Poem by Madison Julius Cawein

Bare Boughs

O heart, - that beat the bird's blithe blood,
The blithe bird's strain, and understood
The song it sang to leaf and bud, -
What dost thou in the wood?

O soul, - that kept the brook's glad flow,
The glad brook's word to sun and moon, -
What dost thou here where song lies low,
And dead the dreams of June?

Where once was heard a voice of song,
The hautboys of the mad winds sing;
Where once a music flowed along,
The rain's wild bugle's ring.

The weedy water frets and ails,
And moans in many a sunless fall;
And, o'er the melancholy, trails
The black crow's eldritch call.

Unhappy brook! O withered wood!
O days, whom Death makes comrades of!
Where are the birds that thrilled the blood
When Life struck hands with Love?

A song, one soared against the blue;
A song, one silvered in the leaves;
A song, one blew where orchards grew
Gold-appled to the eaves.

The birds are flown; the flowers, dead;
And sky and earth are bleak and gray:
Where Joy once went, all light of tread,
Grief haunts the leaf-wild way.

1. Rembrandts
2. Elfin
3. Love's Calendar
4. Two Lives
5. Robert Browning

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