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Title: Deserted
Author: Madison Julius Cawein [
More Titles by Cawein]
A broken rainbow on the skies of May
Touching the sodden roses and low clouds,
And in wet clouds like scattered jewels lost:
Upon the heaven of a soul the ghost
Of a great love, perfect in its pure ray,
Touching the roses moist of memory
To die within the Present's grief of clouds--
A broken rainbow on the skies of May.
A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers,
Or red or white; its darting length of tongue
Sucking and drinking all the cell-stored sweet,
And now the surfeit and the hurried fleet:
A love that put into expanding bowers
Of one's large heart a tongue's persuasive powers
To cream with joy, and riffled, so was gone--
A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers.
A foamy moon which thro' a night of fleece
Moves amber girt into a bulk of dark,
And, lost to eye, rims all the black with froth:
A love of smiles, that, tinctured like a moth,
Moved thro' a soul's night-dun and made a peace--
More bland than Melancholy's white--to cease
In blanks of Time zoned with pale Memory's spark--
A foamy moon that brinks a storm with fleece.
A blaze of living thunder--not a leap--
Momental spouting balds the piled storm,
The ghastly mountains and the livid ocean,
The pine-roared crag, then blots the sight's commotion:
A love that swiftly pouring bared the deep,
Which cleaves white Life from Death, Death from white Sleep,
And, ceasing, gave a brain one blur of storm--
Blank blast of midnight, love for Death and Sleep.
[The end]
Madison Julius Cawein's poem: Deserted
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