Late October.
By Madison Julius Cawein
Ah, haughty hills, sardonic solitudes,
What wizard touch hath, crowning you with gold,
Cast Tyrian purple o'er broad-shouldered woods,
And to your pride anointed empire sold
For wan traditioned death, whose misty moods
Shake each huge throne of quarried shadows cold?
Now where the agate-foliaged forests sleep,
Bleak briars are ruby-berried, and the brush
Flames - when the winds armsful of motion heap
In wincing gusts upon it - amber blush;
The beech an inner beryle breaks from deep
Encrusting topaz of a sullen flush.
Dead gold, dead bronze, dull amethystine rose,
Rose cameo, in day's gray, somber spar
Of smoky quartz - intaglioed beauty - glows
Luxuriance of color. Trunks that are
Vast organs antheming the winds' wild woes
A faded sun and pale night's paler star.
Bulged from its cup the dark-brown acorn falls,
And by its gnarly saucer in the streams
Swells plumped; and here the spikey spruce-gum balls
Rust maces of an ouphen host that dreams;
Beneath the chestnut the split burry hulls
Disgorge fat purses of sleek satin gleams.
Burst silver white, nods an exploded husk
Of snowy, woolly smoke the milk-weed's puff
Along the orchard's fence, where in the dusk
And ashen weeds, - as some grim Satyr's rough
Red, breezy cheeks burn thro' his beard, - the brusque
Crab apples laugh, wind-tumbled from above.
Runs thro' the wasted leaves the crickets' click,
Which saddest coignes of Melancholy cheers;
One bird unto the sumach flits to pick
Red, sour seeds; and thro' the woods one hears
The drop of gummy walnuts; the railed rick
Looms tawny in the field where low the steers.
Some slim bud-bound Leimoniad hath flocked,
The birds to Echo's shores, where flossy foams
Boom low long cream-white cliffs. - Where once buzzed
Unmillioned bees within unmillioned blooms,
One hairy hummer cramps one bloom, frost mocked, - rocked
A miser whose rich hives squeeze oozing combs.
Twist some lithe maple and right suddenly
A leafy storm of stars about you breaks -
Some Hamadryad's tears: Unto her knee
Wading the Naiad clears her brook that streaks
Thro' wadded waifs: Hark! Pan for Helike
Flutes melancholy by the minty creeks.