Blooms of the Berry. Madison Julius Cawein

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      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.

       Table of Contents

THE HOLLOW.

       Table of Contents

      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.

       Table of Contents

      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

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