Madison Cawein - Weeds by the Wall - Verses

Impetuous of pulse it beats
Within my blood and bears me hence;
Above the housetops and the streets
I hear its happy eloquence.

It tells me all that I would know,
Of birds and buds, of blooms and bees;
I seem to hear the blossoms blow,
And leaves unfolding on the trees.

I seem to hear the blue-bells ring
Faint purple peals of fragrance; and
The honey-throated poppies fling
Their golden laughter o'er the land.

It calls to me; it sings to me;
I hear its far voice night and day;
I can not choose but go when tree
And flower clamor, "Come, away!"

What joy you take in making hotness hotter,
In emphasizing dullness with your buzz,
Making monotony more monotonous!
When Summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water
In all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp
Filing the stillness. Or, – as urchins beat
A stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp, —
Your switch-like music whips the midday heat.
O bur of sound caught in the Summer's hair,
We hear you everywhere!

We hear you in the vines and berry-brambles,
Along the unkempt lanes, among the weeds,
Amid the shadeless meadows, gray with seeds,
And by the wood 'round which the rail-fence rambles,
Sawing the sunlight with your sultry saw.
Or, – like to tomboy truants, at their play
With noisy mirth among the barn's deep straw, —
You sing away the careless summer-day.
O brier-like voice that clings in idleness
To Summer's drowsy dress!

You tramp of insects, vagrant and unheeding,
Improvident, who of the summer make
One long green mealtime, and for winter take
No care, aye singing or just merely feeding!
Happy-go-lucky vagabond, – 'though frost
Shall pierce, ere long, your green coat or your brown,
And pinch your body, – let no song be lost,
But as you lived into your grave go down —
Like some small poet with his little rhyme,
Forgotten of all time.

Secluded, solitary on some underbough,
Or cradled in a leaf, 'mid glimmering light,
Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching how
The slow toad-stool comes bulging, moony white,
Through loosening loam; or how, against the night,
The glow-worm gathers silver to endow
The darkness with; or how the dew conspires
To hang at dusk with lamps of chilly fires
Each blade that shrivels now.

O vague confederate of the whippoorwill,
Of owl and cricket and the katydid!
Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrill
Vibrating note and send'st it where, half hid
In cedars, twilight sleeps – each azure lid
Drooping a line of golden eyeball still. —
Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voice
Within the Garden of the Hours apoise
On dusk's deep daffodil.

Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon
Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover
And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune
Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over.
Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover
Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon
Of twilight's hush, and little intimate
Of eve's first fluttering star and delicate
Round rim of rainy moon!

Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn
Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour
When they may gambol under haw and thorn,
Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower?
Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower
The liriodendron is? from whence is borne
The elfin music of thy bell's deep bass,
To summon fairies to their starlit maze,
To summon them or warn.

When, one by one, the stars have trembled through
Eve's shadowy hues of violet, rose, and fire —
As on a pansy-bloom the limpid dew
Orbs its bright beads; – and, one by one, the choir
Of insects wakes on nodding bush and brier:
Then through the woods – where wandering winds pursue
A ceaseless whisper – like an eery lyre
Struck in the Erl-king's halls, where ghosts and dreams
Hold revelry, your goblin music screams,
Shivering and strange as some strange thought come true.

Brown as the agaric that frills dead trees,
Or those fantastic fungi of the woods
That crowd the dampness – are you kin to these
In some mysterious way that still eludes
My fancy? you, who haunt the solitudes
With witch-like wailings? voice, that seems to freeze
Out of the darkness, – like the scent which broods,
Rank and rain-sodden, over autumn nooks, —
That, to the mind, might well suggest such looks,
Ghastly and gray, as pale clairvoyance sees.

You people night with weirdness: lone and drear,
Beneath the stars, you cry your wizard runes;
And in the haggard silence, filled with fear,
Your shuddering hoot seems some bleak grief that croons
Mockery and terror; or, – beneath the moon's
Cloud-hurrying glimmer, – to the startled ear,
Crazed, madman snatches of old, perished tunes,
The witless wit of outcast Edgar there
In the wild night; or, wan with all despair,
The mirthless laughter of the Fool in Lear.

He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence,
Or on the fallen tree, – brown as a leaf
Fall stripes with russet, – gambols down the dense
Green twilight of the woods. We see not whence
He comes, nor whither – 'tis a time too brief! —
He vanishes; – swift carrier of some Fay,
Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief —
A goblin glimpse from woodland way to way.

What harlequin mood of nature qualified
Him so with happiness? and limbed him with
Such young activity as winds, that ride
The ripples, have, that dance on every side?
As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith
Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight,
Gnome-like, in darkness, – like a moonlight myth, —
Lairing in labyrinths of the under night.

Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a hole
Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps;
Lulled by near noises of the cautious mole
Tunnelling its mine – like some ungainly Troll —
Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps
Picking its drowsy and monotonous lute;
Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps,
And trees unrolling mighty root on root.

Such is the music of his sleeping hours.
Day hath another – 'tis a melody
He trips to, made by the assembled flowers,
And light and fragrance laughing 'mid the bowers,
And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree.
Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze —
The silent music of Earth's ecstasy —
The Satyr's soul, the Faun of classic days.

In girandoles of gladioles
The day had kindled flame;
And Heaven a door of gold and pearl
Unclosed when Morning, – like a girl,
A red rose twisted in a curl, —
Down sapphire stairways came.

Said I to Love: "What must I do?
What shall I do? what can I do?"
Said I to Love: "What must I do?
All on a summer's morning."

Said Love to me: "Go woo, go woo."
Said Love to me: "Go woo.
If she be milking, follow, O!
And in the clover hollow, O!
While through the dew the bells clang clear,
Just whisper it into her ear,
All on a summer's morning."