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 slick hickory or larch, / Sighed o'er the sodden meads of March, / The sad heart thrills and reddens warm / To hear thee braving the rough storm, / Frail courier of green-gathering powers, -- / Rebelling sap in trunks and flowers; / Love's minister come heralding; / O sweet saint-voice among bleak bowers! -- / Thou brown-red pursuivant of Spring!
/ II. "_Moan_" sob the woodland cascades 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 passion, wrong. / One wild 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 fangy face, / Thou, in red, woolly tassels proud / Of bannered maples, flutest loud: / "_Her Grace! her Grace! her Grace! _"