Читать книгу Blooms of the Berry - Cawein Madison Julius - Страница 23

Now Lucifer ignites her taper bright

To greet the wild-flowered Dawn,

Who leads the tasseled Summer draped with light

Down heaven's gilded lawn.

Hark to the minstrels of the woods,

Tuning glad harps in haunted solitudes!

List to the rillet's music soft,

The tree's hushed song:

Flushed from her star aloft

Comes blue-eyed Summer stepping meek along.

And as the lusty lover leads her in,

Clad in soft blushes red,

With breezy lips her love he tries to win,

Doth many a tear-drop shed:

While airy sighs, dyed in his heart,

Like Cupid's arrows, flame-tipped o'er her dart,

He bends his yellow head and craves

The timid maid

For one sweet kiss, and laves

Her rose-crowned locks with tears until 'tis paid.

Come to the forest or the musky meadows

Brown with their mellow grain;

Come where the cascades shake green shadows,

Where tawny orchards reign.

Come where fall reapers ply the scythe,

Where golden sheaves are heaped by damsels blithe:

Come to the rock-rough mountain old,

Tree-pierced and wild;

Where freckled flowers paint the wold,

Hail laughing Summer, sunny-haired, blonde child!

Come where the dragon-flies in coats of blue

Flit o'er the wildwood streams,

And fright the wild bee from the honey-dew

Where if long-sipping dreams.

Come where the touch-me-nots shy peep

Gold-horned and speckled from the cascades steep:

Come where the daisies by the rustic bridge

Display their eyes,

Or where the lilied sedge

From emerald forest-pools, lance-like, thick rise.

Come where the wild deer feed within the brake

As red as oak and strong;

Come where romantic echoes wildly wake

Old hills to mystic song.

Come to the vine-hung woodlands hoary,

Come to the realms of hunting song and story;

But come when Summer decks the land

With garb of gold,

With colors myriad as the sand —

A birth-fair child, tho' thousand summers old.

Come where the trees extend their shining arms

Unto the star-sown skies;

Displaying wrinkled age in limb-gnarled charms

When Night, moon-eyed, brown lies

Upon their bending lances seen

With fluttered pennons in the moon's broad sheen.