The poems of Madison Cawein :: :: University of Virginia Library

113

A GRAY DAY

I

Long volleys of wind and of rain,
And the rain on the drizzled pane,
And the day ends chill and murk;
But on yesterday's eve, I trow,
The new-moon's thorn-thin bow
Stabbed rosy through gold and through glow,
Like a rich, barbaric dirk.

II

The throats of the snapdragons,—
Cool-colored with gold like the dawns
That come with spring o'er the hills,—
Are filled with a sweet rain, fine,
Of starry, scintillant shine,
A faery vat of thin wine,
That the rain for the elfins fills.

114

III

Dabbled the poppies shrink,
And the coxcomb and the pink;
And the candytuft's damp crown
Droops, dribbled, low bowed i' the wet;
And rows of the mignonette
Little musk-sacks open set,
Which the weight o' the dew drags down.

IV

Stretched taunt 'twixt the blades of grass,
A gossamer-fibered glass,
That the garden-spider spun,
The web, where the round rain clings
In the sag o' its middle, swings—
A hammock for elfin things
When the stars succeed the sun.

V

And, mark, where the pale gourd grows
As high as the climbing rose,
How the tiger-moth is pressed
To that wide leaf's under side.—
And I know where the red wasps hide,
And the brown bees,—that defied
The first strong gusts,—distressed.

115

VI

Yet I feel that the gray will blow
Aside for an afterglow;
And the wind, on a sudden, toss
Drenched boughs; a pattering shower
Athwart the red dusk in a glower,
Big drops heard hard on each flower,
The grass and the flowering moss.

VII

And then for a minute, may be,—
A pearl, hollow-worn, of the sea,—
A glimmer of moon will smile,
And a star, rinsed clean, through the dusk:
And a freshness of moonlit musk
O'er the showery lawns blow brusque
As spice from an Indian Isle.