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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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[Lead me, thou Bard of Beauty, through those caves]

[O let me sing as thou didst, Keats, and die]

[In the forest of music often and often]

[When winter nights are cold and shrill]

[The roar of winter through the palsied oaks]

[I've wooed soft sleep all night]

[With its helm of silver and spur of gold]

[By the willow copse near the river shore]

[O wilding of the young, young June]

[When all the orchards faded lie]

[The moon is a lemon petal]

[Deep down, deep down, deep, deep, deep]

[Come, kiss me, beautiful Death]

[Cheerily rang the bugle horn]

[And now yon crystal mount of clouds]

[The broad Ohio's darkening stream]

[O wind of eve, what spices, steeped]

[When eve casts on the day's dark bier]

[O my Kentucky, forest old!]

[A distant river glimpsed through deep-leaved trees]

[No more for me shall gray-robed Dawn look through]

[I saw sweet Summer go]

[When the jeweled lights of the fireflies gleam]

[Thus in the dusk as ghosts they met]

[In dimly lighted cloisters of the heart]

[Amid the summer fields and flowers]

[Keep thou my face engraven in thine heart]

[One milk-white hand she stretched to me]

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[Now that the dawn is up, is up]

[Dark woodland ways of drowsy rustlings]

[The thunder boomed from cloudy ridge to ridge]

[Who now hath understood]

[High up she glides, high up, the quartz-white moon]

[The hope, the hate, the bitterness of love]

[Barbaric burgonets, heavy with gems]

[Thou hast no thought for one who walks 'mid flowers]

[Thou art to me the whole of heaven]

[Two unshed tears made beautiful her eyes]

[Oh, for the gods of the Greeks]

[A languid land of lazy moons and stars]

[The haymakers' sickles]

[She whom I loved too well]

[Tell me, do you love to lie]

[What gladness of the young, young Earth]

[Maid Marian rose in the morn betime]

[Look at me over your shoulder, lass]

[Oh, could I only grieve you]

[You who would not have me]

[Dim gleam and gloom]

[Along the west a cloud-wrought crimson cloth]

[What of the sea when the storm clouds thicken]

[Between the meads of millet]

[Her eyes were dark with the darkness of hell]

[Night came, treading the darkness into burning stars]

[On the sunset's cloudy tide]

[Alas! how hearts go groping]

[Why is it thus with me as days go by]

[Swift as the poplar, with its lordly height]

[While lone I stood]

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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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[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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“WHEN SPRING COMES DOWN THE WILDWOOD WAY”

HILDA OF THE HILLSIDE

DAWN IN THE ALLEGHANIES

AUTUMN ETCHINGS

THE CHARCOAL-BURNER'S HUT

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19

[Come, kiss me, beautiful Death]

Come, kiss me, beautiful Death,
And lull me with thy wings;
Breathe on me with thy breath,
And touch my soul with things
Unknown of life. Imbue
My body with thy dew
And bear me far away
Into a deeper dawn
Than lights life's shadowy lawn,
Some fairer break-of-day.

Life's sickness, long and old,
Cure in me; everything:
Life's greed for fame and gold
And love and suffering.
Yea, I am young and fair!
Come, take me by the hair
And kiss me on the eyes;
Then bear me through the deep,
As thy brother, dream-tossed Sleep,
Hath borne me loving-wise.