Читать книгу Weeds by the Wall: Verses - Cawein Madison Julius - Страница 10

Secluded, solitary on some underbough,

Or cradled in a leaf, 'mid glimmering light,

Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching how

The slow toad-stool comes bulging, moony white,

Through loosening loam; or how, against the night,

The glow-worm gathers silver to endow

The darkness with; or how the dew conspires

To hang at dusk with lamps of chilly fires

Each blade that shrivels now.

O vague confederate of the whippoorwill,

Of owl and cricket and the katydid!

Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrill

Vibrating note and send'st it where, half hid

In cedars, twilight sleeps – each azure lid

Drooping a line of golden eyeball still. —

Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voice

Within the Garden of the Hours apoise

On dusk's deep daffodil.

Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon

Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover

And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune

Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over.

Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover

Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon

Of twilight's hush, and little intimate

Of eve's first fluttering star and delicate

Round rim of rainy moon!

Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn

Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour

When they may gambol under haw and thorn,

Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower?

Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower

The liriodendron is? from whence is borne

The elfin music of thy bell's deep bass,

To summon fairies to their starlit maze,

To summon them or warn.