Kentucky Poems. Cawein Madison Julius

gusts of spices brief

      Borne over bosks of sassafras

      By winds that foot it on the grass;

      Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings,

      That hint at untold hidden things —

      Pan and Sylvanus who of old

      Kept sacred each wild wood and wold.

      A wily light beneath the trees

      Quivers and dusks with every breeze —

      A Hamadryad, haply, who, —

      Culling her morning meal of dew

      From frail, accustomed cups of flowers, —

      Now sees some Satyr in the bowers,

      Or hears his goat-hoof snapping press

      Some brittle branch, and in distress

      Shrinks back; her dark, dishevelled hair

      Veiling her limbs one instant there.

II

      Down precipices of the dawn

      The rivers of the day are drawn,

      The soundless torrents, free and far,

      Of gold that deluge every star.

      There is a sound of brooks and wings

      That fills the woods with carollings;

      And, dashed on moss and flow'r and fern,

      And leaves, that quiver, breathe and burn,

      Rose-radiance smites the solitudes,

      The dew-drenched hills, the dripping woods,

      That twitter as with canticles

      Of shade and light; and wind, that smells

      Of flowers, and buds, and boisterous bees,

      Delirious honey, and wet trees. —

      Through briers that trip them, one by one,

      With swinging pails, that take the sun,

      A troop of girls comes – berriers,

      Whose bare feet glitter where they pass

      Through dewdrop-trembling tufts of grass.

      And, oh! their laughter and their cheers

      Wake Echo 'mid her shrubby rocks

      Who, answering, from her mountain mocks

      With rapid fairy horns; as if

      Each mossy vale and weedy cliff

      Had its imperial Oberon,

      Who, seeking his Titania, hid

      In coverts caverned from the sun,

      In kingly wrath had called and chid.

      Cloud-feathers, oozing orange light,

      Make rich the Indian locks of night;

      Her dusky waist with sultry gold

      Girdled and buckled fold on fold.

      One star. A sound of bleating flocks.

      Great shadows stretched along the rocks,

      Like giant curses overthrown

      By some Arthurian champion.

      Soft-swimming sorceries of mist

      That streak blue glens with amethyst.

      And, tinkling in the clover dells,

      The twilight sound of cattle-bells.

      And where the marsh in reed and grass

      Burns, angry as a shattered glass,

      The flies make golden blurs, that shine

      Like drops of amber-scattered wine

      Spun high by reeling Bacchanals,

      When Bacchus wreathes his curling hair

      With vine-leaves, and from every lair

      His worshippers around him calls.

      They come, they come, a happy throng,

      The berriers with gibe and song;

      Their pails brimmed black to tin-bright eaves

      With luscious fruit, kept cool with leaves

      Of aromatic sassafras;

      'Twixt which some sparkling berry slips,

      Like laughter, from the purple mass,

      Wine-swollen as Silenus' lips.

III

      The tanned and tired noon climbs high

      Up burning reaches of the sky;

      Below the drowsy belts of pines

      The rock-ledged river foams and shines;

      And over rainless hill and dell

      Is blown the harvest's sultry smell:

      While, in the fields, one sees and hears

      The brawny-throated harvesters, —

      Their red brows beaded with the heat, —

      By twos and threes among the wheat

      Flash their hot scythes; behind them press

      The binders – men and maids that sing

      Like some mad troop of piping Pan; —

      While all the hillsides swoon and ring

      Such sounds of Ariel airiness

      As haunted freckled Caliban.

      'O ho! O ho! 'tis noon I say.

      The roses blow.

      Away, away, above the hay,

      To the tune o' the bees the roses sway;

      The love-songs that they hum all day,

      So low! So low!

      The roses' Minnesingers they.'

      Up velvet lawns of lilac skies

      The tawny moon begins to rise

      Behind low, blue-black hills of trees, —

      As rises up, in Siren seas,

      To rock in purple deeps, hip-hid,

      A virgin-bosomed Oceanid. —

      Gaunt shadows crouch by tree and scaur,

      Like shaggy Satyrs waiting for

      The moonbeam Nymphs, the Dryads white,

      That take with loveliness the night,

      And glorify it with their love.

      The sweet, far notes I hear, I hear,

      Beyond dim pines and mellow ways,

      The song of some fair harvester,

      The lovely Limnad of the grove,

      Whose singing charms me while it slays.

      'O deep! O deep! the earth and air

      Are sunk in sleep.

      Adieu to care! Now everywhere

      Is rest; and by the old oak there

      The maiden with the nut-brown hair

      Doth keep, doth keep

      Tryst with her lover the young and fair.'

IV

      Like Atalanta's spheres of gold,

      Within the orchard, apples rolled

      From sudden hands of boughs that lay

      Their leaves, like palms, against the day;

      And near them pears of rusty brown

      Lay bruised; and peaches, pink with down,

      And furry as the ears of Pan,

      Or, like Diana's cheeks, a tan

      Beneath