Poems of Madison Cawein Vol. 3 — The Forest Spring

Push back the brambles, berry-blue;

The hollowed spring is full in view: Deep-tangled with luxuriant fern Ripples its rock-embedded urn.

Not for the loneliness that keeps The coigne wherein its crystal sleeps;

Not for wild butterflies that sway Their pansy pinions all the day Above its mirror; nor the bee, Nor dragon-fly, that, passing, see Themselves reflected in its spar;

Not for the one white liquid star That twinkles in its firmament;

Nor moon-shot clouds, so slowly sent Athwart it when the kindly night Beads its long grasses with the light Small jewels of the dimpled dew: Not for the day’s inverted blue, Nor the quaint, dimly colored stones That dance within it where it moans;

Not for all these I love to sit In silence and to gaze in it.

But, lo!

a nymph with merry eyes Greets mine within its laughing skies;

A glimmering, shimmering nymph who plays All the long fragrant summer days With instant sights of bees and birds, And talks with them in water-words;

And for whose nakedness the air Weaves moony mists; and on whose hair, Unfilleted, the night will set That lone star as a coronet.