 ARTIMUS by Madison Cawain Red for LibriVox.org by Josh Kibbey Oft of the hiding oread was thou seen at earliest morn, a tall, imperial shape, high-buskened, dew-dripped and dung-close young curls, bright blackness of thick hair, the tipsy drops caught from the dripping sprays of underbosques, kissed of thy cheek and of thy shoulder brushed, thy rosy cheek is far, aurora's fair, thy snowy shoulder have a beautiful. Left did the shaggy heels and solitudes of Arthusa, shot and ring and reel, reverberate and echo merrily, leap into sound with singing of thy hounds, with the deep belling of thy noble hounds, big-mouthed and musical, that on the stag or bristling wild boar furious grew in quest. And thou, as keen, fleet-footed and clean-limbed, inviolable with thy quivered crew, rushed swinging on the wind-free limbs and lithe, and locs all radiance flung back to blow, and balm with spice the wine-charp air of mourn. I, me, their throats, their clarion-crystal throats, that made the hills sing in the wood-ways dance, as if to orphic strains and gave them life. I, me, their bosoms' deepness in the firm, pure, happy beauty of their naked limbs, that stormed the forest vacancies with light, swift daylight of their splendour, and made blow, within the glad sonorous solitudes, all germs of flower-its a century cold. The woodland niad whispered by her rock, the haemadry had limpid eyed and wild, expectant rustled by her usual oak, and laughed in wonder, and mad pan himself reeled, piping fiercely down the dingled deeps, with rollicking eye that rolled a brutish joy, and did some unwed maiden musing wear her father's well among the god-graced hills, bubbled and babbled to hear thy bugled cry, O, huntress, she, while deeper, dripping jar, unheeded brimmed, bowed her virginity to thee, her shorn hair at thy vestal feet, but, ah, not when the garish daylight fills the forests with far-swimming golden green, let me behold thee goddess. But when dim the slow night settles on the haunted wood, and walks in mystery, and the myriad stars maize heaven with fire, and the echoey waste, far off, far off, and murmurs palpitates into the limnid's voice, unmerciful, or is to some nightbird breaking with song at heart, unmerciful and sad and bittersweet, then come, and all thy godhead, beautiful, all beautiful and gentle, as thou camest to learn in Demyon who, in limnose once, lone in the wizard magic of the wood, wandered a dreaming boy, unfriended, sad. It grew far off among the easy trees, thy pince of beauty, blossoming flower-like between the tree trunks and the leasing limbs, bright in the leaves that kissed for very joy and drunkenness of glory thus revealed. He saw it all, from glorious face to feet, the naked pearl of all thy loveliness. Thy body's beauty, blended lily and rose, alone, accompanied of handmaidens, like some rare radiant fruit asperian, not to be plucked of gauze or min, thou hunkst upon the boughs of heaven. Thy moonid voice came silvering on his wistful ear, and sighed with light like leaves that kiss and cling again, and on such perilous beauty that must slay, the poisonous favor of thy godliness, feasting his every sense through eyes and ears, his soul exalted waxed and amorous. Like some young god who, draining Olympian bowls, grows drunk with nectar, with immortal love, and what remained, ah-ha, what remained but death. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Aphrodite, by Madison Cawain, read for LibriVox.org by Josh Kibbe. Apollo never smote his loveliest strain, when swan-necked hebe stayed her nectared bowl among the circled and reclining gods, to lend a listening ear and smile on him, as that the tritons blew on wreathed horns when Aphrodite, the cold ocean foam and lovely labor, from its singing snow upheaved or dazzling form, like some white pearl, naked and fresh within its ocean shell, borne shoreward from its bed of golden sponge, and crimson coral by the mad monsoon. Wind rocked she swung her white feet on the sea, and music gravedown the slant western winds. With swollen jowls the tritons puffed their conches, where, breasting with white bosoms the green waves, that laughed and ripples that loves misty feet, oceanids with dimple-dented palms smote sidewise the pale bubbles of the foam, weaving a silver rainbow round her form. Around her, dolphins sparkled in the spray, and Neread sang, braiding their streaming locks, or flung them backward shimmering with bells of foam, till evening let her loneliest, loveliest star, that passion-flower of the fields of heaven, pale mirrored in the sheen of shadowy seas. That, like arrested music, or the caves the sirens haunt hung deep on silent deep, when, in a hollow pearl down moon-white waves, the creatures of the ocean danced their queen into an island, like a rosy mist that glimmering dreamed upon the glimmering blue. There on the silvery sands beside the sea, beneath the moon, narcissus white, they met, she naked as a star and crowned with stars, trialed of the airy foam and queen of love. END OF POEM This recording is in the public domain. Persephone. By Madison Cohen. Red for LibreVox.org by Josh Kibbe. O Hades. O false gods, false to yourselves. O Hades, to as my brother gave her thee without a mother's sanction or her knowledge, thou borst her to the dreadful gulfs below, and made her queen, a shadowy queen of shades, queen of the fiery flood and iron realms, eternal torture and eternal pain. On blossomed plains and far Trinacria, a maiden, the dark cascade of whose hair was deep as midnight circled in crowned with stars. Hair dark as rays that brighten with the moon, went gathering flowers with the oceanids, lily and rose into pale narcissus, who was Echo's passion once, a flower now that stares forever in the lake's still glass, whose ripple breaks its image, flickering scene, as once with tears that broke beneath his eyes, with the fast-falling dew that fills its heart, when suddenly there rose with iron wane, with iron wane and steeds of shape-like death, mid-salo smoke and sulfur and pale fires, its countenance gasly, and its hair and eyes like the blue flame of sulfur. In its arms its sooty arms were like to supple steel the mighty muscles lay unto its breast, such as its arms. It drew her fragile form as buzzomed bulks of tempest in their joy, with arms of winds dragged to their black embrace a fairy mist that flux with white the summer, with wings of shadeless white and his no more heaved on the rapture of the thunder's heart. The snowy flowers shuddered and grew still, with withered heads they bowed and on the stream, where all the day it was their want to stand in silence gazing at their loveliness, laid their fair-faces limp and tripled white. Flames whipped the air like fiery scorpions, blasting and burning all the fragrant myths that haunt the dew and lair in bloom and breeze. Oh, foam-fair daughters of Oceanus, in vain you seek your mate and chide the flowers for hiding her beneath their palms of snow. Ask of that shell, that conch of twisted pearl, which, like a spirit of the singing sea, moans at your pallid feet made wet with spray. Then, sitting by the tumbling blue of waves, mourn to the waters and the ribbed sands, the falseness of the God who grasps the storm. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Dimmiter by Madison Coyne, read for LibriVox.org by Josh Kibbe. Eternal pouring in her lonely path the wells of sorrow lay. I see her now. He thinks I see her now. An awful shape guiding her dragon-team and frenzied search, from our guive lands into the jeweled shores of the remotest end where Usha's hand soothed her grief shadowed brow with kindly touch, and Savitar breathed sympathy from the skies or utter most regions of the feignless brawn. In melancholy search I see her roam the Himalayas, world dividing, pale mid-ice in snow, through mists in night and storm, then back again with that wild mother-woe fueling the anguished fire of her eyes. Back were old Atlas groans beneath the world, and the Sumerian twilight ways the soul. Deep was her sleep in Persia's haunted veils where many a-linguid phalamala moaned or heart to rest with heartbreak melody. I see her near Ionia's swelling seas, cold from the sands a labyrinthine shell, hollowing its spiral murmur to her ear, a pearly mouth against an ear of pearl. It hoped some message of Persephone it might impart. Then finding all in vain, an anguish and despair casted afar to watch the salt-spray flash, like some soft plume dropped from the wings of Eros where it fell. I see her take a flute of choral from a listening triton, and on Yethican rocks high-seated at the starry close of day, when sad the moon rose from her salty couch, gazing with sorrow on her face of sorrow. Pipe-pensive airs, plaintive as siren sing in streaming caves beneath the ocean wall, till horror presided and cleared as wrinkled front and stilled as surgy climbers to a sigh. This do I see and more, behold with fear. I see her mid the lonely groves of Crete, frighten the dundere from the overvaulted green of thickest Boschage, reaching every covert with terror of her torches and her wail. Persephone! Persephone! Till the pines of mist swathed to shudder through their miles, the panther roared down in the stream at Gorge, and echo shrieked from chasm to answering chasm. Persephone! Bewildered with her woe! As wild as when she echoed the despaired, disheveled hair of Maiden's wailing-born, Athenian tribute to that King of Crete, great Minos, when the Minotaur they saw grim, watching in his labyrinth of stone. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Dionysus by Madison Coeine, read for LibriVox.org by Campbell Schelp. Eow! Bacchus! Bacchus! Eow! Eow! Oh Dionysus! Dionysus! Ivy crowned! Oh, let me sing thy triumph ere I die! I slept and dreamed a manid came to me. A harp of hollow Agate strung with gold, wailed neath her waxen fingers and her heart, under its gauze through which the moonlight shone, kept time with its wild throbbing to her song. Agus sleeps! Oh, Dionysus sleeps! Beneath the restless waves that sigh his name, eternally at my duke listening feet. Here twas he died! Oh, Dionysus here! The great king died for whom is named this sea. Oh, let me sing thy triumph ere I die! With the shrill sirens and the kissing cling of silver cymbals and the sound of flutes. Oh, part-drawn youth, thou didst awake the world to joy and pleasure with thy sunny wine. Matched India bow and the dun, flooding Nile, grow purple with the muricks of the wine, cast from the fullness of Silenus' cup. While yet the heavens of heat saw serabands, Whirl made the redness of the Libyan sands, That drank the spilt of Bacchus, sparkling sun, From the backing to bull, a beaded red, Or the slant edge that twinkled in the sun, The tiger sun, fierce glaring overhead. What made goldhorus smile with golden lips? A new bestiour forgets his ghosts to lead, To hell's profoundness, he who stayed to sip, On winking bubble from the wine-god's cup, And captive ever after joined thy train. What made Osiris mid the palms of Nile? Leave Isis streaming and the frolic pans, Wild trebles follow as a roaring bull, Far as the faines of Indra, He who long was mourned in Memphis by his tawny priests? Eow, Bacchus, Bacchus, Eow, Eow! The brimming purple of thy hollow god, He tasted and, though gods they worshipped, too, Said Echoset once in a spiral cave. She from its sea-dyed labyrinth of rock, Saw the long pageant dancing on the strand, Where Narius slept upon an aisle of crags, And o'er the slope of his far-foaming head, The strangeness of the Orgis wildly cried, Till the gray god awoke at first and rage, Serene his face then stretched a welcoming hand, With civil utterance for the Bacchus horn. But Echo followed Nott, instead she sits, Among her crags remembering that wild cry, That nomad sound still haunting all her dreams, Confusing all her speech that Nott can say, Save roaring words bewildering her ears, Like waves reverberant in a deep sea cave. Eow, Bacchus, Bacchus, Eow, Eow! See the white stars, oh Dionysus, see, Have spilled their glittering globules one by one, Like bubbles winking in the cup of night, Down the dark west behind the mountain chain, Agus sleeps, lured by my murmuring harp, And I have sung thy triumph, let me die! End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Paefian Venus by Madison Cawain, Read for LibriVox.org by Campbell Shelt. With anxious eyes and dry, expectant lips, Within the sculptured stowa by the sea, All day she waited while, like ghostly ships, Long clouds rolled over Paefos, the wild bee, Hung in the sultry poppy half asleep, Beside the shepherd and his drowsy sheep. White robed she waited day by day, Alone with the white temple's shriant consupiscence, The Paefian goddess on her obscene throne, Dating all chastity to violence, All innocent to lusts that feels no shame, Venus my Lita born of filth and flame. So must they haunt her marble portico, The devotees of passion, passion pale, As moonlight streaming through the stormy snow, Dark eyes desirous of the stranger sail, The gods shall bring across the Cyprian sea, And him elected to their mastery. A priestess of the temple came when Eve, Like a satrap's triumph in the west, And watched her listening to the ocean's heave, Dusks golden glory on her face and breast, And in her hair the rosy winds caress, Pitying her dedicated tenderness. When out of darkness night persuades the stars, A dream shall bend above her saying, Soon a bark shall come with purple sails and spars, Sailing from Tarsus, neath a low white moon, And thou shalt see one in a robe of tire, Racing toward thee like the god's desire. Rise then, as clad in starlight, riseth night, Thy nakedness clad on with loveliness, So shalt thou see him like the god's delight, Breast through the foam and climb the cliff to press, Hot lips to thine and lead thee in before, Love's awful presence where ye shall adore, Thus at her heart the vision entered in, With lips of lust the lips of song had kissed, And eyes of passion laughing with sweet sin, A starry splendor robed in amethyst, Seen like that star-set in the glittering glow, Venus mylita born of fire and foam. So shall she dream until, near middle night, When on the blackness of the ocean's rim, The moon like some more galleon all alight, With blazing battle from the sea shall swim, A shadow with involiate lips and eyes, Shall rise before her speaking in this wise. So hast thou heard the promises of one, Of her with whom the god of gods is wroth, For whom was prophesied at Babylon, The second death, Chaldean mylidoth, Whose feet take hold on darkness and despair, Hissing destruction in her heart and hair, Whatst thou behold the vessel she would bring? A wreck ten hundred years have smeared with slime, A hulk where all abominations cling, The spawn and vermin of the seas of time, Wild waves have rotted it, fierce suns have scorched, Mad winds have tossed and stormy stars have torched, Can lust give birth to love? The vile and foul be mother to beauty? Lo, can this thing be? A monster like a man shall rise and howl, Upon the wreck across the crawling sea, Then plunge and swim unto thee like an ape, A beast all belly, thou canst not escape. Gone was the shadow with the suffering brow, And in the temple's porch she lay and wept, Alone with night the ocean and her vow, Then up the east the moon's full splendor swept, And dark between it wreck or argosy, A sudden vessel far away at sea. End of poem This recording is in the public domain. GARGEOPHY by Madison Cawain Red for LibriVox.org by Campbell Shelp Sucinta Sacra Diane Ovid There the ragged sunlight lay, Tawny on thick ferns and gray, On dark waters dimmer, lone and deep the cyclists grove, Bowered mystery and woeve, braided lights like those that love, On the pearl plums of a dove, Night to gleam and glimmer. There Centennial pine and oak into stormy utterance broke, Hollow rocks gloomed, slanting, echoing in dim arcade, Looming with long moss that made, Twilight streaks and tatters laid, Where the wild heart, hunt afraid, Plunged the water panting. Poppies of a sleepy gold, Mooned the gray-green darkness rolled, Down its vistas, making wisp-like blurs of flame, And pale stole the dim deer down the veil, And the haunting nightingale, Sang unseen the olden tale, All its hurt-heart breaking. There the hazy serpalette, Dewey cystis blooming wet, Blushed on bank and boulder, There the cyclamen, as one, As faint footsteps of the dawn, Carpeted the spotted lawn, Where the nude nymph, dripping drawn, Sloped a flower-white shoulder. In the citrine shadow there, What tall presences and fair, God-like lingered gracious, As the rock rose there that grew, Delicate and dim as dew, Stepped from out the oaks and drew, Fawn-like forms to follow, Who filled the forest spacious. Guarded that Boeusian, Valley so no foot of man, Soiled its silence holy, This profaning tread, save one, The high Antean, Actaeon, Who beheld but wasn't done, By Diana's wrath that none, Though with magic molly, Might escape that valley sleeps, Lost to us enchantment keeps, Sacred still it's banished, Bowers that no man may see, Fountains that her deity, Haunts and every rock and tree, Where her hunt goes swinging free, As in ages vanished. And of poem this recording Is in the public domain. The Faun by Madison Cawain, Read for livervox.org by Campbell Shelt. The joys that touched thee once be mine, The sympathies of sky and sea, The friendship of each rock and pine, That made thy lonely life on me, In tempi or in gargafy, Such joy as thou didst feel when first, On some wild crag thou stoodst alone, And watched the mountain tempest burst, With streaming thunder lightning stone, On latmos ore on Peleon. Thy awe when crowned with vastness night, And silence ruled the deeps abyss, And through dark leaves thou sauced The white breasts of the starry maids, Who kiss pale feet of Mooney Artemis. Thy dreams when breasting matted weeds, Of erathusa thou didst hear The music of the wind-swept reeds, And down dim forest ways drew near, Shy herds of slim Arcadian deer. Thy wisdom that knew not but love, And beauty with which love is fraught, The wisdom of the heart whereof, All noblest passions spring that thought, As nature thinks all else is not. Thy hope wherein tomorrow set, No shadow hope that lacking care, And retrospect held no regret, But bloomed in rainbows everywhere, Filling with gladness all the air. These were thine all in all life's moods, Embracing all of happiness, And when within thy long-loved woods, Did slay thee down to die no less, Thy happiness stood by to bless. End of poem This recording is in the public domain. Apollo by Madison Cawain Read for LibriVox.org by Campbell Shelpe All the Lydian notes revealing sun of Lido O come stealing as the wind the salient rivers Whisper of the wind that shivers Every ripple into stars In the sunlight's golden bars Touch thy harp that haunts the oaks With the mastery that invokes Nyad music of the fount, Oread music of the mount, And such sadder song as keeps Revel on like he in steeps, When night nods a maned shape, Purple with dusk's staining grape, Wake such chords as dewy grounds, Echo when no mortal hounds, Bell the hunt whose spearpoint shines Through Arcadia's tingled vines, When the half-awakened dawn, Dreaming on a mountain lawn, Let's her golden sandals lie, Sandwalks barefooted through the sky, And by Arathusa's bank, Swift upon the Red Heart's flink, Drives Diana's bun-skinned band, Down the cystous blossomed strand, Then loves miners swooning oar, The mountain hushed the ocean roar, As saline-stealing sails, Over Lemnos' lakes to veils, Where Endymion dreams and feels, Love her stolen kiss reveals. Thou hast sung of Helicon, How the sister muses one, From the nine pyreeds, Empire or the harmonies, Thou hast sung of Tempe's maid, And the sudden laurels' aid, Thou hast sung of many loves, Of the gods that haunt the groves, Where the marble altar stands, Rose-heaped by the balmy hands Of romance and beauty wear, High upon the temple stair, Priest-like bay-crowned white of hair, Old tradition looking up, Poor's libation from his cup, Thou hast sung of Sweet of Tongue, As once wild Amphian song, Songs Parnasian rocks that swung, Each in its lyric niche and mast, Such mural heights of song and vast, Melodious walls of posy, That time himself shall not outlast, Enduring as eternity. Ours shall be no island song, Suited to a maiden throng, Dancing with their wreaths of roses, To the double flutes soft closes, But in nations whose large eyes, With life's liberty are wise, And consenting sympathies Of all arts and sciences, She who stands above the storms, With truth's thunder in her arms, And the star's serenity, Of her hope bound burningly, Round her brow and at her knee, The spirit of progress who is shod, With ethereal fire of God, Yea, thy last shall still be first, Some wild epipede to burst, With such organ notes as ring, When the stars of mourning sing, And the sun's of heaven sent, Shoutings through the firmament, As our years have justified, And the stars have prophesied. 1886 End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. By Madison Cowine Read for LibriVox.org by Phil Shempf. Beyond the northern lights, In regions haunted of twilight, Where the world is glacier-planted, And pale as Loki in his cavern, When the serpent's slaver burns him to the bones, I saw the phantasms of gigantic men, The prototypes of vastness quarrying stones, Great blocks of winter, Glittering with the morns and evenings' colors, Wild prismatic tones of boreal beauty, Like the three-grade norns, Silence and solitude and terror loomed Around them where they labored, Walls arose, vast as the Andes, When creation boomed in urgent fire, And through the rushing snows, Enormous battlements of tremendous ice, Bastioned and turreted, I saw arise. But who can sing the workmanship gigantic That reared within its coruscating dome, The roaring fountain hurling in Atlantic Of liquid ice that flashed with flame and foam? An opal spirit, various and many formed, In whose clear heart reverberant fire stormed, Seemed its inhabitant, And through pale halls and deep diaphanous walls, And corridors of whiteness, a rural color swarmed, As rosy flickering stains, or lambent green, Or gold or crimson, Warm the pulsing crystal of the spirit's veins With ever-changing brightness, And through the arctic night there went a voice As if the ancient earth cried out, Rejoice, my heart is full of lightness. Here, well, my Thor, the God of War Harness the whirlwinds to his car, While mailed in storm, his iron arm Heaves high his hammer's lava form, And red and black his beard streams back Like some fierce torrent scoriac, Whose earthquake light glares through the night, Around some dark volcanic height, And through the skies Valkyrian cries Trumpet, as battle-word he flies, Death in his hair, and havoc in his eyes. Still in my dreams I hear that fountain flowing, Beyond all seeing and beyond all knowing, Still in my dreams I see those wild walls Glowing with hues, auroracist, And through huge halls fantastic phantoms going, Vast shapes of snow and mist, Sonorous clarions of the tempest blowing, That trail-dark banners by cloud-like, Underneath the sky of the cavern dome on high, Carbuncle and amethyst. Still I hear the oolulation of their stormy exaltation, Multitudinous and blending in horse echoes, Far unending, and through halls of fog and frost, Howling back like madness lost in the moonless mansion Of death and demon-haunted love. Still in my dreams I hear the mermaid singing, The mermaid music at its portal ringing, The mermaid song that hinged with gold at its door, And whispering evermore hushed the ponderous hurl And roar and vast Aeolian thunder Of the chained tempest under the frozen cataracts That were its floor. And, blinding beautiful, I still behold the mermaid there, Combing her locks of gold, while at her feet, Green as the northern seas, gamble her flocks Of seals and walruses, while, like a drift, Her dog, a polar bear, lies by her, Glowering through his shaggy hair. O wondrous house, built by supernal hands In vague and ultimate lands, thy architects Were behemoth wind and cloud, that laboring loud Mountained thy world foundations, and uplifted Thy sky-y bastions, drifted of piled eternities Of ice and snow, where storms, like plowmen, Go plowing the deeps with awful hurricane, Where spouting icy rain, the huge whale wallows, And through furious hail, the explorer's tattered sail Drives like the wing of some terrific bird, Where wreck and famine herd. Home of the red auroras and the gods, He who profanes thy perilous threshold, Where the ancient centuries lair, And glacier-throined thy monarch winter nods, Let him beware, lest coming on that hoary presence there, Whose pitiless hand, above that hungry land, And iceberg wheels as scepter, and whose crown The North Star is, set in a band of frost, He too shall feel the bitterness of that frown, And turned to stone, forevermore be lost. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. By Madison Gawain, read for LibriVox.org, by Campbell Shelp. The day is dead, and in the west, The slender crescent of the moon, Diana's crystal kindled crest, Sinks hillward in a silvery swoon. What is the murmur in the dowel? The stealthy whisper and the drip, A dryad with her leaf-light trip, A nyad or her fountain well, Who, with white fingers for her comb, Sleeks her blue hair, and from it curls, Showers slim minnows and pale pearls, And hollow music of the foam. What is it in the visted ways, That leans in springs and stups in sways, The naked limbs of one who flees, An oryad who hesitates, Before the sadder form that waits, Crouching to leap that there she sees, Or under boughs reclining cool, A hammadryad like a pool of moonlight, Palely beautiful, Or limnyed with her lily face, More lovely than the misty lace, That haunts a star in a firefly place, Or is it some limoniad, In wildwood flowers dimly clad, Oblong blossoms white as froth, Or mottled like the tiger moth, Or brindled as the brows of death, Wild of hue and wild of breath, Here ethereal flame and milk, Blend with velvet and with silk, Here an iridescent glow, Mixed with satin and with snow, Pansy poppy and the pale, Serpillate and galling gale, Mandrake and anemone, Honey reservoirs or the bee, Cystis and the cyclamen, Cheeked like blushing heave this, And the other white as is, Bubbled milk of Venus when, Cupid's baby mouth is pressed, Rosie to her rosy breast, And besides all flowers that mate, With aroma and in hue, Stars and rainbows duplicate, Here on earth for me and you, Yea, at last my eyes can see, Tis no shadow of the tree, Swaying softly there but she, Main it, baster it back in, What you will, who doth enchant, Night with sensuous nudity. Lo, again I hear her pant, Brusting through the dewy glooms, Through the glowworm gleams and glowers, Of the starlight wood perfumes, Swoon around her and frail showers, Of the leaflet tilted rain, Lo, like love she comes again, Through the pale voluptious dusk, Sweet of limb with breasts of musk, With her lips like blossoms breathing, Honeyed pungents of her kiss, And her obron tresses breathing, Like umbrageous helicris, There she stands like flamin' snow, In the moon's ambrosial glow, Both her shapely loins low-looped, With the balmy blossoms drooped, Of the deep America's spiritual yet sensual, Lo, she ever greets me thus, In my vision white and tall, Her delicious body there, Raymonded with amorous air, To my mind expresses all, The allurements of the world. And once more I seem to feel, On my soul like frenzy hurled, All the passionate past I reel, Greek again in ancient Greece, In the Pyrrhic revelries, In the mad and manid dance, Onward dragged with violence, Pan and old Silenus and, Faunus and abackened band, Round me wild my wine-stained hand, Or tumultuous hair is lifted, While the flushed and phallic orgies Whirl around me and the marges, Of the wood are torn and rifted, With lascivious laugh and shout, And barbarian there again, Shameless with the shameless root, Bacchus lusting in each vein, With her pagan lips on mine, Like a god made drunk with wine, On I reel and in the revels, Her loose hair the dance the shovels, Blows and thwart my vision swims, All the splendor of her limbs, So it seems yet woods are lonely, And when I again awake, I shall find their faces only, Moonbeams in the boughs that shake, And their revels but the rush, Of night winds through bow and brush, But my dreaming is it more, Than mere dreaming is a door, Opened in my soul a curtain raised, To let me see for certain, I have lived that life before. End of poem, This recording is in the public domain. Vine and Sycamore, By Madison Cowine, Read for LibriVox.org, By Sydney Beck. Here where a tree, And its wild liana, Leaning over the streamlit grow, Once a nymph like the mooned liana, Sat in the ages long ago, Sat with a mortal with whom she had mated, Sat and smiled with a mortal youth, There he of the forest, The God who hated, Changed the two into forms uncouth. Once in the woods, She had heard a shepherd, Heard a reed in a golden glade, Followed, And clad in the skin of a leopard, Found him fluting within the shade, Found him sitting with bare brown shoulder, Live and young as a sapling oak, And leaning over a mossy boulder, Love in her dry-ad heart awoke, White she was as a dogwood flower, Rosy white as a wild-crab bloom, Fragrant white as a hot-tree bower, Full of sap in the maze perfume, He who saw her above him burning, Beautiful naked in dawn arrayed, Deemed her Deanna, and from her turning, Leapt to his feet and fled afraid, Far she followed and called and pleaded, Ever he fled with never a look, Fled till he came to this spot deep-readed, Came to the bank of this forest brook. Here for a moment he stopped and listened, Heard in her voice her hearts despair, Saw in her eyes the love that glistened, Sank on her bosom and rested there. Close to her beauty she strained and pressed him, Held and bound him with kiss on kiss, Soft with her hands and her lips caressed him, Sweeter of touch than a blossom is, Spoke to his heart and with sweet persuasion, Mastered his soul till its fear was flown, Smiled on his soul till its mortal evasion, Vanished and body and soul were her own. Many a day they had met and mated, Many a day by this wild wood brook, When he of the forest, the God who hated, Came on their love and changed with a look. There on the shore while they joyed and gested, He in the shadows unseen spied, Her like the goddess Diana breasted, Him like endymion by her side. Low at a word at a sign, Their folded limbs and bodies assumed new form, Hers to the shape of a tree were molded, His to a vine with surrounding arm. So they stand with their limbs enlacing, Nymph and mortal upon this shore, He for ever a vine embracing, Her a silvery sycamore. What would God on this water's mossy curb Lost in reflections of earth's loveliness? Did I just now unconsciously disturb? I, who haphazard wandering at a guess, Came on this spot, Wherein with gold and flame of buds and blooms The season writes its name. Ah, me, could I have seen him, Their alarm of my approach deroused him from his calm. As he part Hamadryad, And may haph part fawn lay here, Who left the shadow warm as a wood rose, And filled the air with balm of his wild breath, As with ethereal sap. Does not the moss retain some slight impress, Green-dented down of where he lay or trod? Do not the flowers so reticent confess With conscious looks the contact of a god? Does not the very water Garulously boast the indulgence of a deity? And hark in burly beach and sycamore How all the birds proclaim it, And the leaves rejoice with clappings Of their myriad hands? And shall not I believe, too, And adore with such wide proof? Yay, though my soul perceives no evident presence, Still it understands. And for a while it moves me to lie down Here on this spot his godhead sanctified, May haph some dream he dreamed may linger, Brown and young as joy around the forest side, Some dream within whose heart lives no disdain, For such as I whose love is sweet and sane, That may repeat so none but I may hear. As one might tell a pearl-strung rosary, Some epic that the leaves have learned to croon, Some lyric whispered in the wild flower's ear, Whose murmurous lines are sung by bird and bee, And all the insects of the night to noon. For all around me, upon field and hill, Enchantment lies as of mysterious flutes, As if the music of a god's good will Had taken on material attributes in blooms, Like chords, and in the water gleam That runs its silvery scales on every stream. In sunbeam bars up which the butterfly, A golden note vibrates, then flutters on, In audible tunes blown on the pipes of pan That have assumed a visible entity, And drugged the air with beauty so, A fawn behold, I seem, and am no more a man. End of poem This recording is in the public domain Dither Ambix by Madison Cawine Read for LibriVox.org by Sydney Beck Tempest Wrapped round of the night as a monster is wrapped of the ocean Down, down through vast stories of darkness Behold in the tower of heaven the thunder On stairways of cloudy commotion Colossal of tread like a giant from echoing hour to hour Go striding in rattling armor The nymph at her billow-roofed dormer of foam And the sylvan greenhouse at her window of leaves appears As a listening woman who hears the approach of her lover Who comes to her arms in the night And loosening the loops of her locks With eyes full of love and delight From the couch of her rest in ardor and haste arises The nymph as if born of the tempest like fire surprises The riotous bands of the rocks that face with a roar The shouting charge of the seas The sylvan, through troops of the trees Whose clamorous clans with gnarly bosoms Keep hurling themselves on the guns of the wind Goes wheeling and whirling The nymph of the waves exultation upheld her green tresses Notted with flowers of the hollow white foam Dives screaming, then bounds to the arms of the storm Who boisterously presses her hair and wild form to his breast That is panting and streaming The sylvan hard-pressed by the wind, pan-footed air On the violent backs of the hills Like a flame that tosses and thrills from crag to crag When the world of spirits is out Is born as her rapture wills with glittering gesture and shout Now here in the darkness, now there from the rain-wild Sweep of her hair bewildering volleyed or eyes and or lips To the lambentswell of her breasts and her hips She flashes her beautiful nakedness out in the glare Of the tempest that bears her away That bears me away, away over forest and foam over tree and spray Far swifter than thought Far swifter than sound or flame Over ocean and pine In arms of tumultuous shadow and shine Though sylvan and nymph do not exist And only what of terror and beauty I feel and I name As parts of the storm The awe and the rapture divine That here in the tempest are mine The two are the same The two are forever the same Calm Beautiful bosomed o' night and I noon Move with majesty onward Bearing as lightly as a singer may bear the notes of an exquisite tune The stars and the moon through the clear stories high of the heaven The firmaments halls under whose saffron walls June Hesperian June robbed in divinity wonders Daily and nightly the turquoise touch of her robe That the violet star the silvery fall of her feet that lilies are Fill the land with languorous light and perfume Is it the melody mute of burgeoning leaf and bloom The music of nature that silently shapes in the gloom Imperial hosts of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep That I hear that I hear With their size of silver and pearl Invisible ghosts each one a beautiful girl Who whisper and leaves and glimmer and blossoms And hover and color and fragrance and loveliness Breathed from the deep world soul of the mother nature Who over and over both sweetheart and lover Go singing her songs from one sweet month to the other That appear that appear in forest and field on hill and in lee As crystallized harmony materialized melody An uttered essence peopling far and near the highline atmosphere Behold how it sprouts from the grass And blooms from flower and tree in waves of diaphanous moonlight and mist In fugue upon fugue of gold and amethyst Around me above me at spirals now slower now faster Like symphonies born of the thought of a musical master Oh music of earth oh god who the music inspired Let me breathe of the life of thy breath And so be fulfilled and attired in resurrection Triumphant or time and or death End of poem This recording is in the public domain Him to Desire By Madison Coween Read for LibraBox.org By Greg Giordano Newport Ritchie, Florida Mother of visions with liniments dulcet as numbers Breathe on the eyelids of love by music that slumbers Secretly, sweetly, o presence of fire and snow Thou comest mysterious in beauty imperious Clad on with dreams and the light of no world that we know Deep to my innermost soul am I shaken Helplessly shaken and tossed And of thy tiredness yearnings so utterly taken My lips unsatisfied thirst Mine eyes are accursed with longings for visions That far in the night are forsaken And mine ears in listening lost Yearn, yearn for the note of a chord that will never awaken Like palpable music, thou comest, like moonlight and fire Resonant bar upon bar The vibrating lyre of the spirit responds with melodious fire As thy fluttering fingers now grasp it and ardently shake With flame and with flake The chords of existence, the instrument star-sprung Whose frame is of clay so wonderfully molded from mire Vested with vanquishment come, O desire, desire Breathe in this harp of my soul, the audible angel of love Make of my heart an israfel burning above A lute for the music of God That lips which are mortal but stammer Smite every rapturous wire With golden delirium, rebellion, and silvery clamor Crying, awake, awake, too long has thou slumbered Too far from the regions of glamour With its mountains of magic, its fountains of fairy The spar-sprung has thou wandered away, O heart Come, O come, and partake Of necromanced banquets of beauty and slake By thirst in the waters of art That are drawn from the streams of love and of dreams Come, O come, no longer shall language be dumb Division shall grasp as one doth the glittering hasp Of a dagger made splendid with gems and with gold The wonder and richness of life Not anguish and hate of it merely And out of the stark eternity awful and dark Immensity silent and cold Universe shaking as trumpets or thunderous metals That cymbal yet pensive and pearly And soft as the rosy unfolding of petals Or crumbling aroma of blossoms that wither too early The majestic music of death where he plays On the organ eternal and vast of eons and days End of poem This recording is in the public domain Nymph and Faun by Madison Coween Read for Libra Box.org by Greg Giordano Newport Richie, Florida With her soft face half turned to me Like an arrested moon beam she stood in the sirk of that deep tree I took her by the hands she raised, her face to mine And half amazed, I kissed her, and we stood and gazed How good to kiss her throats in hair And say no word her throat was bare And as the slim moon young and fair Had God not given us life for this The world-old amorous happiness Of arms that clasp and lips that kiss How eloquence of limbs and arms A rhetoric of breasts whose charms Say to the sluggish blood that warms Had God not smiled upon this hour That ballooned where love had all of power The senses aphrodisiac flower The dawn was far away the night Hung savage stars of sultry white Lamp-like above to give us light Night night who led us each to each Where heart with heart could hold sweet speech With life's best gift within our reach And here it was, between the goals Of flesh and spirit, sex controls Took place the marriage of our souls End of poem This recording is in the public domain Parting of Leander and Hero By Madison Cawine Read for LibraBox.org By Greg Giordano Newport Richie, Florida Browse pale through blue and black tresses Wet with the rain's cold kisses Hair that the sea wind tosses Wild as wild wings in flight Pale brows some sad thought crosses One kiss and then good night Nay, love, thou wilt undo me When in the heavy waves Come, smile, and make unto me The billows backs as slaves To bear me and undo me With strength or ocean's graves Weep not as heavy-hearted Before I go lest thou shouldst follow As we parted Come, gaze at me, glad-hearted Not with sweet lips distorted With fear and eyes tear-smarted Let me remember how thy face looks When thou smilest, and with soft words beguilest My soul, from feet to brow Come, strengthen thy strong lover To breast the waves that cover Deep caves or sea-nymphs hover Eager to seize him now Thy image, love, shall follow With breast pressed close to mine With arms from out whose hollow No death can tear me follow Come, light me through the brine Dark eyes fixed bright on mine And mouth as red as wine Yay, give me wine of kisses Whose fire shall help me home Sweet heart, through foam that hisses Belong wild miles of foam Sweet, cease thy sighs and weeping Tis time for rest and sleeping And Venus ventured dreams For thy liander stooping Thou see as now undrooping With eyes all unaccusing Not as thou sauced it seems In sleep last night in dreams His curls with ocean oozing And wand of cheek and brow But hero, even as now Fair favored, as can make him Thy smile, which is a might A hope, a God, to take him Safe through this hell of night Here, in thy throats white hollow One last long kiss I go Ah, sweet, a kiss to follow Down from thy throats white hollow Unto thy breast that's whiter Thine arms that clasp me tighter One kiss then on thy mouth Warmer than all the south And eyes then waters brighter Wherein the far stars glow Smile on me now, I leave thee And kiss me on the brow Smile on me, love, nor grieve thee No thing can harm me now And of poem This recording is in the public domain The Spirits of the Forest Spring By Madison Coween Read for LibraBox.org By Greg Giordano Newport Richie, Florida Over the rocks she trails her locks Her mossy locks that drip, drip, drip Her sparkling eyes smile at the skies In friendship-wise and fellowship While the gleam and glance of her countenance Lulled into trance the woodland places As over the rocks she trails her locks Her dripping locks that the long, firm graces She pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruise And crystal cruise that drips, drips, drips And all the day its crystal spray Is heard to play from her fingertips And the slight, soft sound makes haunted ground Of the woods around that the sunlight laces As she pours clear ooze from her heart's cool cruise Its dripping cruise that no man traces She swims and swims with glimmering limbs With lucid limbs that drip, drip, drip Where beach and boughs build a leafy house Where her form may drowse, where her feet may trip And the liquid beat of her rippling feet Makes three times sweet the forest mazes As she swims and swims with glimmering limbs With dripping limbs through the twilight's hazes Then wrapped in deeps of the wild she sleeps She whispering sleeps and drips, drips, drips Where moon and mist wreathe neck and wrist And starry wist through the night she slips While the heavenly dream of her soul makes gleam The falls that stream and the foam that races As wrapped in deeps of the wild she sleeps She dripping sleeps where starward gazes End of poem This recording is in the public domain To A Pansy Violet by Madison Cawine Read for LibraVox.org by Greg Giardano Newport Richie, Florida Found solitary among the hills A Pansy Violet with early April wet How frail and lone you look Bost in this silven nook of heaven-holding hills Down which the hurrying rills fling scrolls of melodies Or which the birds and bees weave gossimmers of song Invisible but strong, sweet music webs they spin To snare the spirit in O Pansy Violet, unto your face I set My lips and do you speak? Or is it but some freak, a fancy love in parts Through you, unto the hearts, desire whispering low A secret none may know But me who sit and dream here by this forest stream O Pansy Violet, a wilding flower-rit Hewed like some datal gem Starring the diadem A fey or silven sprite Who in the woods all night is busy with the blooms Young leaves and wild perfumes Through you I seem to have seen All that our dreams may mean O Pansy Violet, long, long ago we met Twas in a fairy tale Two children in a veil Sat underneath the stars Far from the world of war Each loved the other well Her eyes were like the spell Of dusk and dawning skies The purple dark that dies The midnight his were blue As heaven the day shines through O Pansy Violet, what is this vague regret This yearning so like tears That touches me through years Long past when myth and fable In all strange things were able To beautify the earth Things of immortal worth This longing that to me Is like a memory Live long ago of two Fair-forced children who Loved with no mortal love Whom heaven smiled above Fostering and when they died Laid side by loving side O Pansy Violet, do you remember yet That wood-god-guarded tomb Out of whose moss your bloom Sprang with three petals wand As are the eyes of dawn And two as darkly deep As are the eyes of sleep O flower that seems to hold Some memory of old A hope, a happiness A which I can but guess You are a sign to me Of immortality Through you my spirit sees The deathless purposes Of death that still evolves The beauty it resolves The change that still fulfills Life's meaning as God wills And of poem This recording is in the public domain Bind in the long ago The gods who were stern and kind To men below Where shall we seek and find Or finding no Where Greece with king on king Dreamed in her halls Where Rome kneeled worshiping The owl now calls And clambering ivies cling And the moonbeam falls They have served and passed away From the earth and sky And their creeds are a record gray Where the passer by reads Live and be glad today For tomorrow ye die And shall it be so indeed Where we are no more That nations to be Shall read as we have before In the dust of a Christian creed That pagan lore End of poem This recording is in the public domain Beauty and Art by Madison Cowine Read from LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson The gods are dead But still for me lives on In wild wood, brook, and tree Each myth, each old divinity For me still laughs among her rocks The nyad, and the dryad's locks Drop perfume on the wildflower fox And satyr's hoof still prints the loam And whiter than the wind-blown foam The oriad haunts her mountain home To him whose mind is fainted well With loveliness no time can quell All things are real imperishable To him whatever facts may say Who sees the soul beneath the clay Is proof of a diviner day The very stars and flowers preach a gospel Old as God And teach philosophy a child may reach That cannot die, that shall not cease That lives through ideolities of beauty Even as Rome and Greece That lifts the soul above the Claude And working out some period of art Is part and proof of God End of poem This recording is in the public domain The Old Water Mill By Madison Coween Read for Librebox.org By Greg Giardano Newport Richie, Florida Wild ridge on ridge the wooded hills arise Between whose breezy vistas golfs of skies Pilot great clouds like towering Argosies And hawk and buzzard breast the azore breeze With many a foaming fall and glimmering reach Of placid murmur under elm and beach The creek goes twinkling through long gleams and glooms Of woodland quiet, summered with perfumes The creek in whose clear shallows minnows schools Glitter or dart and by whose deeper pools The blue king-fishers and the herons haunt That often startled from the freckled flaunt Of blackberry lilies where they feed and hide Trail a lank flight along the forest side With eerie clanger hear a sycamore Smooth wave uprooted builds from shore to shore A headlong bridge and there a storm hurled oak Leaves a long dam or sand and gravel choke The water's lazy way here mist flower blurs Its bit of heaven there the ox-eye stirs Its gloaming hues of pearl and gold and here A gray cool stain like dawn's own atmosphere The dim wild carrot lifts its crumpled crest And over all at slender flight or rest The dragon flies like coruscating rays Of lapis lazuli and chrysoprase Drowsily sparkle through the summer days And do lap deep here from the noontide heat The bell-hung cattle find a cool retreat And through the willows girdling the hill Now far, now near, born as a soft wind's will Comes the low rushing of the water mill Ah, lovely to me from a little child How changed the place are in once undefiled That glad communion of the sky and stream Went with me like a presence and a dream Where once the brambled mead and orchard lands Poured ripe abundance down with mellow hands Of summer and the birds of field and wood Called to me in a tongue I understood And in the tangles of the old rail fence Even the insect tumult had some sense And every sound a happy eloquence And more to me than wisest books can teach The wind and water said whose words did reach My soul addressing their magnificent speech Rockets and rushing on the old mill wheel They made the rolling mill cogs snore and reel Like some old ogre in a fairy tale Notting above his meat and mug of ale How memory takes me back the ways that lead As when a boy through woodland and through mead To orchards fruited or to fields in bloom Of briary fallows like a mighty room Through which the winds swing sensors of perfume And where deep black berries spread miles of fruit A splendid feast that stayed the plow boy's foot Went to the tassling acres of the corn He drove his team fresh in the primrose morn And from the liberal banquet nature lent Took dewy handfuls as he whistling went A boy once more I stand with sunburned feet And watch the harvester sweep down the wheat Or lays with warm limbs in the unstacked straw Nearby the thresher whose insatiate maw Devours the sheaves hot drawing out its hum Like some great sleepy bee above a bloom Made drunk with honey while grown big with grain The bulging sacks receive the golden rain Again I tread the valley sweet with hay And hear the bobwhite calling far away Or wood dove cooing in the elder break Or see the sassafras bushes madly shake As swift a rufus instant in the glen The red fox leaps and gallops to his den Or standing in the violet-coloured gloam Hear roadway sound with holiday riding home From church or fair or county barbecue Which the whole country to some village drew How spilled with berries were at summer hills And strewn with walnuts all its autumn rills And chestnuts burring from the spring's long flowers When from their tops the trees seemed streaming showers Of slender silver cool crepescular And like in nebulous radiance show in a far And maples how their sappy hearts would gush Rude troughs of syrup when the winter bush Steamed with the sugar kettle day in day And red the snow was streaked with fire-light And was its glorious the mildam's edge One slope of frosty crystal laid a ledge Of pearl across above which slated trees Cost arms of ice that clashing in the breeze Tinkled the ringing creek with icicles Thin as the peel of far-off Elfland bells A sound that in my city dreams I hear That brings before me under skies that clear The old mill in its winter garb of snow Its frozen wheel like a whore-beard below And its west windows too deep-eyes aglow Ah, ancient mill, still do I picture or The cobweb stairs unloft in grain-strewn floor Thy door like some brown honest hand of toil And honorable with labor of the soil Forever open, through which, on his back The prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack And while the miller measures out his toll Again I hear, above the cog's loud roll That makes doubt joyst and rafter groan and sway The harmless gossip of the passing day Good country talk that tells how so and so Has died or married how curculeo And coddling moth have ruined half the fruit And blight plays mischief with the grapes to boot Or what the news from town next county fair How well the crops are looking everywhere Now this, now that, on which their interests fix Prospects for rain or frost and politics While all around the sweet smell of the mill Filters warm pouring from the grinding wheel Into the bin beside which, mealy-white, The miller looms dim in the dusty light Again I see the miller's home between The crinkling creek and hills of beach and green Again the miller greets me, gaunt and brown Who oft overawed my youth with gray-browed frown And rugged mean again he tries to reach My youthful mind with fervid scriptural speech For he, of all the countryside, confessed The most religious was and googly-est A Methodist and one whom faith still led No books except the Bible had he read At least so seemed it to my younger head All things on earth and heaven he'd proved by this Be it a fact or mere hypothesis For to his simple wisdom reverent The Bible says was all of argument God keep his soul, his bones were long since laid Among the sunken gravestones in the shade Of those black-likened rocks that wall around The family-burying ground, the cedars crowned Where bristling teasel and the briar combined With clambering wood-rows in the wild grapevine To hide the stone whereon his name and dates Neglect with mossy hand obliterates And of poem, this recording is in the public domain The Rain Crow by Madison Cawain Read for LibriVox.org by April 6090 Can freckled August, drowsing warm and blonde Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead In her hot hair the oxy-daisies wound O' bird of rain, lend hot but sleepy heed To thee, with no flimmed weed, no feathered seed Blows by her and no ripple-bricks the pond That gleams like flint within its rim of grasses Through which the dragonfly forever passes Like splintered diamond Drought waits the trees and from the farmhouse eaves The locus pulse beats of the summer day Throbs and the lane that shambles under leaves Limp with heat a league of ruddy way Is lost in dust and sultry sense of hay Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain In thirsty heaven or on burning plain That thy keen eye perceives, but thou art right Thou prophesied true, for hardly hast thou seized Thy forecasting. When, up the western fierceness Of scorched blue, great water-carrier winds Their buckets bring brimming with freshness How their dippers ring and flash and rumble Lapshing large dew on corn and forestland That, streaming wet, their hilly back against the downpour set Like giants looming view The butterfly, safe under leaf and flower, Has found a roof knowing how true thou art The bumblebee within the last half hour Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart While in the barnyard under shed and cart Root-hens have housed, but I, who scorned thy power, Barometer of the birds, like August there, Beneath a beach gripping from foot to hair, Like some drenched, truant cower. End of poem This recording is in the public domain The Harvest Moon By Madison Kaywine Read for LibriVox.org By Jim Gallagher Globed in heaven's tree of azure, golden mallow As some round apple hung, high on hisperian boughs Thou hangest yellow, the branch-like clouds among Within thy light a sun-burred youth named health Rest mid the tassled shocks, the tawny stubble And by his side clad with rustic wealth Of field and farm beneath the amber bubble A nut-brown maid, content, sits smiling still While through the quiet trees The mossy rocks, the grassy hill Thy silvery spirit glides to yonder mill Around whose wheel the breeze And shimmering ripples of the water play As by their mother little children may Sweet spirit to the moon who walkest Lifting, exhaustless on thy arm, A face of pearly fire through the shifting Cloud-halls of calm and storm Pour down thy blossoms, let me hear them come Pelting with noiseless light the twinkling thickets Making the darkness audible with the hum Of many insect creatures, grigs and crickets Until it seems the elves hold revelries By haunted stream and grove, or in the night's deep peace The young old presence of earth full increase Seems telling thee her love, air lying down She turns to rest and smiles Hearing thy heartbeat through the myriad miles End of poem, this recording is in the public domain Field and Forest Call By Madison K. Wine Read for LibriVox.org by Jim Gallagher There is a field that leans upon two hills Foamed o'er of flowers and twinkling with clear rills That, in its girdle of wild acres bears Anodyne of rest that cures all cares Wherein soft wind and sun and sound are blunt And fragrances, as in some old instrument, Sweet chords, calm things that nature's magic spell Distills from heaven's azure crucible And pours on earth to make the sick mind well There lies the path, they say, come away, come away There is a forest lying twix to streams Sung through of birds and haunted of dim dreams That in its league-long hand of trunk and leaf Lifts a green wand that charms away all grief Rot of quaint silences and the stealth of things Vague whispering touches, gleams and twitterings Dews and cool shadows that the mystic soul Of nature permeates with suave control And waves o'er earth to make the sad heart whole There lies the road, they say, come away, come away End of poem, this recording is in the public domain Old Homes by Madison Cowayne Read for LibriVox.org by April 6090 Old homes among the hills, I love their gardens They're all rock fences that are day inherits Their doors round which the great trees Stay in like wardens Their paths down which the shadows march like spirits Broad doors and paths that reach bird-haunted gardens I see them gray among their ancient acres Severe of front their gables leech and sprinkled Like gentle-hearted solitary quakers Grave and religious with kind faces wrinkled Serene among their memory hallowed acres Their gardens banked with roses and with lilies Those sweet aristocrats of all the flowers Or springtime mincer golden daffodilies And autumn coins, her marigolds and showers And all the hours are toiless As the lilies, I love their orchard where the gay woodpecker flits Flashing, are you, like a winged jewel Their woods, whose floors of moss the squirrel's checker With half-hold nuts and wear in cool renewal The wild-brooks laugh and raps through redwood pecker Old homes, old hearts, upon my soul forever Their peace and gladness lie like tears and laughter Like love they touch me through the years that sever With simple faith like friendship draw me after The dreamy patience that is theirs forever End of poem This recording is in the public domain A Memory by Madison K. Wein Read for LibriVox.org by Jim Gallagher Above her, pearl and rose the heavens lay Around her, flowers scattered earth with gold Or down the path an insolence held sway Like cavaliers who ride the king's highway Scarlet and buff within a garden old Beyond the hills, faint herd through belts of woods Bells sabbath sweet, swooned from some far-off town Gamboge and gold, broad sunset colors strewed The purple west as if with God imbued Her mighty pellet nature there laid down I made such flowers underneath such skies Embodying all life-nose of sweet and fair She stood, love's dreams in girlhood's face and eyes Fair is a star that comes to emphasize The mingled beauty of the earth and air Behind her, seen through vines and orchard trees Gray with its twinkling windows, like the face Of calm old age that sits and smiles at ease Porched with old roses, haunts of honey-bees The homestead loomed dim in the glimmering space For whom she waited in the afterglow, soft-eyed and dreamy Mid the poppy and rose, I do not know, I do not care to know It is enough I keep her picture so, hung up like poetry In my life's dull prose A fragrant picture where I still may find Her face untouched of sorrow or regret Unspoiled of contact, every young and kind The spiritual sweetheart of my soul and mind She had not been, perhaps, if we had met End of poem This recording is in the public domain Dolce Arniente by Madison Cohen Read for LibriVox.org by April 6090 Over the bay is our boat went sailing Under the skies of Augustine Far to the east lay the ocean pailing Under the eyes of Augustine There in the boat as we sat together Soft in the glow of the turquoise weather Light is the foam or a seagull's feather Far a form and a face serene Sweet at my side I felt you lean As over the bay our boat went sailing Under the skies of Augustine Over the bay as our boat went sailing Under the skies of Augustine Pine and palm in the west hung, trailing Under the skies of Augustine Was it the wind that sighed above you? Was it the wave that whispered of you? Was it my soul that said I love you? Was it your heart that murmured between Answering shy as a bird unseen? As over the bay or boat went sailing Under the skies of Augustine Over the bay as our boat went sailing Under the skies of Augustine Gray and low flew the heron wailing Under the skies of Augustine Notwithspoken we watched the simple goals wing past Your hats white gwimple shadowed your eyes And your lips a dimple Smiled and singed from your soul to wean In inner beauty an added sheen As over the bay our boat went sailing Under the skies of Augustine Over the bay as our boat went sailing Under the skies of Augustine Red on the marsh as the day flamed Failing Under the skies of Augustine Was it your thought or the transitory Gold of the west like a written story Bright on your brow that I read The glory and grace of love Like a rose-crowned queen Pictured pensive in mind and mean As over the bay our boat went sailing Under the skies of Augustine Over the bay as our boat went sailing Under the skies of Augustine Wain on the waters the mist lay Vailing under the skies of Augustine Was it the joy that begot the sorrow Joy that was filled with the dreams that borrow Presidents sad of a far tomorrow There in the now that was all too keen That shadowed the fate that might intervene As over the bay our boat went sailing Under the skies of Augustine Over the bay our boat went sailing Under the skies of Augustine The marsh shan cried and the tide was ailing Under the skies of Augustine And so we parted no vows were spoken No faithless plighted that might be broken But deep in our hearts each wore a token Of life and of love and all they mean Beautiful thornless and evergreen From over the bay were our boat went sailing Under the skies of Augustine St. Augustine, Florida February 1899 End of poem This recording is in the public domain The Purple Valleys by Madison Cobbine Read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson Far in the purple valleys of illusion I see her waiting Like the soul of music with deep eyes Lovelier than cerulean pansies Shadow and fire, yet merciless as poison With red lips sweeter than Arabian Storax Yet bitterer than myrrh O tears and kisses, O eyes and lips That haunt my soul forever Again spring walks transcendent on the mountains The woods are hushed, the veils are full of shadows Above the heights steeped in a thousand Splendors like some vast canvas of the gods Hangs burning the sunsets while xiography And slowly the moon treads heaven's proscenium Night's stately white queen of love and tragedy and madness Again I know forgotten dreams and longings Ideals lost, desires dead and buried Beside the altar sacrifice erected Within the heart's high sanctuary Strangely again I know the horror and the rapture The utterless awe, the joy akin to anguish The terror and the worship of the spirit Again I feel her eyes pierced through and through me Her eyes deep, lovelier than imperial pansies Velvet and flame through which her strong will holds me Powerless and tame and draws me on and onward To sad, unsatisfied and animal yearnings Wild, unrestrained, the brute within the human The fleeting me panting on her mouth and bosom Again I feel her lips like ice and fire Her red lips odorous as Arabian storex Fragrance and fire within whose kiss destruction Lies serpent-like intoxicating languors Resistlessly embrace me, soul and body And we go drifting, drifting She is laughing, outcasts of God into the deep's abyss End of poem This recording is in the public domain The Land of Illusion by Madison Cowine Read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson So we had come at last, my soul and I, Into that land of shadowy plain and peak On which the dawn seemed ever about to break On which the day seemed ever about to die Long we had sought fulfilment of our dreams The everlasting wells of joy and youth Long had we sought the snow-white flower of truth That blooms eternal by eternal streams And fonder still we hoped to find the sweet immortal presence Love, the bird delight beside her And eyed with cideral night faith Like a lion fawning at her feet But scorched and barren in its arid well We found our dreams forgotten founted head And by black bitter waters crushed and dead Among wild weeds, tooth's trampled asphodel And side by side with pallid doubt and pain Not love, but grief did meet us there A far we saw her like a melancholy star A pensive moon moved towards us or the plain Sweet was her face a song that tells of home And filled our hearts with vague suggestive spells of pathos As sad ocean fills its shells With sympathetic moanings of the foam She raised one hand and pointed silently And passed her eyes gaunt with a thirst unslaked Where worlds of woe, where tears and torrents ached Yet never fell, and like a winter sea Whose cavern crags or haunts of rap can raft That house the condor pinions of the storm My soul replied, and weeping arm in arm Towards those dim hills by that appointed path We turned and went, arrived we did discern How beauty beckoned, white mid-miles of flowers Through which behold the amorentine hours Like maidens went, each holding high and urn Wherein it seemed drained from long chalices Of those slim flowers, they bore mysterious wine A poppy vintage full of sleep divine And pale forgetting of all miseries Then to my soul I said, no longer weep Come, let us drink, for hateful is the sky And earth is full of care, and life's a lie So let us drink, yea, let us drink and sleep Then from their brimming urns we drank sweet must While all around us rose-crowned faces laughed into our own But hardly had we quaffed when one by one These crumbled into dust And leagued on leagued the eminence of blooms That flashed and billowed like a summer sea Ruled out a waste of thorns and tombs Where bee and butterfly and bird hung dead in looms Of worm and spider, and through tomb and briar A thin wind, parched with bitter salt and sand Went wailing as if mourning some lost land Of perished empire, Babylon or Tyre Long, long, with blistered feet we wandered In that land of ruins, through whose sky of brass Hates harpy shrieked, and in whose iron grass The hydra hissed of undestroyable sin And there at last behold the house of doom Red as if hell had glared it into life Blood red and howling with incessant strife With burning battlements towering through the gloom And thrown within sat darkness Who might gaze upon that form that threatening presence there Crowned with the flickering corpse-light of despair And yet escaped son's madness and amaze And we had hoped to find among these hills The house of beauty, cursed yet thriced accursed The hope that lures one on from last to first With vain illusions that no time fulfills Why will we struggle to attain and strive When all we gain is but an empty dream? Better unto my thinking doth it seem To end it all and let who will survive To find at last all beauty is but dust That love and sorrow are the very same That joy is only suffering sweeter name And since is but the synonym of lust Far better yea to me it seems to die To set glad lips against the lips of death The only thing God gives that comforteth The only thing we do not find a lie End of poem This recording is in the public domain The Lost Song by Madison Cowie Read for LibriVox.org by Foam She sleeps, he sings to her The day was long and tired out with too much happiness She feign would have him sing of old province All songs that spoke of love in such soft tones Her restless soul was straight besieged of dreams And her wild heart beleaguered of deep peace And heart and soul surrendered unto sleep Like perfect sculpture in the moon she lies It's pallor on her through heraldic pains Of one tall casement's gulet quarterings Beside her couch an antique table Wade with golden crystal Here a carven chair wear on her raiment That suggests sweet curves of shapely beauty Bearing her limb's impress is richly laid And near the chair a glass an oval mirror framed in ebony And dim and deep investing all the room With ghostly life of woven women and men And strange fantastic gloom where shadows move Dark tapestry which in the gusts that twinge A dropping crescent slender star of light Seems swayed of cautious hands assassin-like That bide their hour She alone, deep-haired as golden dawn And whiter than a rose divinely breasted As the queen of love lies robeless and glimmer of the moon Like Danae within the golden shower Seated beside her aromatic rest In silence musing on her loveliness Her knight and turbidor A lute, a slope, the curious baldrick of his tunic Glints pearl-caught reflections of the moon That seem the voiceless ghosts of long-dead melodies In purple and sable slashed with solemn gold Like stately twilight over slopes of snow He leans above her Have his hands forgot their craft That now they pause upon the strings His lips their art that they cease speechless there His eyes are set What is it stills to stone his hands his lips And mails him head and heel in terrible marble Motionless and cold Behind the eras can it be he feels Black-browed and grim with eyes of somber fire Death towers above him with uplifted sword End of poem This recording is in the public domain The Dream of Roderick by Madison Cowain Read for LibriVox.org by foam Below the tawny tagus swept past royal gardens Breathing balm upon his couch the monarch slept The world was still, the night was calm Gray gothigated in the ray of moon-rise tower and castle crown The city of Toledo lay beneath the terraced palace ground Again he dreamed in kingly sport He sought the tree sequestered path And watched the ladies of his court Within the marble-basin bath Its porphyry stares and fountain-base Shown aright with voluptuous forms Where Andalusia fight in grace with old Castile in female charms And laughter, song and water splash Rang round the place with rock arcaded As here a breast or limb would flash Or beauty swam or beauty waited And then like Venus from the wave A maiden came and stood below And by her side a woman slave Bent down to dry her limbs of snow Then on the tessellated bank Robed on with fragrance and with fire Like some exotic flower She sank the type of all divine desire Then her dark curls that sparkled wet She parted from her perfect brows And low her eyes, like lamps of jet Lit in an alabaster house And in his sleep the monarch sighed Florenda, dreaming still he moaned Ah, what an eye had died, had died I have atoned, I have atoned And then the vision changed Her head, tempest and darkness were unrolled Full of wild voices of the dead And lamentations manifold And wandering shapes of gaunt despair Swept by and faces pale with pain Whose eyes wept blood and seemed to glare Fierce curses on him through the rain And then it seemed, against blazing skies A nephromantic tower seat Crag like on crags of giant sighs With adamantine wall and gate And from the storm a hand of might Red rolled in thunder Reached among the gate's huge bolts That burst and night clanked ruin As its hinges swung Then far away a murmur trailed As of sad seas on caverned shores That grew into a voice that wailed They come, they come The moors, the moors And with deep boom of atables And crash of cymbals and wild peel Of battle-bubles from its walls An army rushed in glimmering steel And where it trod he saw the torch Of conflagration stalked the skies And in the vanward of its march The monster form of havoc rise And pain and war cries Rent the storm a thwart whose firmament of flame Destruction reared an earthquake form On wreck and death without a name And then again the vision changed Where flows the Guadaliti sea The champions of the cross are ranged Against the Crescent's chivalry With roar of trumpets and of drums they meet And in the battle's van he fights And towering towards him comes Florenda's father Julian And one eyed tarik great in war And where these couch their burning spears The Christian phalanx near and far Goes down like corn before the shears The Muslim winds, the Christian flies Alá il alá hill and plain reverberate The rocking skies Alá il alá shout again And then he dreamed the swing of swords And hurl of arrows were no more And stranger than the howling hordes Deep silence fell on field and shore And through the night it seemed He fled upon a white steed like a star Across a field of endless dead Beneath a blood-red scimitar of sunset And he heard a moan beneath a round on every hand A cursed, yey, what has thou done To bring this curse upon thy land? And then an awful sense of wings And, lo, the answer T'was his lust that was his crime Behold, in kings must reckon with me God is just End of poem This recording is in the public domain Zips of Searle By Madison Cowain Read for liberfox.org by phone The Alps of the Tyrol are dark with pines Where, foaming under the mountain spines The inns long water sounds and shines Beyond are peaks where the morning waves And icy roads and the evening leaves The golden ghost of a thousand chiefs Deep vines and torrents and glimmering haze And sheep bells tinkling on mountain waves And fluting shepherds make sweet the days The rolling mist like a wandering fleece The great round moon in a mountain crease And the song of love make the night's old peace Beneath the blue Tyrolian skies On the banks of the inn that foams and flies The storied city of Innsbruck lines With its medieval streets that crook And its gabled houses it has the look Of a belfryt town in a fairy book So wild the Tyrol that oft dissaid When the storm is out and the town in bed The howling of wolves sweeps overhead And oft the burger sitting here In his old rose garden Here's the clear shrill scream of the eagle circling near And this is the tale that the burgers tell The abbot of Wiltau stood at his cell Where the solstine lifts its pinnacle A mighty summit of bluffs and crags That frowns on the inn Where the forest stags have worn a path to the water flags The abbot of Wiltau stood below And he was aware of a plume and bow On the precipice there in the morning's glow A shammy he saw from span to span had leapt And after it leapt to man And he knew it was the Kaiser Maximilian But see the rash of the shammy he His foot less sure and verily If the king should miss Jesu, maí, the king hath missed And look, he falls, rolls headlong out to the headlong walls What saint shall save him on whom he calls What saint shall save him who struggles there On the narrow ledge by the eagle's lair With hooked hands clinging to ex-earth and air The abbot crosses himself in dread That prayers go up for the nearly dead And the passing bell be told, he said For the house of Habsburg totters See how reveled the thread of its destiny Sheer hung between cloud and rock, quoth he But hark, where the steeps of the peak reply Is it an eagle's echoing cry And a flitting shadow its plumes on high No voice of the eagle is that which rings And a shadow, a wiry man who swings down Down where the desperate Kaiser clings The crampons bound to his feet he leaps Like a shammy now, and again he creeps Or twists like a snake or the fearful deeps By his crossbow baldrick and cap's black curl Cross the abbot below, I know the churl Tis the hunted outlaw zips of zero Upon whose head, or dead or alive The Kaiser has posted a prize Saints strive the king, quoth Wilto Who may contrive to save him now that his foe is there But hark, again through the breathless air What words are those that the echoes bear Courage, my king, to the rescue, ho! The wild voice rings like a twanging bow And the staring abbot stands mute below And, lo, the hand of the outlaw grasps the arm of the king And death unclasps its fleshless fingers from him who gasps And how he guides, where the clean cliff's wedge Dump flat to their brows, by chasm and ledge He helps the king from the merciless edge Then, up and up, past bluffs that shun the rashes' Chammy, where eagle sun great wings and brood Where the mists are spun And safe at last stand Kaiser and churl On the mountain path where the mosses curl And this, the revenge of zips of zero End of poem, this recording is in the public domain How long had I sat there and had thought beheld The gleam of the glow warm till something compelled The heaven was starless, the forest was deep And the vistas of darkness stretched silent in sleep And late mid the trees had I lingered until No thing was awake but the lone whipper will And haunted of thoughts for an hour I sat On a lich and gray rock where the moss was a mat And thinking of one whom my heart had held dear Like terrible waters a gathering fear Came stealing upon me with all the distress Of loss and of yearning and powerless nests Till the hopes and the doubt and the sleepless unrest That swallowed like built in the home of my breast Now hither, now thither, now heavenward flew While winged as the winds are, now suddenly do My soul to abysses of nothingness wear All light was a shadow, all hope a despair Where truth that religion had set upon high The darkness distorted and changed to a lie And dreams of the beauty ambition had fed Like leaves of the autumn fell withered and dead And I rose with my burden of anguish and doom And cried, oh my God, had I died in the womb? Then born into night with no hope of the mourn In air and two shadows to live so forlorn All effort is vain and the planet called faith Sinks down and no power is real but death Oh, light me a torch in the deepening dark So my sick soul may follow, my sad heart may mark And then in the darkness the answer it came From earth not from heaven a glimmering flame Behold at my feet, in the shadow it shone Mysteriously lovely and dimly alone In ember a sparkle of dew and of glower Like the lamp that a spirit hangs under a flower As goldenly green as a phosphorous star A fairy may wear in her diatoms bar In element essence of moonlight and dawn That, trodden and trampled, burns on and burns on And hushed was my soul with a lesson of light That God had revealed to me there in the night The mortal its structure, material its form, Its spiritual message of warm unto warm End of poem Beneath an old beach-tree they sat together Fair as a flower was she of summer weather They spoke of life and love while through the boughs above The sunlight, like a dove, dropped many a feather And there the violet, the bluit near it Made blurs of azure wet as if some spirit Or woodland dream had gone sprinkling the earth with dawn When only fey and fawn could see or hear it She, with her young sweet face and eyes gray beaming Made of that forest place a spot for dreaming A spot for oreads to smooth their nut-brown braids For dryads of the glades to dance in Gleaming. So dim the place, so blessed One had not wondered had Diane's moon at breast The deep leaves sundered and there on them a while The goddess dain to smile while down some forest isle The far hunt thundered I deemed that our perchance Was but a mirror to show them earth's romance And draw them nearer, a mirror where me seems All that this earth-life dreams, all loveliness that gleams Their souls saw clearer Beneath an old beach-tree they dreamed of blisses Fear as a flower was she that summer kisses They spoke of dreams and days of love that goes and stays Of all for which life prays, ah me, and misses End of poem. This recording is in the public domain Under the Rose, by Madison Cowan Read for liperfox.org by phone He told a story to her, a story old yet new And was it of the fairy folk that dance along the dew The night was hung with silence as a room is hung with cloth And soundless, through the rose-sweet hush, swooned dim the down-white moth Along the east a shimmer, a tenuous breath of flame From which, as from a bath of light, nymph-like the girl moon came And pendant in the purple of heaven, like fireflies Bubbles of gold, the great stars blue from windows of the skies He told a story to her, a story full of dreams And was it of the elfin things that haunt the thin moon-beams Upon the hill a thorn-tree, crooked and knurled and gray Against a moon seemed some crutchet hag dragging a child away And in the veil a runnel that dripped from shelf to shelf Seemed in the night a woodland witch who muttered to herself Along the land a zephyr whose breath was wild perfume That seemed a sorceress who wove sweet spells of beam and bloom He told a story to her, a story young yet old And was it of the mystic things men's eyes shall never behold They heard the dew drip faintly from out the green-cut leaf They heard the petals of the rose unfolding from their sheath They saw the wind light-footing the waters into sheen They saw the starlight kiss to sleep the blossoms on the green They heard and saw these wonders, these things they saw and heard And other things within the heart for which there is no word He told a story to her, the story men call loved Whose echoes fill the ages past and the world ne'er tires of And the poem, this recording is in the public domain Illusive garments woven of gleams In what divine dominions, brighter than day, Far from the world's dark torments, Thus thou stay, thus thou stay When shall my yearnings reach thee again? Not in vain let my soul be sieged thee, Not in vain, not in vain I have longed for thee as a lover, for her the one As a brother for a sister, long dead and gone I have called thee over and over, names sweet to hear With words than music twister, and thrice as dear How long must my sad heart woody yet fail? How long must my soul pursue thee, nor avail, nor avail? All night hath thy loving mother, beautiful sleep, Lying beside me, listened, and heard me weep But ever thou sortest another, who sought thee not For him thy soft smile glistened, I was forgot When shall my soul behold thee as before? When shall my heart enfold thee? Nevermore, nevermore End of poem, this recording is in the public domain