Nature-notes and impressions in prose and verse

Cawein, Madison Julius (1865-1914)

[section]

[dedication]

[Would I could talk as the flowers talk]

NATURE-NOTES and IMPRESSIONS

[There was an old frog]

[So let Noon lead me till at last she reaches]

[Above the hills the sunset's rolled]

[The bloodroot leaves of middle March]

[Croppings out of unmined gold]

[Moist, rocky places of the spring]

[The hairy stems of the hepatica]

[Deep in the leaves' concealing green]

[The dewberries are blooming now]

[Purple the hills stretch under purple mists]

[Hark how the honey-throated thrush]

[The ground is strewn with the dead oak-bloom]

[That little worm shall become a fly]

[Invite my soul to rest awhile]

[The smell of tannin in the ozoned air]

[The stealthy squirrel skips along]

[Yesterday among the beeches, to-day among the oaks]

[The wind is rising and the leaves are blown]

[The dawn comes in clad all in hodden gray]

[Hylas, that pipe the little buds awake]

[Still are the forests barren of all buds]

[Come, let us forth and homage her]

[My mind's washed clean by the wind that brings]

[The wind goes groping among the trees]

[The sluggish snake now basks his uncoiled length]

[Rocked by the winds of March the trees become]

[The gold-green blooms of the spicebush burn]

[Placid and pure and clean the wild-phlox blooms]

[Who is it knows]

[The liquid note of the thrush—what words can describe it]

[The woodpecker! hear him, the redcapped]

[The crawfish in his tower of ooze and clay]

[Hag-tapers bow their heads i' the wind]

[Here where the twilight-colored trunks of trees]

[Silvered with sun and rain the hills and vales]

[The old tree, on which the man was hanged, sighed to itself]

[Where like an angry tyrant roars the sea]

[What boots it to keep saying]

[Until we meet again]

[Where bloomed the rose but yesterday]

[The climbing cricket clings]

[My soul is sick of many things]

[Ah, not in vain]

[A thin fall rain]

[Ephemeral gold]

[The scarlet and the gold and bronze]

[Ochre-colored broom-sedge]

[In the forest by the rain-wild creeks]

[subsection]

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[What boots it to keep saying]

What boots it to keep saying
That “life 's a hollow farce”?
That “men are fools”? that “praying
Helps not, nor doth remorse”?

What boots it to keep dwelling
On grief and sin and shame?
The old, old story telling,
“The end for all 's the same”?

Who says that He, the Power
That made us, as a rule
Made fools with farce for dower,
He only is the fool.

University of Virginia Library

[What boots it to keep saying]