Shapes and Shadows. Cawein Madison Julius

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      There are some things that entertain me more

      Than men or books; and to my knowledge seem

      A key of Poetry, made of magic lore

      Of childhood, opening many a fabled door

      Of superstition, mystery, and dream

      Enchantment locked of yore.

      For, when through dusking woods my pathway lies,

      Often I feel old spells, as o'er me flits

      The bat, like some black thought that, troubled, flies

      Round some dark purpose; or before me cries

      The owl that, like an evil conscience, sits

      A shadowy voice and eyes.

      Then, when down blue canals of cloudy snow

      The white moon oars her boat, and woods vibrate

      With crickets, lo, I hear the hautboys blow

      Of Elf-land; and when green the fireflies glow,

      See where the goblins hold a Fairy Fête

      With lanthorn row on row.

      Strange growths, that ooze from long-dead logs and spread

      A creamy fungus, where the snail, uncoiled,

      And fat slug feed at morn, are Pixy bread

      Made of the yeasted dew; the lichens red,

      Besides these grown, are meat the Brownies broiled

      Above a glow-worm bed.

      The smears of silver on the webs that line

      The tree's crook'd roots, or stretch, white-wove, within

      The hollow stump, are stains of Faëry wine

      Spilled on the cloth where Elf-land sat to dine,

      When night beheld them drinking, chin to chin,

      O' the moon's fermented shine.

      What but their chairs the mushrooms on the lawn,

      Or toadstools hidden under flower and fern,

      Tagged with the dotting dew! – With knees updrawn

      Far as his eyes, have I not come upon

      Puck seated there? but scarcely 'round could turn

      Ere, presto! he was gone.

      And so though Science from the woods hath tracked

      The Elfin; and with prosy lights of day

      Unhallowed all his haunts; and, dulling, blacked

      Our eyesight, still hath Beauty never lacked

      For seers yet; who, in some wizard way,

      Prove Fancy real as Fact.

      My thoughts have borne me far away

      To Beauties of an older day,

      Where, crowned with roses, stands the Dawn,

      Striking her seven-stringed barbiton

      Of flame, whose chords give being to

      The seven colours, hue for hue;

      The music of the colour-dream

      She builds the day from, beam by beam.

      My thoughts have borne me far away

      To Myths of a diviner day,

      Where, sitting on the mountain, Noon

      Sings to the pines a sun-soaked tune

      Of rest and shade and clouds and skies,

      Wherein her calm dreams idealize

      Light as a presence, heavenly fair,

      Sleeping with all her beauty bare.

      My thoughts have borne me far away

      To Visions of a wiser day,

      Where, stealing through the wilderness,

      Night walks, a sad-eyed votaress,

      And prays with mystic words she hears

      Behind the thunder of the spheres,

      The starry utterance that's hers,

      With which she fills the Universe.

      Quaint and forgotten, by an unused road,

      An old house stands: around its doors the dense

      Blue iron-weeds grow high;

      The chipmunks make a highway of its fence;

      And on its sunken flagstones slug and toad

      Silent as lichens lie.

      The timid snake upon its hearth's cool sand

      Sleeps undisturbed; the squirrel haunts its roof;

      And in the clapboard sides

      Of closets, dim with many a spider woof,

      Like the uncertain tapping of a hand,

      The beetle-borer hides.

      Above its lintel, under mossy eaves,

      The mud-wasps build their cells; and in the floor

      Of its neglected porch

      The black bees nest. Through each deserted door,

      Vague as a phantom's footsteps, steal the leaves,

      And dropped cones of the larch.

      But come with me when sunset's magic old

      Transforms the ruin of that ancient house;

      When windows, one by one, —

      Like age's eyes, that youth's love-dreams arouse, —

      Grow lairs of fire; and glad mouths of gold

      Its wide doors, in the sun.

      Or let us wait until each rain-stained room

      Is carpeted with moonlight, pattened oft

      With the deep boughs o'erhead;

      And through the house the wind goes rustling soft,

      As might the ghost – a whisper of perfume —

      Of some sweet girl long dead.

      Here, at its base, in dingled deeps

      Of spice-bush, where the ivy creeps,

      The cold spring scoops its hollow;

      And there three mossy stepping-stones

      Make ripple murmurs; undertones

      Of foam that blend and follow

      With voices of the wood that drones.

      The quail pipes here when noons are hot;

      And here, in coolness sunlight-shot

      Beneath a roof of briers,

      The red-fox skulks at close of day;

      And here at night, the shadows gray

      Stand like Franciscan friars,

      With moonbeam beads whereon they pray.

      Here yawns the ground-hog's dark-dug hole;

      And there the tunnel of the mole

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