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University of Virginia Library

Nature-notes and impressions in prose and verse

Cawein, Madison Julius (1865-1914)

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[Would I could talk as the flowers talk]

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NATURE-NOTES and IMPRESSIONS

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[A vagabond foot and a vagabond road]

[As, all distraught, with dark, neglected hair]

[The milkweeds nod their Rip-Van-Winkle heads]

[In the Garden of Skulls and Serpents]

[The pure precision of a star, a flower]

[I have listened long unto the promises]

[I saw the Spring go by, her mouth a thread]

[An Eldorado of vales and peaks]

[A rune of glimmer and a scrawl of light]

[The deep blue spike of the great lobelia glows]

[I gazed upon the wasted lips of Want]

[Green in the circle of contingent trees]

[On every side the roses rise]

[The shadows where no light looked through]

[With all my heart I deem it no great folly]

[What bird is that that sings so long]

[The sunset lets its heavy curtains down]

[These are the cups of Comus]

[Yea; death behind her, gazing through her hair]

[The blue wild hyssop, with its dewy mouth]

[Drab-colored seed pods of the autumn hung]

[A poet's soul 's unconscious of its dreams]

[The bright half moon, a boat pearl-white]

[When earth forgets one flower that comes with spring]

[All night it rained. Now in the dawn]

[I love to linger o'er the roseless rose]

[The auroral scent of morning lilies blows]

[As I went riding toward the sea]

[Clung o'er with cockle-burrs and thorny seeds]

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[One milk-white hand she stretched to me]

One milk-white hand she stretched to me,
My heart sobbed, “O beware!”
But both my arms reached out to her
Despite my soul's despair.