xt712j683h7q https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt712j683h7q/data/mets.xml Cawein, Madison Julius, 1865-1914. 1906  books b92-199-30751830 English E.P. Dutton, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Nature-notes and impressions, in prose and verse  / by Madison Cawein. text Nature-notes and impressions, in prose and verse  / by Madison Cawein. 1906 2002 true xt712j683h7q section xt712j683h7q 








NATURE-NOTES AND
   IMPRESSIONS

 This page in the original text is blank.

 


NATURE-NOTES
        AN D

 IMPRESSIONS



IN PROSE AND VERSE


     BY



M ADISON



CAWEI N



    NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
      I go6

 
























          Copyright, 1906,
      By MADISON CAWEIN.






























THF TYNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

 




















           ZC tbe fflemorg

                 OF

     GEORGE    H. ELLWANGER

TRUE FRIEND AND LOVER AND INTERPRETER OF
               NATURE,
      AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF ESTEEM
           AND ADMIRATION

 








Would I could talk as the flowers talk
To my soul ! and iMe stars, in their ceaseless wvalk
Through Hea-w7en !-and tell to the high and low
The things that they say, so all mzirht know
The dreams they dream, and have told to me!
As Nature Sees would I could see !
Then might I steak with authority/-
I stand below and look above,
And see her busy with life and love,
And can tell the world so little thereof.


Oh, for a soul that could feel miuch less!
Or, feeling more, could so express
The th ings it feels and their tenderness:
The very essece. the soul of art,
And all the heavens and hells of heart.!
Then might I rise to the very teak,
The summit of song, which tfoets seek,
And speak -with a voice as the masters steak.

 




FORE WOR I)



W       ITH few if any changes the
        contents of this volume, both
        prose and verse, with the
exception of the short sketch at the
end and one or two of the poems,
have been copied almost word for
word from my note-books of many
years. They are impressions, ideas,
fancies, more or less fragmentary, that
struck me at the moment; notes, sug-
gestions, what you will, jotted down
hurriedly,-sometimes taking the form
of prose, other times that of verse as
the fancy moved me,-while wvander-
ing in the woods at all seasons, making
a record of days extending over a
period of some twenty odd years. All
the verses and prose-notes contained
in the first part, "I883-IS86," were
written while hardly more than a boy,
                vii

 
Foreword



between the ages of eighteen and
twenty-one and while attending high
school.
  A number of the verses have ap-
peared in the magazines during the
past year or two: several fragments,
under the title "Reed Notes," in
"The Atlantic";"Autumn Etchings"
in the "Outlook"; and others in
'Ainslee's," " Success, '"Smart Set,"
" Lippincott's," " Metropolitan," and
" Munsev's."
                 MADISON CAWEIN.
LOUISVILLE, KY.



viii


 








    CON TENTS



Nature-Notes and Impressions



i8S3-iSS6  . .  .  .

I3S7-I 390. . . . .

1391-900 . . . . .

I90 r-1905                 .



         PAG E
           I

. . .  .  46

. . .  .  79

 . .  . 135



Poems



CATKINS. . .

ANN' Ul( F-CEIE.I r.  . .  . . .  .   .

"WHEN SPRING COMES I)OWN THE WILD-

   WOOD WAY '
HILDA OF THE HILLSIDE.

DAWN IN THE ALLEGHANIES .

Music .
AUTUAIN ETCHINGS.

WOOD-WAYS

THE CHARCOAL-BURNEIR'S HUTl. .  .
IN CLAY.

                 ix



254
258


26o

261

263

265

267

2 7 2
273

276

 

             Contents
                                   PAGE
GRAY SKIES .  .   . . . . . . . 2 7 7
SUNSET DREAMS  . . . . . . . . 2 7 7
MENDICANTS. . . . . . . . . . 2 79
WVINTER RAIN . . . . . . . . . 23s0
MARINERS.    .. .  .  .  . . . . 281


             Prose Sketch

WVO'MAN OR -WHAT   . . . . . . 2 8 7



x


 



NATURE-NOTES

and IMPRESSIONS


Nature never did betray the heart that loved her. -
                       WORDSWORTH.

            i883-1886

I   HAVE not delved in the ruins
    of antiquity, nor moralized upon
    the past, as Byron did, but have
kept, or tried to keep, two lines of
Keats, txvo lines of Endvymion, for-
ever in mind while writing, and
striven to the uttermost to make my
lines worthy the text.


Lead me, thou Bard of Beauty, through
   those caves
Of pale Diana! let me hear the moan
Of Ocean, sorrowing with all his waves
As once he sorrowed on that Island lone



I



I

 

          Nature-Notes
In siren moonlight. Here, where twilight
    paves
The woodland paths, I seem to hear her
    trail
Dim raime:kt; her, that damsel who en-
    slaves
My soul; that Beauty, sad, divinely pale,
That haunts thy song, mastering the
    gamut whole
Of dreams and mubic; on whose easeful
    breast, -
As once Endymion's head, soft-dreaming,
    pressed
That Indian maiden's bosom, - rests my
    soul.


0 let me sing as thou didst, Keats, and
    die!
  With soul poured on the circling starry
    night;
When Dian's ltne hangs dewy in the sky,
  And the wild nightingale with an-
    guished might
Bewails in some dense bramble's spicy
    dusk
  Its old heart-sorrow to the wild rose
    wan;
                  2

 

         Nature-Notes
Or let me, like thyself, drink in the musk
  Of some (lull draught from  Lethe's
    waters drawn,
And sink, as thou didst. into dreamless
    sleep,
  WNhere disappointment, heartache, grief
    and scorn,
And humani  misery can no longer heap
  The soul that treads life's path set
    round with thorn;
A,\y! fall asleep, as thou didst fall asleep
  under the alien skies, of hope forlorn!



IIn the forest of music often and often,
To the murmuring song of the winds and
    waters,
Have our spirits mingled and mixed
In the wildflower dance of the Hours
On the mossy carpet under the whispering
    leaves:
Or wandered, hand in shadowy hand,
Beneath the song-suggestive stillness of
    the moon:
Or leaned, listening,
Over deep glens of echoing green,
Carved in the ancient bosoms of the hills
                   3

 

          Nature-Notes
By sonorous and impetuous waters,
Bearing upon their foamy crests
Crescents and points, starry and still,
Of reflected emerald flame,
When the heavens bloomed and blazed
    with a million quivering fires.
Dost thou know her name
Fairest of the Daughters of Music is she,
Loveliest of all the Children of Art.


  The puff-ball of the autumn ways
is Puck's fat fist thrust threateningly
out of the half-concealing weeds at
the bee to whom the blossom offers
her milk-white bosom.


When winter nights are cold and shrill,
  And winds sit rocking wild their arms,
Far off, beyond the treeless hill,
  Sound ghostly faint the owl's alarms.
WVail, wail, thou bird of ill omen,
  Within thy freezing glen!
Screech, screech through all the frosty
    night
 Where gleams the cold moonlight!
                  4

 

           Nature-Notes
 Well with man's mood thy song accords,
 Thy song that knows but wailing words.

 Lo, where the oats ill barn are housed,
   The screech-owl sits and croons and
     cries,
Until the cocks are all aroused
   And know to-night some pullet dies.
Hush, hush, thou staring owl!
  And leave the roosting fowl!
Go, seek the shivering wood,
  And there. where wild winds brood,
Sing to the soul that hope has lost,
The soul that still is tempest-tost.

When snows drift deep the forest path,
  Ard sleet bows down the strongest trees,
Like Edgar's fear and Lear's crazed
    wrath,
  The screech-owl's voice makes wild the
    breeze.
Mourn, mourn, thou feathered witch
  Above the frozen ditch!
Weep, weep, unto the icy gale,
  Where icicles hang pale,
As weeps the heart, ingratitude
Makes winter of, the grief pursued.
                  5

 

         Nature-Notes
   Like a pearl, dissolving in a goblet
of golden wine, is the new moon in
the drowning deeps of the sunset.

  JULY 9
  The sea-pink and the tall wild bell-
flower divide the honors of July; the
one, pearly pink, the other, turquoise-
azure, conspicuously placed- in her
flower-garland in fragrant frater-
nity, each proud of its showy loveli-
ness and of the abundant beauty of
the month that bore them.
  Toadstools, large and little, over-
run the woods to-day after a day and
night of rain: red and yellow and
white, green and saffron and gray;
upright, sidewise; some with the
woodland loam and leaves, upheaved
with them, still strewing their tops;
graceful and slender, or bloated and
distorted they stand; poisonous-look-
ing some of them, and of a blue mot-
tled color, which, when broken, exude
                 6

 

         Nature-Notes
a thin cobalt-colored watery juice that
stains whatever it touches; some of
them a burnt-umber l)rown and of
enormous size, looking like huge flat
hats, rims turned up, swollen with
rain, rotting and reeking in the under-
woo(ls and filling the air with a fetid
fungous odor.
  Great clumps of the Alayapples,
l)caten down and ruined by the rain
here and there by the wayside, show
the smooth green and ripening yellow
of their oval fruit, often too large and
heavy for the stalk to support.
  The elecampane and the black-eyed
Susan, with their frank, wide eyes of
gold and bronze; the thimlble-wveed,
with its terminal greenish white b)los-
sorms and stiff thyrsus-like thimbles
of green thrust from and over the
surrounding briers and weeds; and
the lacy white of the wild-carrot
together with the bugled scarlet of the
trunmpet-vine, make a perfect riot of
                 7

 
         Nature-Notes
color in an angle of an old worm-
fence separating a bit of fallow-field
from a bit of sown, wherein a bob-
white keeps calling; repeatedly tying,
as it were, with a thread of three
notes, the stillness and the heat: the
first two, soft, careful, and prelimi-
nary; the last one, whipped out em-
phatically, straight as a thread thrust
through the eye of a needle, complet-
ing and forming the final knot to its
own satisfaction and that also of the
listening summer day.
  Across a wooded vista a red-bird
suddenly wings. Its flight is as the
swift unfurling of a ribbon of living
crimson uniting tree to tree, with a
bright bowknot of silken song at
either end.

  In the careless shadow of a flower-
ing tree she sat - a witch whiter
than a windflower. Her song was all
of poison, - hemlock, - the squeez-
                 8

 
         Nature-Notes
ing of the dark juice through white
fingers. A sound as of owlet wings
kept time to her wild singing. At her
feet lay a youth with closed eyes,
whose lips and forehead she kissed
repeatedly, each kiss leaving a mark
as of a serpent's fang.  He was
dead, and yet he seemed to live, his
heart and soul, through her kisses,
ashes and dust within him. His face
was pinched into smiles that were
not smiles. She laughed, and be-
neath her laugh the monkshood and
nightshade covered themselves with
poison-dripping blossoms, and the
wild-rose was slimed with snails.


  The spirits of the tempest advance
their embattled hosts, thunderous
rank on rank, black with their shields
of midnight. Beneath the flashings
of their terrible helmets and the hiss-
ing and rebounding rain of their
                9

 
         Nature-Notes
arrows, the hills lift tip their writhing
arms of trees, and the river, foaming
with fear, hurls itself headlong at its
banks.


  Twilight with her dusky locks binds
up the beautiful eyes of day, whose
head she pillows on flaming flowers,
-tulip and poppy and rose. Her
voice is plaintive as echo's amid the
rocks where sleeping waves in dull
green mantles lie beneath the cav-
erned cliff; or billows climb, white-
shouldered, with long fingers of
foam.


  Here are passion-flowers, purple
of heart, bearing the cross, as it
were, of some stainless flower-creed;
acacias, too, spotless as the angel
innocence of a babe, and expressing
in fragrance what the poet thinks but
cannot say.
                IO

 

         Nature-Notes
The roar of winter through the palsied
    oaks,
  XWvind-tortured on the withered fields,
Is as the sound of giant chariot spokes,
  And clashing of innumerable shields.



    I 'ye wooed soft sleep all night,
    Clothed in her mantle white
      And dim as rain;
    I Ive lain all night and wept
    For death, who past me crept,
      To still this pain,
      Heart's pain, but all in vain.

   Why cam'st thou not. 0 death 
     Why cam'st thou not, 0 sleep
   Death's brother, calm of breath,
     For whom I keep
   Vigil the long night through:
   At last the day breaks blue
     And dim the dawn.
   Would that you yet might hear,
   And hearing me. draw near
     Ere nighlt be gone.



I I

 
         Nature-Notes
The night is wild; the bitter blasts sweep
    by;
The shrouded snows with ghostly fingers
    beat
The shuddering casements, and the candle
    flame
Seems fluttered of phantom lips whose
    kiss is death.


  Next to children, birds and flowers
are the most beautiful gifts of God.


  A treasure seems concealed here
where the moss is damp and deep,
and the golden blossoms of the crow-
foot and the wood-sorrel are spilled
like little yellow coins.
  As I reached up among the blos-
soming clusters of the elder copse,
was it a faun concealed in the boscage
who blinded me with a storm of white
stars showered into my face, or was
it merely the wind that passed, low
laughing to itself, and whispering of
                 I2

 
         Nature-Notes
forgotten things, lost long ago, and
living now only in the land of dreams
and song--

With its helm of silver and spur of gold
A fairy knight is the toad-flax bold,
Who takes this form to mortal eves,
The form of a flover of golden dyes.


By the willow copse near the river shore,
Where the white waves hush their splash
    and roar,
With an idle sail and an idle oar
I seemed to drift into other streams,
Borne on by the sleepy current of dreams.


  O wilding of the young, young June,
    That this old rock holds fast.
  Thy day is done too soon, too soon,
    Too beautiful to last.


  Water lily, do the Nisses weave
from you their nuptial raiment of
white Or does the enamoured
                 '3

 
         Nature-Notes
Necken pluck you for his hair to lure
some maiden mortal to his arms Or
the mermaid dew you with her tears
when lamenting that she cannot be
redeemed   Speak! and with your
white, sweet lips now tell me! I know
the young Nisses weep because they
cannot be saved. Often do I fancy
them as seated on your broad green
pads, harping and singing sad songs
of sad mortality in the light of the
setting moon, the vibrant silver of
their strings and the hollow gold of
their harps sobbing like some wild
bird in the silence of the night. And
often have you bent your pensive head
in helpless meekness, making yourself
a bud again, closing the wildness of
their music into the imprisoning
petals of your beautiful bosom, to
give it forth again in perfume.

    When all the orchards faded lie,
    When roses drop and lilies die,
                I4

 

          Nature-Notes
WXhen fall's full moon makes deep the sky,
         Lay me asleep,
AWrhere breezes bend the sighing trees,
         Lay me asleep.

\When all the (lusty autumn (lay
Is hear(d the locust's roundelay,
And, dropping leaves, the tree-tops sway
         And wvildflowvers there,
:Beneath the wildflowers let me rest,
         The wildflowers there.

Let not thy hand disturb the grass
To plant an alien flower there;
Let those wild infants, free as fair,
Above me, sleeping, bloom and pass,
         Forgotten die,
Forgotten as myself, alas!
         Who 'neath them lie.


  Gems and crystals lay scattered
around him, on marble the color of
fire: sea-green chrysoprase and co-
palite from Zanzibar; spar the color
of amber; alexandrines - green by
(lay, by night purple or crimson -
                  I5

 
         Nature-Notes
from the Urals; iron, with red
streaks of jasper through it; lapis-
lazuli and chrysoberyl; fluorspar
crystals, white, amethystine, pink and
green; cairngorms, dark and clear
as an Ethiope's eye; topazes, smoky
and blue and wine-colored; and
heaped high amid them, like violets
smothered under the snows of spring,
great sapphires mingled and mixed
with the milky fire of many opals.


  The great stars wax and wane, and
the moon rises over gull-haunted
crags, honeycombed with caves, in
whose dark crevices the yellow mol-
lusks cling like ingots of gold, and
upon whose floors of green the red
coral is strewn like branches of bleed-
ing ruby.

  I cannot help admiring the great
gray hawk. How bold, how bright,

 

          Nature-Notes
 how swift he is! Let himi but show
 his shadow and the shrieking lhens
 scatter, flying to cover; and the
 blood-red cock, that braggart of the
 barn-yard, hides his proud crest in
 fear.  
   To-clay I found a flower unknown
to nie, -a flower white as a pearl
and spotted with crimson, as if some
wild bird, stabbed with a thorn. had
breathed its small life out upon the
altar of its loveliness.


  The moon is a lemon petal,
    And the west a wild-rose red,
  And the twilight twines her dusky locks
    With lily-like stars o'erhead.


Deep down, deep down, deep, deep, deep!
Follow us! come with us! - See how we
    leap!
Daughters of TEger, veiled white with the
    spray,
Beckoninig, calling you. Oh, come away!



2



I7

 

         Nature-Notes
Children of Earth, come hither, where Awe
Dwell in Ran's realms of cerulean hue:
NVkhere through her caverns of green and
    of blue
Echo our songs, our songs of the sea,
Dirging the dead, the sailors who sleep
Deep down, deep (down, deep, deep dleep!
Come, where the dulse and the nautilus
    cling!
Come away, come away, here where we
    sing!
Where of your eyes we will fashion pale
    homes,
Hollow, for pearls and the glimmering
    foams.



  The pale-haired Waves and the
white-veiled  Billows, daughters of
Ran, hurry to meet SFger, King of
Ocean, in his helmet of terrifying
darkness, amid the roaring reefs and
booming breakers.   The (lenons of
the deep, armored and helmeted with
mist, swarm from the caves of the
cliffs, howling to the legions of the
                 I8

 

         Nature-Notes
storm, driving some vessel, helpless
and tattered of sail, toward thlem.


  Come, kiss me, beautiful Death,
    And lull me with thy wings;
  Breathfe on me with thly breathi,
    And', touch my soul with things
 Unknown of life. Imbne
 My hotly with thy dew
    And hear me far away
 into a (leeper dawn
 Than lights life's shadowy lawn,
    Some fairer break-of-day.

 Life's sickness, long and old,
   Cure in me; everything:
 Life's greed for fame and gold
   And love and suffering.
 Yea, I am young and fair!
 Come, take me by the hair
   And kiss me on the eves;
 Then bear me through the deep,
 As thy brotlher, dream-tossed Sleep,
   Hatlh borne me loving-wise.



I9

 

Natu re-Notes



  The new moon is the golden battle-
how of a sylph; the evening star is
the arrow with which it pierces the
sunset.

  I saw the Spirits of Day and of
Darkness meet.   Whiter than the
bloom of crystal were his cheeks; and
hers, a hectic flush that seemed the
reflection of some inward fire, like the
scarlet of the autumn woods. To
grace her drowsy head he wove for
her a chaplet of poppied clouds.


Cheerily rang the bugle horn,
  Cheerily through the wood,
For the ten-tined buck by the hunt out-
    worn
  At bay 'neath the old oak stood.


  The morn, like some blear-eyed
beggar, came trailing her tatters in,
streaming with vapor, dark and dis-
                20

 

         Nature-Notes
mal, her sodden hair blinding lher
eyes.
  The noon was clear; but now, as
the sun sinks, the broadening black
of one tremendous cloud breaks into
peaks, creviced and ravined and rn--
ered with burning gold, cascading
an(d circling and cleaving their crags
of storm. The thunder seems the
sound of its mighty flowing. Nearer
and nearer the blue lines of the rain
shadow and streak the woods, the
hills, and the heavens. Now they
plunge, big-dropped, crackling, and
resilient, clamoring on the reverber-
ating stones; so thin the film of spray
of the shattered drops that the white-
tufted dandelion loses not one light
seed in the shelter of this rock, where.
like a host of fairy helmns, the rose
bush bristles against the rain a
myriad green buds. Again, and vet
again, the thunder, breaking, travels
ponderously along the clouds, the
                21

 


          Nature-Notes
gray-steel flash of the lightning like
a torch before its rolling chariot.


And now yon crystal mount of clouds
  Silvers with light as 't were of wings,
Whose base the thunder's blackness
    shrouds,
  While to its summit brightness clings.

Along the vest, flashed through the dun,
  Leaping, the angled lightnings fly,
Cleaving the deeps, where thunders run
  Like mountain torrents down the sky.

Out of it rises, partly hid,
  A cloud, rose-spar, all fair of form,
Like some sky-pointed pyramid,
  Or pillar of light, above the storm.
  MIAY 23, I885; 6 P. M.


The broad Ohio's darkening stream
  Seems now as still as liquid glass,
In which the bridge's pillars dream
  Unwavering where the still waves pass.
                  22

 

          Nature-Notes
The shattered thunder fragments fly;
  One cloud alone makes dark the west,
Low stooping to the evening sky,
  A champion with a burning crest:

Throtugh whose mailed breast of darkness
    dim
  And ragged rents of vapors deep,
The sun sweeps lances, long and slim,
  Of flame that fall on vale and steep.

Through stratas torn of windy rack
  Full flashes now its crimson star,
Blazing blood-red through stormy black
  And bronze of tempest scattered far.
  MAY 23, 1885; 6.30 P. M.


O wind of eve, what spices, steeped
  In some more aromatic clime,
Thou breathest, -as from islands reaped
  Of Summer, over seas of thyme.

Thou bearest odor on thy breath
  Fresh as the scent of ocean's waves;
Cool as if thou hadst lain beneath,
  All day, in dark and crystal caves.
                  23

 

          Nature-Notes
Night conies, with sparkling fireflies
  Like jewels tangled in hier hair,
And all around her perfumes rise
  Of rain, as 't were dim spirits there.


  To-day I am like one drifting, drift-
ing, and beholding, as in a dream,
never nearer, never farther away. a
line of dim  shore, cliffed and pined
and cascacled, against the sunset's
luminous seas.

When eve casts on the day's dark bier
  The rhododendrons of her light,
And trims her stars, like tapers clear,
  At feet and head, how fair is night.


  To-day I have learned with Keats
  heart's lighltness from  the merri-
ment " of late summer, instead of
" Alay," and wandered with Shake-
sDeare
     Over hill, over (lale,
     Thorough bush, thorough brier,"
                 24

 

         Nature-Notes
an-d seen many things that the ordi-
nary eve would refuse to consider:
the Clhickasaw plum, red as the cheek
of an Oreaci; the jellied spawn of the
frog in a pond, a flaccid white blotched
with black like the freckled face of
Caliban; mushrooms, low and lean-
ing, Puck's own footstools; rocks,
green with lichen, carved of the rain
and frost and heat into fantastic
shapes as of rebeck and of rose, fairer
to my eyes than any tepll)led frieze
of ol01 Greece, where the Amazons
and Ilacchantes still seem to live in
marble; lethargic pawpaws, rotund
an(l jolly as the bottle-belly of
old  Silenus; and  blackherry-lilies,
freaked and streaked with rose and
ruby, like the hood of Ariel; mornin(g-
glories, azure and crimson and crys-
tal, finely fragile, and hung up like
the petticoats of the fays, the fairies'
own laundry, at the entrance to the
wood, that holds in its green heart
                 25

 

          Nature-Notes
many a woodland spring, like a pure
thought, framed in with rocks and
ferns, - the secret mirrors of glim-
mering shapes, the sylvan spirits of
the solitude.


O my Kentucky, forest old!
  Where Beauty dwells, the stalwart child
Of Love and Life, where I behold
  The dreams still glow that long beguiled

The marble and the bronze of men,
  WVhose Art made fair the world of ol0(,
Yet never held, of classic ken,
  A form like thine which I would mould.

Around me now I turn and gaze:
  The earth is green; the heaven is clear:
Where smile the stars, or bloom the days
  More absolutely fair than here!

Young still is she, and fresh as morn,
  Standing her sister States among;
AhM would I were a poet born,
  To sing her as she should be sung!
                 26

 

         Nature-Notes
Bidding her keep beneath her heel
  The Ilust for wsealth, wrong s iron
    crown;
Her pioneer pride, a shield of steel,
  A buckler that no foe may down.

Sister to Hospitality!
  Mnother of Lincoln and of Clay!
Make thyself worthy still to be
  Mother of men as great as they.

Mi'other of loves and hopes that dare;
  Of dreams and deeds that sing and toil,
Whose hands are open as the air,
  WVhose honor none on earth may soil!

Let mightier dreams be thine! arise!
  Let all the world behold thee set
A constellation in the skies
  Where all thy sister Stars are met!
  1s85.

  The noisome hollow of the wood
was fetid with toadstools. The trees
where crippled and swollen with
wormy o- Cgalls, and twisted like tor-
tured things with disease, and dis-
                  27

 

          Natu re-Notes
torted with huge fungous growths.
Nearby, surrounded with such trees,
a rushless and reedless pool lay stag-
nant and sullen in the sun, where
toads and newts and water-snakes
abounded, breeding in the rankness
of its slime and ooze. The horrible
hillside, rising from  the pool, was
smothered with thistle and nettle and
burdock and the evil-smelling jimson-
weed; one wild-rose bush eked out
a sickly existence amid this army of
evils, its stems and leaves leprous with
the mining larvae, and labyrinthed
with the web-white trails of the red
spider. By the side of the pool, in the
shadow of the rose-bush, like some
lean yellow spider, or obscene larva,
sat a man, hideous and old, with long,
straggly gray beard and bristling
eyebrows, through which his small
eyes glittered like a snake's. Hatless
and perfectly bald he sat, -a mirth-
less, a cruel smile, repugnant and un-
                28

 

          Nature-Notes
changing, wvreathing   his ws rinkled
face, -vatching a viper dev our a
toa(l.


A distant river glimpsed through deep-
    leaved trees.
A field of fragment flint, blue, gray, and
    red.
Rocks overgrown with twigs of trailing
    v ines
Thick-hung with clusters of the green
    wvild-grape.
Old clhestnut groves the haunt of drowsy
    cows,
Full-niddered kine chewing a sleepy cud;
Or, at the gate, around the dripping
    trotlgh,
Docile and lowing, waiting the milking-
    time.
Lanes ,where the wild-rose blooms, mur-
    murous with bees,
The bunmble-bee tumbling their frowsy
    heads,
Rumnbling and raging in the bell-flower's
    bells,
Drunken with honey, singing himself
    asleep.
                  29

 
         Nature-Notes
Ol( in romance a shadowy belt of vooo(s.
A  house, wide-porche(d, before which
    sweeps a lawn
Gray-holed with beeches and where elder
    bloonis.
And on the lawn, whiter of hand than
    II) ilk,
And sweeter of breath than is the elder
    hi ooni,
A wonman with a wild-rose in her hair.


  I-To)  longI she had waited!    It
seemed ages since that nmorn, blood-
shot of eye, arose from   the couch
of old   Tithonos, and    she, with
kindred eyes of sleepless hours and
tears, arose from Mark's hated
side.
  From her casement she sees the
castle lake, lilied and fountained, and
far bevond the moated walls the for-
ested mountains where Tristram, it
is whispered, runs naked, a madman
amid swvineherds.
  Now sinks the sadder eve, blood-
                30

 
Nature-Notes



slhot of gaze as morn, over the
shadowy bier of (lay l)owing lher mel-
anIclholy star. And so o'er their (lead
past her sorrowing fancy b)ends, lit
wvith the light of tearful eves. Tris-
tramn  naked and   lost among   vile
men aflnd b)arren. hills and savage
\voodis.  Why  could  she not die!
Yes, she woul(l die!    To-morrow
should not gaze upon her misery
the mutisery of Isoud the Beautiful!
hly halacd Godl cursed her w-ith this
great. this sinful love  Yes, she
-woull die.  Morn would find her
dleadl - morn that she loved, - the
fresh and radiant morn ! Ah ! she
would miss the oxen's far-off low;
the smell of early meadows teclcled andl
decl) with  hay ; the  cock's clear
clarion. call; and under the caved
cottage thatch, as often she and Tris-
train rode afield, the twitterin- of
sparrows.  And, sighing, from, the
windowv slow  she turned, and took
                31

 
          Nature-Notes
her lute; touching its strings, she
sang:

"No more for me shall gray-robed Dawn
    look through
Heaven's windows of the fog, or rain, or
    dew,
The maiden Dawn with eyes of beautiful
    blue."


  I saw sweet Summer go
    Into a woo(lland green,
      Unto a sliding stream,
        A drowsy water;
  With cheeks of sunset glow
    Dreaming she seemed to lean,
      Dreaming a wild-wood dream,
        The wood's wild daughter.

 She seemed to smile, then weep,
    Then lift, then bow her head,
      Deep with its golden hair,
        Sad as some maiden
 XWho loveless falls asleep,
   Her eyes to sorrow wed,
      Her cheeks as wild flowers fair
        With dewdrops laden.
                 32

 

        Nature-Notes
I heard the streanilet moan;
  I heard the wood-wind wvail;
    I heard the forest sob:
        Sumnier is (lying! "
WXhiter she lay than stone,
  And (lown each dell ancl dale
    I heard the wild heart-throb
       Of Nature sighing: -


Come back! -Oh, art thou (lead,
  Thou, thou mny sweetest chilid
    Come back w-ith all thy flowers!
       But naught she heeded.
Lvino with wvild-flowered head
  In beauty undefiled,
    WVhile 'round her sad the Hours
      Bowed down and pleaded.


Then throtglh the woo(lland there,
  With ribbons flying gay,
    Mocking at Summer's death
      With laughter hollow,
Tossing her gipsy hair,
  In Romany array,
    Autumn. all wild of breath,
      Cried, " Follow ! follow!
  3            33

 

          Nature-Notes
  Is it an iron harp smitten of iron
hands or only the winter wind in the
palsied and ancient oaks, Lear-like,
that toss their hoary arms on the
withered hills All day, all night, I
hear them, rustling, warrinr, sigh-
ing or roaring with the wind, their
few last, brown leaves beating their
frantic tatters to and fro. The sound
of their shriveled sorrow will not let
me sleep. An ancient agony seems
theirs, older than that which wrings
the hearts of mortals.



When the jeweled lights of the fireflies
    gleam
  In fairy revelry;
When the waning moon on the forest
    stream
Looks (own, I love to sit and dream,
  To dream her again with me.



We speak of the past; of the things once
    said;
 Of the happiness long gone by;
                 34

 

           Nature-Notes
\NV-lide one blue star burns brighlit over-
     head:-
For sweet it is to talk with the (lead,
  The (leadl that do not die.

\Nitlh the deadl that are never far away,
  That are even as yonder star,
WXhuose light the darkness, ray on ray,
Makes visible, viewless all the day
  Tlhou gh shining still afar.

Like a lonely beautiful flo-wer wvild
  InI the limnitless ian(ls of space,
That star is, blossoming undefiled;
iMore beautiful for that loneness, mild
  It shines on my upturned face.

'Mid the fairy lights of the fireflies,
  In the light of the waning moon,
Born of the grief that never (lies,
Into my eyes gaze her dark eyes,
  The eyes death closed last June.

And I hear her speak, and I hear her
    sighl:-
  For, the (lead - they never forget:
Around my heart her white hands lie,
And she kisses my face and asks me why
  .Iy cheeks Nvith. tears are wet.
                  35

 

         Nature-Notes
And as in life I clasp her and hold,
  And meseems it is no dream -
That here we meet, as oft of old,
When the lights of the fireflies' lamps
    gleam gold,
  In the trysting place by the stream.


  On autumn eves in the beautiful
Indian Summer, sitting wrapt in con-
templation of the sunset, the world
seems compact of imagination. As
the fancy bodies forth, thought gives
substance to things, and unrolling the
Nubian curtains of night, behold, it
is not the sunset that I see, but a sea
of gold dotted with islands vermilion
as the continents of Mars; their
bowers and streams burning rose and
pearl, among and beside which, robed
in shadowy silver, sylphid shapes
wander, - spirits, naked and beau-
tiful as stars, flashing flame-like
from the caverns of purple-pinnacled
peaks, or leaning from the battle-