Blooms of the Berry. Cawein Madison Julius

n Julius

      Blooms of the Berry

      PROEM

      Wine-warm winds that sigh and sing,

      Led me, wrapped in many moods,

      Thro' the green sonorous woods

      Of belated Spring;

      Till I came where, glad with heat,

      Waste and wild the fields were strewn,

      Olden as the olden moon,

      At my weary feet;

      Wild and white with starry bloom,

      One far milky-way that dashed,

      When some mad wind o'er it flashed,

      Into billowy foam.

      I, bewildered, gazed around,

      As one on whose heavy dreams

      Comes a sudden burst of beams,

      Like a mighty sound.

      If the grander flowers I sought,

      But these berry-blooms to you,

      Evanescent as their dew,

      Only these I brought.

July 3, 1887.

      I. – BY WOLD AND WOOD

      THE HOLLOW

I

      Fleet swallows soared and darted

      'Neath empty vaults of blue;

      Thick leaves close clung or parted

      To let the sunlight through;

      Each wild rose, honey-hearted,

      Bowed full of living dew.

II

      Down deep, fair fields of Heaven,

      Beat wafts of air and balm,

      From southmost islands driven

      And continents of calm;

      Bland winds by which were given

      Hid hints of rustling palm.

III

      High birds soared high to hover;

      Thick leaves close clung to slip;

      Wild rose and snowy clover

      Were warm for winds to dip,

      And one ungentle lover,

      A bee with robber lip.

IV

      Dart on, O buoyant swallow!

      Kiss leaves and willing rose!

      Whose musk the sly winds follow,

      And bee that booming goes; —

      But in this quiet hollow

      I'll walk, which no one knows.

V

      None save the moon that shineth

      At night through rifted trees;

      The lonely flower that twineth

      Frail blooms that no one sees;

      The whippoorwill that pineth;

      The sad, sweet-swaying breeze;

VI

      The lone white stars that glitter;

      The stream's complaining wave;

      Gray bats that dodge and flitter;

      Black crickets hid that rave;

      And me whose life is bitter,

      And one white head stone grave.

      BY WOLD AND WOOD

I

      Green, watery jets of light let through

      The rippling foliage drenched with dew;

      Bland glow-worm glamours warm and dim

      Above the mystic vistas swim,

      Where, 'round the fountain's oozy urn,

      The limp, loose fronds of limber fern

      Wave dusky tresses thin and wet,

      Blue-filleted with violet.

      O'er roots that writhe in snaky knots

      The moss in amber cushions clots;

      From wattled walls of brier and brush

      The elder's misty attars gush;

      And, Argus-eyed, by knoll and bank

      The affluent wild rose flowers rank;

      And stol'n in shadowy retreats,

      In black, rich soil, your vision greets

      The colder undergrowths of woods,

      Damp, lushy-leaved, whose gloomier moods

      Turn all the life beneath to death

      And rottenness for their own breath.

      May-apples waxen-stemmed and large

      With their bloom-screening breadths of targe;

      Wake robins dark-green leaved, their stems

      Tipped with green, oval clumps of gems,

      As if some woodland Bacchus there

      A-braiding of his yellow hair

      With ivy-tod had idly tost

      His thyrsus there, and so had lost.

      Low blood root with its pallid bloom,

      The red life of its mother's womb

      Through all its ardent pulses fine

      Beating in scarlet veins of wine.

      And where the knotty eyes of trees

      Stare wide, like Fauns' at Dryades

      That lave smooth limbs in founts of spar,

      Shines many a wild-flower's tender star.

II

      The scummy pond sleeps lazily,

      Clad thick with lilies, and the bee

      Reels boisterous as a Bassarid

      Above the bloated green frog hid

      In lush wan calamus and grass,

      Beside the water's stagnant glass.

      The piebald dragon-fly, like one

      A-weary of the world and sun,

      Comes blindly blundering along,

      A pedagogue, gaunt, lean, and long,

      Large-headed naturalist with wise,

      Great, glaring goggles on his eyes.

      And dry and hot the fragrant mint

      Pours grateful odors without stint

      From cool, clay banks of cressy streams,

      Rare as the musks of rich hareems,

      And hot as some sultana's breath

      With turbulent passions or with death.

      A haze of floating saffron; sound

      Of shy, crisp creepings o'er the ground;

      The dip and stir of twig and leaf;

      Tempestuous gusts of spices brief

      From elder bosks and sassafras;

      Wind-cuffs that dodge the laughing grass;

      Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings

      That hint at untold hidden things,

      Pan and Sylvanus that of old

      Kept sacred each wild wood and wold.

      A wily light beneath the trees

      Quivers