Witches...

 

  

Since All Hallows/ Samhain/ Halloween is right around the corner I thought it was time for a few witches. Mine are fairly unwicked, so I thought this lovely poem was apropos.

October

I OFT have met her slowly wandering

Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild,

Her cheeks a hectic flush, more fair than Spring,

As if on her the sumach copse had smiled.

Or I have seen her sitting, tall and brown,--

Her gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,--

Beneath a twisted oak from whose red leaves

She wound great drowsy wreaths and cast them down;

The west-wind in her hair, that made it swim

Far out behind, deep as the rustling sheaves.




Or in the hill-lands I have often seen

The marvel of her passage; glimpses faint

Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between,

Like Indian faces, fierce with forest paint.

Or I have met her 'twixt two beechen hills,

Within a dingled valley near a fall,

Held in her nut-brown hand one cardinal flower;

Or wading dimly where the leaf-dammed rills

Went babbling through the wildwood's arrased hall,

Where burned the beech and maples glared their power.












Or I have met her by some ruined mill,

Where trailed the crimson creeper, serpentine,

On fallen leaves that stirred and rustled chill,

And watched her swinging in the wild-grape vine.

While Beauty, sad among the vales and mountains,

More sad than death, or all that death can teach,

Dreamed of decay and stretched appealing arms,

Where splashed the murmur of the forest's fountains;

With all her loveliness did she beseech,

And all the sorrow of her wildwood charms.









Once only in a hollow, girt with trees,

A-dream amid wild asters filled with rain,

I glimpsed her cheeks red-berried by the breeze,

In her dark eyes the night's sidereal stain.

And once upon an orchard's tangled path,

Where all the golden-rod had turned to brown,

Where russets rolled and leaves were sweet of breath,

I have beheld her 'mid her aftermath

Of blossoms standing, in her gypsy gown,

Within her gaze the deeps of life and death.

Madison Cawein 

 

 

           And if you enjoy these there are witches post cards in the shop too!