Read "Penetralia" by Madison Cawein online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
/ I am a part of all you see / In Nature; part of all you feel: / I am the impact of the bee / Upon the blossom; in the tree / I am the sap, -- that shall reveal / The leaf, the bloom, -- that flows and flutes / Up from the darkness through its roots.
/ I am the vermeil of the rose, / The perfume breathing in its veins; / The gold within the mist that glows / Along the west and overflows / With light the heaven; the dew that rains / Its freshness down and strings with spheres / Of wet the webs and oaten ears.
/ I am the egg that folds the bird; / The song that beaks and breaks its shell; / The laughter and the wandering word / The water says; and, dimly heard, / The music of the blossom's bell / When soft winds swing it; and the sound / Of grass slow-creeping o'er the ground.
/ I am the warmth, the honey-scent / That throats with spice each lily-bud / That opens, white with wonderment, / Beneath the moon; or, downward bent, / Sleeps with a moth beneath its hood: / I am the dream that haunts it too, / That crystallizes into dew.
/ I am the seed within the pod; / The worm within its closed cocoon: / The wings within the circling clod, / The germ, that gropes through soil and sod / To beauty, radiant in the noon: / I am all these, behold! and more -- / I am the love at the world-heart's core.