The Poems of Madison Cawein, Volume 3 (of 5) Nature poems

The bird, that sang so sweet, is still At dusk and dawn; No more it makes the silence thrill Of wood and lawn. In vain the buds, when it is near, Open each pink and perfumed ear...

It is the time to cast off care; To make glad intimates of these:-- The frank-faced sunbeam laughing there: The great-heart wind, that bids us share The optimism of the trees.

Last night the sleet made white the world: All day the wind moaned in the pines: Now like a wolf, that whines and whines, Like some wild wolf its hate is hurled

And when she saw me, all her face Bloomed like a wild-rose by the stream; And to my breast a moment’s space I gathered her; and all the place Seemed conscious of some happy drea...

Like Atalanta’s spheres of gold, Within the orchard, apples rolled From sudden hands of boughs that lay Their leaves, like palms, against the day; And near them pears of rusty b...

The Winter Wind, the wind of death, Who knocked upon my door, Now through the key-hole entereth, Invisible and hoar: He breathes around his icy breath And treads the flickering...

And it stood there, brown and gray, In the bee-boom and the bloom, In the shadow and the ray, In the passion and perfume, Grave as age among the gay.

Where, I dream, my youth still crosses, With a corn-sack for the meal, Through the sprinkled ferns and mosses, To the gray mill’s lichened wheel, Where the water drips and tosses.

Brown as the agaric that frills dead trees, Or those fantastic fungi of the woods That crowd the dampness--are you kin to these In some mysterious way that still eludes My fancy...

What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well?-- A path that brings me through the frost Of winter, when the moon is tossed In clouds; beneath great cedars...

Myrrh and music everywhere Haunt its cascades--like the hair That a Naiad tosses cool, Swimming strangely beautiful, With white fragrance for her bosom, And her mouth a breath o...

Moon in a cloud, as white as snow, Mist in the vale where the rivulet bounds, Dropping from ledge to ledge below, Turning to gold in the sunset’s glow, Softer and sweeter her fo...

The hills hang woods around, where green, below Dark, breezy boughs of beech-trees, mats the moss, Crisp with the brittle hulls of last year’s nuts; The water hums one bar there...

_There is a poetry that speaks Through common things: the grasshopper, That in the hot weeds creaks and creaks, Says all of summer to my ear: And in the cricket’s cry I hear The...