Poems. Cawein Madison Julius

        Before I found her I had found

          Within my heart, as in a brook,

        Reflections of her: now a sound

          Of imaged beauty; now a look.

        So when I found her, gazing in

          Those Bibles of her eyes, above

        All earth, I read no word of sin;

          Their holy chapters all were love.

        I read them through. I read and saw

          The soul impatient of the sod—

        Her soul, that through her eyes did draw

          Mine—to the higher love of God.

        I am a part of all you see

        In Nature; part of all you feel:

        I am the impact of the bee

        Upon the blossom; in the tree

        I am the sap,—that shall reveal

        The leaf, the bloom,—that flows and flutes

        Up from the darkness through its roots.

        I am the vermeil of the rose,

        The perfume breathing in its veins;

        The gold within the mist that glows

        Along the west and overflows

        With light the heaven; the dew that rains

        Its freshness down and strings with spheres

        Of wet the webs and oaten ears.

        I am the egg that folds the bird;

        The song that beaks and breaks its shell;

        The laughter and the wandering word

        The water says; and, dimly heard,

        The music of the blossom's bell

        When soft winds swing it; and the sound

        Of grass slow-creeping o'er the ground.

        I am the warmth, the honey-scent

        That throats with spice each lily-bud

        That opens, white with wonderment,

        Beneath the moon; or, downward bent,

        Sleeps with a moth beneath its hood:

        I am the dream that haunts it too,

        That crystallizes into dew.

        I am the seed within the pod;

        The worm within its closed cocoon:

        The wings within the circling clod,

        The germ, that gropes through soil and sod

        To beauty, radiant in the noon:

        I am all these, behold! and more—

        I am the love at the world-heart's core.

        My soul goes out to her who says,

        "Come, follow me and cast off care!"

        Then tosses back her sun-bright hair,

        And like a flower before me sways

        Between the green leaves and my gaze:

        This creature like a girl, who smiles

        Into my eyes and softly lays

        Her hand in mine and leads me miles,

        Long miles of haunted forest ways.

        Sometimes she seems a faint perfume,

        A fragrance that a flower exhaled

        And God gave form to; now, unveiled,

        A sunbeam making gold the gloom

        Of vines that roof some woodland room

        Of boughs; and now the silvery sound

        Of streams her presence doth assume—

        Music, from which, in dreaming drowned,

        A crystal shape she seems to bloom.

        Sometimes she seems the light that lies

        On foam of waters where the fern

        Shimmers and drips; now, at some turn

        Of woodland, bright against the skies,

        She seems the rainbowed mist that flies;

        And now the mossy fire that breaks

        Beneath the feet in azure eyes

        Of flowers; now the wind that shakes

        Pale petals from the bough that sighs.

        Sometimes she lures me with a song;

        Sometimes she guides me with a laugh;

        Her white hand is a magic staff,

        Her look a spell to lead me long:

        Though she be weak and I be strong,

        She needs but shake her happy hair,

        But glance her eyes, and, right or wrong,

        My soul must follow—anywhere

        She wills—far from the world's loud throng.

        Sometimes I think that she must be

        No part of earth, but merely this—

        The fair, elusive thing we miss

        In Nature, that we dream we see

        Yet never see: that goldenly

        Beckons; that, limbed with rose and pearl,

        The Greek made a divinity:—

        A nymph, a god, a glimmering girl,

        That haunts the forest's mystery.

        The summer takes its hue

        From something opulent as fair in her,

        And the bright heaven is brighter than it was;

        Brighter and lovelier,

        Arching its beautiful blue,

        Serene and soft, as her sweet gaze, o'er us.

        The springtime takes its moods

        From something in her made of smiles and tears,

        And flowery earth is flowerier