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

THE LEAF-CRICKET

I

SMALL twilight singer Of dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger Of dusk's dim glimmer, How chill thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmer Vibrate, soft-sighing, Meseems, for Summer that is dead or dying. I stand and listen, And at thy song the garden-beds, that glisten With rose and lily, Seem touched with sadness; and the tuberose chilly, Breathing around its cold and colorless breath, Fills the pale evening with wan hints of death.

II

I see thee quaintly Beneath the leaf; thy shell-shaped winglets faintly — (As thin as spangle Of cobwebbed rain) — held up at airy angle; I hear thy tinkle With faery notes the silvery stillness sprinkle;

Investing wholly The moonlight with divinest melancholy: Until, in seeming, I see the Spirit of Summer sadly dreaming Amid her ripened orchards, russet-strewn, Her great, grave eyes fixed on the harvest-moon.

III

As dewdrops beady; As mist minute, thy notes ring low and reedy: The vaguest vapor Of melody, now near; now, like some taper Of sound, far-fading—Thou will-o'-wisp of music aye evading. Among the bowers, The fog-washed stalks of Autumn's weeds and flowers, By hill and hollow, I hear thy murmur and in vain I follow—Thou jack-o'-lantern voice, thou pixy cry, Thou dirge, that tellest Beauty she must die.

IV

And when the frantic Wild winds of Autumn with the dead leaves antic; And walnuts scatter The mire of lanes; and dropping acorns patter

In grove and forest, Like some frail grief with the rude blast thou warrest, Sending thy slender Far cry against the gale, that, rough, untender, Untouched of sorrow, Sweeps thee aside, where, haply, I to-morrow Shall find thee lying — tiny, cold and crushed, Thy weak wings folded and thy music hushed.