical rillet ran slow,
And the buccaneer bee was worried,
And the red lilies swung to and fro.

B22OBOMOS OF THE BERRY.

Till the elf-cuirassiers of the showers
Came, bright with slant lances of rain,
And charged the bare heads of the flowers,
And trampled the grass of the plain.

And t62 armies of the leaves were shattered,
Thei- standards drenched, heavy and lank;
And the iron weed's purple was spattered,
And the lily lay broke on the bank.

But high in the storm was the swallow,
And Wle rain-strong voice of the fill
In the 5ough-grottoed dingle sang hollow
To the sky-blue flags on its wall.

But the storm and its clouds passed over,
And ltft but one cloud in the West,
Wet wafts th it were fragrant with clover,
And the sun low sunken to rest;

SAoft spices of rain-studded poppies,
Of honey unfilched of a bee,
And balm of the mead and the coppice,
And musk of the rain-breathing tree.

Then the cloud in the West was riven,
And bubbled and bLursten with gold,
Blown out through deep gorges of hea en,
And spilled on the wood and the wold.

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

TO S. McK.

HTALL we forget how, in our day,
The Sabine fields about us lay
In amaranth and asphodel,
And bubbling, cold BandUsian well,
Fair Pyrrhas haunting every way
In dells of forest faun and fay,
Moss-lounged within the fountain's spray,
How drained we wines too rare to tell,
Shall we forget

The fine Falernian or the ray
Of fiery Caecuban, while gay
We heard B icchantes shout and yell,
Filled full of Bacchus, and so fell
To dreaming of some Lydia;
Shall we forget

II.

If we forget in after years,
Mly comrade, all the hopes and fears
That hovered all our walks around
When ent'ring on that mystic ground

24 BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

Of ghostly legends, where one hears
By bandit towers the chase that nears
TI-ro' cracking woods, the oaths and cheers
Of demon huntsman, horn and hound;
If we forget.

Lenora's lover and her tears,
Fi,-rce Wallenstein, satanic sneers
Xf the red devil Goethe bound,-
WXhy then, forsooth, they soon are found
In burly stoops of German beers,
If we forget I

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

MORNING AND NIGHT.

FRo.M " THE TRIUMPH OF MUSIC."

Fresh from bathing in orient fountains,
In wells of rock water and snow,
Comes the Dawn with her pearl-brimming fingers
O'er the thyme and the pines of yon mountain;
Where she steps young blossoms fresh blow.

And sweet as the star-beams in fountains,
And soft as the fall of the dew,
Wet as the hues of the rain-arch,
To me was the Dawn when on mountains
Pearl-capped o'er the hyaline blue,
Saint-fair and pure thro' the blue,
Her spirit in dimples comes dancing,
In dimples of light and of fire,
Planting her footprints in roses
On the floss of the snow-drifts, while glancing
Large on her brow is her tire,
Gemmed with the morning-star's fire.

But sweet as the incense from altars,
And warm as the light on a cloud,
Sad as the wail of bleak woodlands,
To me was the Night when she falters
In the sorrowful folds of her shroud,
In the far-blowing black of her shroud,
3

2 5

26 BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

O'er the flower-strewn bier of her lover,
Th, Day lying faded and fair
In the red-curtained chambers of air.
When disheveled I've seen her uncover
He gold-girdled raven of hair-
All hooped with the gold of the even-
And for this sad burial prepare,
The spirit of Night in the heaven
To me was most wondrously fair,
So fa r that I wished it were given
To die in the rays of her hair,
Die wrapped in her gold-girdled hair.

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

THE TOLL-MAN'S DAUGHTER.

ONCE more the June with her great moon
Poured harvest o'er the golden fields;
Once more her days in hot, bright shields
She bore from morn to drooping noon.
A rhymer, sick of work and rhyme,
Disheartened by a poor success,
I sought the woods to loll the time
In one long month of quietness.
It was the time when one will thrill
For indolent fields, serener skies:
For Nature's softening subtleties
Of higher cloud and gullied rill.

When crumpled poppies strew the halls
Of all the East, where mounts the Dawn,
And in the eve the skyey lawn
Gold kingcups heap 'neath Night's gray walls.
The silver peace of distant wolds,
Of far-seen lakes a glimmering dance,
Fresh green of undulating hills,
Old woodlands silent with romance.
Intenser stars, a lazier moon,
The moonlit torrent on the peak,
And at one's side a maiden meek
And lovely as the balmy June.

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

The toll-gate stood beside the road,
The highway from the city's smoke;
Its long, fvell white-washed spear-point broke
The clean sky o'er the pike and showed
The draugh;-horse where his rest should be.
The locusts tall with shade on shade
The trough of water cool beneath,
Fro m heat and toil a Sabbath made.
Beyond were pastures where the kine
Would browse, and where a young bull roared;
And herc would pass a peeping hoard
Of duck and brood in waddling line.

A week fle-v by on wings of ease.
I walked along a rutty lane;
I stoppeCd to list some picker's strain
Sung in a patch of raspberries.
Upon the fence's lanky rails
I leaned to stare into great eyes
Glooming jeneath a bonnet white
Bowed 'neath a chin of dimpled prize.
Phcebe, the toll-man's daughter she;
' knew her by a slow, calm smile,
Whose source seemed distant many a mile,
Brimming h.er eyes' profundity.

Elastic as .;. filly's tread
Her molest step, and full and warm
The graceful contour of her form

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

Harmonious swelled from foot to head.
And such a head !-You'd thought that there
The languid night, in frowsy bliss,
Had curled brown rays for her deep hair
And stained them with the starlight's kiss.
A face as beautiful and bright,
As crystal fair as twilight skies,
Lit with the stars of hazel eyes,
And lashed with black of dusky night.

She stood waist-deep amid the briers;
Above in twisted lengths were rolled
The sunset's tangled whorls of gold,
Blown from the West's mist-fueled fires.
A shuddering twilight dashed with gold
D)own smouldering hills the fierce day fell,
And bubbling over star on star
The night's blue cisterns 'gan to well,
With the dusk crescent of his wings
A huge crane cleaves the wealthy West,
While up the East a silver breast
Of chastity the full moon brings.

For her, I knew, where'er she trod,
Each dew-drop raised a limpid glass
To flash her beauty from the grass;
That wild flowers bloomed along the sod,
Or, whispering, murmured when she smiled;
The wood-bird hushed to hark her song,

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

Or, all ena nored, from his wild
Before her feet flew flutt'ring long.
The brook droned mystic melodies,
Eddied in laughter when she kissed
-With naked feet its amethyst
Of waters stained by blooming trees.

THE BERRIERS.

MORN.

DOWN si ver precipices drawn
rhe red-wine cataracts of dawn
Pour soundless torrents wide and far,
Deluging each warm, floating star.
A sound of winds and brooks and wings,
Sweet woodland-fluted carolings,
Star radiance dashed on moss and fern,
Wet leaves that quiver, breathe, and burn;
Wet hills hung heavily with woods,
Dew-drenched and drunken solitudes
Faint-mi rmuring elfin canticles;
Sound, 1 ght, and spicy boisterous smells,
And flowers and buds; tumultuous bees,
Wind-wafts and genii of the trees.
T'hro' br ers that trammel, one by one,
With swinging pails comes laughing on

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.Y3

A troop of youthful berriers,
Their wet feet glitt'ring where they pass
Thro' dew-drop studded tufts of grass:
And oh! their cheers, their merry cheers,
Wake Echo on her shrubby rock,
Whom dale and mountain answering mock
With rapid fairy horns, as if
Each mossy hill and weedy cliff
Had its imperial Oberon,
Who, seeking his Titania hid
In bloomy covets him to shun,
In kingly wrath had called and chid.

EVENING.

Cloud-feathers oozing rich with light,
Slow trembling in the locks of Night,
Her dusky waist with sultry gold
Girdled and buckled fold on fold.
High stars; a sound of bleating flocks;
Gray, burly shadows fall'n 'mid rocks,
Like giant curses overthrown
By some Arthurian champion;
Soft-swimming sorceries of mist
Haunting glad glens of amethyst;
Low tinklings in dim clover dells
Of bland-eyed kine with brazen bells;
And where the marsh in reed and grass
Burrns angry as a shattered glass,

32 BLOOMS OF THE BERRY

The flies blur sudden blasts of shine,
Like wasted draughts of amber wine
Spun high by reeling Bacchanals
Wher, Bacchus bredes his curling hair
With vine-leaves, and from ev'ry lair
Voluptuous Maenads lovely calls.
They come, they come, a happy throng,
The berriers with gibe and song;
Deep pails brimmed black to tin-white eaves
With lu cious fruit kept cool with leaves
Of aromatic sassafras,
'Twixt which some sparkling berry slips,
Like laughter, from the purple mass,
Wine-swollen as Silenus' lips.

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY. 33

HARVESTING.

I.
NOON.

THE tanned and sultry noon climbs high
Up gleaming reaches of the sky;
Below the balmy belts of pines
The cliff-lunged river laps and shines;
Adown the aromatic dell
Sifts the warm harvest's musky smell.
And, oh! above one sees and hears
The brawny-throated harvesters;
Their red brows beaded with the heat,
By twos and threes among the wheat
Flash their hot sickles' slenderness
In loops of shine; and sing, and sing,
Like some mad troop of piping Pan,
Along the hills that swoon or ring
With sounds of Ariel airiness
That haunted freckled Caliban:

"0 ho! 0 ho ! 'tis noon, I say;
The roses blow.
Away, away, above the hay
The burly bees to the roses gay
Hum love-tunes all the livelong day,
So low! so low!
The roses' Minnesingers they."

3'LOOMS OF THE BERRY.

II.
TWILIGHT.
Up velvet lawns of lilac skies
The tavny moon begins to rise
Behinc. low blue-black hills of trees,
As rises from faint Siren seas,
To rock in purple deeps, hip-hid,
A virgin-bosom'd Oceanid.
Gaunt shadows crouch by rock and wood,
Like hairy Satyrs, grim and rude,
Till th! white Dryads of the moon
Come noiseless in their silver shoon
To beautify them with their love.
The sweet, sad notes I hear, I hear,
Beyond dim pines and mellow hills,
Of some fair maiden harvester,
The lovely Limnad of the grove
Whose singing charms me while it kills:

"0 deep! 0 deep! the twilight rare
Pales on to sleep;
And fair, so fair! fades the rich air.
The fo-intain shines in its ferny lair,
Where the cold Nymph sits in her oozy hair
To weep, to weep,
For a mortal youth who is not there."

BRLOOMS OF THE BERRY5

GOING FOR THE COWS.

I.
THE juice-big apples' sullen gold,
Like lazy Sultans laughed and lolled
'Mid heavy mats of leaves that lay
Green-flatten'd 'gainst the glaring day;
And here a pear of rusty brown,
And peaches on whose brows the down
Waxed furry as the ears of Pan,
And, like Diana's cheeks, whose tan
Burnt tender secresies of fire,
Or wan as Psyche's with desire
Of lips that love to kiss or taste
Voluptuous ripeness there sweet placed.
And down the orchard vistas he,-
Barefooted, trousers out at knee,
Face shadowing from the sloping sun
A hat of straw, brim-sagging broad,-
Came, lowly whistling some vague tune,
Upon the sunbeam-sprinkled road.
Lank in his hand a twig with which
In boyish thoughtlessness he crushed
Rare pennyroyal myriads rich
In pungent souls that warmly gushed.
Before him whirled in rattling fear
The saffron-bellied grasshopper;

L LOOOMS OF THE BERRY.

And ringing from the musky dells
Came faint the cows' melodious bells,
Where whimpering like a fretful hound
The fojuntain bubbled up in sound.

II.

Yellow as sunset skies and pale
As fairy clouds that stay or sail
Thro' azure vaults of summer, blue
As summer heavens the violets grew;
And mosses on which spurts of light
Fell laughing, like the lips one might
Feign for a Hebe or a girl
Whosz mouth heat-lightens up with pearl;
Limp ferns in murmuring shadows shrunk
And ,.ilent as if stunned or drunk
With aloist aromas of the wood;
Dry r istlings of the quietude;
On silver fronds' thin tresses new
Cold limpid blisters of the dew.
Across the rambling fence she leaned:
A gingham gown to ankles bare;
Her artless beauty, bonnet-screened,
Tempestuous with its stormy hair.
A rain-crow gurgled in a vine,-
She heard it not-a step she hears;
The wild rose smelt like delicate wine,-
She knew it not-'tis he that nears.

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

With smiles of greeting all her face
Grew musical; with rustic grace
He leant beside her, and they had
Some parley, with light laughter glad;
I know not what; I know but this,
Its final period was a kiss.

SONG OF THE SPIRITS OF SPRING.

I.
W AFTED o'er purple seas.
From gold Hesperides,
Mixed with the southern breeze,
Hail to us spirits!
Dripping with fragrant rains,
Fire of our ardent veins,
Life of the barren plains,
Woodlands and germs that the woodland inherits.
II.
Wan as the creamy mist,
Tinged with pale amethyst,
Warm with the sun that kissed
Vine-tangled mountains
Looming o'er tropic lakes,
Where ev'ry air that shakes
Tamarisk coverts makes
Music that haunts like the falling of fountains.

38 ILOOMS OF THE BERRY.

III.

SWift are our flashing feet,
Fleet with the winds that meet,
MWinds that, blown, billow sweet,
And with light porous,
Boom with the drunken bees,
Sigh with the surge of seas,
Rush with the rush of trees,
Birds and wvild wings and of torrents sonorous.

IV.
Stars in our liquid eyes,
S ars of the darkest skies,
And on our fingers lies
Starlight; and shadows,
Unmooned, of nights that creep
Hide in our tresses deep,
And in our limbs white sleep
Dreams like a baby in asphodel meadows.

V.
Music of many streams,
Strength of a million beams,
Fare and sainted dreams,
Murmuring lowly,
Pilse on hot lips of light,
'Which, what they kiss of blight,
Quicken and blossom white,
Raise to be beautiful, perfect, and holy.

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

VI.
Oh, will you sit and wait,
When fields, erst desolate,
Now are intoxicate
With life that flowers
Purple with love and rife
With their fierce budded life,
Passion and rosy strife
Drained from warm winds and the turbulent showers

VII.
Nay! at our feet you'll lie:
For the winds lullaby,
For our completest sky,
And largess flying
Of pinky pearls of blooms,
For the one bee that booms,
And the warm-spilled perfumes
Forget for a moment already we're dying!

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

THE SPIRITS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS.

[VOICES SINGING.]

FIRST CHORUS.

E RE the birth of Death and of Time,
Ere the birth of Hell and its torments,
Ere the ozbs of heat and of rime
And the winds to the heavens were as garments,
Worm-like in the womb of Space,
Worm-like from her monster womb,
We sprur g, a myriad race
Of thunder and tempest and gloom.

SECOND CHORUS.

As from the evil good
Springs like a fire,
As bland beatitude
Wells from the dire,
So was the Chaos brood
Of us the sire.

FIRST CHORUS.

We had lain for gaunt ages asleep
'Neath her breast in a bulk of torpor,
When down through the vasts of the deep
Clove (. sound like the notes of a harper;

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY4

Clove a sound, and the horrors grew
Tumultuous with turbulent night,
With whirlwinds of blackness that blew,
And storm that was godly in might.
And the walls of our prison were shattered
Like the crust of a fire-wrecked world;
Like torrents of clouds that are scattered
On the face of the Night we are hurled.

SECOND CHORUS.

Us, in unholy thought
Patiently lying,
Eons of violence wrought,
Violence defying.
When on a mighty wind,-
Born of a godly mind
Large with a motive kind,-
Girdled with wonder,
Flame and a strength of song
Rushed in a voice along,
Burst and, lo! we were strong-
Strong as the thunder.

FIRST CHORUS.

We lurk in the upper spaces,
Where the oceans of tempest are born,
Where the scowls of our shadowy faces
Ar