OF THE BERRY
BY MADISON J. CAWEIN



BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

BY

MADISON J. CAWEIN.

"I fain would tune my fancy to your key."--_Sir John Suckling._



LOUISVILLE:
JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS.
1887


COPYRIGHTED
By MADISON J. CAWEIN.
1887




PROEM.

Wine-warm winds that sigh and sing,
Led me, wrapped in many moods,
Thro' the green sonorous woods
Of belated Spring;

Till I came where, glad with heat,
Waste and wild the fields were strewn,
Olden as the olden moon,
At my weary feet;

Wild and white with starry bloom,
One far milky-way that dashed,
When some mad wind o'er it flashed,
Into billowy foam.

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.




THE HOLLOW.


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.


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
Reels boisterous as a Bassarid
Above the bloated green frog hid
In lush wan calamus and grass,
Beside the water's