The poems of Madison Cawein

When the season was dry and the sun was hot,
And the hornet sucked, gaunt on the apricot,
And the ripe peach dropped, to its seed a-rot,
With a lean, red wasp that stung and clung:
When the hollyhocks, ranked in the garden plot,
More seed-pods had than blossoms, I wot,
Then all had been said and been sung,
And meseemed that my heart had forgot.

II

When the black grape bulged with the juice that burst
Through its thick blue skin that was cracked with thirst,
And the round, ripe pippins, that summer had nursed,
In the yellowing leaves o' the orchard hung:

When the farmer, his lips with whistling pursed,
To his sun-tanned brow in the corn was immersed,
Then something was said or was sung,
And I remembered as much as I durst.

III

Now the sky of December gray drips and drips,
And eaves of the barn the icicle tips,
And the cackling hen on the snow-path slips,
And the cattle shiver the fields among:
Now the ears of the milkmaid the north-wind nips,
And the red-chapped cheeks of the farm-boy whips,
What, what shall be said or be sung,
With my lips pressed warm to your lips!

University of Virginia Library

WHAT YOU WILL

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