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Title: A Gray Day
Author: Madison Julius Cawein [
More Titles by Cawein]
I.
Long vollies of wind and of rain
And the rain on the drizzled pane,
And the eve falls chill and murk;
But on yesterday's eve I know
How a horned moon's thorn-like bow
Stabbed rosy thro' gold and thro' glow,
Like a rich barbaric dirk.
II.
Now thick throats of the snapdragons,--
Who hold in their hues cool dawns,
Which a healthy yellow paints,--
Are filled with a sweet rain fine
Of a jaunty, jubilant shine,
A faery vat of rare wine,
Which the honey thinly taints.
III.
Now dabble the poppies shrink,
And the coxcomb and the pink;
While the candytuft's damp crown
Droops dribbled, low bowed i' the wet;
And long spikes o' the mignonette
Little musk-sacks open set,
Which the dripping o' dew drags down.
IV.
Stretched taunt on the blades of grass,
Like a gossamer-fibered glass,
Which the garden-spider spun,
The web, where the round rain clings
In its middle sagging, swings;--
A hammock for Elfin things
When the stars succeed the sun.
V.
And mark, where the pale gourd grows
Up high as the clambering rose,
How that tiger-moth is pressed
To the wide leaf's underside.--
And I know where the red wasps hide,
And the wild bees,--who defied
The first strong gusts,--distressed.
VI.
Yet I feel that the gray will blow
Aside for an afterglow;
And a breeze on a sudden toss
Drenched boughs to a pattering show'r
Athwart the red dusk in a glow'r,
Big drops heard hard on each flow'r
On the grass and the flowering moss.
VII.
And then for a minute, may be,--
A pearl--hollow worn--of the sea,--
A glimmer of moon will smile;
Cool stars rinsed clean on the dusk,
A freshness of gathering musk
O'er the showery lawns, as brusk
As spice from an Indian isle.
[The end]
Madison Julius Cawein's poem: Gray Day
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