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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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[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]

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64

[Night came, treading the darkness into burning stars]

Night came, treading the darkness into burning stars,
And in my heart waking again old wars.
The shadow of the past lay on my mind's sick gloom
As on a waste the shadow of a tomb.