 Prologue by Madison Cowine, read for LibriFox.org by Larry Wilson. There is a poetry that speaks through common things. The grasshopper that in the hot weeds creaks and creaks says all of summer to my ear. And in the crickets cry I hear the fireside speak and feel the frost work mysteries of silver near, on country casements, while deep lost in snow the gatepost seems a sheeted ghost. And other things give rare delight. The guttural harps the green frogs too. Those minstrels of the falling night that hail the sickle of the moon from grassy pools that glass her loom. Or all of August in its loud dry cry the locusts call at noon that emphasizes heat. No cloud of lazy white makes less with its cool shroud. The rain whose cloud dark lids the moon, that great white eyeball of the night, makes music for me. To its tune I hear the flowers unfolding white. The mushroom groin and the slight green sound of grass that dances near. The melon ripening with delight and in the orchard soft and clear the apple readily rounding out its sphere. The grigs make music as of old to which the fairies swirl and shine within the moonlight's prodigal gold. On woodways wild with many a vine, when all the wilderness with wine of stars is drunk I hear it say, is God restricted to confine his wonders only to the day that yields the abstract tangible to clay? And to my ear the wind of morn, when on her rubric forehead far one star burns big, lifts the vast horn of wonder where all murmurs are. In which I hear the waters war, the torrent and the blue abyss, and pines that tear us bar and bar the mountain side, like lovers kiss and whisper words where all of grandeur is. The jutting crabs, dark iron veined with oar, the peaks where eagles scream that pour their cataracts rainbow-stained like hair in many a mountain stream, can lift my soul beyond the dream of all religions, make me scan no mere external or extreme, but inward pierce the outward plan and learn that rocks have souls as well as man. In DuPort, this recording is in the public domain. In the Shadow of the Beaches by Madison Cawine, read for LibriVox.org by Laurie Wilson. In the Shadow of the Beaches, where the fragile wildflowers bloom, where the pensive silence bleaches green a roof of cool perfume, have you felt an awe imperious as when in a church, mysterious windows paint with God the gloom? In the Shadow of the Beaches, where the rock ledged waters flow, where the sun's slant splendor bleaches every wave to foaming snow, have you felt a music solemn as when minister arch and column echo organ worship blow? In the Shadow of the Beaches, where the light and shade are blend, where the forest bird beseeches and the breeze is brimmed with scent, is it joy or melancholy that overwhelms us partly, wholly to our spirit's betterment? In the Shadow of the Beaches, lay me where no eye perceives, where like some great arm that reaches gently as a love that grieves, one gnarled root may clasp me kindly, while the long years working blindly slowly change my dust to leaves. In the Poem, this recording is in the Public Domain. A Fallen Beach by Madison Cawine, read for LibriVox.org by Laurie Wilson. Nevermore at doorways that our barken shall the madcap wind knock and the moonlight, nor the circle which thou once didst darken shine with footsteps of the neighbouring moonlight, visitors for whom thou off didst harken. Nevermore galooned with plowdy laces shall the morning like a fair freebooter make thy leaves his richest treasure-places, nor the sunset like a royal suitor clothe thy limbs with his imperial graces. Add no more between the savage wonder of the sunset and the moon's upcoming shall the storm with boisterous hoofbeats under thy dark roof dance, fun like to the humming of the panpipes of the rain and thunder. Off the satter spirit, beauty drunken of the spring called, and the music-measure of thy sap made answer, and thy sunken veins grew vehement with youth, whose pressure swelled thy gnarly muscles winter shrunken, and the germs deep down in darkness rooted, bubbled green from all thy million oilets where the spirits rain and sunbeam suited, of the April made their whispering toilets or within thy stately shadow footed. Off the hours a blonde summer tinkled at the windows of thy twigs, and found thee bird-blive, or with shapely bodies twinkled, lice and feet of naked flowers around thee, where thy mats of moss lay sunbeam sprinkled, and the autumn with his gypsy-coated troupe of days beneath thy branches rested, swarthy faced in dark eye, and throated songs of hunting, or with red hand tested every nut bird that above him floated. Then the winter barren-browed, but rich in shaggy followers of frost and freezing, made the floor thy broad boughs his kitchen, trapper-like to camp in, grimly easing limbs snow-ferred and moccasin'd with litton. Now, alas, no more do these invest thee with the dignity of while them gladness. They unto whose hearts thou once confessed thee of thy dreams. Now know thee not, and sadness sits beside thee, where for God dost rest thee. In the poem this recording is in the public domain. A Coyne of the Forest by Madison Cowan, read for leverbox.org by Daryl Horton on May 2019 in Columbia, South Carolina. The hills hang woods around, where green below, dark, breezy boughs of beech trees mats the moss, crisp with the brittle holes of last year's nuts. The water hums one bar there, and the glow of gold lies steady, where the trailers toss, red bug-led blossoms and a rock abut, and spots the wild flocks and oxalis grow, where beech roots bulge the loam, and wilt across the grass-grown road, and roll it into ruts. And where the sumac breaks, grow dusk and dense, among the rocks, great yellow violets, bluebells and windflowers bloom, the agaric, in dampness crowds of fungus thick and tense, with gold and crimson and wax white that sets the may apples along the terraced creek at bold defiance, where the old rail fence divides the hollow, there the bee bird wets his bill, and there the elder hedge is thick. No one can miss it, for two cat birds nest, calling all morning in the trumpet vine, and there at noon the pewee sits and floats a woodland welcome, and his varied best at eve the red bird sings as if to sign the record of its loveliness with notes. At night the moon stoops over it to rest, and unreluctant stars in whose faint shine there runs a whisper as of windswept oats. In the poem, this recording is in the public domain, A House in the Hills by Madison Cowan, read for LibaVox.org by Daryl Horton on May 2019 in Columbia, South Carolina. Old hearts that hold the saddest memories are the most beautiful, and such makes sweet, light, happy moods of younger natures, which their sadness contacts and so sanctifies. And such to me is an old, gabled house, deserted, and neglected, and unknown, lost in the tangled hollow of its hills, dark, cedar hills, and dreamy orchard lands, with but its host of shrouded memories, haunting its ruined rooms and desolate halls, pathetic with their fallen finery, and whispering through its cobweb to crevices, and roomy hearths that sigh with ceaseless wind, undreamed of things that happened long ago. Hearing gray afternoons, I love to sit and hear the running rain along the roof, the creak and crack of noises that are born, of silence, or mysterious agencies, the fitful footfalls of the wind addon, grand, winding stairways, massy banistered, a clapping door, and then a sudden hush, as if the old house held its breath to see, invisible to me, a presence pass, that brings a pleasant terror stiffening through the tingling veins and staring from the eyes, then comes the rain again along the roof, and in rain-rodded room and rain-stained hall, the drip and whisper of the wind and rain seem viewless footsteps of the sometime lords and mistresses who lived here in the past, and could the state material but assume a state clairvoyant, then the dream-drugged eyes, perhaps might see, from room to dusty room, the ghost of stately gentlemen glide by, and glimmering ladies, all be ruffled, trail, long, haughty, silks, miraculously stiff. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Wind by Madison Cowan, read for LibaBox.org by Daryl Horton on May, 2019 in Columbia, South Carolina. Wind of the East. If thou pass by the land where my loved ones dwell, I pray the fullest of greetings bear to them from me, their lover and say that I am the pledge of passion still from the Arabic. The ways of the wind are eerie, and I love them all, the blith, the mad, and the dreary, spring, winter, and fall, when it tells to the waiting crocus, its beak to show, and hangs on a wayside locus, bloom bunches of snow, when it comes like a balmy blessing from the musky wood, the half-grown roses caressing till their cheeks burn blood, when it rolls in the autumn season, and winds with rain, or sleet like a mine without reason, or soul in pain, when the woodways want so spicy, with bud and bloom, or desolate, dead and icy, as the icy tomb, when the puffed owl crouched and frozzy in the hollow tree, sobs the laurel's cold and drowsy, its shuddering melody, then I love to sit in December with the big hearth sings, and dreaming forget and remember a host of things. And the wind, I hear how it strangles in wells in size, on the roof-sharp, shivering angles that front the skies, how it shouts and rumps and tumbles, in attics overhead, in the great-throated chimney rumbles, then all at once falls dead, then comes like the footsteps stealing of a chow on the stair, overbent, old gentleman filling, his slippet way with care, and my soul grows anxious-hearted, for those once dear, the long-lost loves depart in the wind draw near, and I seem to see their faces not one estranged, and their old accustomed places round the wind-hearth ranged, and the wind that waits and poises with a shadow sway, seems their visionary forces calling me far away, then I wake in tears and hear it, welling outside my door, or is it some wandering spirit weeping upon the moor. End of poem, this recording is in a public domain. RAIN IN THE WOODS by Madison Cowine redforlibrivox.org by Phil Schemf When on the leaves the rain persists, and every gust brings showers down, when copes and woodlands smoke with mists, I take the old road out of town, into the hills, through which it twists. I find the veil where catnip grows, where boneset blooms with moisture bowed, the veil through which the red creek flows, turbid with hill-washed clay, and loud as some wild horn the huntsman blows. Around the root the beetle glides, a burnished barrel, and the ant, large, agate-red, a garnet slides beneath the rock, and every plant is roofed for some frail thing that hides. Like knots against the trunks of trees, the like-and-colored moths are pressed, and wedged in hollow blooms the bees hang pollen-clotted. In its nest the wasp is crawled and lies at ease. The locus harsh that sharply saws the silence of the summer noon, the katydid that thinly draws its fine file o'er the bars of moon, and grasshopper that drills each pause, the mantis, long-clawed, furtive lean, fierce feline of the insect hordes, and dragonfly, gauzed winged and green, beneath the wild grapes leaves, and gourds have housed themselves and rest unseen. The butterfly and forest bird are huddled on the same gnarled bow, from which, like some rain-bowled word, that dampness hoarsely utters now. The tree-toed's guttural voice is heard, I crouch and listen, and again the woods are filled with phantom forms, with shapes grotesque in cloudy train, that rise and reach to me cool arms of mist, dim, wandering wraiths of rain. I see them come, fantastic, fair, chill, mushroom-colored, sky and earth grow ghostly with their floating hair and trailing limbs, that have their birth in wetness, fungi of the air, o' wraiths of rain, o' ghosts of mist, still fold me, hold me and pursue, still let my lips by yours be kissed, still draw me with your hands of dew, unto the trist, the dripping trist. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Heap by Madison Cowine, read for LibriVox.org by Mira Eagle. Now is it as if spring had never been, and winter but a memory and a dream, here where the summer stands her lap of green, heaped high with bloom and beam, among her blackberry lilies low that lean to kiss her feet, or freckle-browed that stare upon the dragonfly, which slimly seen, like a blue jewel flickering in her hair, sparkles above them there. Knee deep among the tepid pools, the cows chew a slow cud or switch a slower tail, half sunk in sleep beneath the beach and boughs, where thin the wood gnats ale. From bloom to bloom the languid butterflies drowze, the sleepy bees make hardly any sound. The only things the sun rays can arouse, it seems, are two black beetles rolling round upon the dusty ground. Within its channel glares the creek and shrinks, beneath whose rock the furtive crawfish hides, in stagnant places, where the green frog blinks and waters strider glides. Far hotter, it seems, for the bird that drinks, the startled kingfisher that screams and flies, hotter and lonelier for the purples and pinks of weeds that bloom, whose sultry perfumes rise, stiffling the swooning skies. From ragweed follows, rye fields heap with sheaves, from blistering rocks, no monster likens crust, and from the road where every hoof stroke heaves a cloud of burning dust. The hotness quivers, making limp the leaves that lull like panting tongues. The pulsing heat seems a wan wimple that the summer weaves, a veil in which she wraps as in a sheet, the shriveling corn and wheat. Furious incessant in the weeds and briars the sawing weed bugs sing, and heat begot the grasshoppers so many strident wires to cut out stinging huts. A lash of whirling sound that never tires, the locus flails the noon, where harnessed thirst beside the roadspring many a shod hoof mires into the trough thrust his hot head immersed round which cool bubbles burst. The sad sweet voice of some wood spirit who laments while watching a loved oak tree die. From the deep forest comes the wood doves coo, a long lost lonely cry. O far breeze, a mighty wind to woo the woods to stormy laughter, sow like grain the world with freshness of invisible dew, and pile above far fevered hill and plain cloud bastions black with rain. And poem, this recording is public domain. Young September by Madison Carwine, read for leapivox.org by Alan Lawley, with a look and a laugh where the stream was flowing. September led me along the land with a golden rod and lobelia glowing, seem-burning torches within her hand, and faint as the thistles or milkweed's feather, I glimpsed her form in the sparkling weather. Now twas her hand and now her hair, that tossed me welcome everywhere, that lured me onward through the stately rooms of forest hung and carpeted with glooms, and widowed wise with a sore, doors with green, through which rich glimmers of a robe were seen. Now like some deep-marsh mellow rosy gold, now like the great Joe Parr weed fold on fold, of heavy mauve, and now like the intense, masked iron weed of purple opulence. Along the bank in a wild possession of gold and sapphire the blossoms bloom, and born on the breeze came their soft confession, in syllableed musk and honeydew, in words unheard that their lips keep saying, sweet as the lips of children praying. And so mis-seamed I heard them tell, how here her loving glance once fell, upon this bank and from it so grew, the agerator miss flowers, happy hue, how from her kiss as grim-sum as the dawn, the carden flower drew its vermilion, and from her hair's blonde touch the illa campaign evolved the glory of its golden rain, while from her starry footsteps redolent, the aster purled its flowery fermentant. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Vintage By Madison Collwine Red4Libervox.org Among the fragrant grapes she bows, long violet clusters heap her hands, and with bright brows on him bestows sweet looks like soft commands. And from her sun-burnt throat at times as bubbles burst on new-made wine, a happy fit of merry rhymes rings down the hills of vine, and in his heart remorseless, sweet grew big the red grape, passion there, his heart that ever at her feet was filled with love's despair. But she, who ne'er the honeyed must of love had drained, a grown-up child saw in him merely one to trust, and broke his heart and smiled. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Black Vespers Pageants By Madison Collwine Red4Libervox.org By Alan Lawley The day or fierce with carmine turns, an Indian face towards earth and dies. The west like some cornfars in urns, its ashes under smoldering skies, a thwart whose bowl, one red cloud streams, wild as some dream, an Aztec dreams. Now shadows mass above the world, and night comes on with wind and rain, the mulberry-colored leaves are hurled, like frantic hands against the pain, and through the forests bending low, night stalks like some gigantic woe. In hollows where the thistle shakes, a hoar bloom like a witch's light, from weed and flower the rain-wind rakes, dead sweetness, as a wild man might, from autumn leaves the woods among dig some dead woman, fair and young. Now let me walk the woodland ways, alone except the thoughts that are akin to such wild nights and days, a portion of the storm that far fills heaven and earth tumultuously, and my own soul with ecstasy. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. I wish that white goes softly messendering through the night, whom each expectant flower makes its guest. All day the prim roses have thought of thee, their golden heads close harem'd from the heat. All day the mystic moon flowers silkenly veiled snowy faces, that no bee might greet, or butterfly, that wade with pollen past, keeping sultana charms for thee at last their lord, who comest to salute each sweet. Cool throated flowers that avoid the days to fervid kisses, every bud that drinks the tipsy dew, and to the starlight plays nocturnes of fragrance, by winged shadow links in bonds of secret brotherhood and faith. O bearer of their orders shibboleth, like some pale cymbal fluttering o'er these pinks, what dost thou whisper in the balsam's ear that sets it blushing, or the hollyhocks, a syllable'd silence that no man may hear, as dreamily upon its stem it rocks, what spell dost bear from listening plant to plant, like some white witch, some ghostly ministerant, some spectre of some perished flower of flocks. O voyager of that universe, which lies between the four walls of this garden fair, whose constellations are the fireflies that wield their instant courses everywhere, mid-fairy firmaments, wherein one sees mimic-buities in the Pleiades, thou stearest like some fairy ship of air, gnome wrought of moon-beam fluff and gossamer, silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotist ma'ber king Oberon, or haply her his queen, Tatania, on some midnight quest. O for the herb, the magic euphorcy that should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah me, and all that world at which my soul hath guessed. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. What joy you take in making hotness hotter, and emphasizing dullness with your buzz, making monotony more monotonous. When summer comes and droth hath dried the water in all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp filling the stillness, or as urchins beat a stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp, your switch-like music whips the midday heat. Ober of sound caught in the summer's hair, we hear you everywhere. We hear you in the vines and the berry brambles, along the unkept lanes among the weeds, amid the shadeless meadows gray with seeds, and by the wood round which the rail fence rambles sawing the sunlight with your sultry saw. Or, like a tomboy truant at their play with noisy mirth among the barn's deep straw, you sing away the careless summer day, o briar-like voice that clings in idleness to summer's drowsy dress. You tramp of insects, vagrant and unheeding, improvident, who the summer make one long green mealtime, and for winter take no care. Eyes singing or just merely feeding. Happy go lucky, vagabond, though frost shall pierce ere long your coat of green or brown and pinch your body, let no song be lost, but as you lived into your grave go down, like some small poet with his little rhyme forgotten of all time. End poem, this recording is public domain. Forest and Field by Madison Cowine Red for LibriVox.org by Phil Schemf Green watery jets of light let through the rippling foliage drenched with dew, and golden glimmers warm and dim that in the visted distant swim, where round the wood springs oozy urn the limp loose fronds of forest fern trail like the tresses, green and wet, a wood nymph binds with violet. Or rocks that bulge and roots that not, the emerald amber mosses clot. From matted walls of briar and brush, the elder nods its plumes of plush, and argous eyed with bloom on bloom the wild rose breathes its wild perfume. Mayapples ripening yellow lean with oblong fruit, a lemon green, near Indian turnips, long of stem that bear an acorn oval gem, as if some woodland bachas there while braiding locks of hyacinth air with idytrod had idly tossed his thersus down, and so had lost, and blood-root that from scarlet wombs puts forth in spring its milk-white blooms, that then like starry footsteps shine of April under beach and pine, at which the gnarled eyes of trees stare, big as fawns at dryadies, that bend above the fountain spar as white and naked as a star. The stagnant stream flows sleepily, thick-paved with lily-pads, the bee, brown, honey-drunk, a besarred, booms past the mottled toad, that hid in calmus and blue-eyed grass beside the water's pooling-glass, silenius-like, eyes-stalled, the mainat glittering dragonfly, and penny-royal and peppermint pour dry-hot orders without stint from fields and banks of many streams, and in their scent one almost seems to see the meter-pass, her breath sweet, with her triumph over death, a haze of floating saffron, sound of shy, crisp creepings o'er the ground, the dip and stir of twig and leaf, tempestuous gusts of spices-brief, born over bosques of sassafras, by winds that foot it on the grass, sharp, sudden songs and whisperings that hint at untold, hidden things, pan and sylvanus, who of old kept sacred each wild wood and wold, a wily light beneath the trees, quivers and dusks with every breeze, a hama-dryad, happily who, culling her morning meal of dew, from frail accustomed cups of flowers, now sees some satyr in their bowers, or hears his goat-like hoof snapping press of brittle branch, and in distress shrinks back, her dark, disheveled hair veiling her limbs one instant there. Down precipices of the dawn, the rivers of day are drawn, the soundless torrents free and far, of gold that deluge every star, there is a sound of winds and wings that fills the woods with carolings, and dashed on moss and flower and fern, and leaves that quiver breathe and burn, rose radiance smites the solitudes, the dew-drenched hills, the dripping woods that twitter as with canticles of bird and brook, an air that smells of flowers and buds and boisterous bees, delirious honey and wet trees. Through briars that trip them, one by one, with swinging pales that flash the sun, a troop of girls comes, barriers whose bare feet glitter where they pass, through dew-drop trembling tufts of grass, and oh, their laughter and their cheers wake echo on her shrubby rocks, who answering from her mountain mocks with rapid fairy horns, as if each mossy bale and weedy cliff has its imperial Oberon, who, seeking his titania, hid in covarts caverned from the sun, in kingly wrath had called and chid. Cloud feathers oozing orange light make rich the indian locks of night, her dusky waist with sultry gold girdled and buckled fold on fold. One star, a sound of bleating flocks, great shadows stretched along the rocks, like giant curses overthrown by some Arthurian champion, soft swimming sorceries of mist that streak blue glans with amethyst, and tinkling in the clover bells the twilight sound of cattle bells. And where the martian reed and grass burns, angry, as a shattered glass, the flies blur sudden gold and shine like drops of amber-scattered wine, spun high by reeling bacchanals, when Bacchus reeds his curling hair with vine leaves, and from every lair his worshipers around him calls. They come, they come, a happy throng, the barriers with lilt and song, their pales brimmed black to tin bright eaves, with luscious fruit kept cool with leaves of aromatic sassafras. Twix-twitch, a berry often slips, like laughter from the purple mass, wine swollen as Silenius's lips. The tanned and tired noon climbs high, up burning reaches of the sky. Below the drowsy belts of pines, the rock-ledged river leaps and shines. An overrainless hill and dell is blown the harvest sultry smell, while in the fields one sees and hears the brawny throated harvesters. Their red brows beaded with the heat, by twos and trees among the wheat, flash their hot sides. Behind them press the binders, men and maids who sing like some mad troop of piping pan. While all the hillsides echoing, ring such sounds of aerial airiness as haunted freckled caliban. Oh, ho! Oh, ho! Tis noon I say, the roses blow, away, away, above the hay, to the song o' the bees the roses sway, the lovelace that they hum all day, so low, so low, the roses minisingers they. Up a velvet lawns of lilac skies, the tawny moon begins to rise. Behind low blue-black hills of trees, as rises up in siren seas, to rock in purple deeps, hip-hid, a virgin bosomed oceanid, gaunt shadows crouch by tree and scour, dusky shaggy sadders waiting for, the nymphs of moon, the dryads white, who take with loveliness the night, and glorify it with their love. The sweet far notes I hear, I hear beyond dim pines and mellow ways, the song of some fair harvester, the lovely limnad of the grove, whose singing charms me while it slays. Oh, deep, oh, deep, the earth and air are sunken sleep, adieu to care. Now everywhere is rest, and by the old oak there the maiden with the nut-brown hair doth keep, doth keep trist with her lover, the young and fair. Like Atalanta's spheres of gold, within the orchard apples rolled from sudden hands of boughs that lay, their leaves like palms against the day, and near them pairs of rusty brown roll bruised and peaches pink with down, and furry as the ears of pan, or like Diana's cheeks, a tan beneath which burnt a tender fire, or one as psyches with desire, and down the orchard vistas. Young, a hickory basket by him swung a hat of straw against the sun, drawn shadowy o'er his face. He strode as if he looked to find someone. His eyes searched every bend of road. Before him, like a living burr, rattled the noisy grasshopper, and where the cow's melodious bells trailed music up and down the dells, beside the spring, that o'er the ground went whimpering like a fretful hound. He saw her waiting, fair and slim, her pale forgotten there, for him, yellow as sunset skies, and pale as fairy-clouds that stay or sail through azure vaults of summer, blue as summer heavens, the wild flowers grew, and blossoms on which spurts of light fell laughing, like the lips one might feign once for heebies, or a girl's that laughter lights with rows of pearls. Long ferns in murmuring masses heaped, and mosses moist in barrel steeped, and mosca-romas of the wood and silence of the solitude, and everything that near her blew the spring had showered thick with dew. Across the rambling fence she leaned, her fresh round arms all white and bare, her artless beauty bonnet-screened, simplicity from feet to hair, a woodthrush gurgled in a vine, ah, tis his step, tis he she hears, the wild rose smelt like some rare wine, he comes, ah, yes, tis he who nears, and her brown eyes and happy face said welcome, and with rustic grace he leaned beside her, and they had some talk with youthful laughter glad, I know not what, I know but this, its final period was a kiss. And a poem, this recording is in the public domain. To greet sweet summer, her, who, clothed in light, leads earth's best hours on. Hark! how the wild birds of the woods, throat it within the dewy solitudes, the brook sings low and soft, the trees make song, as from her heaven aloft comes blue-eyed summer like a girl along. And as the day her lover leads her in, how bright his beauty glows, how red his lips that ever try to win, her mouth's delicious rose, and from the beating of his heart warm winds arise and sighing thence depart, and from his eyes and hair the light and dew fall round her everywhere, and heaven above her is an arch of blue. Come to the forest, o'er the treeless meadows, deep with their hay or grain, come where the hills lift high their thrones of shadows, and tawny orchards rain, come where the reapers wet the scythe, o'er golden sheaves are heaped, where barriers blithe with willow basket and with pail, swarm knoll and plain, where flowers freckle every veil, and beauty goes with hands of berry stain, come where the dragon flies a brassy blue, flit round the wild wood's dreams, and sucking at some horn of honey-dew the wild bee-hums and dreams, come where the butterfly waves wings of sleep gold-disked and mottled over blossoms deep, come where beneath the rustic bridge the creek-frog cries, or in the shade the rainbowed midge above the emerald pools with murmuring flies, come where the cattle brows within the break, as red as oak and strong, where cattle bells the echoes faintly wake, and milk-maids sing their song, come where the vine-trailed rocks with waters hoary tell to the sun some legend old or story, or where the sunset to the land speaks words of gold, where ripeness walks a wheaten band about her brow, making the buds unfold, come where the woods lift up their stalwart arms unto the star-sown skies, knotted in the emerald that to the winds and storms fling mighty rhapsodies, or to the moon repeat what they have seen, when night upon their shoulders vest doth lean, come where the dew's clear syllable slips from the rose, where the fireflies fill the dark with golden music of their glows, now while the dingles and the vine-roofed glens whisper their flowery tale, unto the silence and the lakes and fends, unto the moonlight pale, murmur their rapture, let us seek her out, her of the honey throat and peach sweet pout, summer and at her feet, the love of old, lay like a sheaf of wheat, and of our hearts the purest gold of gold, and of poem this recording is in the public domain. Indian Summer by Madison Coween Red for Librevox.org by Greg Giordano, Newport Richie, Florida The dawn is a warp of fever, the eve is a wolf of fire, and the month is a singing weaver, weaving a red desire, with stars dawned dices with even, for the rosy gold they heap, on the blue of the day's broad heaven, on the back of the night's wide deep, it's rains to the blood and merry, the seasons of prince who burns, with the teasing lusts that harry, his heart for a wench who spurns, it's crown us a beaker with sherry, to drink to the doxy's heels, a tankard of wine o' the berry, to lips like a clove in peels, it's death if a king be saddened, right so let a fool laugh lies, but wine when a king is gladdened, and a woman's waist and her eyes, he hath shattered the loom of the weaver, and left but a leaf that flits, he hath seized heaven's gold and a fever, of mist and of frost is it's, he hath tippled the buxom beauty, and gotten her hug and her kiss, the wide world's royal booty, to pile at her feet for this. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. To Sorrow by Madison Coween. Red for Librebox.org by Greg Giordano. Newport Ritchie, Florida. O dark-eyed spirit of the marble brow, whose look is silence and whose touch is night, who walkest lonely through the world, O thou, whose sittest lonely with life's blown out light, who in the hollow hours of night's noon, cryest like some lost child, whose anguished fevered eyeballs seek the moon, to cool their pulses wild, thou who dost bend to kiss Joy's sister cheek, turning its rose to alabaster yay, thou who art terrible and mad and meek, why in my heart are thou enshrined today? Sorrow, O say, O say! Now spring is here, and all the world is white, I will go forth, and wear the forest robes, itself in green, and every hill in height, crown its fair head with blossoms, spirit globes, of hyacinth and crocus dashed with dew, I will forget my grief, and thee, O sorrow, gazing at the blue, beneath a last year's leaf, of some brief violet, the south wind woos, or blue it whence the west wind raked the snow, the baby eyes of love, the darling hues of happiness that thou can't never know, mother of pain and woe, on some whore upland whore with clustered thorns, hard by a river's windy white of waves, I shall sit down with spring whose eyes are mourns, of light whose cheeks the rose of health enslave, and so forget thee, braiding in spring's hair, the snow drop tipped with green, the cool-eyed primrose and the trillium fair, and Mooney, Selendine, contented so to lie within her arms, forgetting all the seren sad and wan, remembering love alone, who are earth's storms, high on the mountains of perpetual dawn, lead the glad hours on, for in the peace that follows storm when even, within the west stands dreaming, lone and far, clad on with green and silver, and the heaven is brightly brooched with one gold-glittering star, how will lie down beside a mountain-lake on which the tall pine sigh, and breathing musk of rain from vows that shake, storm bawsome blowing by, make friends of dream and contemplation high, and music listening to the mocking bird, who through the hush sends its melodious cry, and so forget awhile that other word that all loved things must die, and of poem this recording is in the public domain. Slumber and dream, who mortals so adore, their flowing raiment sculpture to their charms. Soft on thy breast thy lovely children rest, lay'd like two roses in one balmy nest. Silent thou comest, swiftly too and slow, there is no other presence like to thine, when thou approachest with thy babes divine, thy shadowy face above them bending low, blowing the ringlets from their brows of snow. Oft have I taken sleep from thy dark arms, and fondled her fair head, with poppies wreathed, within my bosom's depths, until its storms with her were hushed, and I but faintly breath'd. And then her sister dream, with frolic art arose from rest, and in my sleeping heart blew bubbles of dreams where elfin worlds were lost, worlds where my stranger soul looked down at me, or walked with spirits by a rainbowed sea, or smiled an unfamiliar shape of frost, floating on gales of breathless melody. Day comes to us in garish glory garbed, but thou thou bringest to the tired heart rest in sweet silence, wherein are absorbed all the vain tumults of the mind and mart. Whether thou comest with hands full of stars, or clothed in storm and cloud, the lightning-bars rolling the thunder like a mighty dress, God moves with thee. We seem to hear his feet wind-like along the floors of heaven-beat, to see his face revealed an awfulness through thee, O night, to ban us, or to bless. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Haunted House by Madison Cawain Read for LibriVox.org by Cornel Nemesh, Reno, Nevada. The shadows sit and stand about its door like uninvited guests and the poor, and all the long, hot summer day, the ceaseless locus dins its round delay in one old sycamore. The square leaves upon its rotting roof its wandering tracks in empty holes, and in its clapp-board cracks the spider who weaves a windy roof, and cells of clay, the mud-wasp-packs, the she-fox-velbs upon its floor, and over its unvarbed door the outlet rusts, and where the moses run the freckled snakes' basks in the sun. The children of what father sleep beneath those melancholy pines. The slow slugs slime their headstones, their very creep the duttered poison vines. The orchard near the meadow deep lifts up the creepyed arms. Black like and in the wittering hip no sap swells up to make it leap, and the shout against the spring's storms. No blossom lulls its age asleep, the winds bring sad alarms, big bell-round piers and pippins rusted red, no maiden gutters now. The warm-bored drunks weep tears of gum instead, oozing from each old bow. The woodlands around it are solitary and folded like gound hands. The sunlight is sad and the moonlight is dreary, the hum of the country is lonesome and weary, and the bees go by in bands to gladder and lovelier lands. The grasses are rotting in vok and in bower, the loneliness dank and rank as a chamber where lies for a lonely hour an old man's corpse with many a flower. Is hushed and blank, and even the birds have pasted by, gone with their songs to a happier sky, a happier sky and bank. In its desolate halls are lying gold, blood red, and bronze-drifted leaves of autumn dying, and the winds above them sighing turn them round and round, make a ghostly sound as a footsteps falling, flying, ghostly footsteps fently flying through the haunted house. Gazing down in her white shroud, woven of windy cloud comes at night the phantom moon, comes and all the shadows soon, crowned in chambers of the house, haunting whispering rooms arouse, shadows, ghosts, her rays lead on till beneath the cloud like a ghost she's gone in her gusty shroud or the haunted house. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Autumn by Madison Cowine, read for LibriVox.org by Phil Shemf. I oft have met her slowly wandering beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild, her cheeks a hectic flush, more fair than spring, as if on her the scarlet copes had smiled, or I have seen her sitting, dark and tall, her gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim, beneath a twisted oak from whose red leaves she wound great drowsy wreaths and let them fall, the west wind in her hair that made it swim far out behind, brown as the rustling sheaves, or in the hill lands I have often seen the marvel of her passage, glimpses faint of glimmering woods that glance the hills between, like Indian faces fierce with forest paint, or I have met her twixed two beach and hills within a dingled valley near a fall, held in her nut-brown hand one cardinal flower, or waiting dimly where the leaf-dammed rills went babbling through the wild woods' aroused hall, where burned the beach and maples glared their power, or I have met her by a ruined mill where trailed the crimson creeper, serpentine on fallen leaves that stirred and rustled, chill and watched her swinging in the wild grapevine, while beauty, sad among the veils and mountains, more sad than death, or all that death can teach, dreamed of decay and stretched appealing arms, where splashed the murmur of the forest's fountains, with all her loveliness did she beseech and all the sorrow of her wildwood charms. Once only, in a hollow gurt with trees, a dream amid wild asters filled with rain, I glimpsed her cheeks, red-buried by the breeze, in her dark eyes the night's sidereal stain, and once upon an orchard's tangled path, where all the golden rod had turned to brown, where russets rolled and leaves lay sweet of breath, I did behold her, mid her aftermath of blossoms standing, in her gypsy gown, within her gaze, the dreams of life and death. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. A river aflame the wide Ohio lies. Beneath the sunset billowing manifold the dark blue hill tops rise, and westering dips the crescent of the moon through great cloud feathers, flushed with rosy ray, that close around the crystal of her loon, the redbird wings of death. A little skiff slips o'er the burnish stream, a wake aflame that broadens far behind, follows and ripples, and the paddles gleam against the evening wind. Was it the boat, the solitude, the hush, that with dead Indians peopled all the glooms? That made each bank, me seemed, and every bush start into eagle plumes. That made me seem to hear the breaking brush, and as the stag's great antlers swelled in view, to hear the arrow twang from cane and rush that dipped to the canoe. To see the glimmering wigwams by the waves, and wildly clad round the campfire's glow the shawney chieftains with their painted braves, each with his battle-move. But now the vision like the sunset fades, the clouds of ribbed gold have oozed their light, and from the west like somber sacrum shades gallop the shades of night. The broad Ohio glitters to the stars, and many murmurs wander through its woods. Is it the morning of dead warriors for their lost solitudes? The moon is set. But like another moon the crescent of the river shimmers there, unchanged as when the eyes of Daniel Boone beheld its flowing fare. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Old Inn by Madison Kaywin. Red for Libervox.org by William Mosqueda. Red winding from the sleepy town, one takes the lone forgotten lane straight through the hills. A brush-bird brown bubbles in the thorn flowers, sweet with rain, where breezes bend the gleaming grain and cautious drip of higher leaves, the lower dips that drip again, above the tangled trees it heaves, its gables and its haunted eaves. One creeper gnarled and blossomless, over forest all its eastern wall, the sighing cedars rake in press, dark bows along the pains they sprawl. While where the sun beats, drone and drawl, the mud wasps and one bushy bee, gold-dusty hurls along the hall, to crowd into a crack, to me the shadows seem too scared to flee. Of ragged chimneys martins make, huge pipes of music twittering here they build and brood. My foot falls awake, strange stealing echoes, till I fear I'll see my pale self drawing near. My phantom self, as in a glass, for one, men murdered, buried, where, dim in gray, stealthier glimmer pass, with lips that seem to moan, alas. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Millwater, by Madison Kaywin. Read for LibriVox.org by William Mosqueda. The water flag and wild cane grow, round banks wherein the sun beams so ephemeral gold when, on its shores, the wind sighs through the sycamores. In one green angle just in reach, between a willow tree and a beach, moss grown in leaky lies a boat, the thick-grown lilies keep afloat. And through its waters half awake, slow swims the spotted watersnake, and near its edge, like some gray streak, stands gaunt, the still fly up the creek. Between the lily-pads and blooms, the water spirits set their looms, and weave lace-like light that dims the glimmering leaves of underlimbs. Each lily is the hiding place of some dim wood-things-elvish face that watches you with gold-green eyes where bubbles of its breathing rise. I fancy when the waxing moon leans through the trees and the dreams of June, and when the black bat slants its wing and lonelier the green frogs sing. I fancy when the whirlpool will and some old tree sings wildly shrill, with glow-worm eyes that dot the dark, each holding high a firefly spark, to torch its way the wood-imps come, and some float rocking here, and some unmoor the lily-leaves and oar around the old boat by the shore. They climb through oozy weeds and moss, they swarm its rotting sides, and toss their firefly torches oar its edge, or hang them in the tangled sedge. The boat is loosed, the moon is pale, around the dam they slowly sail, upon its bow to pilot it, a jack-o'-lantern flame doth sit. Yes, I have seen it all in dreams, not as forgotten, not it seems, the strangled face, the matted hair, drowned of the wombing trailing there. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Dream by Madison Kaywin, read for LibriVox.org by William Mosqueda. Thus did I dream. It seemed the afternoon of some deep, tropic day, and yet the moon hung, round and bright, with golden alchemy, high in a heaven sapphire as the sea. Long, longy lengths of perishable cloud, templeed the west, over rolling forest bowed, clouds raining colors, golden violets, that opening, seemed from inner worlds to let down hints of perian beauty, and lost charms, of old romance, peopled with fairy forms. And all about me, fruited orchards grew, pear, quints and peach, and plums of dusty blue, rose apricots and apples streaked with fire, kissed into rightness by some sun's desire and big with juice, and on far fading hills down which it seemed a hundred torrent rills, flashed silent silver, vines and vines and vines, terraced the world with vintage cooling wines, pleasant and fragrant as the heart of June, their delicate tang drawn from the wine-white moon. And from the clouds, or the sweet world, their dripped and odorous music, strange and feverishly lipped, that swung and swooned and panted as with sighs, investing at each throb the air with eyes and forms of sensuous spirits, limpid white, clad on with the ramiant as of starry night, fair frail embodiments of melody, from out whose hearts of crystal one could see, the music stream like light through delicate hands hollowing a lamp, and as on sounding sands the ocean murmur haunts the rosy shells, within whose convolution beauty dwells, my soul became a harp of vibrant love, re-echoing all the harmony above. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The sun set late and waffs of wind beat down and cuffed the blossoms from the blossoming quints scattered the petals on the puppy's crown and made the clover wince. By dusking forests through whose fretful bows and flying fragments shot the evening's flame, a down the tangled lane, the quiet cows with dreamy tinklings came. The sun set late, but scarcely had he gone when o'er the moon, gold-lit and crescent there, bright fosper, polished as a precious stone burned in fair deeps of air. As from the faint stars the glory waned and waned, the crickets made the old-time garden shrill, beyond the luminous pasturelands complain the first far whipper-will. End poem. This recording is in the public domain. A sleet storm in May by Madison Coine Read for LibriVox.org by Matthew D. Robinson On southern wind shot through with amber light, breathing soft balm and clothed in cloudy white, the lily-fingered spring came o'er the hills, waking the crocus and the daffodils, o'er the cold earth she breathed a tender sigh. The maples sang and flung their banners high, their crimson tasseled pennons, and the elm bound his dark brows with a green-crested helm. Beneath the musky rot of last year's leaves, under the forest's myriad naked eaves, life-woken rose and gold and green and blue, robed in the starlight of the twinkling dew. With timid tread a-down the barren wood spring held her way, when low before her stood white mantled winter nodding his white head, stormy his brow and stormily he said, The God of Terror and the King of Storm, must I remind thee how my iron arm raised rebel standards mid these conquered bowers, turning their green to crimson? Thou with flowers, thou wouldst supplant me, nay you serp my throne, audacious one? And at her breast he tossed a glittering spear of ice and piercing frost, and struck her down dead on the unfeeling mold. The fragile blossoms gathered in the fold of her young bosom fell in desolate rose about her beauty, and like fragrant snows covered her lovely hands and beautiful feet, or on her lips lay like glass kisses sweet that died there, lilacs musky of the may, and bluer violets and snowdrops lay and tombed in crystal, icy faint and fair, like teardrops scattered through her heavenly hair. Alas, sad heart, break not beneath the pain, time changes all, the beautiful wakes again. We should not question such, a higher power knows best what bud is ripest or what flower silently plucks it at the fittest hour. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Hartle Spring by Madison Carwine Read for leapivox.org by Alan Lawley Whiten, oh whiten, oh clouds of lawn, lily like clouds that whiten above, now like a dove and now like a swan, but never, oh never, pass on, pass on, never as white as the throat of my love. Blue black night on the mountain peaks, oh not so black as the locks, oh my love, stars that shine through the evening's streaks over the torrent that flashes and breaks, brighter the eyes of my love, my love. Moon in a cloud as white as snow, mist in the veil, where the rivulet bounds, dropping from ledge to ledge below, turning to gold in the sunset's glow, softer and sweeter her footsteps' sounds, sound or may winds in the blossoming trees, oh not so sweet as her laugh that rings, song a while birds on the morning breeze, birds and brooks and murmur obese, sweeter her voice when she laughs or sings. The rose of my heart is she my dawn, my star o'er the east, my moon above, my soul takes ship for the avalanche of her heart of hearts and shall sail on till it anchors safe in its haven of love. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Spanning the roses' gray of memory against the tumult of life's rushing crowds, a broken rainbow on the skies of May, a flashing hummingbird among the flowers' deep colored blooms, its slender tongue and bill, sucking the calyxed and the honeyed meurs, till sick of sweets to other flowers at worse. Such was his love that won her heart's full bowers to yield to him their all, their sweets in showers, the flower from which he drank his body's fill, a flashing hummingbird among the flowers, a moon moth-white that through far mists like fleece moves ambergirt into a bulk of black and lost to sight rims all the black with froth, a love that swept its moon like some great moth across the heaven of her soul's young peace and smoothly passing in the clouds did cease of time through which its burning light comes back, a moon moth-white that moves through mists like fleece, a bolt of living thunder downward hurled, momental blazing from the piled up storm that etches out the mountains in the ocean, the towering rocks then blots the sight's commotion. Love, love that swiftly coming, bared the world, the deeps of life round which fates clouds are curled, and ceasing left all night in black alarm, a bolt of living thunder downward hurled. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Mist and moon, lascivious eyes and mouths of sensual rows smile into mine, and breasts of luring light, and tresses streaming golden to the night, persuade me onward where the forest glows, and then it seems along the haunted hills there falls a flutter as of beautiful feet, as if tempestuous troops of maynads meet to drain deep bowls and shout and have their wills, and then I feel her limbs will be revealed like some great snow-white moth among the trees, her vampire beauty waiting there to seize and drag me downward where my doom is sealed. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Plentious perfume everywhere, there in the summer gladiols drew parallels of scarlet glare, and the moon hewed prime rose cool, sat in soft and redolent, honey-suckles beautiful, filling all the air with scent, roses red or wide as wool, roses glorious and lush, rich in tender tinted dyes, like the gate and pestuous rush of unnumbered butterflies clustering or each bending bush. Here, japonica and box and the wayward violets, clumps of star-enabled flocks, and the myriad flowery jets of the twilight four o'clock, ah, the beauty of the place when the June-made one-grade rose full of musk and mellow grays in the garden's humming-clothes of her calmly mother-face, babble-like the holy hawks budded, burst and flunted-wide gypsy beauty from their stalks, mourning glories, babble-dyed, swung in honey-hearted flocks, tawny tiger lilies flung, doublet slashed with crimson on, graceful slave-girls fair and young, like surcasions in the sun, alabaster lilies swung, ah, the droning of the pea in his dusty pantaloons, tumbling in the fleur-de-lis in the drowsy afternoons dreaming in the pink sweet pea, ah, the moaning-wild-wood dove with its throat of amethyst rippled like a shining cove, which a wing to pearl had kissed, moaning, moaning of its love, and the insect's gossip thin, from the summer hotness hid in lone, leafy-dips of green, then at eve the cate did with its hard, unverited deem, often from the whispering hills, born from out the golden dusk, gold with gold of daffodils, thrilled into the garden's musk the wild wail of weeper-wheels, from the purple-tangled trees, like the white, full heart of night, solemn with majestic peace, swum the big moon, veined with light, like some gorgeous golden fleece, she was there with me, and who, in the magic of the hour, had not sworn that they could view beating on each blade and flower, moony blisters of the doom, and each fairy of our home, firefly, its tapper-lit in the honey-scented gloom, dashing down the dusk with it like an instant flaming phone, and we heard the calling, calling of the brown owl in the break, where the trumpet-vine hung, crawling down the ledge into the lake heard the sighing stream-let falling. Then we wandered to the creek where the water lilies, growing thick as stars, lay white and weak, or against the brooklets, lowing stooped and bathed a bashful cheek, and the moonlight, rippling golden, fell in virgin orioles on their bosoms half unfolden, where it seemed the fairy's souls dreamed as perfume, unbeholden, lying sleeping, pearly tinted, baby creed with each bud, while the night wind, pinewood scented, swooning over the field and flood, rocked them on the water's dented. Then the low melodious bell of a sleeping, high-ferting coat, in some very bryard dell, as her satin-dulap wrinkled with the cut that made it swell. And returning home, we heard, in a beech tree at the gate, some brown, dream-behunted bird singing of its absent mate, of the mate that never heard. And you see, now I am gray. Why within the old, old place, with such memories I stay, fancy out her absent face long, since passed away. She was mine, yes, still is mine, and my frosty memory reels about her, as with wine-wormed into young eyes that see all the past that was divine. Yes, I loved her, and have grown melancholy in that love, and the memory alone of her loveliness, whereof she did sanctify each stone. And where her flowers swing, there she walks, as if a bee fan them with its airy wing. Down her garden, shadowy in the hush, the evenings bring. The end of poem. This recording is in the public domain. THE BOY COLUMBUS by Madison Coween Read for Librebox.org by Greg Giordano, Newport Ritchie, Florida And he had mused on lands each bird, that winged from realms of ballerina, or seas of the enchanted sword, in romance sang him till he heard, far foam on islands of Alsina, for rich Levant and old Castile, that other seamen freight their galleys, with polo he and Mandeville, through stranger seas a dreamy keel, sailed into wonder-people valleys, far continents of flower and fruit, of everlasting spring, where fountains and flowers with human faces shoot, for races dwell both man and brute, in cities under golden mountains, for cataracts their thunder's hurl, from heights the tempest has at mercy, vast peaks that touch the moon and whirl, wild torrents down of gold and pearl, and forests strange as those of Cersei, let repeared love loot in the shade of royal gardens to the palace, and court that haunt the ballast strayed, of terraces and still parade, their vanity and guile and malice, him something calls diviner yet, than love, more mighty than a lover, heroic truth that will not let, deed lag a purpose westward set, in eyes far-seeing to discover, and of poem, this recording is in the public domain. North Beach, Florida by Madison Cawine red4libbervox.org Surge upon Surge, the miles of surf uncurl volutes of murmur, and the far shore foams, the thundering billows, boiling into pearl, the sea-wind clouds and combs. Wave upon wave, as when the nearyids pour, with streaming tresses, landward, when the arms of tritons reach them, racing towards the shore, bursts on the beach that storms. O thou primeval solitude, that rolled out of creation when the world was young, that shall roll on when man is not, and old the ages yet unsung, time shall not flaw thy music. Thou hast heard God's spirit on thy waters, and no night anews the memory of that one word which blossomed into light. With such impression as upon thy face, the soaring seagulls make, man comes and came, and countless myriads, race on warring race, have found thee thus the same. Thy part is to destroy, and still remain immutable midst mutability, the symbol of all change, that clothes again mystery in mystery. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Storm. By Madison Cowine. Red for LibriVox.org by Phil Shemp. Thor. Thor is out on the hills, the frown of his fierce brow showing, his breath through his red beard blowing, with rain through his beard that it fills. The forests are taken, the mightiest oaks are twisted and shaken, as by chariot spokes, where mountains awaken to the hoofs of his yoke, rained sheer with the strength of his arm. Right forth, oh spirit of storm! What hope for the sparrow, or nest of the bird, where fords were once narrow, what hope for the herd, when arrow on arrow he empties the third of his quiver against their alarm. Descend, oh spirit of storm! You may measure the might that he brings, by the welcome that echoes his fellows, by the fork of the lightning that yellows the darkness, the hammer he swings, the cattle are scattered and low from the shore, the roses are shattered that grew at the door, the swallows look tattered and twitter and soar, made glad with the force of his form. Rejoice, oh spirit of storm! On levels that sunder, the roar of the main, he plows with the thunder and soars with the rain. No sunbeam shall blunder through black till the plain is planted with storm as a farm. Sweep on, oh spirit of storm! His path is the abyssum which heaps the wild wind behind him and hovers a whirlwind before, that uncovers the hurricane lair where he sleeps, at night through the wrestle of winds that contend, to guard the good vessel from rocks that would rend, like a star let it nestle the light to defend, the semen and his from all harm, from thee, oh spirit of storm! End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. You remember how the mist when we climbed to Devil's Den, Pearl white in the mountain glen, and above us amethyst, throbbed in circled, then away through the wild woods opposite, torn and scattered, morning lit, vanished into dewy gray, vague as in romance we saw from the fog one riven trunk, talon-like with branches shrunk, thrust a monster-dragging claw, and we climbed for hours through the dawn dripping jellicos to a wooded rock, wince those undulating leagues of blue summits, mountain chains, that lie dark with forest bar on bar, ranged their wild, irregular purple peaks beneath the sky, ocean hasher. Range on range billowed their enormous spines, where the rocks and priestly pines sat eternal, without change. We were sons of nature then, she had taken us to her, drawn us bound with briar and burr, closer her than other men. Intimates of all her moods, from her bloom anointed looks, wisdom of no man-made books, learned we in those solitudes. How the seed contained the flower, how the acorn held the oak, how within the vine awoke the wild impulse still to tower, how in fantasy a mirth springing when she summoned there, sponge-like fungi everywhere, bulged exuded from the earth, coral vegetable fangs that the underworld excelled, bulbous fluted ribbed and scaled, many-colored end in rings. Like the Indian pipe that grew pink and white in lomy cracks, flowers of a natural wax she had turned her fancy to. On that laurel precipice where the chestnuts dropped their burrs, warm with balsam of the furs, first we felt her mother kiss, full of heaven and the wind, while the forests wood on wood murmured like a multitude giving praise where none hath sinned. Freedom met us there. We saw a freedom-giving audience, in her face the eloquence lightning-like of love and law, round her on majestic hips lounged the giant mountains, where streaming cataracts tossed their hair, god in thunder on their lips. Often eagle or a hawk or a scavenger we knew, winged above us through the blue by its shadow on the rock, or a cloud of temple white moved a lazy berg of pearl through the sky-specific swirl shot with cool cerulean light. So we dreamed an hour upon that high rock the lichens must, while around us glimmering tossed golden mittens of the sun. Then arose, and a ravine which a torrent once had worn, made our roadway to the corn in the valley deep and green. And the farmhouse with its bees, where old-fashioned flowers spun gay rag carpets in the sun, gray among the apple trees. Here we watched the evening fall, or Wolf Mountain sunset made, huge a rhododendron raid round the sun's cloud-calixed ball, then through scents of urban soil through the mining camp we turned, in the twinkling dusk discerned with its white-washed homes of toil. Ah, those nights! We wandered forth on some haunted mountain path, when the moon rose late, and wrath the large stars sowed south and north, splashed with gold and purple skies, and the milky zodiac rolled the thwart the belted black, seemed a path to paradise. And we walked our tarried till in the valley land beneath, like the vapor of a breath, wreathed in frost, arose the still architecture of the mist, and the moondawn's necromanths touched the mist, and made it glance, terraced pearl and amethyst. Then around us, sharpened brusque, night's shrill insects strident strung fairy vials that buzzed and sung pixie music of the dusk. And we seemed to hear soft sighs and hushed steps of ghostly things, flustered feet and rustled wings all around us. Fireflies gleaming in the tangled glade seemed the eyes of warriors stealing under-watching stars to some phantom ambuscade. To the teepees there that gloomed wigwams of the mist that slept by the woodland side once crept shadowy Shawnee's moonbeam bloomed. When the moon rose like a cup, lay the valley brimming shine of mesmeric mist like wine, to the sky's dim face held up. As she rose from out the mines of the necrious darkness, night metter clad in dewy light, mid pine mountains sage and pines. As through fragmentary fleece of the clouds her circle broke, ore seemed about as woke myths of Italy and Greece. As an orb of spary quartz her serene circumference grew, home we turned, and all night through slept the sleep of happy hearts. In the poem, this recording is in the public domain. The Whipperwell by Madison Cowine, read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson. Above lone woodland ways that led to Dells the stealthy twilight tread, the west was hot geranium red, and still, and still along old lanes the locusts sow, with clustered pearls the maytimes blow. Deep in the crimson afterglow we heard the homeward recattle low, and then far off like some far woe, the Whipperwell, the Whipperwell. Beneath the idle beach and boughs we heard the slow bells of the cows, come softly jangling towards the house, and still, and still, beyond the light that would not die, out of the scarlet-haunted sky, beyond the evening star's white eye of glittering calcedony, drained out of dusk the plaintive cry of Whipperwell, of Whipperwell. And in the city oft when swims the pale moon or the smoke that dims its disc, I dream of wildwood limbs, and still, and still, I seem to hear where shadows grope, midst ferns and flowers that dew drops rope, lost in faint deeps of heliotrope. Above the clover sweetened slope we treat despairing past all hope, the Whipperwell, the Whipperwell. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. In the Wildwood by Madison Cobbine, read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson. I lie where silence sleeps and twilight dreams and sighs, where all heaven's azure peeps blew from one wildflower's eyes, where in reflecting deeps a world-inferted lies of dimmer woods and skies, divining God from things humble as weed and bee, from songs the wild bird sings guessing at poetry, and from each flower that swings each star familiar tree, learning philosophy. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. A Hollow of the Hills by Madison Cobbine, read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson. How oft the swallow darted above its deeps of blue, where leaves close clung or parted to let the sunlight through, where roses, honey-hearted, hung full of living dew. How oft from out the heaven upon me blew the balm of soft winds, summer-driven from continents of calm, with rustlings as of riven, sea-sounding pine and palm. How oft from its leafy cover I watched the red bird slip, and marked like some rude lover the bee with a robber lip, bend down the snowy clover or make the wild rose dip. Still darts the soaring swallow above it, and the rose still blooms within its hollow, where still the runnel flows, the brook that I shall follow, no more, that seaward goes. There still the white moon shineth at night through rifted trees, upon the stream that twineeth through blooms that no one sees, and on as I divineth my soul that sighs for these. End of poem, this recording is in the public domain. Beneath the beaches by Madison Cobbine, read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson. I long, O long to lie neath beach and branches twisted, green twix the summer sky, the woodland shadows nigh like dry-eyed sunbeam risted, the live long day to dream beside a wild wood stream. I long, O long to hear the claustral force breathing sounds soothing to the ear, to see the wild vine near its scarlet blooms unsheathing, the live long day to cross slow o'er the nuts, true and moss. I long, O long to see the nesting redbird singing glad on the wood-rose tree, to watch the breezy bee half in the wildflower swinging, God's live long day to pass deep in cool forest grass. O soul, so builded in with martin-booth and steeple, brick alley ways of sin, what hope for you to win ways free of pelf and people, ways of the leaf and root, and soft mcdonian flute. In the poem, this recording is in the public domain. The Bridal Path by Madison Cowayne. Read for LibriVox.org by Cornel Namesh in Reno, Nevada. Through meadows of the iron weeds, those purple blooms hang. Sleeping the morning dew in twinkling beads, the thin path twists and winding leads through woodland hollows, dripping down to a creek of rocks and reeds, onto a lily dam that feeds a mill, whose wheel, through willow braids, wings, the white water whipping. It winds through meadows of mint and brush, where silvery seeds drift drowsy, or swoon along the heatful hush, and where the bobwhite in the bush, the elder blooming frowsy, keeps calling clear, then through a crush of crowded saplings low and lush, then by a pool of flag and rush with bright rows, petaled blousey. Thence over the ragweed fallow lot, whose low rail fence encumbers the dense packed berries, ripening hot, where in the heaven one far spot of gray, the gray hawks' lumbers, then through the greenwood where the rot of leaves and loam smells cool, and, shot with dotting dark, the touch-me-not swings curling horns in numbers. It winds round rocks that bulge, and lie deep in damp ferns and mosses, each like a giant on his thigh watching some forest quarry die. And thence it frilly crosses a bramble bridge, winds wearing high, a partridge startles toward the sky a jarring light where bubbling by the brook its diamonds tosses. And here the cohosh swings its snow, gaunt from the forest springing. There gold-soral blossoms blow, here very colored totes to sow or swell the soil, and swinging the trumpet vine hangs red and low near boughs, on which the beach-bursts glow, the woodland winds ways to and fro over waters wildly ringing. It leads us deep into the cane through spice-bush belts, where tinkle one stray bell sounds, and then again, lost in some lone and leafy lane, where smooth the clay roots wrinkle, a cloud looms up, a grayish stain against the blue, and wet with rain the wind blows, denting down the grain and the leaves. The first drops sprinkle, the dust is drilled with the raindrops, one, then two quick gleams, then thunder, and scurrying with dust, we run into a whiff of hay and sun, of creeps and barns, and under low, martin-builded eaves, where done the sparrows shelter, watch the spun-blue rain sweep down. That seems to stun the world with wind and wonder, a crushing wedge of stormy light, vibrating blinds and dashes a monster elm to splinters white, then roaring rain, then blinding bright, a bolt again that crushes, the storm is over. Left and right, the clouds break, and with green delight, fresh rain sends blow from wood and height, where each blade drips and flashes, a ghostly gold burns slowly through the chasmed clouds, and blended with rainy rose and rainy blue, the heavens, purled with many a hue, die like a dolphin splendid, high bowed in rock, now one or two slide stars peep out, the pirate claw to night's rich horde, in dusk and dew, here is our pathway ended, the end of poem, this recording is in the public domain. The Old Farm by Madison Cohen, recorded for LibriVox.org by Cornel Nemish in Reno, Nevada, dormered and branded, cool, locust girdled on the hill, stained with weather wear, at yule and midsummer, every seal thresholding the beautiful, still I see it standing there, brown above the woodland deep, wrapped in lights of lavender, and slow shadows rocked asleep by the warm wind everywhere. I remember how the spring, liberal lapped, bewildered its acreed orchards murmuring with the blossoms budded bits, where the wood trush came to sing, barefoot spraying, at first who trod, like a beggar maid, at down the wet woodland where the god, with a bright sun for a crown and a firmament for rod, met her, clothed her, wedded her, her cafetua, when low, all the hill, one breathing blur, burst in blossom, gleam and glow, pitch and pearl and lavender, secal, black-heart, palpitant, reindeer bleaching strays, and white snow the damson, bent a slant, rainbow tree and ramanite seemed beneath deep drifts to bent, and it stood there, brown and gray, in the bee-boom and bloom, in the shadow and ray, in the passion and perfume, grave as age among the gay, sweet with laughter rum the clear boyish voices round its walls, rare wild roses where the dear girlish faces in its halls, music haunted all the year, far before it meadows full of green penny-royal sank, clover dotted as with wool here and there, and now a bank of wild color, and the cool dark blue shadows undefined of the clouds rolled overhead, plowed, from which the summer wind blew with the rain, and freshly shed dew upon the flowerkind, where, through mint and gypsy lily, runs the rocky brook away, musical among the hilly solitudes, its flashing spray, sun-beam-dashed, or shadow-steely, buried in thick sassafras, memory follows up the hill, still some cowbells mellow brass, where the ruin-watermill looms, half-hid in cane and grass. Ah, the old farm, is it set on the hill-top still, mid-musk of the mids, where violet deepens all the dreaming dusk, and the locus trees hang wet, while the sunset far and low on its westward windows dashes, spring-rose, or pomegranate glow, and above, in lilac splashes, faint, first stars the heavens so, slips its steel among its roses, yellow roses, while the choir of the lonesome insect's dozes, and the white moan, filled with fire, where its mossy roof reposes, sleeps its steel among its roses, the end of poem. This recording is in the public domain. Of terraced hills and woodland galleries, Thou utterance of all calm melodies, Thou leutinous of earth's most fecund loot, Where no false note intrudes, To mar the silent music, branch and root, Playing the fields ripe, orchard, and deep woods, To song similitudes of flower and seed and fruit. Offt have I felt thee, in some sensuous air, Bewitched the wide wheat acres everywhere, To imitated gold of thy rich hair, The peach by thy red lips delicious trouble, Blown into gradual dyes, Of crimson have I seen, have watched thee double, With the interluted music of thine eyes, The grapes rotundides bubble by purple bubble, Deliberate uttered into life intense, Out of thy song's melodious eloquence. Beauty evolves its just preeminence, The lily from some pensive smitten cord, Drawing significance of purity, A visible hush stands, starred, With splendour from thy passionate utterance, The rose tells its romance, In blushing word on word, As star by star day harps in evening, The inspiration of all things that sing, Is it in thy hands and from their touch takes wing. All brooks, all birds, Whom song can ever sate, Even the wind and rain, And frogs and insects singing soon and late, Thy sympathies inspire, thy hearts refrain, Whose sounds invigorate, With the rest life's weary brain. And as the night, like some mysterious rune, Its beauty makes emphatic with the moon, Thou lootest us no immaterial tune, But where dim whispers haunt the cane and corn, Be thy still strain made strong, Earth's awful avatar, in whom is born Thy own deep music, labours all night long, With growth assuring mourn, assumes like onward song. End of Poem This recording is in the public domain.