Blooms of the Berry Part 1

Blooms of the Berry.

by Madison J. Cawein.

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 sc.u.mmy pond sleeps lazily, Clad thick with lilies, and the bee Reels boisterous as a Ba.s.sarid Above the bloated green frog hid In lush wan calamus and gra.s.s, Beside the water's stagnant gla.s.s.

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 pa.s.sions 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 sa.s.safras; Wind-cuffs that dodge the laughing gra.s.s; Sharp, sudden songs and whisperings That hint at untold hidden things, Pan and Sylva.n.u.s that of old Kept sacred each wild wood and wold.

A wily light beneath the trees Quivers and dusks with ev'ry breeze; Mayhap some Hamadryad who, Culling her morning meal of dew From frail accustomed cups of flowers-- Some Satyr watching through the bowers-- Had, when his goat hoof snapped and pressed A brittle branch, shrunk back distressed, Startled, her wild, tumultuous hair Bathing her limbs one instant there.

ANTIc.i.p.aTION.

Windy the sky and mad; Surly the gray March day; Bleak the forests and sad, Sad for the beautiful May.

On maples ta.s.seled with red No blithe bird swinging sung; The brook in its lonely bed Complained in an unknown tongue.

We walked in the wasted wood: Her face as the Spring's was fair, Her blood was the Spring's own blood, The Spring's her radiant hair,

And we found in the windy wild One cowering violet, Like a frail and tremulous child In the caked leaves bowed and wet.

And I sighed at the sight, with pain For the May's warm face in the wood, May's pa.s.sions of sun and rain, May's raiment of bloom and of bud.