Madison Julius Cawein Poems

Now 'tis the time when, tall,
The long blue torches of the bellflower gleam
Among the trees; and, by the wooded stream,
In many a fragrant ball,
Blooms of the button-bush fall.
...

Summer evenings, when it's warm,
In the yard we sit and swing:
And it's better than a farm,
Watching how the fireflies swarm,
Listening to the crickets sing,
...

You, who are met to remember
Kentucky and give her praise;
Who have warmed your hearts at the ember
Of her love for many days!
...

Onward he gallops through enchanted gloom.
The spectres of the forest, dark and dim,
And shadows of vast death environ him
Onward he spurs victorious over doom.
...

Deep in her broom-sedge, burs and iron-weeds,
Her frost-slain asters and dead mallow-moons,
Where gray the wilding clematis balloons
The brake with puff-balls: where the slow stream leads
...

Clumped in the shadow of the beech,
In whose brown top the crows are loud,
Where, every side, great briers reach
And cling like hands, the beechdrops crowd
The mossy cirque with neutral tints
Of gray; and deep, with berries bowed,
The buckbush reddens 'mid the mints.
...

There is a scent of roses and spilt wine
Between the moonlight and the laurel coppice;
The marble idol glimmers on its shrine,
White as a star, among a heaven of poppies.
...

There is never a thing we dream or do
But was dreamed and done in the ages gone;
Everything's old; there is nothing that's new,
And so it will be while the world goes on.
...

When all the world was Mayday,
And all the skies were blue,
Young innocence made playday
Among the flowers and dew;
Then all of life was Mayday,
And clouds were none or few.
...

There is a place among the Cape Ann hills
That looks from fir-dark summits on the sea,
Whose surging sapphire changes constantly
Beneath deep heavens, Morning windowsills,
With golden calm, or sunset citadels
...