Читать книгу Afterwhiles - James Whitcomb Riley - Страница 11

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O The South Wind and the Sun!

How each loved the other one

Full of fancy— full folly—

Full of jollity and fun!

How they romped and ran about,

Like two boys when school is out,

With glowing face, and lisping lip,

Low laugh, and lifted shout!

And the South Wind—he was dressed

With a ribbon round his breast

That floated, flapped and fluttered

In a riotous unrest,

And a drapery of mist

From the shoulder and the wrist

Flowing backward with the motion

Of the waving hand he kissed.

And the Sun had on a crown

Wrought of gilded thistle-down,

And a scarf of velvet vapor,

And a ravelled-rainbow gown;

And his tinsel-tangled hair,

Tossed and lost upon the air,

Was glossier and flossier

Than any anywhere.

And the South Wind's eyes were two

Little dancing drops of dew,

As he puffed his cheeks, and pursed his lips,

And blew and blew and blew!

And the Sun's—like diamond-stone,

Brighter yet than ever known,

As he knit his brows and held his breath,

And shone and shone and shone!

And this pair of merry fays

Wandered through the summer days;

Arm-in-arm they went together

Over heights of morning haze—

Over slanting slopes of lawn

They went on and on and on,

Where the daisies looked like star-tracks

Trailing up and down the dawn.

And where'er they found the top

Of a wheat-stalk droop and lop

They chucked it underneath the chin

And praised the lavish crop,

Till it lifted with the pride

Of the heads it grew beside,

And then the South Wind and the Sun

Went onward satisfied.

Over meadow-lands they tripped,

Where the dandelions dipped

In crimson foam of clover-bloom,

And dripped and dripped and dripped;

And they clinched the bumble-stings,

Gauming honey on their wings,

And bundling them in lily-bells,

With maudlin murmurings.

And the humming-bird that hung

Like a jewel up among

The tilted honeysuckle-horns,

They mesmerized, and swung

In the palpitating air,

Drowsed with odors strange and rare,

And with whispered laughter, slipped away,

And left him hanging there.

And they braided blades of grass

Where the truant had to pass;

And they wriggled through the rushes

And the reeds of the morass,

Where they danced, in rapture sweet,

O'er the leaves that laid a street

Of undulant mosaic for

The touches of their feet.

By the brook with mossy brink

Where the cattle came to drink.

They trilled and piped and whistled

With the thrush and bobolink,

Till the kine in listless pause,

Switched their tails in mute applause,

With lifted heads and dreamy eyes,

And bubble-dripping jaws.

And where the melons grew,

Streaked with yellow, green and blue

These jolly sprites went wandering

Through spangled paths of dew;

And the melons, here and there,

They made love to, everywhere

Turning their pink souls to crimson

With caresses fond and fair.

Over orchard walls they went,

Where the fruited boughs were bent

Till they brushed the sward beneath them

Where the shine and shadow blent;

And the great green pear they shook

Till the sallow hue forsook

Its features, and the gleam of gold

Laughed out in every look.

And they stroked the downy cheek

Of the peach, and smoothed it sleek,

And flushed it into splendor;

And with many an elfish freak,

Gave the russet's rust a wipe—

Prankt the rambo with a stripe,

And the wine-sap blushed its reddest

As they spanked the pippins ripe.

Through the woven ambuscade

That the twining vines had made,

They found the grapes, in clusters,

Drinking up the shine and shade—

Plumpt like tiny skins of wine,

With a vintage so divine

That the tongue of fancy tingled

With the tang of muscadine.

And the golden-banded bees,

Droning o'er the flowery leas,

They bridled, reigned, and rode away

Across the fragrant breeze,

Till in hollow oak and elm

They had groomed and stabled them

In waxen stalls oozed with dews

Of rose and lily-stem.

Where the dusty highway leads,

High above the wayside weeds

They sowed the air with butterflies

Like blooming flower-seeds,

Till the dull grasshopper sprung

Half a man's height up, and hung

Tranced in the heat, with whirring wings,

And sung and sung and sung!

And they loitered, hand in hand,

Where the snipe along the sand

Of the river ran to meet them

As the ripple meets the land,

Till the dragon-fly, in light

Gauzy armor, burnished bright,

Came tilting down the waters

In a wild, bewildered flight.

And they heard the killdee's call,

And afar, the waterfall,

But the rustle of a falling leaf

They heard above it all;

And the trailing willow crept

Deeper in the tide that swept

The leafy shallop to the shore,

And wept and wept and wept!

And the fairy vessel veered

From its moorings—tacked and steered

For the centre of the current

Sailed away and disappeared:

And the burthen that it bore

From the long-enchanted shore—

"Alas! The South Wind and the Sun!"

I murmur evermore.

For the South Wind and the Sun,

Each so loves the other one,

For all his jolly folly

And frivolity and fun,

That our love for them they weigh

As their fickle fancies may,

And when at last we love them most,

They laugh and sail away.