The Poetry Corner

The Spring.

By Madison Julius Cawein

"O Fons Bandusi!" Push back the brambles, berry-blue, The hollowed spring is full in view; Deep tangled with luxuriant fern Its rock-imbedded crystal urn. Not for the loneliness that keeps The coigne wherein its silence sleeps; Not for wild butterflies that sway Their pansy pinions all the day Above its mirror; nor the bee, Nor dragon-fly which passing see Themselves reflected in its spar; Not for the one white, liquid star That twinkles in its firmament, Nor moon-shot clouds so slowly sent Athwart it when the kindly night Beads all its grasses with the light, Small jewels of the dimpled dew; Not for the day's reflected blue, Nor the quaint, dainty colored stones That dance within it where it moans; Not for all these I love to sit In silence and to gaze in it. But, know, a nymph with merry eyes Meets mine within its laughing skies; A graceful, naked nymph who plays All the long fragrant summer days With instant sight of bees and birds, And speaks with them in water-words. One for whose nakedness the air Weaves moony mists, and on whose hair, Unfilleted, the night will set That lone star as a coronet.