Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SIERRAN IDYL, by BYRON MCCRAY JONES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SIERRAN IDYL, by                    
First Line: Beside my grot, the little brook
Last Line: Though she sings of death!
Subject(s): Death; Dead, The


Beside my grot, the little brook
Its seaward way had long forsook,
Nor tidings bore from snowy height
Down golden day or argent night
As once I bent, when all was still
Beyond the trickling of a rill,
And in the ear of fancy heard
The Pan-like fluting of a bird
Set on swift wing to herald down
The brooklet's path of parching stone
A sylvan-clear and lilting tide,
And strew along its either side
Deep beds of moss and tender cress;
And in a shady labyrinth,
With violet and hyacinth
Soft-redolent of the wilderness,
To spread for me, of viands choice
And spring-sweet wines, a woodland feast—
Ah, 'twas her voice!

From the ethereal timberline—
Ah, native blossom, wild and chaste,—
The timid mountain columbine
Blown by a deep and snowy waste,
And Mariposas, shy and rare,
Borne down upon the dew-rinst air;
And on the brooklet's undertone,
From a hushed and ferny nook apart,
The thrush's strain and the wild bee's drone—
'Twas in her heart!

Now at my foreland's mossy brink
To kneel again, again to drink,
As by a willow's shadow-frond
Limned on the mirrored blue beyond,
Half playful, half mischievous smiled
The wondering face of a little child;
Yet on the brook's dim-pebbled depth
The misty light of autumn skies—
'Twas in her eyes!

And now the brook in wanton mood
All headlong down the canyon leapt,
And, frothing-wild, the angry flood
The moss, the cress, the foreland swept!
And at its height there came to me
The leveling sense of destiny!—
Life's nether side, with its scar and seam,—
'Twas on her cold, her stifled breath!
O, stir me not from a waking dream,
Though she sings of death!





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