Kentucky Poems. Cawein Madison Julius

his cosmopolitan writings, have been neglected in favour of such lyrics as would present him most vividly in his own native landscape, no visitor in spirit to Europe, but at home in that bright and exuberant West —

      Where, in the hazy morning, runs

      The stony branch that pools and drips,

      Where red-haws and the wild-rose hips

      Are strewn like pebbles; where the sun's

      Own gold seems captured by the weeds;

      To see, through scintillating seeds,

      The hunters steal with glimmering guns.

      To stand within the dewy ring

      Where pale death smites the bone-set blooms,

      And everlasting's flowers, and plumes

      Of mint, with aromatic wing!

      And hear the creek, – whose sobbing seems

      A wild man murmuring in his dreams, —

      And insect violins that sing!

      So sweet a voice, so consonant with the music of the singers of past times, heard in a place so fresh and strange, will surely not pass without its welcome from the lovers of genuine poetry.

      EDMUND GOSSE.

      PROLOGUE

      There is a poetry that speaks

      Through common things: the grasshopper,

      That in the hot weeds creaks and creaks,

      Says all of summer to my ear:

      And in the cricket's cry I hear

      The fireside speak, and feel the frost

      Work mysteries of silver near

      On country casements, while, deep lost

      In snow, the gatepost seems a sheeted ghost.

      And other things give rare delight:

      Those guttural harps the green-frogs tune,

      Those minstrels of the falling night,

      That hail the sickle of the moon

      From grassy pools that glass her lune:

      Or, – all of August in its loud

      Dry cry, – the locust's call at noon,

      That tells of heat and never a cloud

      To veil the pitiless sun as with a shroud.

      The rain, – whose cloud dark-lids the moon,

      The great white eyeball of the night, —

      Makes music for me; to its tune

      I hear the flowers unfolding white,

      The mushroom growing, and the slight

      Green sound of grass that dances near;

      The melon ripening with delight;

      And in the orchard, soft and clear,

      The apple redly rounding out its sphere.

      The grigs make music as of old,

      To which the fairies whirl and shine

      Within the moonlight's prodigal gold,

      On woodways wild with many a vine:

      When all the wilderness with wine

      Of stars is drunk, I hear it say —

      'Is God restricted to confine

      His wonders only to the day,

      That yields the abstract tangible to clay?'

      And to my ear the wind of Morn, —

      When on her rubric forehead far

      One star burns big, – lifts a vast horn

      Of wonder where all murmurs are:

      In which I hear the waters war,

      The torrent and the blue abyss,

      And pines, – that terrace bar on bar

      The mountain side, – like lovers' kiss,

      And whisper words where naught but grandeur is.

      The jutting crags, – all iron-veined

      With ore, – the peaks, where eagles scream,

      That pour their cataracts, rainbow-stained,

      Like hair, in many a mountain stream,

      Can lift my soul beyond the dream

      Of all religions; make me scan

      No mere external or extreme,

      But inward pierce the outward plan

      And learn that rocks have souls as well as man.

      FOREST AND FIELD

I

      Green, watery jets of light let through

      The rippling foliage drenched with dew;

      And golden glimmers, warm and dim,

      That in the vistaed distance swim;

      Where, 'round the wood-spring's oozy urn,

      The limp, loose fronds of forest fern

      Trail like the tresses, green and wet,

      A wood-nymph binds with violet.

      O'er rocks that bulge and roots that knot

      The emerald-amber mosses clot;

      From matted walls of brier and brush

      The elder nods its plumes of plush;

      And, Argus-eyed with many a bloom,

      The wild-rose breathes its wild perfume;

      May-apples, ripening yellow, lean

      With oblong fruit, a lemon-green,

      Near Indian-turnips, long of stem,

      That bear an acorn-oval gem,

      As if some woodland Bacchus there, —

      While braiding locks of hyacinth hair

      With ivy-tod, – had idly tost

      His thyrsus down and so had lost:

      And blood-root, that from scarlet wombs

      Puts forth, in spring, its milk-white blooms,

      That then like starry footsteps shine

      Of April under beech and pine;

      At which the gnarled eyes of trees

      Stare, big as Fauns' at Dryades,

      That bend above a fountain's spar

      As white and naked as a star.

      The stagnant stream flows sleepily

      Thick with its lily-pads; the bee, —

      All honey-drunk, a Bassarid, —

      Booms past the mottled toad, that, hid

      In calamus-plants and blue-eyed grass,

      Beside the water's pooling glass,

      Silenus-like, eyes stolidly

      The Mænad-glittering dragonfly.

      And pennyroyal and peppermint

      Pour dry-hot odours without stint

      From fields and banks of many streams;

      And in their scent one almost seems

      To see Demeter pass, her breath

      Sweet with her triumph over death. —

      A haze of floating saffron; sound

      Of shy, crisp creepings o'er the ground;

      The dip and stir of twig and leaf;

      Tempestuous