Madison Cawein. My Lady of the Beeches. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

My Lady of the Beeches

By Madison Cawein


HERE among the beeches
Winds and wild perfume,
That the twilight pleaches
Into gleam and gloom,
Build for her a room.	5

Her, whose Beauty cometh,
Misty as the morn,
When the wild bee hummeth,
At its honey-horn,
In the wayside thorn.	10

As the wood grows dimmer,
With the drowsy night,
Like a moonbeam glimmer
Here she walks in white,
With a firefly-light.	15

Moths around her flitting,
Like a moth she goes;
Here a moment sitting
By this wilding rose,
With my heart’s repose.	20

Every bough that dances
Has assumed the grace
Of her form: and Fancies,
Flashed from eye and face,
Brood about the place.	25

And the water, shaken
In its plunge and poise,
To itself has taken
Quiet of her voice,
And restrains its joys.	30

Would that these could tell me
What and whence she is;
She, who doth enspell me,
Fill my soul with bliss
Of her spirit kiss.	35

Though the heart beseech her,
And the soul implore,
Who is it may reach her—
Safe behind the door
Of all woodland lore?	40