The Garden of Dreams. Cawein Madison Julius

      Earth hath her images of utterance,

      Her hieroglyphic meanings which elude;

      A symbol language of similitude,

      Into whose secrets science may not glance;

      In which the Mind-in-Nature doth romance

      In miracles that baffle if pursued —

      No guess shall search them and no thought intrude

      Beyond the limits of her sufferance.

      So doth the great Intelligence above

      Hide His own thought's creations; and attire

      Forms in the dream's ideal, which He dowers

      With immaterial loveliness and love —

      As essences of fragrance and of fire —

      Preaching th' evangels of the stars and flowers.

      First came the rain, loud, with sonorous lips;

      A pursuivant who heralded a prince:

      And dawn put on a livery of tints,

      And dusk bound gold about her hair and hips:

      And, all in silver mail, then sunlight came,

      A knight, who bade the winter let him pass,

      And freed imprisoned beauty, naked as

      The Court of Love, in all her wildflower shame.

      And so she came, in breeze-borne loveliness,

      Across the hills; and heav'n bent down to bless:

      Before her face the birds were as a lyre;

      And at her feet, like some strong worshiper,

      The shouting water pæan'd praise of her,

      Who, with blue eyes, set the wild world on fire.

      There is a music of immaculate love,

      That breathes within the virginal veins of Spring: —

      And trillium blossoms, like the stars that cling

      To fairies' wands; and, strung on sprays above,

      White-hearts and mandrake blooms, that look enough

      Like the elves' washing, white with laundering

      Of May-moon dews; and all pale-opening

      Wild-flowers of the woods, are born thereof.

      There is no sod Spring's white foot brushes but

      Must feel the music that vibrates within,

      And thrill to the communicated touch

      Responsive harmonies, that must unshut

      The heart of beauty for song's concrete kin,

      Emotions – that be flowers – born of such.

      Yes, there are some who may look on these

      Essential peoples of the earth and air —

      That have the stars and flowers in their care —

      And all their soul-suggestive secrecies:

      Heart-intimates and comrades of the trees,

      Who from them learn, what no known schools declare,

      God's knowledge; and from winds, that discourse there,

      God's gospel of diviner mysteries:

      To whom the waters shall divulge a word

      Of fuller faith; the sunset and the dawn

      Preach sermons more inspired even than

      The tongues of Penticost; as, distant heard

      In forms of change, through Nature upward drawn,

      God doth address th' immortal soul of Man.

      It is the time when, by the forest falls,

      The touchmenots hang fairy folly-caps;

      When ferns and flowers fill the lichened laps

      Of rocks with color, rich as orient shawls:

      And in my heart I hear a voice that calls

      Me woodward, where the Hamadryad wraps

      Her limbs in bark, or, bubbling in the saps,

      Laughs the sweet Greek of Pan's old madrigals.

      There is a gleam that lures me up the stream —

      A Naiad swimming with wet limbs of light?

      Perfume, that leads me on from dream to dream —

      An Oread's footprints fragrant with her flight?

      And, lo! meseems I am a Faun again,

      Part of the myths that I pursue in vain.

      Sad o'er the hills the poppy sunset died.

      Slow as a fungus breaking through the crusts

      Of forest leaves, the waning half-moon thrusts,

      Through gray-brown clouds, one milky silver side;

      In her vague light the dogwoods, vale-descried,

      Seem nervous torches flourished by the gusts;

      The apple-orchards seem the restless dusts

      Of wind-thinned mists upon the hills they hide.

      It is a night of omens whom late May

      Meets, like a wraith, among her train of hours;

      An apparition, with appealing eye

      And hesitant foot, that walks a willowed way,

      And, speaking through the fading moon and

      flowers,

      Bids her prepare her gentle soul to die.

      The hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms,

      And on its mossy porch the lizard lies;

      Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies,

      And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms.

      Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes

      Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries

      Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs

      With ghostly lips among the attic glooms.

      And now a heron, now a kingfisher,

      Flits in the willows where the riffle seems

      At each faint fall to hesitate to leap,

      Fluttering the silence with a little stir.

      Here Summer seems a placid face asleep,

      And the near world a figment of her dreams.

      Calling, the heron flies athwart the blue

      That sleeps above it; reach on rocky reach

      Of water sings by sycamore and