 A Gray Day, by Madison Cowine, read for LibriVox.org by Phil Shempf. Long volleys of wind and of rain, and the rain on the drizzled pain, and the day ends chill and murk. But on yesterday's eve, I throw the new moon's thorn-thin bow, stabbed rosy through the gold, and through the glow, like a rich barbaric dirk. The throats of the snap-dragons, cool-colored with gold like the dons that come with spring or the hills, are filled with the sweet rain fine, of starry, scintillant shine, a fairy-vat of thin wine, that the rain for the elfens fills. Dabbled the poppy shrink, and the coxcomb and the pink, and the candy-tuffs damp crown droops, dribbled, low-bowed in the wet, and rows of the minyanet little musk-sacks open set, which the weight o' the dew drags down. Stretched taunt twix the blades of grass, a gossamer fibrid glass, that the garden spider-spun. The web where the round rain clings in the sag o' its middle swings, a hammock for elfin things when the stars succeed the sun. And mark where the pale gourd grows as high as the climbing rose, how the tiger moth is pressed to that wide leaf's underside, and I know where the red wasps hide, and the brown bees, that defied the first strong gusts, distressed. Yet I feel that the gray will blow aside for an afterglow, and the wind on a sudden toss drenched a boughs, a pattering shower, a thwart the red dusk in a glower, big drops herd hard on each flower, the grass and the flowering moss. And then for a minute may be a pearl hollow-worn of the sea, a glimmer of moon will smile, and a star rinsed clean through the dusk, and a freshness of moonlit musk or the showery lawns blow brusque as spice from an Indian Isle. The mood of the earth by Madison Cowain, read for Libberfolk's dot org by phone, my heart is high as the day is clear as the wind in the wood that blows, my heart is high with the mood that's cheer and glows like a sun-blown rose, my heart is high and up and away like a bird in the sky's deep blue, my heart goes singing through the day as glad as a bee in the dew, my heart my heart is high its beat is wild as the scent of the wood, the wild sweet wind with its pulse of heat and its musk of blossom and bird, my heart is high and it leads my feet where the scents of summer is full to woods and waters where lovers meet to hills where the creeks run cool, my heart is one is one with the heart but the joyed bee that comes and sucks in the flowers that dip apart for his dusty body that hums, my heart is glad as the glad red start, the flame-flecked bird, the spotted bird whose lilt my soul has got by heart fitting each note with a word. God's love I tread the wind and air and one with the hoidon wind and the stars that swim in the blue I swear right soon in my hair I'll find. To live high up a life of the mist with the cloud-things in white skies with their limbs of pearl and of amethyst that laugh cerulean eyes. To creep and to suck like an elfin thing in the aching heart of a rose in the blue-bell's ear to cling and swing and whisper what no one knows. To live on wild honey as fresh as thin as the rain that's left in a flower and roll forth golden from feet to chin in the pollen's denay shower. Or free bird-hearted bend back to throat with a vigorous look at the blue and launch from my soul one wild true note is the thing that my heart would do. God's life the blood of the earth is mine and the mood of the earth I'll take and brim my soul with their wonderful wine and sing till my heart doth break. End of poem This recording is in the public domain Nooning by Madison Cowain read for librafox.org by phone Weak winds that make the waters wink White clouds that sail from lands of fable To white utopias vague that brink skygolfs of blue unfathomable Their rolling shadows drifting or hills of forest lifting wild peaks of purple range That loom and sink warm knolls were on the summer dreams And droning dowels where all her brightness lies Lulled with hymns of mountain streams far roaming falls of windy whiteness Where from the glooming hollow with calling crows that follow The hunted hawk wings wearyly and screams Dry buzzing heat and drought that shrills with one harsh locusts lonesome worry No voice amid the answering hills recedes in echoes far recurring As when with twilight wimpled the morning rosy dimpled From dewy tops cold or responding brills Wand with sweet summer hangs the deep hot heaven with the high sun heartened A great wide bluebell bloom asleep with golden pistil petals parted So loom one would not startle if from yawn wood should dartle Some wildwood dream some myth the wildwoods keep End of poem This recording is in the public domain The Log Bridge by Madison Cowain Read for librafox.org by phone Last months where the old log bridge is laid Or the woodland creek in the belts of the shade To the right and left pink pact was made A gloaming glory of scented tangle by the bramble roses there That weighed high heaped from the banks with many a braid That wilting powdered diruts ensuaved to the waters beneath loose loops of spangle Where the breeze that bloom and the beam that raid Were murmurous soft with the bees a wrangle This month, this August, the lane that leads To the bramble bridge runs waste with weeds That bloom bright saffron or satin seeds of thistle fleas Blow at you hazy Starry the lane with the thousand breeds of the yellow daisy And bud-like beads of marigold eyes Around which speeds the butterfly sumptuous with mottle and lazy Where under the pooey picks and pleads On the sumac's tassel that dips to the daisy All golden the spot in the noon's gold shine Where the yellow bird sits with eyes like wine And swings and whistles where line on line In coils of warmth the sun beams nestle Where cool by the pool where the crawfish Fine as a shadow shadow darts dim to mime The wet creek clay with their peevish wine Come mason hornets and roll and wrestle With balls of clay they carry and twine In hollow nests on the joist of the trestle Where the horseman shoots through the grasses High on the root-thick rivage that roofs A dry gray knob that bristles with pink The sigh of crickets is heard And the leaves' deep bosoms are pierced at dust With the bird's quick cry A passing bird that twitters by And the frog's grave antiphones rise and die And here to drink come the wild opossums And here tonight will you and I linger and lean While the great moon blossoms End of poem, this recording is in the public domain Among the knobs by Madison Cowain Read for LibriVox.org by phone There is a place embanked with brush Three wooded knobs beyond Lost in a valley where the lush wild eaglentine Blows blonde Where light the dogwood's earliest Their torches of white fires And bee bewildered east and west The red haws build their spires The wild crab-apples' flowery spray Blur through the pensive gloom A fragrant pink And by lone ways the clothes blackberries bloom I love the spot a shallow brook Slips from the forest near a cane-break And a violet nook its rustling depths so clear The minnows' glimmer where they glide Above its rocky bend A boyhood-haunted brook not wide That has its sparkling head among the rainy hills And drops by five low waterfalls Wild music of a hundred stops Between the forest's walls Down to a water-gate that hangs across the stream A dull, portcullous root whose wooden fans The moss makes beautiful The brass-bride dragonflies About its seeding grasses swim The streaked wasps, worrying in and out Dirt sleepily and slim Here in the moon-gold moss That glows like pools of moonlight Dies to pale anemone And blows to blue-it blue as skies And where in April tenderly The wild geranium made a thin, peculiar fragrance We, cool in pollucid shade, found wild strawberries just about Wild berries tart and fresh Pale scarlet as a wood-bird's blood That maize-low vines would mesh Once from that hill a farmhouse-mid deep orchards cosy brown In lilux and old roses-hinned With picket-fence looked down Or ruins now the roses' guard The plum-and-seckle pear And apricot wrought on the sword Their wasted ripeness there Again, when huckleberries blow Their waxen bells all tread That dear accustomed way And go, a-down that orchard, led to that avoided spot Which seems the haunt of vanished springs Lost as the hills in drowsy dreams Of visionary things End of poem, This recording is in the public domain Behold the high-o-falls, see how it seethes Though hardly heard from this high, wooded point Yet high it still confuses tongue and ear With its subdued and loam and notonous roar Not as it did, however, when we stood and marked it From the spanning of the bridge Rushing beneath, impetuous as a herd A tameless herd, with maines of flying spray Between the pillars, tearing above No more does it confound us and confuse Its clamour here is softened to a sound Incessant and subdued Like that which hunts the groves of spring When, like some dim surprise A wind precursor of the rain rides down From a grey cloud and sets the leafy tongues Cool gossiping of the approaching shore There runs the dam, and where its dark line cuts The river sheen Already you may see the ripples glancing to the summer sun As if a host had couched a thousand spears And tossed a thousand blooms of fleecy foam In answer to the challenge of the falls Blown from his limestone battlements And cried from his wave-builded city's roaring walls And there you see the waves like champions charge Crowding, wild form on form There foam hoofs beat The ragged rocks that roll them on their way Billowing they come night-like to ringing lists With shout on shout, tossing a thousand blooms A thousand spears in sparkling tournament Lifting, opposing each a silvery shield Or shining pen and now that sinks or soars And many a glittering sword of twinkling foam And many a helmet shattered in flakes of froth That to the trumpeting wind hisses away While o'er it all swell out the Russian roar Of onset as of battlement born afar On, on they come a beautiful mad trip On, on along the sandy banks that fling Red pebbled freckled arms far out to stay There run as rush the nightly strife of waves Warring and winding wild their watery horns Look where a thousand oily eddies whirl And turn and turn like whales of liquid steel Below this headland, to the place that none Has bottomed yet with sounding lead and line Like some huge kraken calling vast its length The eddy sleeps and bedding from the shores The spotted sycamores have gazed and gazed Watching its slumber as grey giants might A dragon in the willow in the hollow of gunt hills Its serpent bulk whined round some magic horde So long they've watched their ancient banks have grown Humped, gnarled and bent But still they gaze and gaze leaning above And from the glassy waves their images Stare back their wonderment Happily they see the guardian genius lie At the dark bottom of an oozy cave of coral Webbed, recumbent on his mace of mineral His locks of dripping green circling a crown of oar His fishy eyes dull with the aqueous dullness of his realms But when the storms abroad whips the waves With stinging lashes of the myriad rain Or scars with thunder some ancestral oak Sire of a forest when he wakes in wrath And on the dark foundation of the stream Rises a monarch crowned with iron crown And hurls his challenge upward at the storm And rages through the waters heaves and breaks Through the wild caves Whose round and murky bulks ribbed white with foam Wallow their monster way Like giant herds a long yawn edge of rock Or strain with pitrefactions of far time Molusk and trilobite and honeycomb of whitest coral And with mass on mass of root-like reptiles Rithing turned to rock Huge psorian bulks that Happily sported there Convolved and in a moment when the change Which made and unmade continents and seas That teemed and groaned with mammoth and plesiosaur Came with upheaval of the universe Through all their monster spines were struck to stone There were uprises a wild knoll Or strewn with wrecks of ancient forest In midstream once rose an island green and beautiful With willow and beech, poplar and sycamore A river island where the woodmen built Stream guarded from the savage hunted shore His rude long cabin here he sowed his maize Here saw it tassle in the summer heat And glanced like ranks of feathered Indians through The glimmering vistas of the broken wood Here reaped and sheaved its stalks all ivory-eared In shocks like wigwam rose when like a maid An Indian maid ruddy in dogwood beads The autumn came soft o'er the sunset hills That blushed for love and underneath her feet Cast untold golds and leaves in yellow fruit Here dwelt the pioneer and here he died And mingled his rough dust with the raw earth And limb of what was once an island Now a bed of limestone rock and waterpills Where in the quarry you may see the blast The spout heavenward, the dust and dirt and stone And flap and pound its echoes round the hills In giant strokes as of some titan hammer A mound of stump-pierced soil were once an isle As rich and fair in forest and infield As any isle that rises to a seal In tropic seas arose to kiss the sun There lies the other half of what was once corn island Broad the channel beats between lower it lies A mantled with dwarf breaks of willow and of cotton and beech Degenerate offsprings of the mighty bowls That once overbrowed the stream in majesty Of tall primeval beauty In the morn ere yet the east assumes its faintest blush Here you may hear the melancholy snipe piping Or see her paddling in the pools That splash the low bed of the rocky soil Here once the indians stole in natural craft From wahoo bush to bush From tree to tree his head blooms Like a bird below above fluttering and nodding mid the undergrowth In his brown hand the plant polished by And in his back his gaudy quiver filled With tuft arrows headed blue with flint And while the deep flamingo coloured west Flamed on his ruddy cheek and airy fire Struck rosy thwart the stream He swift as thought strung his quick bow And through the grey wild goose That rose with clamour from the rushy pool Scent of fleet arrow crest with the quills Which yesterday perhaps its mate's grey wing May be beautiful and plucked to decorate The painted shaft that should today speed home And redden all their white with kindred blood It falling, gasping at his muck-assigned feet Breathed out its wild life With the lonely brave whooped to the sunset And yawn faint blue hills Answered his exultation of a whoop A wind blew and I heard wild echoes of the wood's reply The herald of some royal word With bannered trumpet blown on high Me seemed then passed me by Whose summoned marvels there to meet In pomp upon a cloth of gold Where berries of the bitter sweet That splitting showed the coals they hold Sewed garnets through the wold Where under tens of maples seeds of smooth cornelian Oval red the spice-bush dangled Where like beads the dog-woods rounded rubies Fed with fire blazed and bled And there I saw amid the rout Of months in richness cavalier Adminising her lips a-pout A gypsy face straight as a spear A rose stuck in his ear Eyes sparkling like old German wine All mirth and moonlight Not despair of slender beard That lent a line unto his lip October dare with chestnut-curling hair His blue burrata swept its bloom White through the leaves His purple hose, puffed at a thighs, Made gleam of gloom His tawny doublet slashed with rose And laced with crimson bows Out shone to Wahoo's scarlet bride The hall in rich vermilion dressed A dagger dangling at his side A slim lute banded to his breast Whereon his hands did rest I saw him come and lo, to hear The lilt of his approaching lute No wonder that the regnant ear Bent down her beauty, blushing mute Her heart beneath his foot End of poem This recording is in the public domain Late October by Madison Cowain Read for LibriVox.org by phone Bulged from its cup The dark brown acorn folds And by its gnarly saucer In the stream's clear puddles swells The sweetgums spike crowned bowls Beside them lie And opening all their seams Beneath the chestnut tree The hurry hulls split And within each nut like copper gleams Burst silver white Naughts An exploded husk of snowy, woolly smoke The milk-weeds puff along the orchard's fence Where in the dusk and ashen weeds As sun-grim, satyr's rough red, breezy cheeks Burn through his beard To brusque crab-apple's glow Wind tumbled from above And under withered leaves The cricket's clicks seem some dim dirge Side into memory's ears One bird sits in the sumac Flits and picks its sour seeds Through all the woods one hears The dropping hickories Round the haze-railed ricks Among the fields gather the lowing stairs Some slim, bud-bound limonia Has flocked, like birds The flowers herding from their homes To warmer woods and skies Where once were rocked, unnumbered bees Within unnumbered blooms One feeble bee clings to one bloom Or, looked within it, dreams of summers using combs Winds shake the maples And all suddenly A storm of leafy stars around you freaks Some dryad's tattered raiment To her knee wading The naïat haunts her stream That streaks through woodland waves Hark! Pan, for he-like flutes in the forest While he seeks and seeks End of poem This recording is in the public domain A November walk by Madison Cowain Read for librafox.org by phone Morning The whore-frost crisps beneath the feet And sparkling in the morning's strength Defense along its straggling length Gleams as if wrought of virgin sleep On broom-sedge fields and sassafras Neglectfully the dim wind lifts the dead leaves And around me drifts the milkweed Shaken from the grass Reluctantly and one by one The useless leaves drift slowly down And seen through woodland vistas Brown the nut-tree patters in the sun Where pools to brook beneath its foal With scales of ice its edge is bound And on the pebbles scattered round The ooze is frozen Each a bowl, it seems, of crystal fallen there And now the wind sweeps through the wood With sighings and a solitude Seems shaken with a mighty care Decay and melancholy draped nearby hills In mysteries of mist through which the rocks and trees Loom, hazy, each a phantom shape To sullenness, the surly crow All his derisive being yields And o'er the barren stubble fields Flaps, callous, wrapped in hungry woe Evening As Eve comes on the teasel stoops Its spike-crowned comb before the blast The tattered leaves drive whirling past In frantic and fantastic troops The matted eldercopsis sigh Their broad blue combs with berries wade Like heavy pendulums are swayed With every gust that wanders by Through broken walls of tangled briar That hedged a lame, the sumac's thrust Their scarlet torches bred as rust Lit with the sun's set's stolid fire The eve is here, cold, hard, and drear The cloudless west with livid white Of flaming silver walls the night Far as one star's thin ray appears Wedged thwart the west's white luridness The wild geese wing, from roseless domes The far honk of the leader comes Lonely and harsh and colourful The west guides down, and in its cup Shadow on shadow pours the night The east glows with a mystic light The stars are keen, the moon comes up End of poem, this recording is in the public domain The white evening, by Madison Cowan Read for Liberfox.org by phone On hills, beneath the starry sky On hills, beneath the steely skies The wind-tossed forests rock and roar Along the river's ringing shore Homeward the skimming skater flies On windy meads of icy breaks Where sheathed in sleet the hot tree stands The moon looks down on glistening lands Where, with the cold, each bramble shakes Last night, the sleet made white the world All day, the wind moaned in the pines Now, like a wolf, that whines and whines Like some wild wolf, its hate is hurled Against a hut upon the walt And the one willow by the stream Where, huddled in the moon's chill gleam The houseless hair leaps through the cold The moon sinks low, the thin new moon And, with it, like a bit of spar Sinks down the large white evening star Beneath which earth seems crystal-hume Slim, o'er the treetops wade with white The country's church-spire doth swell A scintillating icicle While fitfully the village light Stamps, stains with sallow stars the dark Homeward, the creaking wagon's strain The smithy glairs, the tavern's vane Porns northward in its ghostly sark And, from the north, with stinging lash Driving his herds of snow and sleet Upon his steed of wind, whose feet Hurl through the iron woods and crash Along the hills with blow-on-blow The tempest sweeps before his shout The moon and stars are blossered out And fold on fold rolls down the snow End of poem, this recording is in the public domain Dreams, by Madison Cowing Read for LibreFox.org by Fong My thoughts have borne me far away To beauties, to the stars Beauties of an older day Where crowned with roses stands the dawn Striking her seven-stringed barbiton of flame Whose cords give beam to the seven colors Hue for hue The music of the color dream she builds the day from Beam by beam My thoughts have borne me far away To mitts of a diviner day Where, sitting on the mountain, noon Sings to the pines a sun-soaked tune Of rest and shade and clouds and skies Wherein her calm dreams idealize Light as a presence, heavenly fair Sleeping with all her beauty bare My thoughts have borne me far away To visions of a wiser day Where, stealing through the wilderness Night walks a sad-eyed voteress And prays with mystic words she hears Behind the thunder of the spheres The story utterance that is hers With which she fills the universe End of poem, this recording is in the public domain The Brook, by Madison Cowing Read for LibreFox.org by Larry Wilson To it the force tells the mystery that haunts its heart and folds Its form in cognition deep That holds the shadow of each myth that dwells in nature Be it nymph or fae or faun And whispering of them to the dales and dels It wanders on and on To it the heaven shows the secret of its soul True images of dreams that form its aspect And with these reflected in its countenance It goes with pictures of the skies The dusk and dawn within its breast As every blossom knows for them to gaze upon Through it the world's soul sins its hearts Creating pulse that beats and sings The music of maternity whence springs all life And shaping earthly ends From the deep sources of the heavens drawn Planting its way with beauty on its winds On and for ever on End of poem, this recording is in the public domain The Old Swing by Madison Calwine Read for LibreFox.org Under the boughs of spring She swung in the old rope swing Her cheeks with their happy blood Glowed pink as the apple bud Her eyes with their deep delight Shown glad as the stars of night Her curls with their romp and fun Tossed hoidon to wind and sun Her lips with their laughter shrill Rippled like some wild rill Under the boughs of spring She swung in the old rope swing And I who leaned on the fence Watching her innocence As under the boughs that bent Now high, now low, she went In her soul the ecstasies of the stars The brooks, the breeze Had given the rest of my years With their blessings and hopes and fears To have been as she was then And just for a moment again a boy in the old rope swing Under the boughs of spring End of poem, this recording is in the public domain To autumn by Madison Cowan Read for ThebroVox.org by Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. I feel thee as one feels of flowers A dead flower's fragrance in a room A dim gray grief that haunts the hours With sad perfume Thou charms'd me as a ghost lily Might charm a garden's withered space With the pale pathos and the chilly hush of thy face I hearken in thy fogs, I hearken When, like the phantom of dead night With immaterial limbs they darken The day with white With wrecks of rain and mad winds heaping Red ruins of riven rose and leaf Make sad my heart, oh autumn sweeping The world with grief End of poem, this recording is in the public domain Winter Dreams by Madison Cowan Read for ThebroVox.org by Mira Eagle How does it come that now I go down ways May blue with bluest eyes Along the creek road as the crow with mocking laughter flies A wild bird beats a crippled wing to lure me From its brush-built nest, then like a brook I hear it sing its wildwood happiest Beyond the orchard hills are delves Of knee-deep huckleberries White with little bell blooms Maytime swells with sweetness and delight The fawn wakes in me, wild and keen And with the joy the wraith months hold Kicks happy heels and deeps of green And rolls in deeper gold My Shakespeare falls, I wake And frost and ice seam every flower bed Where once each stalk and Edgar tossed Poor Tom now shakes instead Where once the glad oil gleaming Shook a wand of folly at the sun The hump-stock hat the withered look The poor pale fool is done A great-gray beard the rose-bush hath An old king's where hangs many a tear Near the dead lily by the path Cordelia and Lear End poem This recording is public domain Tansy and Sweet Elysum A Flower of the Fields by Madison Cowine Read for LibroVox.org by Larry Wilson Bee-bitten and the orchard hung the peach Or fallen in the weeds lay rotting Where still sucked and sung The gray bee boring to the seeds Pink pulp and honey-blackly stung The orchard path, which wound around the garden With its heat one twinge of dining locus Picket-bound and ragged Brought me where one hinge held up the gate That scraped the ground All seemed the same The martin box sun-warped with pygmy balconies Still stood with all its twittering flocks Perched on its pole above the peas And silvery-seeded onion stalks The clove-pink and the rose The clump of coppery sunflowers With the heat sick to the heart The garden stump red with geranium pots And sweet with moss and firms this side the pump I rested with one hesitant hand upon the gate The lonesome day droning with insects Made the land one dry stagnation Soaked with hay and scents of weeds The hot wind fanned I breathed the sultry scents My eyes parched as my lips And yet I felt my limbs were ice As one who flies to some wild woe How sleepy smelt the hay-hot heat That soaked the skies Noon nodded, dreamier, lonesomer For one long, plaintive, forced-side bird quaver And I knew me near some heartbreak anguish She had died, I felt it, and no need to hear I passed the quints and pear-tree Where all up the porch a grapevine trails How strange that fruit whatever air or earth it grows in Never fails to find its native flavor there And she who was as a flower too That grows its proper bloom and scent No matter what the soil She who, born better than her place, Still lent grace to the lowliness she knew They met me at the porch and were gaunt eyed with weeping Then the room shut out the country's heat and purr And left light-stricken into gloom So loved that I might look on her End of poem, this recording is in the public domain On Stony Run By Madison Cowan Read for LibreVox.org By Linda Ray Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. O cheerly, cheerly by the road And merely down the hillot And where the bottom lands are sowed With bristle bearded millet Then o'er a pabbled path it goes Through Woodland Dale and Dingle Unto a farmstead's windowed rose And roof of moss and shingle Then darkly, darkly through the bush And dimly round the boulder Where cane and water-weeds grow lush Its current clear flows colder Then by the cedar way that leads Through burr and bramble thickets Unto a burial-ground of weeds Fenced in with broken pickets Then slowly, slowly down the vale And wearily through the rushes Where sunlight of the noon is pale Its shadowy water hushes For off'd her young face smiled upon Its deep here willow shaded And off'd with bare feet in the sun Its shallows there she waited No more beneath the twinkling leaves Shall stand the farmer's daughter Softly past the cottage eaves O memory-haunted water No more shall bend her laughing face Above it where the rose is Sigh softly past the burial place Where all her youth reposes End of poem This recording is in The Public Domain Home by Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Renee Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. Among the fields the chamomile Seems blown mist in the lightning-sclair Cool, rainy odors drench the air Night speaks above the angry smile Of storm within her stare The way that I shall take tonight Is through the wood whose branches fill The road with double darkness till Between the boughs a window's light Shines out upon the hill The fence and then the path that goes Around a trailer tangled rock Through puckered pink and holly hawk Unto a latchgate's unkempt rose And door where at I knock Bright on the old-time flower-place The lamp streams through the foggy pane The door is open to the rain And in the door her happy face And outstretched hands again End of poem, this recording is in the Public Domain Dusk in the Woods by Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org by Phil Schimpf Three miles of trees it is And I came through the woods that waited dumb For the cool summer dusk to come And lingered there to watch the sky Up which the gradual sunset clump A tree-toed quavered in a tree And then a sudden whipper-well called overhead So wildly shrill, the sleeping wood it seemed to me Cried out, and then again was still Then through dark boughs its stealthy flight an owl took An at drowsy strife, the cricket tuned its fairy-fife And like a ghost-flower, silent white The woodmoth glimmered into life And in the punk wood everywhere the insects ticked Or bored below the rotted bark And glow on glow the lambent fireflies Here and there lit up their jack-o'-lantern show I heard a besper sparrow sing, withdrawn it seemed, Into the far slow sunset's tranquil cinnabar The crimson, softly smoldering behind gaunt trunks With its one star, a dog-barked and down ways that gleamed Through dew and clover faint the noise of cowbells moved And then a voice that sang a milking so it seemed Made glad my heart as some glad boys And then the lane and full-in view of farmhouse With a rose-grown gate and honeysuckle paths A wait for night, the moon and love and you These are the things that made me late In the poem this recording is in the public domain Comrades, by Madison Kawain Read for LibriVox.org by Matthew D. Robinson Down through the woods, along the way that fords the stream By rock and tree wherein the bramble bell the bee swings And through twilight's green and gray the red bird flashes Suddenly my thoughts went wandering today I found the fields where row on row the blackberries Hang black their fruit, where nesting at the elder's root The partridge whistles soft and low, the fields that billow To the foot of those old hills we used to know There lay the pond still willow-bound, on whose bright surface When the hot noon burnt above we chased the nod Of water-striders, while around our heads like bits of Rainbow shot the dragonflies without a sound The pond above which evening bent to gaze upon her gypsy face Wherein the twinkling night would trace a vague inverted Firmament, in which the green frogs tuned their base And firefly sparkles came and went The old-time woods we often ranged when we were Playmates, you and I The old-time fields with boyhood sky still blue Above them, not was changed, nothing, alas, then tell me Why should we be whom the years estranged? End of poem This recording is in the public domain The Rock by Madison Cowan Read for LibreVox.org by Linda-Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. Here, at its base, in dingled deeps, a spice bush Where the ivy creeps, the cold spring scoops its hollow And there, three mossy stepping stones, make ripple murmurs Under tones, a foam whose low falls follow A voice far in the wood that drones The quail pipes here, when noons are hot And here, in coolness, sunlight shot Beneath a roof of buyers, the red fox skulks at close of day And here, at night, the shadows gray Stand like Franciscan friars With moon-beam beads, whereon they pray Here yawns the woodchucks dark Dug-hole, and there the tunnel of the mole Heaves underweed and flower A sandy pitfall here and there The ant-lion digs and lies a lair And here, for sun and shower, the spider weaves a silvery snare The poison oaks rank tendrils twine The rock so sighed, the trumpet fine With crimson bugles sprinkled Makes green its eastern side The west is rough with lichen And gray pressed into an angle wrinkled The hornets hang an oblong nest The north is hid from sun and star And here, like an inquisitor of fairy inquisition Who roots out Elfland heresy Deep in the rock, cowled shadowy And grave as his commission, the owl sits majesterially End of poem This recording is in the public domain Standing Stone Creek By Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. A weed-grown slope, where on the rain Has washed the brown rocks bare Leads tangled from a lonely lane Down to a creek's broad stair A stone that, through the solitude, Wines onward to a quiet wood An intermittent roof of shade The beach above it throws Along its step a balustrade Of beauty builds the rose In which a stately lamp of green At intervals the cedar scene The water carpeting each ledge Of rock that runs across Glints, twigs of flow or embroidered edge Of ferns and grass and moss And in its deeps the wood and sky Seem patterns of the softest dye Long corridors of pleasant dusk Within the house of leaves It reaches where, on looms of musk The ceaseless locus weaves A web of summer and perfume Trails a sweet gown From room to room Green windows of the boughs that swing It passes where the notes A bird's are glad thoughts entering And butterflies are moats And now a vista where the day Opens a door of wind and ray It is a stairway for all sounds That haunt the woodland sides On which boy like the south wind bounds Girl like the sunbeam glides And like fond parents following these The old time dreams of rest and peace End of poem, this recording is in the public domain Clouds of the Autumn Night By Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. Clouds of the Autumn Night Under the hunter's moon Ghostly and windy white Wither like leaves while strewn Take ye your stormy flight Out of the west where dusk From her red window sill Leaned with a wand of tusk Witch-like and wood and hill Phantom with mist and musk Into the east where morn Sleeves in a shadowy clothes Shot with a gate of horn Round witch the dream she knows Flutter with rose and thorn Blow from the west, oh blow Clouds that the tempest steers And with your rain and snow Bear of my heart the tears And of my soul the woe Into the east then pass Clouds that the night wind sweep And on her grave sear grass There where she lies asleep There let them fall alas End of poem, this recording is in the public domain Then and now by Madison Cowine Read for LibriVox.org by Matthew D. Robinson When my old heart was young, my dear, The earth and heaven were so near That in my dreams I oft could hear The steps of airy races In woodlands where bright waters ran On hills God's rainbows used to span I followed voices not of man And smiled in spirit faces Now my old heart is old, my sweet No longer earth and heaven meet All life has grown to one dull street Where fact with fancy clashes The voices now that speak to me Are prose instead of poetry And in the faces now I see Is less of flame than ashes End of poem, this recording is in the public domain By the Tristing Beach by Madison Cowine Read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson Deep in the west a berry-colored bar Of sunset gleams Against which one tall fir stands Outline dark, above which courier A dew of dreams burns dusk's appointed star And flash on flash as when the elves wage war In goblin land the fireflies bombard the silence And like spears o'er the sward The twilight winds bringing fragrance from afar And now withdrawn into the hill with belts A whip of will While with attendant states of pearl and silver Slow the green moon melts into the night To show me where she waits Like some slim moonbeam by the old beech tree Who keeps her lips fresh as a flower for me End of poem, this recording is in the public domain After Long Grief and Pain by Madison Cowine Read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson There is a place hung o'er of summer boughs And dreamy skies Where in the grey hawk sleeps Where waters flow within whose lazy deeps Like silvery prisms where the sunbeams drows The meadows twinkle Where the bells of cows tinkle the stillness And the bobwhite keeps calling for meadows Where the reaper reaps And children's laughter haunts an old-time house A place where life wears ever an honest smell Of hay and honey, sun and elder bloom Like some sweet modest girl within her hair Where with our love for Comrade We may dwell far from the city strife Whose cares consume O take my hand and let me lead you there End of poem, this recording is in the public domain The Haunted Woodland by Madison Cowine Read for LibriVox.org by Rumpelt Poetry Here in the golden darkness and green night of the woods A flitting form I follow A shadow that eludes Or is it but the phantom of former forest moods The phantom of some fancy I knew when I was young And in my dreaming boyhood The wildwood flowers among Young face to face with fairy Spoken no on known tongue Blue were her eyes and golden the nimbus of her hair And scarlet is a flower Her mouth that kissed me there That kissed and made me follow Then smiled away my care A magic and a marvel lived in her word and look As down among the blossoms she sate me by the brook And read me wonder legends and nature's storybook Loved fairy tales forgotten She never reads again Of beautiful enchantments that haunt the sun and rain And in the wind and water chant a mysterious strain And so I search the forest wherein my spirit feels In stream or tree or flower herself she still conceals But now she flies who followed whom earth no more reveals End of poem, this recordings in the public domain Comradery by Madison Cowan Read for LibreVox.org by Linda-Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. With eyes hand-arched he looks into The morning's face then turns away With skull-boyed feet, a wet with dew, out for a holiday The hill-brook sings incessant stars Phone fashioned on its restless breast And where he wades its water-bars Its song is happiest A comrade of the cynical pen He looks into its naughty eyes And sees its heart and deep within Its soul that makes him wise The wood-thrush knows and follows him Who whistles up the birds and bees And round him all the perfume swim Of woodland loam and trees Where ere he pass the supple springs Phone people sing the flowers awake And sappy lips of bark-clad things Laugh ripe each fruited break His touch is a companionship His word an old authority He comes a lyric on his lip Unstudied posy End of poem This recording is in the public domain O'Cult by Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org By Linda-Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. Unto the soul's companionship Of things that only seem to be Earth points with magic fingertip And bids thee see How fancy keeps the company For oft at dawn hast not beheld A spirit of prismatic hue Blow wide the buds which night has swelled And stain them through With heavens ethereal gold and blue While at her side another went With gleams of enigmatic white A spirit who distributes scent To veil and height in footsteps of the rosy light And oft at dusk hast thou not seen The star-phase bring their caravans Of dew and glitter all the green Night shadow cans With drops the rain-hung cobwebs spans Nor watched with these the orphans go Who tune faint instruments that sound Like that moon music insects blow Then haunted ground, though hast not trodden Never found. End of poem This recording is in the public domain Woodwords by Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org by Phil Schemf The spirits of the forest that to the winds give voice I lie the live long April day And wonder what it is they say that makes the leaves rejoice The spirits of the forest that breathe in bud and bloom I walk within the ha tree break And wonder how it is they make the bubbles of perfume The spirits of the forest that dwell in every spring I lean above the brook's bright blue And wonder what it is they do that makes the water sing The spirits of the forest that haunt the sun's green glow Down fungus ways of fern I steal And would surprise what they conceal in do that twinkle so O spirits of the forest, here are my heart in hand O send a gleam or glow-worm ray To guide my soul the firefly way That leads to fairyland The time when dog-toothed violets hold up inverted horns of gold The elvish cups that spring upsets with dripping feet When April wets the sun and shadow marbled wold Is calm, and by each leafing way The sorrel drops pale blots of pink And, like an angled star, a fae sets on her forehead's palette day The blossoms of the trillium wink Within the veil, by rock and stream, a fragile fairy porcelain Blue as a baby's eyes adream, the bluits blow And gleam in gleam, the sun-shot dog-woods flash with rain It is the time to cast off care, to make glad intimates of these The frank-faced sunbeam laughing there The great-heart wind that bids us share the optimism of the trees The white ghosts of the flowers, the gray ghosts of the trees Rise when the April showers and haunt the wild wood-bowers And trail along the breeze The white ghosts of the flowers, the gray ghosts of the trees Often the woodless places I feel their dim control The wildflowers' perished faces, the great trees' vanished races That meet me soul to soul Often the woodless places I feel their dim control Crab-apple buds, whose bell the mouth of April kissed That hang, like rosy shells around the niad's wrist Pink as dawn tinted mist And paw-paw buds, whose dark-deep-paw-burn blossoms shake on boughs As, neath the bark, a dryad's eyes awake Brown as a midnight lake These, with symbolic blooms of windflower and wild flocks I found among the glooms of hill-lost woods and rocks Layers of the hare and fox The beetle in the brush, the bird about the creek The bee within the hush And I, whose love was meek, stood still to hear these speak The language that records in flower's syllables The hieroglyphic words of beauty Who enspells the world and I compelze End of poem This recording is in the public domain The Wind at Night by Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org by Linda-Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. Not till the wildman wind is shrill Howling upon the hill In every wolfish tree, whose boisterous bows Like desperate arms, gesture and beat the night And down huge clouds in chasms of stormy white The frightened moon hurries above the house Shall I lie down and deep, letting the mad wind keep Its shouting revel round me fall asleep Not till its dark hallow is hushed And where wild waters rushed Like some hoof terror underneath its whip And spur of foam remains A ghostly glass hill-framed Where over stains a moony mist and rains And stealthy starbeams still as specters slip Shall I, with thoughts that take, unto themselves The ache, a silence as a sound, from sleep awake End of poem This recording is in the public domain Airy Tongues by Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org by Linda-Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. There is a song, The Wet Leaves, Lisp When mourn comes down the woodland way And misty as a thistle wisp Her gown gleams windy gray A song that seems to say, Awake, to stay There is a sigh when day sits down Beside the sunlight lulled lagoon While on her glistening hair and gown The rose of rest is strewn A sigh that seems to croon Come rest, tis noon There is a whisper when the stars Above an evening purple height Crown the dead day with new parts Of fire gold and white A voice that seems to invite Come love, tis night Before the wrath song sparrow sings Among the ha trees in the lane And to the wind the locust flings Its early clusters fresh with rain Beyond the morning star that swings Its rose of fire above the spire Between the morning's watchet wings A wild voice rings or brook And bows, a rouse, a rouse Before the first brown owlet cries Among the grapevines on the hill And in the dam with half shut eyes The lilies rock above the mill Beyond the oblong moon that flies A pearly flower above the tower Between the twilight's primrose skies A soft voice sighs from east to west To rest, to rest End of poem, this recording is in the public domain All the night is shrill with wind and rain That beats the pain, and my soul with awe is still For every dripping window their headlong rush Makes bound, galloping up and galloping by Then back again and around Till the gusty roofs ring with their hoofs And the drafty cellars sound And then I hear black horsemen Hallowing in the night Hallowing and hallowing they ride or veil and height And the branches snap and the shutters clap With the fury of their flight Then at each door a horseman with burly bearded lip Hallowing through the keyhole pauses with cloak adrip And the doorknob shakes and the panel quakes Neath the anger of his whip All night I hear their gallop and their wild hallows alarm The treetops sound and the veins go round in forest and on farm But never a hair of a thing is there Only the wind and storm End of poem, this recording is in the public domain Under Arcturus by Madison Coway Read for Libberbox.org by Larry Wilson I belt the moored with ribbon mist With bald rick to blue I gird the moon And dusk with purple crimson kissed White buckled with the hunter's moon These follow me this season says Mine is the frost pale hand that packs their scripts And speeds them on their ways With gypsy gold that weighs their backs A daybreak horn the autumn blows As with a suntanned hand he parts wet bows Whereon the berry glows And at his feet the red fox starts The leafy lease that holds his hounds is loosed And all the noonday hush is startled And the hillside sounds behind the fox's bounding brush When red dusk makes the western sky A fire lit window through the furs He stooped to see the red fox die Among the chestnut's broken birds Then fanfaree and fanfaree is bugle sounds The world below grows hushed to hear And two or three soft stars dream through the afterglow Like some black hosts the shadows fall And blackness camps among the trees Each wildwood road a goblin hall Grows populous with mysteries Night comes with brows of ragged storm And limbs of writhe and cloud enmist The rain wind hangs upon his arm Like some wild girl who cries and kissed By his gaunt hands the leaves are shed In headlong troops and nightmare herds And like a witch who calls the dead The hill stream whirls with foaming words Then all is sudden silence and dark fear Like his who cannot see Yet hears lost in a haunted land Death rattling on a gallows tree The days approach again The days whose mantles stream, whose sandals drag When in the haze by puddled ways The gnarled thorn seems a crooked hag When rotting orchards reek with rain And woodlands crumble, leaf and log And in the drizzling yard again The gourd is tagged with points of fog Now let me seat my soul among the wood's dim dreams And come in touch with melancholy Sad of tongue and sweet, who says so much, so much In the poem, this recording is in the public domain The song is saying to leaf and bud What dost thou in the wood? O soul, they kept the brook's glad flow The glad brook's word to sun and moon What dost thou hear where song lies low Dead as the dreams of june Where once was heard a voice of song The hot boys of the mad wind sing Where once a music float along The rains while bugles ring The weedy water frets and nails And moans in many a sunless fall And o'er the melancholy trails The black crow's eldritch call Unhappy brook, a withered wood O days whom death makes comrades of Where are the birds that thrill the blood When life struck hands with love A song once soared against the blue A song once bubbled in the leaves A song once threw where orchards grew Red-appled to the eaves The birds are flown, the flowers are dead And sky and earth are bleak and gray The wild winds hang in the boughs instead And wild leaves strew the way End of poem, this recording is in the public domain Athernody by Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen, Vancouver, B.C. The rainy smell of a ferny dell Whose shadow no sunray flaws When Autumn sits in the wayside weeds Telling her beads of haws The phantom mist that is moonbeam kissed On hills where the trees are thinned When Autumn leans at the oak-roop-scarp Touching a harp of wind The crickets chirr neath briar and bur By leaf-stream pools and streams When Autumn stands mid the dropping nuts With the book she shuts of dreams The gray alas of the days that pass And the hope that says adieu A parting sorrow, a shriveled flower And one ghost-hour with you End of poem, this recording is in the public domain Snow by Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org The moon, like a round device On a shadowy shield of war Hangs white in a heaven of ice With a solitary star The wind is sunk to a sigh And the waters are sealed with frost And gray in the eastern sky The last snow cloud is lost White fields that are winter-starved Black woods that are winter-fraught And earth like a face death-carved With the iron of some black thought End of poem, this recording is in the public domain An Old Song by Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver B.C. It's O for the hills where the wind's someone With a vagabond foot that follows And a cheer-up hand that he claps upon Your arm with the hearty words, come on Will soon be out of the hollows, my heart Will soon be out of the hollows It's O for the songs where the hope's someone With a renegade foot that doubles And a kindly look that he turns upon Your face with the friendly laugh, come on Will soon be out of the troubles, my heart Will soon be out of the troubles End of poem, this recording is in the public domain Baby Mary By Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org Deep in Baby Mary's eyes Baby Mary's sweet blue eyes Dwell the golden memories of the music once her ears Heard in far-off paradise So she has no time for tears Baby Mary Listening to the songs she hears Soft in Baby Mary's face Baby Mary's lovely face If you watch, you too, may trace dreams Her spirit self have seen In some far-off Eden place Once her soul she cannot wean Baby Mary Dreaming in a world between End of poem, this recording is in the public domain A Sunset Fancy by Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. Wide in the West, a lake A flame that seems to shake As if the mill-guard snake Deep down did breathe An isle of purple glow Where rosy rivers flow Down peaks of cloudy snow With fire beneath And there the tower of night With windows all alight Frowns on a burning height Wherein she sleeps Young through the years of doom Veiled with her hair's gold gloom She, the Valkyrie, whom Enchantment keeps End of poem, this recording is in the public domain The Fen Fire by Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. The misty rain makes dim my face The night's black caulk is o'er me I tread the dripping cypress place A flickering light before me Out of the death of leaves that rot And ooze and weedy water My form was breathed to haunt this spot Death's immaterial daughter The owl that whoops upon the you The snake that lairs within it Have seen my wild face flashing blue For one fantastic minute But should you follow where my eyes Like some pale lamp decoy you Beware, lest suddenly I rise With love that shall destroy you End of poem, this recording is in the public domain The Wood by Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. Which hazel, dogwood, and the maple here And there the oak and hickory Lin, poplar, and the beech tree Far and near as the east eye can see While ginger wahoo with its flat balloons And breaks of briars of a twilight green And fox grapes plumed with summer And strung moons of mandrake flowers between Deep gold green ferns and mosses green and gray Matts for what naked myths white feet And cool and calm a cascade far away With ever even beat Old logs made sweet with death Rough bits of bark and tangled twig and knotted root And sunshine splashes and great pools of dark And many a wild bird's flute Here let me sit until the Indian dusk With copper-colored face comes down Sewing the wildwood with starfire and musk And shadows blue and brown Then side by side with some magician dream I'll take the outlet haunted lane Half roofed with vines led by a firefly gleam That brings me home again End of poem This recording is in The Public Domain Wood Notes By Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. There is a flute that follows me From tree to tree A water flute a spirit sets To silver lips in waterfalls And through the breath of violence A sparkling music calls Hither, halloo, oh, follow Down leafy hill and hollow Where through clear swirls With feet like pearls Way down the blue-eyed country girls Hither, halloo, oh, follow There is a pipe that plays to me From tree to tree A bramble pipe and elfin holds To golden lips in buried breaks And swinging oar the elder waltz A flickering music makes Come over, come over, the new moan clover Come over the fresh cut hay Where thereby the berries With cheeks like cherries and locks With which the warm wind marries Brown girls are healing the hay All day, come over the fields and away Come over, come over End of poem This recording is in the public domain Hills of the West By Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. Hills of the West That gird Forest and farm Home of the nesting bird Housing from harm When on your tops is herd Storm Hills of the West That bar Belts of the gloam Under the twilight star Where the Miss Rome Take ye the wanderer Home Hills of the West That dream Under the moon Making of wind and stream Late herd and soon Parts of your lives that seem Tune Hills of the West that take Silence to ye Be it for sorrow's sake Or memory Part of such silence make Me End of poem This recording is in the public domain The Wind of Spring By Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. The wind that breeze of columbines And salendines that crowd the rocks That shakes the balsam of the pines With music from his airy locks Stops at my city door and knocks He calls me far a forest where The twin leaf and the blood root bloom And circled by the amber air Life sits with beauty and perfume Weaving the new web of her loom He calls me where the waters run Through fronding fern where wades the hern And sparkling in the equal sun Song leans beside her brimming urn And dreams the dreams that love shall learn The wind has summoned, and I go To con God's meaning in each line The wild flowers write and walking slow God's purpose of which song is sign The wind's great gusty hand in mine End of poem, this recording is in the public domain The Willow Bottom By Madison Cowan Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. Lush green the grass that grows between The willows of the bottom land Edge by the careless water, tall and green The brown-topped cattails stand The cows come gently here to browse Slow through the great-leafed sycamores You hear a dog bark from a low-roofed house With cedars round its doors Then all is quiet as the wings Of the one buzzard floating there And on a woman's high-pitched voice that sings An old camp meeting air A cock that flaps and crows and then Heard drowsy through the rustling corn A flutter and the cackling of a hen Within a hay-sweet barn How still again no water stirs No wind is heard, although the weeds Are waved a little and from silk-filled burrs Drift by a few soft seeds So drugged with dreams the place that you Expect to see her gliding by Hummed round of bees Through blossoms spilling dew The spirit of July End of poem This recording is in the public domain God makes the red clouds ripples A flame that seemed to split In rubies and in dribbles Of rows where rills and ripples The singing flame that lit Red clouds of sauntered splendor God whispered one small word Rich, sweet, and wild and tender Straight and a vibrant splendor The word became a bird He flies beneath the garnet Of clouds that flame and float When summer hears the hornet Hum round the plum turned garnet Heaven's music in his throat End of poem This recording is in the public domain The pleated crimson holly hawks Are bending and smoldering in the breaking brown Above the hills that rim the town The day is ending The air is heavy with the damp And one by one each cottage lamp is lighted Infrequent passers of the street Stroll on or stop to talk or greet Be knighted I look beyond my city-yard And watch the white moon struggling hard Cloud buried The wind is driving toward the east A wreck of pearl all cracked and creased And sirried At times the moon erupting streaks Some long cloud raised in mountain peaks Of shadow That seemed with silver vein on vein Grows to a far volcano chain Of Eldorado The wind that blows from out the hills Is like a woman's touch that stills A sorrow The moon sits high with many a star In the deep calm and fair and far Abides to moral End of poem This recording is in the public domain Autumn sorrow By Madison Cawine Read for LibriVox.org By Larry Wilson Ah, me, too soon the autumn comes Among these purple-planted hills Too soon among the forest gums For monetary flames she spills Bleak melancholy flame that kills Her white fogs veil the morn That rims with wet the moon's flowers Elfin moons And like exhausted starlight dims The last limb lily-disk And swoons with scents of hazy afternoons Her gray mists hump the sunset skies And build the west cadaverous fire Where a sorrow sits with lonely eyes And hands that wake her ancient liar Beside the ghost of dead desire End of poem This recording is in the public domain A dark day of summer By Madison Cawine Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. Through summer walks the world today With corn-crowned hours for her guard Her thoughts have clad themselves in gray And wait in Autumn's weedy yard And where the lockspur and the flocks Spread carpets for her feet to pass She stands with somber, dripping locks Bound bleak with fog-washed zinnias Sad terracotta colored flowers Whose discs the trickling wet has tinged With dingy luster like the bowers Flame flicked with leaves The frost has singed She, with slow feet, mid-gaunt gold blooms Of merry golds her fingers twist Passes dim swathed in falls perfumes And dreams of sullen rain and mist End of poem This recording is in the public domain Days and Days By Madison Cawine Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. The days that clothed white limbs with heat And rocked the red rose on their breast Have passed with amber sandaled feet Into the ruby gated west These were the days that filled the heart With overflowing riches of Life, in whose soul no dream shall start But hath its origin in love. Now come the days gray-huddled in The haze, whose foggy footsteps drip Who pin beneath a gypsy chin The frosty merry-gold and hip The days whose forms fall shadowy A thwart, the heart, whose misty breath Shape saddest sweets of memory Out of the bitterness of death End of poem This recording is in the public domain Droth in Autumn By Madison Cawine Read for LibriVox.org By Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver, B.C. Gnarled acorn oaks against a west Of copper cavernous with fire A wind of frost that gives no rest To such lean leaves as haunt the briar And hide the cricket's vibrant wire Seer, shivering shocks and stubble blurred With bramble blots of dome maroon And creakless hills whereon, no heard Finds pasture and where or the loon Flies haggard as the rainless moon End of poem This recording is in the public domain In Summer By Madison Cawine Read for LibriVox.org By Larry Wilson When in dry hollows hilled with hay The vesper sparrow sings afar And golden gray dusk dies away Beneath the amber evening star There where a warm and shadowy arm The woodland lays around the farm I'll meet you at the trist, the trist And kiss your lips no man hath kissed I'll meet you at the twilight trist With a hay and a hole, sweetheart I'll kiss you at the trist When clover fields smell cool With dew and crickets cry And roads are still And fate infuse the fireflies Through the dark where calls the whipper wheel There in the lane where sweet again The petals of the wild rose rain I'll take in mind your hand, your hand And say the words you'll understand Your soft hand nestling in my hand With a hay and a hole, sweetheart All loving hand in hand End of poem This recording is in the public domain In Winter By Madison Cawine Read for LibriVox.org By Larry Wilson When black frosts pluck the acorns down And in the lane the waters freeze And thwart red skies the wild fowl flies And death sits grimly in the trees When home lights glitter through the brown of dusk Like shaggy eyes Before the door his feet, sweetheart And two white arms that greet, sweetheart And two white arms that greet When ways are drifted with the leaves And winds make music in the thorns And lone and lost above the frosts The new moon shows its silver horns When underneath the lamplit eaves The open doors cross A happy heart and light, sweetheart And lips that kiss good night, sweetheart And lips that kiss good night End of poem This recording is in the public domain He sang a song as he sowed the field Sowed the field at break of day When the pursed up leaves are as lips that yield Balm and balsam and spring concealed And the odorous green is so revealed Hello and oh, hello for the woods in the far away He trilled a song as he mowed the mead Mowed the mead as noon begun When the hills are gold with the ripened seed As the sunset stares of the clouds that lead To the sky where summer knows not of need Hello and oh, hello for the hills and the harvest sun He hummed a song as he swung the flail Swung the flail in the afternoon When the idle fields are a wrecker's tale At the autumn tells to the twilight pale As the year turned seaward at crimson sail Hello and oh, hello for the fields and the hunter's moon He whistled a song as he shouldered his axe Shouldered his axe in the evening storm When the snow of the road shows the rabbit's tracks And the wind is a whip that the winter cracks For the herdsmen's cry or the cloud's blackbacks Hello and oh, hello for home and a fire to warm And of poem this recording is in the public domain Paths by Madison Cowain Read for Librebox.org by Greg Giordano Newport Richey, Florida But words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well The path that takes me in the spring Past quince trees where the bluebird sing Where peonies are blossoming Unto a porch where stereo hung Around whose steps may lilies blow If fair girl reaches down among Her arm more white than their sweet snow But words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well Another path that leads me when The summer time is here again Past hollyhocks that shame the west When the red sun has sunk to rest To roses bowing a nest A lattice neath which minyonet And deep geraniums surge and soft Where in the twilight starless yet A fair girl's eyes are stars enough What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well A path that takes me when the days Of autumn wrap the hills in haze Beneath the pippen pelting tree Mid-flipping butterfly and bee Unto a door where fiery the creeper climbs And garnet ewed the cox comb In the dahlia flare and in the door Where shades intrude gleams bright A fair girl's sunbeam hair What words of mine can tell the spell Of garden ways I know so well A path that brings me through the frost Of winter when the moon is tossed In clouds beneath great cedars weak With shaggy snow past shrubs blown bleak With shivering leaves to eaves that leak The tattered ice where under is A fair flickering windowspace And then the light with lips to kiss A fair girl's welcome giving face And of poem this recording is in the public domain A song in season by Madison Coween Read for LibreBox.org by Greg Giordano Newport Richie, Florida When in the wind the vein turns round And round and round And in his kennel winds the hound When all the gable eaves are bound With icicles of ragged gray A tattered gray, but there is little to do And much to say And you hug your fire and pass the day With the thought of the springtime, dearie When late at night the outlet hoots And hoots and hoots And wild winds make of keyholes flutes When to the door the Goodman's boots Stamp through the snow the light strains red The fire lights red There is nothing to do and all is said And you quaff your cider and go to bed And dream of the summer, dearie When nearing dawn the black cock crows And crows and crows And from the barn the milk-cow lows And the milk-maid's cheeks have each arose And the still skies show a star or two Or one or two There's little to say and much to do And the harder you're done the happier you With a song of the winter, dearie End of poem This recording is in the public domain Before The End by Madison Cowain Read for Librevox.org by Greg Giordano Newport Ritchie, Florida How does the autumn in her mind conclude The tragic mask her frosty pencil writes Brought on the pages of the days and nights And burning lines of orchard wood and wood What lonelier forms That at the years door stood At spectral weight with wildly wasted lights Shall enter and with melancholy rites Inaugurate their sadder sisterhood Sorrow who lifts a signal hand and slow The green leaf fevers falling ere it dies Regret whose pale lips summon and gaunt woe Wakes the wild wind harps with sonorous sighs And sleep who sits with poppy dyes and seas The earth and sky-grown dream accessories End of poem This recording is in the public domain Orfrost by Madison Cowain Read for Librevox.org by Greg Giordano Newport Ritchie, Florida The frail idulands of Alblossom Spring Year after year about the forest tossed The magic touch of the enchanter frost Back from the heaven of the flowers doth bring Each branch and bush in silence visiting With phantom beauty of its blooms long lost Each dead weed bends white haunted of its ghosts Each dead flower stands ghostly with blossoming This is the wonder-legend nature tells To the grey moon and mist a winter's night The fairytale which from her fancy wells With all the glamour of her soul's delight Before the summoning sorcery of her eyes Rising as might a dream materialize End of poem This recording is in the public domain Cold by Madison Cowain Read for Librevox.org by Greg Giordano Newport Ritchie, Florida A mist that froze beneath the moon and shook My newtous frosty crystals in the air All night the wind was still as lonely care Who sighs before her shivering angled nook The face of winter wore a cruder look Then when he shakes the icicles from his hair And in the boisterous pauses lets his stare Freeze through the forest, fettering bow and brook He is the despot now who sits in dreams Of desolation and despair and smiles At poverty who hath no place to rest Who wanders our life's snow-made pathless miles And sees the home of comfort's window gleams Hugging her rag-wrapped baby to her breast End of poem This recording is in the public domain The Winter Moon by Madison Cowain Read for Librevox.org by Alan Lawley Deep in the dell I watched her as she rose A face of icy fire over the hills With snow-sad eyes that froze the forest rails And snow-sad feet that bleached the meadow snows Pay us some young witch who, a listening goes To her first meeting with the fiend who fears Fixed demon eyes behind each bush she nears Stops, yet must on, fearful of following foes And so I chased her, startled in the wood Like a discovered or red who flies The fawn who found her sleeping each nude limb Glittering betrayal through the solid jude Tail in a frosty cloud I saw her swim Like a drowned face, a blur beneath the ice End of poem This recording is in the public domain The hillside grave by Madison Cowain Read for Librevox.org by Alan Lawley Ten thousand deep, the drifted daisies break Here at the hill's foot, on its top, the wheat Hands meager bearded, and in vague retreat The wisp like blooms of the moth Malaine's shake And where the wild pink drops of crimson flake And mourning glories like young lips make sweet The shadowed hush low in the hunted heat The wild bees hum as if afraid awake One sleeping here with no white stone to tell If it be youth or maiden, just the stem Of one wild rose, tarring, or brier, and weed Where all the day the wild bird's requiem Within those shade and timid violets fell And epitaph, the stars alone can read End of poem This recording is in the public domain