Читать книгу Blooms of the Berry - Cawein Madison Julius - Страница 15

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:

"O ho! O 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."

Up velvet lawns of lilac skies

The tawny moon begins to rise

Behind 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 the 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:

"O deep! O deep! the twilight rare

Pales on to sleep;

And fair, so fair! fades the rich air.

The fountain 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."