Читать книгу Days and Dreams: Poems - Cawein Madison Julius - Страница 4

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.

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,