Read "A Motive in Gold and Gray" by Madison Cawein online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I. To-night he sees their star burn, dewy-bright, / Deep in the pansy, eve hath made for it, / Low in the west; a placid purple lit / At its far edge with warm auroral light: / Love's planet hangs above a cedared height; / And there in shadow, like gold music writ / Of dusk's dark fingers, scale-like fire-flies flit / Now up, now down the balmy bars of night. / How different from that eve a year ago! / Which was a stormy flower in the hair / Of dolorous day, whose sombre eyes looked, blurred, / Into night's sibyl face, and saw the woe / Of parting near, and imaged a despair, / As now a hope caught from a homing word.
II. She came unto him -- as the springtime does / Unto the land where all lies dead and cold, / Until her rosary of days is told / And beauty, prayer-like, blossoms where death was. -- / Nature divined her coming -- yea, the dusk / Seemed thinking of that happiness: behold, / No cloud it had to blot its marigold / Moon, great and golden, o'er the slopes of musk; / Whereon earth's voice made music; leaf and stream / Lilting the same low lullaby again, / To coax the wind, who romped among the hills / All day, a tired child, to sleep and dream: / When through the moonlight of the locust-lane / She came, as spring comes through her daffodils.