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 | The poems of Madison Cawein |  |
34
III
The tanned and tired Noon climbs high
Up burning reaches of the sky;
Below the drowsy belts of pines
The rock-ledged river leaps 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 who sing
Like some mad troop of piping Pan;—
While all the hillsides, echoing, ring
Such sounds of Ariel airiness
As haunted freckled Caliban.
Up burning reaches of the sky;
Below the drowsy belts of pines
The rock-ledged river leaps 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 who sing
Like some mad troop of piping Pan;—
While all the hillsides, echoing, ring
Such sounds of Ariel airiness
As haunted freckled Caliban.
“O ho! O ho! 't is noon I say.
The roses blow.
Away, away, above the hay,
To the song o' the bees the roses sway;
The love-lays 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,
Dusk's shaggy Satyrs waiting for
The Nymphs of moon, the Dryads white,
Who 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.
The roses blow.
Away, away, above the hay,
To the song o' the bees the roses sway;
The love-lays that they hum all day,
So low! so low!
The roses' Minnesingers they.”
35
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,
Dusk's shaggy Satyrs waiting for
The Nymphs of moon, the Dryads white,
Who 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.”
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.”
| The poems of Madison Cawein | |