March 17th, 1903. For the first time this year, here in Kentucky, to-day I heard the hylodes piping in the
Nature-notes and impressions : in prose and verse / by Madison Cawein [electronic text]
About this Item
- Title
- Nature-notes and impressions : in prose and verse / by Madison Cawein [electronic text]
- Author
- Cawein, Madison Julius, 1865-1914
- Publication
- New York: E.P. Dutton and Company
- 1906
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- Cite this Item
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"Nature-notes and impressions : in prose and verse / by Madison Cawein [electronic text]." In the digital collection American Verse Project. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/BAP5363.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 30, 2024.
Pages
Page 154
marshy places: those elfin music-makers of March, fairy horn-blowers heralding the approach of Spring.
A myriad golden-thighed honeybees, with one great black bumblebee, — burly and crapulous choragus of the Bacchic chorus,— were zooming and booming among the fluffy, furry catkins of the willows that hung, a green-gold mist, along the borders of a stream; the fragrance and honey of the pussy-willows had made boisterous Bacchantes of them all.
The chortling orchestration of the hylodes; the warbling of the bush-sparrow in tufting cottonwoods; the violet, breaking azure over the sod; the moist spring smell of the fresh new grass, and glimmer of the catkins, combined to form a symphony of sounds, aromas, and colors that no man-made music could ever equal.
Cobwebs, iridescent in the sunlight, streamed by, the tattered and rent
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remnants of the banners of elfdom, caught here and there on the withered weeds of last year: or shimmered in broken arches, the gossamer bridges of fairyland; or floated slowly away in torn shreds, shattered rainbows of the fays.
The cottonwoods' blooms made the winds haunting and balsam-sweet, smelling like the Balm-of-Gilead, and sonorous with the joy of a thousand busy honey-bees.