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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE BARBERRY BUSH, by GRACE HAZARD CONKLING Poet's Biography First Line: Threading the wood, if I might see Last Line: His brown immortal veery-thrush. Subject(s): Mythology | |||
Threading the wood, if I might see A hamadryad leave her tree, Or Pan with dripping honeycomb Luring a nymph away from home, Eager to ask some friendly faun What way Proserpina had gone, Or catch an accent, pungent, wild, Of garrulous Hermes, like a child I grieved to miss them. Everything Was hushed: no creature cared to sing, Nor memory of song sufficed: The earth had grown unparadised. But where a barberry in flower Had tossed against the sun a shower Of pendent blossoms, golden shapes Clustered like small immortal grapes Grown for a baby Bacchus, all The air turned rich and musical With honeyed little changing chimes Only a bee makes when he climbs A bell-shaped bloom, and being stout, Shakes pollen-dust and music out. Whether the barberry had made A compact with the winds, afraid To lose her sweets if wind should blow, Or what she offered, can I know? But all her essence hovered there Diffused in aromatic air That glittered like a living wine Her soul exhaled, besieging mine With beauty, making me at home Within the windless delicate dome Of vaulted fragrance over her. Some poignancy of mint or myrrh, Rosemary-whim, lavender-lure, Or balm of bruised balsam pure, Some whiff of fern, fennel, or rue, Tang of the wild grass steeped in dew, Had Hermes flung her from mid-flight As benison for his delight? For incense-strange and spiced was she, A pensioner of Araby, Dreaming her dream of winged feet And cloud-lost laughter bitter-sweet. Yet not for Hermes did each urn Of hidden honey yield in turn Its amber to the pilgrim bees. Their god is Pan, the god of trees, Who pipes for them all blossom-news, And knows what melody to use For ripe wild-grape and apple-tree, And you in bloom, O Barberry! Was that your motif that I heard His veery sing, in which recurred Honey and spices, grape-bloom mist, Young leaves in evening amethyst, With ringing of thin topaz bells Like small close-clustered asphodels? So sang Pan's veery, so sang he, That all the world was Thessaly, And any cedar might avail To hold an answering nightingale. The mosses by the oak-tree's root Caressed a gleaming naked foot, But quick as light the nymph was gone, I glimpsed the brown pursuing faun And heard the chiming of their glee. Proserpina eluded me, But from your blossoms showered down I guessed the color of her gown -- What else but color of the sun? And singing veery there was none Until into my mood you flowered, Illumining the wood unbowered. Now kindly Pan forevermore Be mindful of you! May he store Your honey in Arcadian jars; Summon back Hermes from the stars Into your zone of spicy zest -- A little Orient in the West! Jeweled with bees, gilded with bloom, You shall hold court within your room If once he pipe beside the door, The Master Improvisator! Thither may he resort, content To find you richly redolent, And make you music all your own, So river-sweet in reedy tone, It shall inspire at evening hush His brown immortal veery-thrush. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BEDTIME READING FOR THE UNBORN CHILD by KHALED MATTAWA EAST OF CARTHAGE: AN IDYLL by KHALED MATTAWA SEVEN TWILIGHTS: 7 by CONRAD AIKEN VICARIOUS ATONEMENT by RICHARD ALDINGTON NOTHING ABOUT THE MOMENT by LUCILLE CLIFTON VENUS IN A GARDEN by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON AN OFFERING FOR TARA by GARY SNYDER VICTORY BELLS by GRACE HAZARD CONKLING |
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