Explore "Forest and Field" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ I. Green, watery jets of light let through / The rippling foliage drenched with dew; / And golden glimmers, warm and dim, / That in the vistaed distance swim; / Where, 'round the wood-spring's oozy urn, / The limp, loose fronds of forest fern / Trail like the tresses, green and wet, / A wood-nymph binds with violet.
/ O'er rocks that bulge and roots that knot / The emerald-amber mosses clot; / From matted walls of brier and brush / The elder nods its plumes of plush; / And, Argus-eyed with many a bloom, / The wild-rose breathes its wild perfume; / May-apples, ripening yellow, lean / With oblong fruit, a lemon-green, / Near Indian-turnips, long of stem, / That bear an acorn-oval gem, / As if some woodland Bacchus there, -- / While braiding locks of hyacinth hair / With ivy-tod, -- had idly tost / His thyrsus down and so had lost: / And blood-root, that from scarlet wombs / Puts forth, in spring, its milk-white blooms, / That then like starry footsteps shine / Of April under beech and pine; / At which the gnarled eyes of trees / Stare, big as Fauns' at Dryades, / That bend above a fountain's spar / As white and naked as a star.