Poems of Madison Cawein Vol. 3 — Bare Boughs

BARE BOUGHS

O heart,--that beat the bird’s blithe blood, The blithe bird’s strain, and understood The song it sang to leaf and bud,-- What dost thou in the wood?

O soul,--that kept the brook’s glad flow, The glad brook’s word to sun and moon,-- What dost thou here where song lies low, Dead as the dreams of June?

Where once was heard a voice of song, The hautboys of the mad winds sing;

Where once a music flowed along, The rain’s wild bugles ring.

The weedy water frets and ails, And moans in many a sunless fall;

And, o’er the melancholy, trails The black crow’s eldritch call.

Unhappy brook!

O withered wood!

O days, whom death makes comrades of!

Where are the birds that thrilled the blood When Life struck hands with Love?

A song, one soared against the blue;

A song, one bubbled in the leaves: A song, one 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 i’ the boughs instead, And wild leaves strew the way.

A THRENODY