Explore "The Brush Sparrow" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ I. Ere wild-haws, looming in the glooms, / Build bolted drifts of breezy blooms; / And in the whistling hollow there / The red-bud bends, as brown and bare / As buxom Roxy's up-stripped arm; / From some gray hickory or larch, / Sighed o'er the sodden meads of March, / The sad heart thrills and reddens warm / To hear you braving the rough storm, / Frail courier of green-gathering powers; / Rebelling sap in trees and flowers; / Love's minister come heralding -- / O sweet saint-voice among bleak bowers! / O brown-red pursuivant of Spring!
/ II. 'Moan' sob the woodland waters still / Down bloomless ledges of the hill; / And gray, gaunt clouds like harpies hang / In harpy heavens, and swoop and clang / Sharp beaks and talons of the wind: / Black scowl the forests, and unkind / The far fields as the near: while song / Seems murdered and all beauty wrong. / One weak frog only in the thaw / Of spawny pools wakes cold and raw, / Expires a melancholy bass / And stops as if bewildered: then / Along the frowning wood again, / Flung in the thin wind's vulture face, / From woolly tassels of the proud, / Red-bannered maples, long and loud, / 'The Spring is come! is here! her Grace! her Grace!'