Explore "The Screech-Owl" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When, one by one, the stars have trembled through / Eve's shadowy hues of violet, rose, and fire -- / As on a pansy-bloom the limpid dew / Orbs its bright beads; -- and, one by one, the choir / Of insects wakes on nodding bush and brier: / Then through the woods -- where wandering winds pursue / A ceaseless whisper -- like an eery lyre / Struck in the Erl-king's halls, where ghosts and dreams / Hold revelry, your goblin music screams, / Shivering and strange as some strange thought come true.
Brown as the agaric that frills dead trees, / Or those fantastic fungi of the woods / That crowd the dampness -- are you kin to these / In some mysterious way that still eludes / My fancy? you, who haunt the solitudes / With witch-like wailings? voice, that seems to freeze / Out of the darkness, -- like the scent which broods, / Rank and rain-sodden, over autumn nooks, -- / That, to the mind, might well suggest such looks, / Ghastly and gray, as pale clairvoyance sees.