Poems / by Madison Cawein ; with a foreward by William Dean Howells [electronic text]

MUSIC OF SUMMER

I

THOU sit'st among the sunny silences Of terraced hills and woodland galleries, Thou utterance of all calm melodies, Thou lutanist of Earth's most affluent lute,—Where no false note intrudes To mar the silent music, — branch and root, — Charming the fields ripe, orchards and deep woods, To song similitudes Of flower and seed and fruit.

II

Oft have I seen thee, in some sensuous air, Bewitch the broad wheat-acres everywhere., To imitated gold of thy deep hair: The peach, by thy red lips' delicious trouble,Blown into gradual dyes Of crimson; and beheld thy magic double —Dark-blue with fervid influence of thine eyes — The grapes' rotundities, Bubble by purple bubble.

III

Deliberate uttered into life intense, Out of thy soul's melodious eloquence Beauty evolves its just preëminence: The lily, from some pensive-smitten chord Drawing significance Of purity, a visible hush stands: starred With splendor, from thy passionate utterance, The rose writes its romance In blushing word on word.

IV

As star by star Day harps in Evening, The inspiration of all things that sing Is in thy hands and from their touch takes wing: All brooks, all birds, —whom song can never sate, — The leaves, the wind and rain, Green frogs and insects, singing soon and late, Thy sympathies inspire, thy heart's refrain, Whose sounds invigorate With rest life's weary brain.

V

And as the Night, like some mysterious rune, Its beauty makes emphatic with the moon, Thou lutest us no immaterial tune:

But where dim whispers haunt the cane and corn, By thy still strain made strong, Earth's awful avatar, — in whom is born Thy own deep music, — labors all night long With growth, assuring Morn Assumes with onward song.