Читать книгу Blooms of the Berry - Cawein Madison Julius - Страница 14

Down silver precipices drawn

The 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-murmuring elfin canticles;

Sound, light, and spicy boisterous smells,

And flowers and buds; tumultuous bees,

Wind-wafts and genii of the trees.

Thro' briers that trammel, one by one,

With swinging pails comes laughing on

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 coverts him to shun,

In kingly wrath had called and chid.

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

Burns angry as a shattered glass.

The flies blur sudden blasts of shine,

Like wasted draughts of amber wine

Spun high by reeling Bacchanals

When Bacchus bredes his curling hair

With vine-leaves, and from ev'ry lair

Voluptuous Mænads lovely calls.

They come, they come, a happy throng,

The berriers with gibe and song;

Deep pails brimmed black to tin-white 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.