Читать книгу Kentucky Poems - Madison Julius Cawein - Страница 4

Table of Contents

I

Green, watery jets of light let through

The rippling foliage drenched with dew;

And golden glimmers, warm and dim,

That in the vistaed distance swim;

Where, 'round the wood-spring's oozy urn,

The limp, loose fronds of forest fern

Trail like the tresses, green and wet,

A wood-nymph binds with violet.

O'er rocks that bulge and roots that knot

The emerald-amber mosses clot;

From matted walls of brier and brush

The elder nods its plumes of plush;

And, Argus-eyed with many a bloom,

The wild-rose breathes its wild perfume;

May-apples, ripening yellow, lean

With oblong fruit, a lemon-green,

Near Indian-turnips, long of stem,

That bear an acorn-oval gem,

As if some woodland Bacchus there—

While braiding locks of hyacinth hair

With ivy-tod—had idly tost

His thyrsus down and so had lost:

And blood-root, that from scarlet wombs

Puts forth, in spring, its milk-white blooms,

That then like starry footsteps shine

Of April under beech and pine;

At which the gnarled eyes of trees

Stare, big as Fauns' at Dryades,

That bend above a fountain's spar

As white and naked as a star.

The stagnant stream flows sleepily

Thick with its lily-pads; the bee—

All honey-drunk, a Bassarid—

Booms past the mottled toad, that, hid

In calamus-plants and blue-eyed grass,

Beside the water's pooling glass,

Silenus-like, eyes stolidly

The Mænad-glittering dragonfly.

And pennyroyal and peppermint

Pour dry-hot odours without stint

From fields and banks of many streams;

And in their scent one almost seems

To see Demeter pass, her breath

Sweet with her triumph over death.—

A haze of floating saffron; sound

Of shy, crisp creepings o'er the ground;

The dip and stir of twig and leaf;

Tempestuous gusts of spices brief

Borne over bosks of sassafras

By winds that foot it on the grass;

Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings,

That hint at untold hidden things—

Pan and Sylvanus who of old

Kept sacred each wild wood and wold.

A wily light beneath the trees

Quivers and dusks with every breeze—

A Hamadryad, haply, who—

Culling her morning meal of dew

From frail, accustomed cups of flowers—

Now sees some Satyr in the bowers,

Or hears his goat-hoof snapping press

Some brittle branch, and in distress

Shrinks back; her dark, dishevelled hair

Veiling her limbs one instant there.

II

Down precipices of the dawn

The rivers of the day are drawn,

The soundless torrents, free and far,

Of gold that deluge every star.

There is a sound of brooks and wings

That fills the woods with carollings;

And, dashed on moss and flow'r and fern,

And leaves, that quiver, breathe and burn,

Rose-radiance smites the solitudes,

The dew-drenched hills, the dripping woods,

That twitter as with canticles

Of shade and light; and wind, that smells

Of flowers, and buds, and boisterous bees,

Delirious honey, and wet trees.—

Through briers that trip them, one by one,

With swinging pails, that take the sun,

A troop of girls comes—berriers,

Whose bare feet glitter where they pass

Through dewdrop-trembling tufts of grass.

And, oh! their laughter and their cheers

Wake Echo 'mid her shrubby rocks

Who, answering, from her mountain mocks

With rapid fairy horns; as if

Each mossy vale and weedy cliff

Had its imperial Oberon,

Who, seeking his Titania, hid

In coverts caverned from the sun,

In kingly wrath had called and chid.

Cloud-feathers, oozing orange light,

Make rich the Indian locks of night;

Her dusky waist with sultry gold

Girdled and buckled fold on fold.

One star. A sound of bleating flocks.

Great shadows stretched along the rocks,

Like giant curses overthrown

By some Arthurian champion.

Soft-swimming sorceries of mist

That streak blue glens with amethyst.

And, tinkling in the clover dells,

The twilight sound of cattle-bells.

And where the marsh in reed and grass

Burns, angry as a shattered glass,

The flies make golden blurs, that shine

Like drops of amber-scattered wine

Spun high by reeling Bacchanals,

When Bacchus wreathes his curling hair

With vine-leaves, and from every lair

His worshippers around him calls.

They come, they come, a happy throng,

The berriers with gibe and song;

Their pails brimmed black to tin-bright eaves

With luscious fruit, kept cool with leaves

Of aromatic sassafras;

'Twixt which some sparkling berry slips,

Like laughter, from the purple mass,

Wine-swollen as Silenus' lips.

III

The tanned and tired noon climbs high

Up burning reaches of the sky;

Below the drowsy belts of pines

The rock-ledged river foams and shines;

And over rainless hill and dell

Is blown the harvest's sultry smell:

While, in the fields, one sees and hears

The brawny-throated harvesters—

Their red brows beaded with the heat—

By twos and threes among the wheat

Flash their hot scythes; behind them press

The binders—men and maids that sing

Like some mad troop of piping Pan;—

While all the hillsides swoon and ring

Such sounds of Ariel airiness

As haunted freckled Caliban.

'O ho! O ho! 'tis noon I say.

The roses blow.

Away, away, above the hay,

To the tune o' the bees the roses sway;

The love-songs that they hum all day,

So low! So low!

The roses' Minnesingers they.'

Up velvet lawns of lilac skies

The tawny moon begins to rise

Behind low, blue-black hills of trees—

As rises up, in Siren seas,

To rock in purple deeps, hip-hid,

A virgin-bosomed Oceanid.—

Gaunt shadows crouch by tree and scaur,

Like shaggy Satyrs waiting for

The moonbeam Nymphs, the Dryads white,

That take with loveliness the night,

And glorify it with their love.

The sweet, far notes I hear, I hear,

Beyond dim pines and mellow ways,

The song of some fair harvester,

The lovely Limnad of the grove,

Whose singing charms me while it slays.

'O deep! O deep! the earth and air

Are sunk in sleep.

Adieu to care! Now everywhere

Is rest; and by the old oak there

The maiden with the nut-brown hair

Doth keep, doth keep

Tryst with her lover the young and fair.'

IV

Like Atalanta's spheres of gold,

Within the orchard, apples rolled

From sudden hands of boughs that lay

Their leaves, like palms, against the day;

And near them pears of rusty brown

Lay bruised; and peaches, pink with down,

And furry as the ears of Pan,

Or, like Diana's cheeks, a tan

Beneath which burnt a tender fire;

Or wan as Psyche's with desire.

And down the orchard vistas—young,

A hickory basket by him swung,

A straw-hat, 'gainst the sloping sun

Drawn brim-broad o'er his face—he strode;

As if he looked to find some one,

His eyes far-fixed beyond the road.

Before him, like a living burr,

Rattled the noisy grasshopper.

And where the cows' melodious bells

Trailed music up and down the dells,

Beside the spring, that o'er the ground

Went whimpering like a fretful hound,

He saw her waiting, fair and slim,

Her pail forgotten there, for him.

Yellow as sunset skies and pale

As fairy clouds that stay or sail

Through azure vaults of summer, blue

As summer heavens, the wildflowers grew;

And blossoms on which spurts of light

Fell laughing, like the lips one might

Feign for a Hebe, or a girl

Whose mouth is laughter-lit with pearl.

Long ferns, in murmuring masses heaped;

And mosses moist, in beryl steeped

And musk aromas of the wood

And silence of the solitude:

And everything that near her blew

The spring had showered thick with dew.—

Across the rambling fence she leaned,

Her fresh, round arms all white and bare;

Her artless beauty, bonnet-screened,

Rich-coloured with its auburn hair.

A wood-thrush gurgled in a vine—

Ah! 'tis his step, 'tis he she hears;

The wild-rose smelt like some rare wine—

He comes, ah, yes! 'tis he who nears.

And her brown eyes and all her face

Said welcome. And with rustic grace

He leant beside her; and they had

Some talk with youthful laughter glad:

I know not what; I know but this

Its final period was a kiss.