Читать книгу Days and Dreams: Poems - Madison Julius Cawein - Страница 15

An elf there is who stables the hot

Red wasp that stings o' the apricot;

An elf who rowels his spiteful bay,

Like a mote on a ray, away, away;

An elf who saddles the hornet lean

To din i' the ear o' the swinging bean;

Who hunts with a hat cocked half awry

The bottle-blue o' the dragon-fly:—

O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.

An elf there is where the clover tips

A horn whence the summer leaks and drips,

Where lanthorns of mustard-flowers bloom,

In the dusk awaits the bee's dull boom;

Gay gold brocade from head to knee,

Who robs the caravan bumble-bee;

Big bags of honey bee-merchants pay

To the bandit elf of the Fairy way—

O ho, O hey! I have heard them say.

Another ouphen the butterflies know,

Who paints their wings like the buds that blow;

Flowers, staining the dew-drops through,

Seals their colors in tubes of dew;

Colors to dazzle the butterflies' wing—

The evening moth is another thing:

The butterfly's glory he got at dawn,

The moon-moth's got when the moon was wan;

He it is, that the hollyhocks hear,

Who dangles a brilliant i' each one's ear;

Teases at noon the pane's green fly,

And lights at night the glow-worm's eye:—

O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.

But the dearest elf, so the poets say,

Is the elf who hides in an eye of gray;

Who curls in a dimple and slips along

The strings of a lute or a lover's song;

Shines in a scent, or wings a rhyme,

And laughs in the bells of a wedding chime;

Hides unhidden, where none may know,

In her bosom's blossom or throat's blue bow—

O ho, O ho!—a friend or foe?