Читать книгу The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5) - Cawein Madison Julius - Страница 49

Beyond those knotted apple-trees,

That partly hide the old brick barn,

Its tattered arms and tattered knees

A scarecrow tosses to the breeze

Among the shocks of corn.

My heart is gray as is the day,

In which the rain-wind drearily

Makes all the rusty branches sway,

And in the hollows, by each way,

The dead leaves rustle wearily.

And soon we ’ll hear the far wild-geese

Honk in frost-bitten heavens under

Arcturus; when my walks must cease,

And by the fireside’s log-heaped peace

I ’ll sit and nod and ponder.—

When every fall of this loud creek

Is silent with the frost; and tented

Brown acres of the corn stretch bleak

And shaggy with the snows, that streak

The hillsides, hollow-dented;

I ’ll sit and dream of that glad morn

We met by banks with elder snowing;

That dusk we strolled through flower and thorn,

By tasseled meads of cane and corn,

To where the stream was flowing.

Again I ’ll oar our boat among

The dripping lilies of the river,

To reach her hat, the grape-vine long

Struck in the stream; we ’ll row to song;

And then … I ’ll wake and shiver.

Why is it that my mind reverts

To that sweet past? while full of parting

The present is: so full of hurts

And heartache, that what it asserts

Adds only to the smarting.

How often shall I sit and think

Of that sweet past! through lowered lashes

What-might-have-been trace link by link;

Then watch it gradually sink

And crumble into ashes.

Outside I ’ll hear the sad wind weep

Like some lone spirit, grieved, forsaken;

Then, shuddering, to bed will creep,

To lie awake, or, haply, sleep

A sleep by visions shaken.

By visions of the past, that draw

The present in a hue that’s wanting;

A scarecrow thing of sticks and straw,—

Like that just now I, passing, saw,—

Its empty tatters flaunting.