by Madison Cawein – 1887

 

There is a place embanked with brush

Three wooded knobs beyond,

Lost, in a valley, where the lush

Wild eglantine blows blond.

Where light the dogwoods earliest

Their torches of white fires,

And, bee-bewildered, east and west

The red haws build their spires.

The wild crab-apples’ flowery sprays

Blur through the pensive gloom

A fragrant pink; and by lone ways

The close blackberries bloom.

I love the spot: a shallow brook

Slips from the forest, near

A cane-brake and a violet nook;

Its rustling depths so clear

The minnows glimmer where they glide

Above its rocky bed:

A boyhood-haunted brook, not wide,

That has its sparkling head

Among the rainy hills; and drops

By five low waterfalls—

Wild music of a hundred stops—

Between the forests’ walls:

Down to a water-gate, that hangs

Across the stream; a dull

Portcullis rude, whose wooden fangs

The moss makes beautiful.

The brass-bright dragonflies about

Its seeding grasses swim;

The streaked wasps, worrying in and out,

Dart sleepily and slim.

Here in the moon-gold moss, that glows

Like pools of moonlight, dies

The pale anemone; and blows

The bluet, blue as skies.

And, where in April tenderly

The wild geranium made

A thin, peculiar fragrance, we,

Cool in pellucid shade,

Found wild strawberries just a-bud;

Wild berries, tart and fresh,—

Pale scarlet as a wood-bird’s blood,—

That May’s low vines would mesh.

Once from that hill a farm-house ’mid

Deep orchards—cozy brown,—

In lilacs and old roses hid,—

With picket-fence looked down.

O’er ruins now the roses guard;

The plum and seckel-pear

And apricot rot on the sward

Their wasted ripeness there.

Again when huckleberries blow

Their waxen bells I’ll tread

That dear accustomed way; and go

Adown that orchard; led

To that avoided spot, which seems

The haunt of vanished springs;

Lost as the hills in drowsy dreams

Of visionary things.