Read "The Old Byway" by Madison Cawein online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
/ Its rotting fence one scarcely sees / Through sumac and wild blackberries, / Thick elder and the bramble-rose, / Big ox-eyed daisies where the bees / Hang droning in repose.
/ The little lizards lie all day / Gray on its rocks of lichen-gray; / And, insect-Ariels of the sun, / The butterflies make bright its way, / Its path where chipmunks run.
/ A lyric there the redbird lifts, / While, twittering, the swallow drifts / 'Neath wandering clouds of sleepy cream, -- / In which the wind makes azure rifts, -- / O'er dells where wood-doves dream.
/ The brown grasshoppers rasp and bound / Mid weeds and briers that hedge it round; / And in its grass-grown ruts, -- where stirs / The harmless snake, -- mole-crickets sound / Their faery dulcimers.
/ At evening, when the sad west turns / To lonely night a cheek that burns, / The tree-toads in the wild-plum sing; / And ghosts of long-dead flowers and ferns / The winds wake, whispering.