Читать книгу Blooms of the Berry - Madison Julius Cawein - Страница 6

Table of Contents

I.

Green, watery jets of light let through

The rippling foliage drenched with dew;

Bland glow-worm glamours warm and dim

Above the mystic vistas swim,

Where, 'round the fountain's oozy urn,

The limp, loose fronds of limber fern

Wave dusky tresses thin and wet,

Blue-filleted with violet.

O'er roots that writhe in snaky knots

The moss in amber cushions clots;

From wattled walls of brier and brush

The elder's misty attars gush;

And, Argus-eyed, by knoll and bank

The affluent wild rose flowers rank;

And stol'n in shadowy retreats,

In black, rich soil, your vision greets

The colder undergrowths of woods,

Damp, lushy-leaved, whose gloomier moods

Turn all the life beneath to death

And rottenness for their own breath.

May-apples waxen-stemmed and large

With their bloom-screening breadths of targe;

Wake robins dark-green leaved, their stems

Tipped with green, oval clumps of gems,

As if some woodland Bacchus there

A-braiding of his yellow hair

With ivy-tod had idly tost

His thyrsus there, and so had lost.

Low blood root with its pallid bloom,

The red life of its mother's womb

Through all its ardent pulses fine

Beating in scarlet veins of wine.

And where the knotty eyes of trees

Stare wide, like Fauns' at Dryades

That lave smooth limbs in founts of spar,

Shines many a wild-flower's tender star.

II.

The scummy pond sleeps lazily,

Clad thick with lilies, and the bee

Reels boisterous as a Bassarid

Above the bloated green frog hid

In lush wan calamus and grass,

Beside the water's stagnant glass.

The piebald dragon-fly, like one

A-weary of the world and sun,

Comes blindly blundering along,

A pedagogue, gaunt, lean, and long,

Large-headed naturalist with wise,

Great, glaring goggles on his eyes.

And dry and hot the fragrant mint

Pours grateful odors without stint

From cool, clay banks of cressy streams,

Rare as the musks of rich hareems,

And hot as some sultana's breath

With turbulent passions or with 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

From elder bosks and sassafras;

Wind-cuffs that dodge the laughing grass;

Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings

That hint at untold hidden things,

Pan and Sylvanus that of old

Kept sacred each wild wood and wold.

A wily light beneath the trees

Quivers and dusks with ev'ry breeze;

Mayhap some Hamadryad who,

Culling her morning meal of dew

From frail accustomed cups of flowers—

Some Satyr watching through the bowers—

Had, when his goat hoof snapped and pressed

A brittle branch, shrunk back distressed,

Startled, her wild, tumultuous hair

Bathing her limbs one instant there.