Days and Dreams: Poems. Cawein Madison Julius

ghostly foxfire in the night.

      Now oar we through this willow fringe

      The bulging shore that bosks, – a tinge

      Of green mists down the marge; – where old,

      Scarred cottonwoods build walls of shade

      With breezy balsam pungent; bowled

      Around vined trunks the floods have made

      Concentric hollows. On we pass.

      As we pass, we pass, we pass,

      In daisy jungles deep as grass,

      A bubbling sparrow flirts above

      In wood-words with its woodland love:

      A white-streaked woodpecker afar

      Knocks: slant the sun dashed, each a star,

      Three glittering jays flash over: slim

      The piping sand-snipes skip and skim

      Before us: and a finch or thrush —

      Who may discover where such sing? —

      The silence rinses with a gush

      Of mellow music gurgling.

      On we pass, and onward oar

      To yon long lip of ragged shore,

      Where from yon rock spouts, babbling frore

      A ferny spring; where dodging by

      Rests sulphur-disced that butterfly;

      Mallows, rank crowded in for room,

      'Mid wild bean and wild mustard bloom;

      Where fishers 'neath those cottonwoods

      Last Spring encamped those ashes say

      And charcoal boughs. – 'T is long till buds! —

      Here who in August misses May?

3He speaks, resting

      Here the shores are irised; grasses

      Clump the water gray that glasses

      Broken wood and deepened distance:

      Far the musical persistence

      Of a field-lark lingers low

      In the west where tulips blow.

      White before us flames one pointed

      Star; and Day hath Night anointed

      King; from out her azure ewer

      Pouring starry fire, truer

      Than true gold. Star-crowned he stands

      With the starlight in his hands.

      Will the moon bleach through the ragged

      Tree-tops ere we reach yon jagged

      Rock, that rises gradually?

      Pharos of our homeward valley.

      Down the dusk burns golden-red;

      Embers are the stars o'erhead.

      At my soul some Protean elf is:

      You 're Simaetha, I am Delphis;

      You are Sappho and her Phaon —

      I. We love. There lies a ray on

      All the dark Æolian seas

      'Round the violet Lesbian leas.

      On we drift. He loves you. Nearer

      Looms our island. Rosier, clearer

      The Leucadian cliff we follow,

      Where the temple of Apollo

      Lifts a pale and pillared fire —

      Strike, oh, strike the Lydian lyre;

      Out of Hellas blows the breeze

      Singing to the Sapphic seas.

4He sings

      Night, Night, 't is night. The moon before to love us,

      And all the moonlight tangled in the stream:

      Love, love, my love, and all the stars above us,

      The stars above and every star a dream.

      In odorous purple, where the falling warble

      Of water cascades and the plunged foam glows,

      A columned ruin heaps its sculptured marble

      Curled with the chiselled rebeck and the rose.

She sings

      Sleep, Sleep, sweet Sleep sleeps at the drifting tiller,

      And in our sail the Spirit of the Rain —

      Love, love, my love, ah bid thy heart be stiller,

      And, hark! the music of the harping main.

      What flowers are those that blow their balm unto us?

      Bow white their brows' aromas each a flame?

      Ah, child, too kind the love we know, that knew us,

      That kissed our eyes that we might see the same.

He

      Night! night! good night! no dream it is to vanish,

      The temple and the nightingale are there;

      The thornless roses bruising none to banish,

      The moon and one wild poppy in thy hair.

She

      Night! night! good night! and love's own star before thee,

      And love's star-image in the starry sea;

      Yes, yes, ah yes! a presence to watch o'er thee —

      Night! night! good night and good the gods to thee!

5Homeward through flowers: she speaks

      O simple offerings of the common hills;

      Love's lowly names, that make you trebly sweet!

      One Johnny-jump-up, but an apron-full

      Of starry crowfoot, making mossy dells

      Dim with heaven's morning blue; dew-dripping plumes

      Of waxen "dog-mouths"; red the tippling cups

      Of gypsy-lilies all along the creek,

      Where dull the freckled silence sleeps, and dark

      The water runs when, at high noon, the cows

      Wade knee-deep and the heat hums drowsy with

      The drone of dizzy flies; – one Samson-flower

      Blue-streaked and crystal as a summer's cloud;

      White violets, milk-weed, scarlet Indian-pinks,

      All fragile-scented and familiar as

      Pink baby faces and blue infant eyes.

      O fair suggestions of a life more fair!

      Love's fragrant whispers of an untaught faith,

      High habitations 'neath a godlier blue

      Beyond the sin of Earth, in heavens prepared —

      What is it? – halcyon to utter calm,

      Faith? such as wrinkled wisdom, doubting, has

      Yearned for and sought in miser'd lore of worlds,

      And vainly? – Love? – Oh, have I learned to live?

6He speaks

      Would you have known it seeing it?

      Could you have seen it being it?

      Waving me out of the budding land

      Sunbeam-jewelled a bloom-white hand,

      Wafting