Weeds by the Wall: Verses. Cawein Madison Julius

      Before the rain, low in the obscure east,

      Weak and morose the moon hung, sickly gray;

      Around its disc the storm mists, cracked and creased,

      Wove an enormous web, wherein it lay

      Like some white spider hungry for its prey.

      Vindictive looked the scowling firmament,

      In which each star, that flashed a dagger ray,

      Seemed filled with malice of some dark intent.

      The marsh-frog croaked; and underneath the stone

      The peevish cricket raised a creaking cry.

      Within the world these sounds were heard alone,

      Save when the ruffian wind swept from the sky,

      Making each tree like some sad spirit sigh;

      Or shook the clumsy beetle from its weed,

      That, in the drowsy darkness, bungling by,

      Sharded the silence with its feverish speed.

      Slowly the tempest gathered. Hours passed

      Before was heard the thunder's sullen drum

      Rumbling night's hollow; and the Earth at last,

      Restless with waiting, – like a woman, dumb

      With doubting of the love that should have clomb

      Her casement hours ago, – avowed again,

      'Mid protestations, joy that he had come.

      And all night long I heard the Heavens explain.

      It seemed the listening forest held its breath

      Before some vague and unapparent form

      Of fear, approaching with the wings of death,

      On the impending storm.

      Above the hills, big, bellying clouds loomed, black

      And ominous, yet silent as the blue

      That pools calm heights of heaven, deepening back

      'Twixt clouds of snowdrift hue.

      Then instantly, as when a multitude

      Shout riot and war through some tumultuous town,

      Innumerable voices swept the wood

      As wild the wind rushed down.

      And fierce and few, as when a strong man weeps,

      Great rain-drops dashed the dust; and, overhead,

      Ponderous and vast down the prodigious deeps,

      Went slow the thunder's tread.

      And swift and furious, as when giants fence,

      The lightning foils of tempest went insane;

      Then far and near sonorous Earth grew dense

      With long sweet sweep of rain.

      A mile of lane, – hedged high with iron-weeds

      And dying daisies, – white with sun, that leads

      Downward into a wood; through which a stream

      Steals like a shadow; over which is laid

      A bridge of logs, worn deep by many a team,

      Sunk in the tangled shade.

      Far off a wood-dove lifts its lonely cry;

      And in the sleepy silver of the sky

      A gray hawk wheels scarce larger than a hand.

      From point to point the road grows worse and worse,

      Until that place is reached where all the land

      Seems burdened with some curse.

      A ragged fence of pickets, warped and sprung, —

      On which the fragments of a gate are hung, —

      Divides a hill, the fox and ground-hog haunt,

      A wilderness of briers; o'er whose tops

      A battered barn is seen, low-roofed and gaunt,

      'Mid fields that know no crops.

      Fields over which a path, o'erwhelmed with burs

      And ragweeds, noisy with the grasshoppers,

      Leads, – lost, irresolute as paths the cows

      Wear through the woods, – unto a woodshed; then,

      With wrecks of windows, to a huddled house,

      Where men have murdered men.

      A house, whose tottering chimney, clay and rock,

      Is seamed and crannied; whose lame door and lock

      Are bullet-bored; around which, there and here,

      Are sinister stains. – One dreads to look around. —