Poems. Cawein Madison Julius

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        Before I found her I had found

          Within my heart, as in a brook,

        Reflections of her: now a sound

          Of imaged beauty; now a look.

        So when I found her, gazing in

          Those Bibles of her eyes, above

        All earth, I read no word of sin;

          Their holy chapters all were love.

        I read them through. I read and saw

          The soul impatient of the sod—

        Her soul, that through her eyes did draw

          Mine—to the higher love of God.

        I am a part of all you see

        In Nature; part of all you feel:

        I am the impact of the bee

        Upon the blossom; in the tree

        I am the sap,—that shall reveal

        The leaf, the bloom,—that flows and flutes

        Up from the darkness through its roots.

        I am the vermeil of the rose,

        The perfume breathing in its veins;

        The gold within the mist that glows

        Along the west and overflows

        With light the heaven; the dew that rains

        Its freshness down and strings with spheres

        Of wet the webs and oaten ears.

        I am the egg that folds the bird;

        The song that beaks and breaks its shell;

        The laughter and the wandering word

        The water says; and, dimly heard,

        The music of the blossom's bell

        When soft winds swing it; and the sound

        Of grass slow-creeping o'er the ground.

        I am the warmth, the honey-scent

        That throats with spice each lily-bud

        That opens, white with wonderment,

        Beneath the moon; or, downward bent,

        Sleeps with a moth beneath its hood:

        I am the dream that haunts it too,

        That crystallizes into dew.

        I am the seed within the pod;

        The worm within its closed cocoon:

        The wings within the circling clod,

        The germ, that gropes through soil and sod

        To beauty, radiant in the noon:

        I am all these, behold! and more—

        I am the love at the world-heart's core.

        My soul goes out to her who says,

        "Come, follow me and cast off care!"

        Then tosses back her sun-bright hair,

        And like a flower before me sways

        Between the green leaves and my gaze:

        This creature like a girl, who smiles

        Into my eyes and softly lays

        Her hand in mine and leads me miles,

        Long miles of haunted forest ways.

        Sometimes she seems a faint perfume,

        A fragrance that a flower exhaled

        And God gave form to; now, unveiled,

        A sunbeam making gold the gloom

        Of vines that roof some woodland room

        Of boughs; and now the silvery sound

        Of streams her presence doth assume—

        Music, from which, in dreaming drowned,

        A crystal shape she seems to bloom.

        Sometimes she seems the light that lies

        On foam of waters where the fern

        Shimmers and drips; now, at some turn

        Of woodland, bright against the skies,

        She seems the rainbowed mist that flies;

        And now the mossy fire that breaks

        Beneath the feet in azure eyes

        Of flowers; now the wind that shakes

        Pale petals from the bough that sighs.

        Sometimes she lures me with a song;

        Sometimes she guides me with a laugh;

        Her white hand is a magic staff,

        Her look a spell to lead me long:

        Though she be weak and I be strong,

        She needs but shake her happy hair,

        But glance her eyes, and, right or wrong,

        My soul must follow—anywhere

        She wills—far from the world's loud throng.

        Sometimes I think that she must be

        No part of earth, but merely this—

        The fair, elusive thing we miss

        In Nature, that we dream we see

        Yet never see: that goldenly

        Beckons; that, limbed with rose and pearl,

        The Greek made a divinity:—

        A nymph, a god, a glimmering girl,

        That haunts the forest's mystery.

        The summer takes СКАЧАТЬ