Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE BARBERRY BUSH, by GRACE HAZARD CONKLING


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE BARBERRY BUSH, by                     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.





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