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Title: Anticipation
Author: Madison Julius Cawein [
More Titles by Cawein]
Windy the sky and mad;
Surly the gray March day;
Bleak the forests and sad,
Sad for the beautiful May.
On maples tasseled with red
No blithe bird swinging sung;
The brook in its lonely bed
Complained in an unknown tongue.
We walked in the wasted wood:
Her face as the Spring's was fair,
Her blood was the Spring's own blood,
The Spring's her radiant hair,
And we found in the windy wild
One cowering violet,
Like a frail and tremulous child
In the caked leaves bowed and wet.
And I sighed at the sight, with pain
For the May's warm face in the wood,
May's passions of sun and rain,
May's raiment of bloom and of bud.
But she said when she saw me sad,
"Tho' the world be gloomy as fate,
And we yearn for the days to be glad,
Dear heart, we can afford to wait.
"For, know, one beautiful thing
On the dark day's bosom curled,
Makes the wild day glad to sing,
Content to smile at the world.
"For the sinless world is fair,
And man's is the sin and gloom;
And dead are the days that were,
But what are the days to come?
"Be happy, dear heart, and wait!
For the past is a memory:
Tho' to-day seem somber as fate,
Who knows what to-morrow will be?"
* * * * * * *
And the May came on in her charms,
With a twinkle of rustling feet;
Blooms stormed from her luminous arms,
And honey of smiles that were sweet.
Now I think of her words that day,
This day that I longed so to see,
That finds her dead with the May,
And the March but a memory.
[The end]
Madison Julius Cawein's poem: Anticipation
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