Madison Julius Cawein

“ 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.
[6]
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. ”

“ And broom-sedge strips of smoky pink and pearl-gray clumps of grass,
In which, beneath the ragged sky, the rain-pools gleam like glass.
From West to East, from wood to wood, along the forest-side,
The winds,—the sowers of the Lord,—with thunderous footsteps stride;
Their stormy hands rain acorns down; and mad leaves, wildly dyed,
Like tatters of their rushing cloaks, stream round them far and wide.
The frail leaf-cricket in the weeds rings a faint fairy bell;
And like a torch of phantom ray the milkweed's windy shell
Glimmers ”

“ Of loam and leaf, like some sad ghost, steals over field and dell.
[35]
The oaks against a copper sky—o'er which, like some black lake
Of Dis, dark clouds, like surges fringed with sullen fire, break—
Loom sombre as Doom's citadel above the vales, that make
A pathway to a land of mist the moon's pale feet shall take.
Now, dyed with burning carbuncle, a Limbo-litten pane,
Within its wall of storm, the West opens to hill and plain,
On which the wild geese ink themselves, a far triangled train;
And then the shuttering clouds close down—and night is here again. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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,—
[9] Like age's eyes, that youth's love-dreams arouse,—
Grow lairs of fire ”

“ To heights that know no wrong.
[66]
A Daughter of the States.
She has the eyes of some barbarian Queen
Leading her wild tribes into battle; eyes,
Wherein th' unconquerable soul defies,
And Love sits throned, imperious and serene.
And I have thought that Liberty, alone
Among the mountain stars, might look like her,
Kneeling to GOD, her only emperor,
Kindling her torch on Freedom's altar-stone.
For in her self, regal with riches of
Beauty and youth, again those Queens seem born—
Boadicea, meeting scorn with scorn,
And Ermengarde, returning love for love. ”