Explore "Drouth" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ I. The hot sunflowers by the glaring pike / Lift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops, / Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike / Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse / Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops, / The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat / Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team, -- / Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream, -- / An empty wagon rattles through the heat.
/ II. Where now the blue wild iris? flowers whose mouths / Are moist and musky? Where the sweet-breathed mint, / That made the brook-bank herby? Where the South's / Wild morning-glories, rich in hues, that hint / At coming showers that the rainbows tint? / Where all the blossoms that the wildwood knows? / The frail oxalis hidden in its leaves; / The Indian-pipe, pale as a soul that grieves; / The freckled touch-me-not and forest rose.