Explore "The Forester" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ I met him here at Ammendorf one Spring. / It was the end of April and the Harz, / Veined to their ruin-crested summits, seemed / One pulse of tender green and delicate gold, / Beneath a heaven that was like the face / Of girlhood waking into motherhood. / Along the furrowed meadow, freshly ploughed, / The patient oxen, loamy to the knees, / Plodded or lowed or snuffed the fragrant soil; / And in each thorntree hedge the wild bird sang / A song to Spring, made of its own wild heart / And soul, that heard the dairy-maiden May's / Heart beating like a star at break of day, / As, kissing ripe the blossoms, she drew near, / Her mouth's sweet rose all dew-drops and perfume. / Here at this inn and underneath this tree / We took our wine, the morning prismed in its / Flame-angled gold. -- A goodly vintage that! / Tang with the ripeness of full twenty years. / Rare! I remember! -- wine that spurred the blood, / That brought the heart glad to the limbered lip, / And made the eyes unlatticed casements where / A man's true soul you could not help but see.
/ As royal a Rhenish, I will vouch to say, / As that, old legends tell, which Necromance / And Magic keep, gnome-guarded, in huge casks / Of antique make deep in the Kyffhaeuser, / The Cellar of the Knights near Sittendorf. -- / So solaced of that wine we sat an hour. / He told me his intent in coming here. / His name was Rudolf; and his native home, / Franconia; but no word of parentage: / Only his mind to don the buff and green / And live a forester with us and be / Enfellowed in the Duke of Brunswick's train, / And for the Duke's estate even now was bound. / Tall was he for his age and strong and brown, / And lithe of limb; and with a face that seemed / Hope's counterpart -- but with the eyes of doubt; / Deep restless disks, instinct with gleaming night, / That seemed to say, "We're sure of earth, at least / For some short space, my friend; but afterward -- / Nay! ransack not to-morrow till to-day, / Lest it engulf thy joy before it is! " -- / And when he spoke, the fire in his eyes / Worked stealthy as a hunted animal's; / Or like the Count von Hackelnburg's that turn, / Feeling the unseen presence of a fiend.