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

PHANTOMS

THIS was her home; one mossy gable thrust Above the cedars and the locust trees: This was her home, whose beauty now is dust, A lonely memory for melodies The wild birds sing, the wild birds and the bees.

Here every evening is a prayer: no boast Or ruin of sunset makes the wan world wroth; Here, through the twilight, like a pale flower's ghost, A drowsy flutter, flies the tiger-moth; And dusk spreads darkness like a dewy cloth.

In vagabond velvet, on the placid day, A stain of crimson, lolls the butterfly; The south wind sows with ripple and with ray The pleasant waters; and the gentle sky Looks on the homestead like a quiet eye.

Their melancholy quaver, lone and low, When day is done, the gray tree-toads repeat: The whippoorwills, far in the afterglow, Complain to silence: and the lightnings beat, In one still cloud, glimmers of golden heat.

He comes not yet: not till the dusk is dead, And all the western glow is far withdrawn; Not till, — a sleepy mouth love's kiss makes red, —The baby bud opes in a rosy yawn, Breathing sweet guesses at the dreamed-of dawn.

When in the shadows, like a rain of gold, The fireflies stream steadily; and bright Along the moss the glowworm, as of old, A crawling sparkle — like a crooked light In smoldering vellum — scrawls a square of night,—

Then will he come; and she will lean to him, — She, — the sweet phantom, — memory of that place, —Between the starlight and his eyes; so dim With suave control and soul-compelling grace, He cannot help but speak her, face to face.