Читать книгу Shapes and Shadows - Cawein Madison Julius - Страница 4

Clad on with glowing beauty and the peace,

Benign, of calm maturity, she stands

Among her meadows and her orchard-lands,

And on her mellowing gardens and her trees,

Out of the ripe abundance of her hands,

Bestows increase

And fruitfulness, as, wrapped in sunny ease,

Blue-eyed and blonde she goes,

Upon her bosom Summer's richest rose.

And he who follows where her footsteps lead,

By hill and rock, by forest-side and stream,

Shall glimpse the glory of her visible dream,

In flower and fruit, in rounded nut and seed:

She in whose path the very shadows gleam;

Whose humblest weed

Seems lovelier than June's loveliest flower, indeed,

And sweeter to the smell

Than April's self within a rainy dell.

Hers is a sumptuous simplicity

Within the fair Republic of her flowers,

Where you may see her standing hours on hours,

Breast-deep in gold, soft-holding up a bee

To her hushed ear; or sitting under bowers

Of greenery,

A butterfly a-tilt upon her knee;

Or, lounging on her hip,

Dancing a cricket on her finger-tip.

Aye, let me breathe hot scents that tell of you:

The hoary catnip and the meadow-mint,

On which the honour of your touch doth print

Itself as odour. Let me drink the hue

Of ironweed and mist-flow'r here that hint,

With purple and blue,

The rapture that your presence doth imbue

Their inmost essence with,

Immortal though as transient as a myth.

Yea, let me feed on sounds that still assure

Me where you hide: the brooks', whose happy din

Tells where, the deep retired woods within,

Disrobed, you bathe; the birds', whose drowsy lure

Tells where you slumber, your warm-nestling chin

Soft on the pure

Pink cushion of your palm … What better cure

For care and memory's ache

Than to behold you so and watch you wake!