Poems of Madison Cawein Vol. 3 — A Gray Day

I

Long volleys of wind and of rain, And the rain on the drizzled pane, And the day ends chill and murk;

But on yesterday’s eve, I trow, The new-moon’s thorn-thin bow Stabbed rosy through gold and through glow, Like a rich, barbaric dirk.

II

The throats of the snapdragons,-- Cool-colored with gold like the dawns That come with spring o’er the hills,-- Are filled with a sweet rain, fine, Of starry, scintillant shine, A faery vat of thin wine, That the rain for the elfins fills.

III

Dabbled the poppies shrink, And the coxcomb and the pink;

And the candytuft’s damp crown Droops, dribbled, low bowed i’ the wet;

And rows of the mignonette Little musk-sacks open set, Which the weight o’ the dew drags down.

IV

Stretched taunt ’twixt the blades of grass, A gossamer-fibered 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.

V

And, mark, where the pale gourd grows As high as the climbing rose, How the tiger-moth is pressed To that wide leaf’s under side.

-- And I know where the red wasps hide, And the brown bees,--that defied The first strong gusts,--distressed.

VI

Yet I feel that the gray will blow Aside for an afterglow;

And the wind, on a sudden, toss Drenched boughs; a pattering shower Athwart the red dusk in a glower, Big drops heard hard on each flower, The grass and the flowering moss.

VII

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 O’er the showery lawns blow brusque As spice from an Indian Isle.