Poems by Madison Julius Cawein Part 18

EVENING ON THE FARM

From out the hills where twilight stands, Above the shadowy pasture lands, With strained and strident cry, Beneath pale skies that sunset bands, The bull-bats fly.

A cloud hangs over, strange of shape, And, colored like the half-ripe grape, Seems some uneven stain On heaven's azure; thin as c.r.a.pe, And blue as rain.

By ways, that sunset's sardonyx O'erflares, and gates the farm-boy clicks, Through which the cattle came, The mullein-stalks seem giant wicks Of downy flame.

From woods no glimmer enters in, Above the streams that, wandering, win To where the wood pool bids, Those haunters of the dusk begin,-- The katydids.

Adown the dark the firefly marks Its flight in gold and emerald sparks; And, loosened from his chain, The s.h.a.ggy mastiff bounds and barks, And barks again.

Each breeze brings scents of hill-heaped hay; And now an owlet, far away, Cries twice or thrice, "T-o-o-w-h-o-o"; And cool dim moths of mottled gray Flit through the dew.

The silence sounds its frog-ba.s.soon, Where, on the woodland creek's lagoon,-- Pale as a ghostly girl Lost 'mid the trees,--looks down the moon With face of pearl.

Within the shed where logs, late hewed, Smell forest-sweet, and chips of wood Make blurs of white and brown, The brood-hen cuddles her warm brood Of teetering down.

The clattering guineas in the tree Din for a time; and quietly The henhouse, near the fence, Sleeps, save for some brief rivalry Of c.o.c.ks and hens.

A cowbell tinkles by the rails, Where, streaming white in foaming pails, Milk makes an uddery sound; While overhead the black bat trails Around and round.

The night is still. The slow cows chew A drowsy cud. The bird that flew And sang is in its nest.

It is the time of falling dew, Of dreams and rest.

The beehives sleep; and round the walk, The garden path, from stalk to stalk The bungling beetle booms, Where two soft shadows stand and talk Among the blooms.

The stars are thick: the light is dead That dyed the west: and Drowsyhead, Tuning his cricket-pipe, Nods, and some apple, round and red, Drops over-ripe.

Now down the road, that shambles by, A window, shining like an eye Through climbing rose and gourd, Shows Age and young Rusticity Seated at board.

THE LOCUST

Thou pulse of hotness, who, with reedlike breast, Makest meridian music, long and loud, Accentuating summer!--Dost thy best To make the sunbeams fiercer, and to crowd With lonesomeness the long, close afternoon-- When Labor leans, swart-faced and beady-browed, Upon his sultry scythe--thou tangible tune Of heat, whose waves incessantly arise Quivering and clear beneath the cloudless skies.

Thou singest, and upon his haggard hills Drouth yawns and rubs his heavy eyes and wakes; Brushes the hot hair from his face; and fills The land with death as sullenly he takes Downward his dusty way. 'Midst woods and fields At every pool his burning thirst he slakes: No grove so deep, no bank so high it shields A spring from him; no creek evades his eye: He needs but look and they are withered dry.

Thou singest, and thy song is as a spell Of somnolence to charm the land with sleep; A thorn of sound that pierces dale and dell, Diffusing slumber over vale and steep.

Sleepy the forest, nodding sleepy boughs; Sleepy the pastures with their sleepy sheep: Sleepy the creek where sleepily the cows Stand knee-deep; and the very heaven seems Sleepy and lost in undetermined dreams.

Art thou a rattle that Monotony, Summer's dull nurse, old sister of slow Time, Shakes for Day's peevish pleasure, who in glee Takes its discordant music for sweet rhyme?

Or oboe that the Summer Noontide plays, Sitting with Ripeness 'neath the orchard tree, Trying repeatedly the same shrill phrase, Until the musky peach with weariness Drops, and the hum of murmuring bees grows less?

THE DEAD DAY

The west builds high a sepulcher Of cloudy granite and of gold, Where twilight's priestly hours inter The Day like some great king of old.

A censer, rimmed with silver fire, The new moon swings above his tomb; While, organ-stops of G.o.d's own choir, Star after star throbs in the gloom.

And Night draws near, the sadly sweet-- A nun whose face is calm and fair-- And kneeling at the dead Day's feet Her soul goes up in mists like prayer.

In prayer, we feel through dewy gleam And flowery fragrance, and--above All earth--the ecstasy and dream That haunt the mystic heart of love.

THE OLD WATER MILL

Wild ridge on ridge the wooded hills arise, Between whose breezy vistas gulfs of skies Pilot great clouds like towering argosies, And hawk and buzzard breast the azure breeze.

With many a foaming fall and glimmering reach Of placid murmur, under elm and beech, The creek goes twinkling through long gleams and glooms Of woodland quiet, summered with perfumes: The creek, in whose clear shallows minnow-schools Glitter or dart; and by whose deeper pools The blue kingfishers and the herons haunt; That, often startled from the freckled flaunt Of blackberry-lilies--where they feed or hide-- Trail a lank flight along the forestside With eery clangor. Here a sycamore Smooth, wave-uprooted, builds from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e A headlong bridge; and there, a storm-hurled oak Lays a long dam, where sand and gravel choke The water's lazy way. Here mistflower blurs Its bit of heaven; there the ox-eye stirs Its gloaming hues of pearl and gold; and here, A gray, cool stain, like dawn's own atmosphere, The dim wild carrot lifts its crumpled crest: And over all, at slender flight or rest, The dragonflies, like coruscating rays Of lapis-lazuli and chrysoprase, Drowsily sparkle through the summer days: And, dewlap-deep, here from the noontide heat The bell-hung cattle find a cool retreat; And through the willows girdling the hill, Now far, now near, borne as the soft winds will, Comes the low rushing of the water-mill.

Ah, lovely to me from a little child, How changed the place! wherein once, undefiled, The glad communion of the sky and stream Went with me like a presence and a dream.

Where once the brambled meads and orchardlands, Poured ripe abundance down with mellow hands Of summer; and the birds of field and wood Called to me in a tongue I understood; And in the tangles of the old rail-fence Even the insect tumult had some sense, And every sound a happy eloquence: And more to me than wisest books can teach The wind and water said; whose words did reach My soul, addressing their magnificent speech,-- Raucous and rushing,--from the old mill-wheel, That made the rolling mill-cogs snore and reel, Like some old ogre in a faerytale Nodding above his meat and mug of ale.

How memory takes me back the ways that lead-- As when a boy--through woodland and through mead!

To orchards fruited; or to fields in bloom; Or briery fallows, like a mighty room, Through which the winds swing censers of perfume, And where deep blackberries spread miles of fruit;-- A wildwood feast, that stayed the plowboy's foot When to the ta.s.seling acres of the corn He drove his team, fresh in the primrose morn; And from the liberal banquet, nature lent, Plucked dewy handfuls as he whistling went.--

A boy once more, I stand with sunburnt feet And watch the harvester sweep down the wheat; Or laze with warm limbs in the unstacked straw Near by the thresher, whose insatiate maw Devours the sheaves, hot-drawling out its hum-- Like some great sleepy bee, above a bloom, Made drunk with honey--while, grown big with grain, The bulging sacks receive the golden rain.

Again I tread the valley, sweet with hay, And hear the bobwhite calling far away, Or wood-dove cooing in the elder-brake; Or see the sa.s.safras bushes madly shake As swift, a rufous instant, in the glen The red fox leaps and gallops to his den: Or, standing in the violet-colored gloam, Hear roadways sound with holiday riding home From church or fair, or country barbecue, Which half the county to some village drew.

How spilled with berries were its summer hills, And strewn with walnuts all its autumn rills!-- And chestnuts too! burred from the spring's long flowers; June's, when their tree-tops streamed delirious showers Of blossoming silver, cool, crepuscular, And like a nebulous radiance shone afar.-- And maples! how their sappy hearts would pour Rude troughs of syrup, when the winter h.o.a.r Steamed with the sugar-kettle, day and night, And, red, the snow was streaked with firelight.

Then it was glorious! the mill-dam's edge One slope of frosty crystal, laid a ledge Of pearl across; above which, sleeted trees Tossed arms of ice, that, clashing in the breeze, Tinkled the ringing creek with icicles, Thin as the peal of far-off elfin bells: A sound that in my city dreams I hear, That brings before me, under skies that clear, The old mill in its winter garb of snow, Its frozen wheel like a h.o.a.r beard below, And its west windows, two deep eyes aglow.

Ah, ancient mill, still do I picture o'er Thy cobwebbed stairs and loft and grain-strewn floor; Thy door,--like some brown, honest hand of toil, And honorable with service of the soil,-- Forever open; to which, on his back The prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack, And while the miller measures out his toll, Again I hear, above the cogs' loud roll,-- That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,-- The harmless gossip of the pa.s.sing day: Good country talk, that says how so-and-so Lived, died, or wedded: how curculio And codling-moth play havoc with the fruit, s.m.u.t ruins the corn and blight the grapes to boot: Or what is news from town: next county fair: How well the crops are looking everywhere:-- Now this, now that, on which their interests fix, Prospects for rain or frost, and politics.

While, all around, the sweet smell of the meal Filters, warm-pouring from the rolling wheel Into the bin; beside which, mealy white, The miller looms, dim in the dusty light.

Again I see the miller's home between The crinkling creek and hills of beechen green: Again the miller greets me, gaunt and brown, Who oft o'erawed my boyhood with his frown And gray-browed mien: again he tries to reach My youthful soul with fervid scriptural speech.-- For he, of all the countryside confessed, The most religious was and goodliest; A Methodist, who at all meetings led; Prayed with his family ere they went to bed.

No books except the Bible had he read-- At least so seemed it to my younger head.-- All things of Heaven and Earth he'd prove by this, Be it a fact or mere hypothesis: For to his simple wisdom, reverent, _"The Bible says"_ was all of argument.-- G.o.d keep his soul! his bones were long since laid Among the sunken gravestones in the shade Of those dark-lichened rocks, that wall around The family burying-ground with cedars crowned: Where bristling teasel and the brier combine With clambering wood-rose and the wildgrape-vine To hide the stone whereon his name and dates Neglect, with mossy hand, obliterates.

ARGONAUTS

With argosies of dawn he sails, And triremes of the dusk, The Seas of Song, whereon the gales Are myths that trail wild musk.

He hears the hail of Siren bands From headlands sunset-kissed; The Lotus-eaters wave pale hands Within a land of mist.

For many a league he hears the roar Of the Symplegades; And through the far foam of its sh.o.r.e The Isle of Sappho sees.

All day he looks, with hazy lids, At G.o.ds who cleave the deep; All night he hears the Nereds Sing their wild hearts asleep.

When heaven thunders overhead, And h.e.l.l upheaves the Vast, Dim faces of the ocean's dead Gaze at him from each mast.

He but repeats the oracle That bade him first set sail; And cheers his soul with, "All is well!