A Voice on the Wind, and Other Poems. Cawein Madison Julius

as a wild rose is,

      Till they gaze on naught but bliss.

      "On the meadows you will hear,

      Leaning low your spirit ear,

      Cautious footsteps drawing near.

      "You will deem it but a bee,

      Murmuring soft and sleepily,

      Till your inner sight shall see

      "'Tis a presence passing slow,

      All its shining hair ablow,

      Through the white-tops' tossing snow.

      "By the waters, if you will,

      And your inmost soul be still,

      Melody your ears shall fill.

      "You will deem it but the stream

      Rippling onward in a dream,

      Till upon your gaze shall gleam

      "Arm of spray and throat of foam —

      'Tis a spirit there aroam

      Where the radiant waters comb.

      "In the forest, if you heed,

      You shall hear a magic reed

      Sow sweet notes like silver seed.

      "You will deem your ears have heard

      Stir of tree or song of bird,

      Till your startled eyes are blurred

      "By a vision, instant seen,

      Naked gold and beryl green,

      Glimmering bright the boughs between.

      "Follow me! and you shall see

      Wonder-worlds of mystery

      That are only known to me!"

      Thus outside my city door

      Speaks the Wind its wildwood lore,

      Speaks and lo! I go once more.

      THE SPIRIT OF THE FOREST SPRING

      Over the rocks she trails her locks,

      Her mossy locks that drip, drip, drip;

      Her sparkling eyes smile at the skies

      In friendship-wise and fellowship;

      While the gleam and glance of her countenance

      Lull into trance the woodland places,

      As over the rocks she trails her locks,

      Her dripping locks that the long fern graces.

      She pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruse,

      Its crystal cruse that drips, drips, drips;

      And all the day its diamond spray

      Is heard to play from her finger-tips;

      And the slight soft sound makes haunted ground

      Of the woods around that the sunlight laces,

      As she pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruse,

      Its dripping cruse that no man traces.

      She swims and swims with glimmering limbs,

      With lucid limbs that drip, drip, drip;

      Where beechen boughs build a leafy house

      For her form to drowse or her feet to trip;

      And the liquid beat of her rippling feet

      Makes three-times sweet the forest mazes,

      As she swims and swims with glimmering limbs,

      With dripping limbs through the twilight's hazes.

      Then wrapped in deeps of the wild she sleeps,

      She whispering sleeps and drips, drips, drips;

      Where moon and mist wreathe neck and wrist,

      While, starry-whist, through the night she slips;

      And the heavenly dream of her soul makes gleam

      The falls that stream and the foam that races,

      As wrapped in deeps of the wild she sleeps,

      She dripping sleeps or starward gazes.

      TO THE LEAF-CRICKET

I

      Small twilight singer

      Of dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger

      Of dusk's dim glimmer,

      How cool thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmer

      Vibrate, soft-sighing,

      Meseems, for Summer that is dead or dying.

      I stand and listen,

      And at thy song the garden-beds, that glisten

      With rose and lily,

      Seem touched with sadness; and the tuberose chilly,

      Breathing around its cold and colorless breath,

      Fills the pale evening with wan hints of death.

II

      I see thee quaintly

      Beneath the leaf; thy shell-shaped winglets faintly —

      As thin as spangle

      Of cobwebbed rain – held up at airy angle;

      I hear thy tinkle,

      Thy fairy notes, the silvery stillness sprinkle;

      Investing wholly

      The moonlight with divinest melancholy:

      Until, in seeming,

      I see the Spirit of the Summer dreaming

      Amid her ripened orchards, apple-strewn,

      Her great, grave eyes fixed on the harvest-moon.

III

      As dew-drops beady,

      As mist minute, thy notes ring low and reedy:

      The vaguest vapor

      Of melody, now near; now, like some taper

      Of sound, far fading —

      Thou will-o'-wisp of music aye evading.

      Among the bowers,

      The fog-washed stalks of Autumn's weeds and flowers,

      By hill and hollow,

      I hear thy murmur and in vain I follow —

      Thou jack-o'-lantern voice, thou elfin cry,

      Thou dirge, that tellest Beauty she must die.

IV

      And when the frantic

      Wild winds of Autumn with the dead leaves antic;

      And walnuts scatter

      The mire of lanes; and dropping acorns patter

      In grove and forest,

      Like some frail grief, with the rude blast thou warrest,

      Sending thy slender

      Far cry against the gale, that, rough, untender,

      Untouched of sorrow,

      Sweeps thee aside, where, haply, I to-morrow

      Shall find thee lying, tiny, cold and crushed,

      Thy weak wings folded and thy music hushed.

      THE OWLET

I

      When dusk is drowned in drowsy dreams,

      And slow the hues of sunset die;

      When firefly and moth go by,

      And