Will-O'-The-Wisp
Madison Cawein, The Poems, (1908)
I
There in the calamus he stands
With frog-webbed feet and bat-winged hands;
His glow-worm garb glints goblin-wise;
And elfishly, and impishly,
Above the gleam of owlet eyes,
A death's-head cap of downy dyes
Nods out at me, and beckons me.
II
Now in the reeds his face looks white
As witch-down on a witches' night;
Now through the dark, old, haunted mill,
All eerily, all flickeringly
He flits; and with a whippoorwill
Mouth calls, and seems to syllable,
"Come follow me! oh, follow me!"
III
Now
o'er the
sluggish stream he
wends,
A slim light at his fingers' ends;
The spotted
spawn, the
toad hath
clomb,
Slips
oozily, sucks slimily;
His easy
footsteps seem to come---
Like
bubble-
gaspings of the
scum---
This side of me; that side of me.
IV
There by the
stagnant pool he stands,
A
foxfire lamp in flickering hands;
The weeds are
slimy to the
tread,
And
mockingly, and gloatingly,
With
slanted eyes and
pointed head,
He leans above a face long
dead,---
The face of me! of me! of
me!