xt7ht7279w72 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7ht7279w72/data/mets.xml Cawein, Madison Julius, 1865-1914. 1903  books b92-32-26573304 English E.P. Dutton, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Kentucky poems / by Madison Cawein ; with an introduction by Edmund Gosse. text Kentucky poems / by Madison Cawein ; with an introduction by Edmund Gosse. 1903 2002 true xt7ht7279w72 section xt7ht7279w72 

















KENTUCKY POEMS

 




















The Author's thanks are due to Mr. R. H. RUSSELL,
    of New York, for kind permission to reprint
       from Shapes and Shadows four of the
         poems published in this volume.

 





KENTUCKY POEMS

          BY

    MADISON CAWEIN

    WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

    EDMUND GOSSE















      NEW YORK

   E. P. DUTTON  CO.

         1903

 
















                 NOTE

THE poems included in this volume have been
selected from the following volumes of the author:
Moods and Memories, Red Leaves and Roses,
Poems of Nature and Love, Intimations of the
Beautiful, Days and Dreams, Undertones, Idyllic
Monoloues, The Garden of Dreams, Shapes and
Shadows, Myth and Romance, and Weeds by
   the Wall. None of the longer poems
     have been included in this selection.


 


CONTENTS



PROLOGUE

FOREST AND FIELD .


SUMMER .

TO SORROW

NIGHT

A FALLEN BEECH


A TWILIGHT MOTH

THE GRASSHOPPER

BEFORE THE RAIN

AFTER RAIN .

THE HAUNTED HOUSE



                    PAGE
    .   .   .    .      I


                       5

                     i8


                     24

                     28


                   3'


                     35

                     38

                     4I

                43

             q   47
V

 







CONTENTS



OCTOBER .

INDIAN SUMMER


ALONG THE OHIO

A COIGN OF THE FOREST


CREOLE SERENADE

WILL 0 THE WISPS


TIlE TOLLBIAN'S I)AUGHTEJR

THE BOY COLUMBUS

SONG OF THE ELF


THE (ILI) INN .

TIlE: MII,-WATER

THlE DREAM U


SPRING TWILIGHT


A SLEET-STORMI IN MAY


UNREQUITED


THE HEART 0 SPRING

                       vi



            PAGE
              52

              56


              58

       .   6'


           63

           67

      70


            73

              76


              79

              81


              84

              87

              89


              92


          94

 







CONTENTS



cA BROKEN RAINBOW ON T

ORGIE   .


REVERIE .


LETHE


DIONYSIA .


THE NAIAD

THE LIMNAD  


INTIMATIONS

BEFORE THE TEMPLE


ANTHEM OF DAWN

AT THE LANE'S END


THE FARMSTEAD

A FLOWER OF THE FIELDS


THE FEUD


LYNCHERS


DEAl) MAN S RUN



HE



                 PAGE
SKIES OF MAY'     96


                 99

              [01


                  o6


             [109




                 I19


                 123

                 128


                 130


                134

                  146

             155


                159


                  162

                  64



VI'i

 






CONTENTS



AUGUST

THE BUSH-SPARROW

QUIET

MUSIC

THE PURPLE VALLEYS

A DREAM1 SHAPE

THE OLD BARN

THE WOOD WITCH

AT SUNSET

MlAY

RAIN

TO FA LL,  

SUNSET IN AUTUMN

THE HILLS

CONTENT 

HEART OF MY HEART



                     lAGE
                     x68

                     172

                     176

                     178

                       i8i

                       t84

                       :86

                       :89

                       192

                    194

                      96

                      198

                      200

                      203

                      206

                      2039
viii

 



CO NTENTS



OCTOBER 


MYTH AND ROMANCE


GENIUS LOCI


DISCOVERY


THE OLD SPRING


T.lE FOREST SPRING


TRANSMUTATION


DEAD CITIES


FROST


A NIGHT IN JUNE


THE DREAMER.


WINTER


M1ID-WINTER


SPRING    .


TRANSFORMATION


RESPONSE    .



ix



        F'AGE

      211


   .   214


        218


        222


        224


        226


        228


      229


        232


      234


       237


       238


       240


       242


       243


     245

 





CONTENTS



THE SWASHBUCKLER .

SIMULACRA

CAVERNS 

THE BLUE BIRD

QUATRAINS   .


ADVENTURERS 


EPILOGUE



       PAGE
       247

       249

.    251

      253

       254


       258

       260



I

 












INTRODUCTION



SINCE the disappearance of the latest survivors of
that graceful and somewhat academic school of
poets who ruled American literature so long
from the shores of Massachusetts, serious poetry
in the United States seems to have been passing
through a crisis of languor. Perhaps there is no
country on the civilised globe where, in theory,
verse is treated with more respect and, in
practice, with a greater lack of grave considera-
tion than America. No conjecture as to the
reason of this must be attempted here, further
than to suggest that the extreme value set upon
sharpness, ingenuity and rapid mobility is obvi-
ously calculated to depreciate and to condemn
                      xi

 




INTRODUCTION



the quiet practice of the most meditative of' the
arts. Hence we find that it is what is called
' humorous' verse which is mainly in fashion
on the western side of the Atlantic. Those
rhymes are most warmly welcomed which play
the most preposterous tricks with language,
which dazzle by the most mountebank swiftness
of turn, and which depend most for their effect
upon paradox and the negation of sober thought.
It is probable that the diseased craving for
what is 'smart,' 'snappy' and wide-awake, .nd
the impulse to see everything foreshortened and
topsy-turvy, must wear themselves out before
cooler and more graceful tastes again prevail in
imaginative literature.
  Whatever be the cause, it is certain that this
is not a moment when serious poetry, of any
species, is flourishing in the United States. The
absence of anything like a common impulse
                     xii

 





INTRODUCTION



among young writers, of any definite and
intelligible, if excessive, parli pris, is immediately
observable if we contrast the American, for
instance, with the French poets of the last
fifteen years. Where there is no school and no
clear trend of executive ambition, the solitary
artist, whose talent forces itself up into the
light and air, suffers unusual difficulties, and runs
a constant danger of being choked in the aimless
mediocrity that surrounds him. We occasionally
meet with a poet in the history of literature, of
whom we are inclined to say, Charming as he is,
he would have developed his talent more evenly
and conspicuously,-with greater decorum,
perhaps,-if he had been accompanied from the
first by other young men like-minded, who
would have formed for him an atmosphere and
cleared for him a space. This is the one regret
I feel in contemplating, as I have done for years
                     xiii

 




INTRODUCTION



past, the ardent and beautiful talent of Mr.
Cawein. I deplore the fact that he seems to
stand alone in his generation; I think his poetry
would have been even better than it is, and its
qualities would certainly have been more clearly
perceived, and more intelligently appreciated, if
he were less isolated. In his own country, at this
particular moment, in this matter of serious nature-
painting in lyric verse, Mr. Cawein possesses
what Cowley would have called 'a monopoly of
wit.' In one of his lyrics Mr. Cawein asks-

       'The song-birds, are they flown away,
         The song-birds of the summer-time,
       That sang their souls into the day,
         And set the laughing hours to rhyme
       No cat-bird scatters through the hush
         The sparkling crystals of her song;
         Within the woods no hermit-thrush
         Trails an enchanted flute along.'

  To this inquiry, the answer is: the only hermit-
                      xiv

 




INTRODUCTION



thrush now audible seems to sing from Louisville,
Kentucky. America will, we may be perfectly
sure, calm herself into harmony again, and
possess once more her school of singers. In
those coming days, history may perceive in Mr.
Cawein the golden link that bound the music
of the past to the music of the future through
an interval of comparative tunelessness.
  The career of Mr. Madison Cawein is repre-
sented to me as being most uneventful. He
seems to have enjoyed unusual advantages for
the cultivation and protection of the poetical
temperament. He was born on the 23rd of
March 1865, in the metropolis of Kentucky, the
vigorous city of Louisville, on the southern side
of the Ohio, in the midst of a country celebrated
for tobacco and whisky and Indian corn. These
are commodities which may be consumed in
excess, but in moderation they make glad the
    b                xv

 




INTRODUCTION



heart of man. They represent a certain glow of
the earth, they indicate the action of a serene
and gentle climate upon a rich soil. It was in
this delicate and voluptuous state of Kentucky
that Mr. Cawein was born, that he was educated,
that he became a poet, and that he has lived
ever since. His blood is full of the colour and
odour of his native landscape. The solemn
books of history tell us that Kentucky was
discovered in 1769, by Daniel Boone, a hunter.
But he first discovers a country who sees it first,
and teaches the world to see it; no doubt some
day the city of Louisville will erect, in one of its
principal squares, a statue to 'Madison C.iwein,
who discovered the Beauty of Kentucky.' The
genius of this poet is like one of those deep
rivers of his native state, which cut paths
through the forests of chestnut and hemlock as
they hurry towards the south and west, brushing
                     xvi

 



INTRODUCTION



with the impulsive fringe of their currents the
rhododendrons and calmias and azaleas that bend
from the banks to be mirrored in their flushing
waters.
  Mr. Cawein's vocation to poetry was irresist-
ible. I do not know that he ever tried to resist
it. I have even the idea that a little more
resistance would have been salutary for a talent
which nothing could have discouraged, and
which opposition might have taught the arts of
compression and selection. Mr. Cawein suffered
at first, I think, from lack of criticism more than
from lack of eulogy. From his early writings I
seem to gather an impression of a Louisville
more ready to praise what was second-rate than
what was first-rate, and practically, indeed,
without any scale of appreciation whatever.
This may be a mistake of mine; at all events,
Mr. Cawein has had more to gain from the
                     xvii

 




INTRODUCTION



 passage of years in self-criticism than in inspiring
    enthusiasm. The fount was in him from the
    first; but it bubbled forth before he had digged
    a definite channel for it. Sometimes, to this
    very day, he sports with the principles of syntax
    as Nature played games so long ago with the
    fantastic caverns of the valley of the Green
    River or with the coral-reefs of his own Ohio.
    He has bad rhymes, amazing in so delicate an
    ear; he has awkwardness of phrase not expected
    in one so plunged in contemplation of the
    eternal harmony of Nature. But these grow
    fewer and less obtrusive as the years pass by.
      The virgin timber-forests of Kentucky, the
    woods of honey-locust and buck-eye, of white
    oak and yellow poplar, with their clearings full
    of flowers unknown to us by sight or name, from
    which in the distance are visible the domes of the
    far-away Cumberland Mountains, this seems to
                        xviii

 




INTRO D U CT ION



be the hunting-field of Mr. Cawein's imagination.
Here all, it must be confessed, has hitherto been
unfamiliar to the Muses. If Persephone ' of our
Cumnor cowslips never heard,' how much less
can her attention have been arrested by clusters
of orchids from the Ocklawaha, or by the
song of the Whippoorwill, rung out when 'the
west was hot geranium-red' under the boughs
of a black-jack on the slopes of Mount Kinnex.
' Not here,' one is inclined to exclaim, ' not here,
o Apollo, are haunts meet for thee,' but the
art of the poet is displayed by his skill in break-
ing down these prejudices of time and place.
Mr. Cawein reconciles us to his strange land-
scape-the strangeness of which one has to
admit is mainly one of nomenclature,-by the
exercise of a delightful instinctive pantheism.
He brings the ancient gods to Kentucky, and it
is marvellous how quickly they learn to be at

                    xix

 



             INTRODUCTION

home there. Here is Bacchus, with a spicy
fragment of calamtus-root in his hand, trampling
down the blue-eyed grass, and skipping, with
the air of a hunter born, into the hickory
thicket, to escape Artemis, whose robes, as she
passes swiftly with her dogs through the woods,
startle the humming-birds, silence the green
tree-frogs, and fill the hot still air with the
perfumes of peppermint and penny-royal. It is
a queer landscape, but one of new natural
beauties frankly and sympathetically discovered,
and it forms a mise en scene which, I make bold
to say, would have scandalised neither Keats nor
Spenser.
  It was Mr. Howells,-ever as generous in
discovering new native talent as he is unflinching
in reproof of the effeteness of European taste,--
who first drew attention to the originality aind
beauty of Mr. Cawein's poetry. The Kentucky
                     xx

 



INTRODUCTION



poet had, at that time, published but one
tentative volume, the Blooms of the Berry, of
1887. This was followed, in 1888, by The
Trnumph of Music, and since then hardly a year
has passed without a slender sheaf of verse from
Mr. Cawein's garden. Among these (if a single
volume is to be indicated), the quality which
distinguishes him from all other poets,-the
Kentucky flavour, if we may call it so,-is
perhaps to be most agreeably detected in
Itiimations of the Beautifli. But it is time that
I should leave the American lyrist to make his
own appeal to English ears, with but one
additional word of explanation, namely, that in
this selection Mr. Cawein's narrative poems on
medieval themes, and in general his cosmopolitan
writings, have been neglected in favour of such
lyrics as would present him most vividly in his
own native landscape, no visitor in spirit to
                     xxi

 




INTRODUCTION



Europe, but at home in that bright and
exuberant West-

    Where, in the hazy morning, runs
      The stony branch that pools and drips,
      Where red-haws and the wild-rose hips
    Are strewn like pebbles; where the sun's
      Own gold seems captured by the weeds;
      To see, through scintillating seeds,
    The hunters steal with glimmering guns.
    To stand within the dewy ring
    Where pale death smites the bone-set blooms,
      And everlasting's flowers, and plumes
    Of mint, with aromatic wing!
      And hear the creek,-whose sobbing seems
      A wild man murmuring in his dreams,-
    And insect violins that sing!

  So sweet a voice, so consonant with the music
of the singers of past times, heard in a place so
fresh and strange, will surely not pass without
its welcome from the lovers of genuine poetry.

                       EDMUND GOSSE.



XXI I

 












PROLOGUE



  There is a poetry that speaks
    Through common things: the grasshopper,
  That in the hot weeds creaks and creaks,
    Says all of'summer to my ear:
    And in the cricket's cry I hear
  The fireside speak, and feel the frost
     Work mysteries of'silver near
  On country casements, while, deep lost
In snow, the gatepost seems a sheeted ghost.


  And other things give rare delight:
    Those guttural harps the green-frogs tune,
  Those minstrels of the fidling night,
    That hail the sickle of'the moon



A



I1

 



PROLOGUE



    From grassy pools that glass her lune:
  Or,-all of August in its loud
    Dry cry,-the locust's call at noon,
  That tells of heat and never a cloud
To veil the pitiless sun as with a shroud.



  The rain,-whose cloud dark-lids the moon,
    The great white eyeball of the night,-
  Makes music for me; to its tune
    I hear the flowers unfolding white,
    The mushroom growing, and the slight
  Green sound of grass that dances near;
    The melon ripening with delight;
  And in the orchard, soft and clear,
The apple redly rounding out its sphere.



  The gigs make music as of old,
    To which the fairies whirl and shine
                     2

 




              PROLOGUE

  Within the moonlight's prodigal gold,
     On woodways wild with many a vine:
     When all the wilderness with wine
  Of stars is drunk, I hear it say-
    ' Is God restricted to confine
  His wonders on4y to the day,
That yields the abstract tangible to clay'



  And to my ear the wind of Morn,-
     When on her rubric fjrehead fir
  One star burns big,-lifis a vast horn
    Of wonder where all murmurs are:
    In which I hear the waters war,
  The torrent and the blue abyss,
    And pines,--that terrace bar on bar
  The mountain side,-like lovers' kiss,
And whisper words where naught but
    grandeur is.

                     3

 



PROLOGUE



  The jutting crags,-all iron-veined
     With ore,-the peaks, There eagles scream,
  That pour their cataracts, rainbow-stained,
    Like hair, in many a mountain stream,
    Can lift my soul beyond the dream
  Of all religions; make me scan
    No mere external or extreme,
  But inward pierce the outward plan
And learn that rocks have souls as well as man.



4

 




FOREST AND FIELD



      FOREST AND FIELD



GREEN, watery jets of light let through
The rippling foliage drenched with dew;
And golden glimmers, warm and dim,
That in the vistaed distance swim;
Where, 'round the wood-spring's oozy urn,
The limp, loose fronds of forest fern
Trail like the tresses, green and wet,
A wood-nymph binds with violet.
O'er rocks that bulge and roots that knot
The emerald-amber mosses clot;
From matted walls of brier and brush
The elder nods its plumes of plush;
And, Argus-eyed with many a bloom,
The wild-rose breathes its wild perfume;

                 S

 



FOREST AND FIELD



May-apples, ripening yellow, lean
With oblong fruit, a lemon-green,
Near Indian-turnips, long of stem,
That bear an acorn-oval gem,
As if some woodland Bacchus there,-
While braiding locks of hyacinth hair
With ivy-tod,-had idly tost
His thyrsus down and so had lost:
And blood-root, that from scarlet wombs
Puts forth, in spring, its milk-white blooms,
That then like starry footsteps shine
Of April under beech and pine;
At which the gnarled eyes of trees
Stare, big as Fauns' at Dryades,
That bend above a fountain's spar
As white and naked as a star.


The stagnant stream flows sleepily
Thick with its lily-pads; the bee,-
                 6

 



FOREST AND FIELD



All honey-drunk, a Bassarid,-
Booms past the mottled toad, that, hid
In calamus-plants and blue-eyed grass,
Beside the water's pooling glass,
Silenus-like, eyes stolidly
The Maenad-glittering dragonfly.
And pennyroyal and peppermint
Pour dry-hot odours without stint
From fields and banks of many streams;
And in their scent one almost seems
To see Demeter pass, her breath
Sweet with her triumph over 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
Borne over bosks of sassafras
By winds that foot it on the grass;
                 7

 



FOREST AND FIELD



Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings,
That hint at untold hidden things-
Pan and Sylvanus who of old
Kept sacred each wild wood and wold.
A wily light beneath the trees
Quivers and dusks with every breeze-
A Hamadryad, haply, who,-
Culling her morning meal of dew
From frail, accustomed cups of flowers,-
Now sees some Satyr in the bowers,
Or hears his goat-hoof snapping press
Some brittle branch, and in distress
Shrinks back; her dark, dishevelled hair
Veiling her limbs one instant there.


                 11

Down precipices of the dawn
The rivers of the day are drawn,
The soundless torrents, free and far,
                8

 




FOREST AND FIELD



Of gold that deluge every star.
There is a sound of brooks and wings
That fills the woods with carollings;
And, dashed on moss and flow'r and fern,
And leaves, that quiver, breathe and burn,
Rose-radiance smites the solitudes,
The dew-drenched hills, the dripping woods,
That twitter as with canticles
Of shade and light; and wind, that smells
Of flowers, and buds, and boisterous bees,
Delirious honey, and wet trees.-
Through briers that trip them, one by one,
With swinging pails, that take the sun,
A troop of girls comes-berriers,
Whose bare feet glitter where they pass
Through dewdrop-trembling tufts of grass.
And, oh! their laughter and their cheers
Wake Echo 'mid her shrubby rocks
Who, answering, from her mountain mocks

                 9

 




FOREST AND FIELD



With rapid fairy horns; as if
Each mossy vale and weedy cliff
Had its imperial Oberon,
Who, seeking his Titania, hid
In coverts caverned from the sun,
In kingly wrath had called and chid.


Cloud-feathers, oozing orange light,
Make rich the Indian locks of night;
Her dusky waist with sultry gold
Girdled and buckled fold on fold.
One star. A sound of bleating flocks.
Great shadows stretched along the rocks,
Like giant curses overthrown
By some Arthurian champion.
Soft-swimming sorceries of mist
That streak blue glens with amethyst.
And, tinkling in the clover dells,
The twilight sound of cattle-bells.
                 I0

 




FOREST AND FIELD



And where the marsh in reed and grass
Burns, angry as a shattered glass,
The flies make golden blurs, that shine
Like drops of amber-scattered wine
Spun high by reeling Bacchanals,
When Bacchus wreathes his curling hair
With vine-leaves, and from every lair
His worshippers around him calls.
They come, they come, a happy throng,
The berriers with gibe and song;
Their pails brimmed black to tin-bright
    eaves
With luscious 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.



I I

 




FOREST AND FIELD



                III

The tanned and tired noon climbs high
Up burning reaches of the sky;
Below the drowsy belts of pines
The rock-ledged river foams and shines;
And over rainless hill and dell
Is blown the harvest's sultry smell:
While, in the fields, 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 scythes; behind them
    press
The binders-men and maids that sing
Like some mad troop of piping Pan;-
While all the hillsides swoon and ring
Such sounds of Ariel airiness
As haunted freckled Caliban.



12

 




FOREST AND FIELD



'O ho! 0 ho! 'tis noon I say.
    The roses blow.
Away, away, above the hay,
To the tune o' the bees the roses sway;
The love-songs that they hum all day,
    So low! So low!
The roses' Minnesingers they.'


Up velvet lawns of lilac skies
The tawny moon begins to rise
Behind low, blue-black hills of trees,-
As rises up, in Siren seas,
To rock in purple deeps, hip-hid,
A virgin-bosomed Oceanid.-
Gaunt shadows crouch by tree and scaur,
Like shaggy Satyrs waiting for
The moonbeam Nymphs, the Dryads white,
That take with loveliness the night,
And glorify it with their love.

                 13

 



FOREST AND FIELD



The sweet, far notes I hear, I hear,
Beyond dim pines and mellow ways,
The song of some fair harvester,
The lovely Limnad of the grove,
Whose singing charms me while it slays.
'0 deep! 0 deep! the earth and air
    Are sunk in sleep.
Adieu to care! Now everywhere
Is rest; and by the old oak there
The maiden with the nut-brown hair
    Doth keep, doth keep
Tryst with her lover the young and fair.'



                IV

Like Atalanta's spheres of gold,
Within the orchard, apples rolled
From sudden hands of boughs that lay
Their leaves, like palms, against the day;

                '4

 




FOREST AND FIELD



And near them pears of rusty brown
Lay bruised; and peaches, pink with down,
And furry as the ears of Pan,
Or, like Diana's cheeks, a tan
Beneath which burnt a tender fire;
Or wan as Psyche's with desire.
And down the orchard vistas,-young,
A hickory basket by him swung,
A straw-hat, 'gainst the sloping sun
Drawn brim-broad o'er his face,-he
    strode;
As if he looked to find some one,
His eyes far-fixed beyond the road.
Before him, like a living burr,
Rattled the noisy grasshopper.
And where the cows' melodious bells
Trailed music up and down the dells,
Beside the spring, that o'er the ground
Went whimpering like a fretful hound,
                I5

 



FOREST AND FIELD



He saw her waiting, fair and slim,
Her pail forgotten there, for him.


Yellow as sunset skies and pale
As fairy clouds that stay or sail
Through azure vaults of summer, blue
As summer heavens, the wildflowers grew;
And blossoms on which spurts of light
Fell laughing, lMe the lips one might
Feign for a Hebe, or a girl
Whose mouth is laughter-lit with pearl.
Long ferns, in murmuring masses heaped;
And mosses moist, in beryl steeped
And musk aromas of the wood
And silence of the solitude:
And everything that near her blew
The spring had showered thick with dew.-
Across the rambling fence she leaned,
Her fresh, round arms all white and bare;
                 I6

 



FOREST AND FIELD



Her artless beauty, bonnet-screened,
Rich-coloured with its auburn hair.
A wood-thrush gurgled in a vine-
Ah! 'tis his step, 'tis he she hears;
The wild-rose smelt like some rare wine---
He comes, ah, yes! 'tis he who nears.
And her brown eyes and all her face
Said welcome. And with rustic grace
He leant beside her; and they had
Some talk with youthful laughter glad:
I know not what; I know but this
Its final period was a kiss.



I 7



B

 



SUMMER



              SUMMER

                   I
HANG out your loveliest star, 0 Night! 0
      Night!
    Your richest rose, 0 Dawn!
To greet sweet Sununer, her, who, clothed
      in light,
    Leads Earth's best hours on.
Hark! how the wild birds of the woods
Throat it within the dewy solitudes!
    The brook sings low and soft,
      The trees make song,
    As, from her heaven aloft
Comes blue-eyed Summer like a girl along.
                  I8

 





SUMMER



                   if

And as the Day, her lover, leads her in,
    How bright his beauty glows!
How red his lips, that ever try to win
    Her mouth's delicious rose!
And from the beating of his heart
Warm winds arise and sighing thence depart;
    And from his eyes and hair
      The light and dew
    Fall round her everywhere,
And Heaven above her is an arch of blue.



                   III

Come to the forest, or the treeless meadows
    Deep with their hay or grain;
Come where the hills lift high their thrones
      of shadows,
    Where tawny orchards reign.
                   '9

 




SUMMER



Come where the reapers whet the scythe;
Where golden sheaves are heaped; where
      berriers blythe,
    With willow-basket and with pail,
      Swarm knoll and plain;
    Where flowers freckle every vale,
And beauty goes with hands of berry-stain.



                  IV

Come where the dragon-flies, a brassy
      blue,
    Flit round the wildwood streams,
And, sucking at some horn of honey-dew,
    The wild-bee hums and dreams.
Come where the butterfly waves wings of
      sleep,
Gold-disked and mottled over blossoms
      deep;
                  20

 




SUMMER



    Come where beneath the rustic bridge
      The green frog cries;
    Or in the shade the rainbowed midge,
Above the emerald pools, with murmurings flies.


                   v
Come where the cattle browse within the
      brake,
    As red as oak and strong;
Where far-off bells the echoes faintly
      wake,
    And milkmaids sing their song.
Come where the vine-trailed rocks, with waters
      hoary,
Tell to the sun some legend or some story;
    Or, where the sunset to the land
      Speaks words of gold;
    Where ripeness walks, a wheaten band
Around her hair and blossoms manifold.
                  21

 




SUMMER



                   vI
Come where the woods lift up their stalwart
      arms
    Unto the star-sown skies;
Knotted and gnarled, that to the winds and
      storms
    Fling mighty rhapsodies:
Or to the moon repeat what they have seen,
When Night upon their shoulders vast doth
      lean.
    Come where the dew's clear syllable
      Drips from the rose;
    And where the fire-flies fill
The night with golden music of their glows.


                   VII
Now while the dingles and the vine-roofed
      glens
    Whisper their flowery tale
                   22

 




SUMMER



Unto the silence; and the lakes and fens
    Unto the moonlight pale
Murmur their rapture, let us seek her out,
Her of the honey throat, and peachy pout,
    Summer! and at her feet,
      The love of old
    Lay like a sheaf of wheat,
And of our hearts the purest gold of gold.



23

 




TO SORROW



               TO SORROW

                     I

0 DARK-EYED goddess of the marble brow,
  Whose look is silence and whose touch is
    night,
Who walkest lonely through the world, 0 thou,
  Who sittest lonely with Life's blown-out light;
Who in the hollow hours of night's noon
  Criest like some lost child;
Whose anguish-fevered eyeballs seek the moon
  To cool their pulses wild.
Thou who dost bend to kiss Joy's sister cheek,
  Turning its rose to alabaster; yea,
                     24

 




TO SORROW



Thou who art terrible and mad and meek,
  Why in my heart art thou enshrined to-day 
       O Sorrow say, 0 say!


                      11

Now Spring is here and all the world is white,
  I will go forth, and where the forest robes
Itself in green, and every hill and height
  Crowns its fair head with blossoms,-spirit
    globes
Of hyacinth and crocus dashed with dew,-
  I will forget my grief,
And thee, 0 Sorrow, gazing on the blue,
  Beneath a last year's leaf,
Of some brief violet the south wind woos,
  Or bluet, whence the west wind raked the snow;
The baby eyes of love, the darling hues
  Of happiness, that thou canst never know,
      0 child of pain and woe.
                     25

 




TO SORROW



                     II[

On some hoar upland, sweet with clustered
    thorns,
  Hard by a river's windy white of waves,
I shall sit down with Spring,-whose eyes are
    moms
  Of light; whose cheeks the rose of health
    enslaves,-
And so forget thee braiding in her hair
  The snowdrop, tipped with green,
The cool-eyed primrose and the trillium fair,
  And moony celandine.
Contented so to lie within her arms,
  Forgetting all the sear and sad and wan,
Remembering love alone, who o'er earth's
    storms,
  High on the mountains of perpetual dawn,
      Leads the glad hours on.
                     26

 





TO SORROW



                     IV

Or in the peace that follows storm, when Even,
  Within the west, stands dreaming lone and far,
Clad on with green and silver, and the Heaven
  Is brightly brooched with one gold-glittering
    star.
I will lie down beside some mountain lake,
  'Round which the tall pines sigh,
And breathing musk of rain from boughs that
    shake
  Storm balsam from on high,
Make friends of Dream and Contemplation high
  And Music, listening to the mocking-bird,-
Who through the hush sends its melodious cry,-
  And so forget a while that other word,
      That all loved things must die.



27

 




NIGHT



                  NIGHT

Our of the East, as from an unknown shore,
  Thou comest with thy children in thine
    arms,-
Slumber and Dream,-whom mortals all adore,
  Their flowing raiment sculptured to their
    charms:
Soft on thy breast thy lovely children rest,
Laid like twin roses in one balmy nest.
  Silent thou comest, swiftly too and slow.
There is no other presence like to thine,
When thou approachest with thy babes divine,
  Thy shadowy face above them bending low,
Blowing the ringlets from their brows of snow.
                     28

 




NIGHT



Oft have I taken Sleep from thy dark arms,
  And fondled her fair head, with poppies
    wreathed,
Within my bosom's depths, until its storms
  With her were hushed and I but faintly
    breathed.
And then her sister, Dream, with frolic art
Arose from rest, and on my sleeping heart
  Blew bubbles of dreams where elfin worlds
    were lost;
Worlds where my stranger soul sang songs to me,
And talked with spirits by a rainbowed sea,
  Or smiled, an unfamiliar