Madison Julius Cawein

“ On burnished axle quits the drowsy skies!
And as his snorting steeds of glowing brass
Rush 'neath the earth, a glimmering dust of gold
From their fierce hoofs o'er heaven's azure meads
Rolls to yon star that burns beneath the moon.
With solemn tread and holy-stoled, star-bound,
The Night steps in, sad votaress, like a nun,
To pace lone corridors of th' ebon-archéd sky.
How sad! how beautiful! her raven locks
Pale-filleted with stars that dance their sheen
On her deep, holy eyes, and woo to sleep,
Sleep or the easeful slumber of white Death! ”

“ Wild Ragnaroke, when Odin's self shall pass:
The moon and sun consumed, the fiery host
From Muspelheim shall flaming split the heavens,
Blot out the stars with lustre of their arms;
And down the squarèd legions led by Surt
Swift whirl in fogs of flame to war with gods;
Nor Thor avail, but suffocated fall
In contest with the Midgard serpent vast.
All men and gods abolished with the world,
Which into an abyss of fume and flame
Sinks like a meteor of the Summer night,
That slides into the gold of burning eve
And with eve's gold is burning, blent and lost. ”

“ Or in the peaceful calm of stormy evens,
When the sick, bloodless West doth winding spread
A sheeted shroud of silver o'er the heavens
And brooches it with one rich star's gold head,
Low lay thee down beside a mountain lake,
Which dimples at the twilight's sigh,
Couched on plush mosses 'neath green bosks that shake
Storm fragrance from on high,—
The cold, pure spice of rain-drenched forests deep,—
And gorge thy grief upon the nightingale,
Who with the hush a war doth keep
That bubbles down the starlit vale
To Silence's rapt ear. ”

“ Reach to the cold moon's ghastly lands,
Hoots the lorn owl, and crouching quakes.
With frowsy snow blanched is the world;
Stiff sweeps the wind thro' murmuring pines,
Then fiend-like deep-entangled whines
Thro' the dead oak, that vagrant twirled
Phantoms the cliff o'er the wild wold:
Ghost-vested willows rim the stream,
Low hang lank limbs where in a dream
The houseless hare leaps o'er the cold
On snow-tressed crags that twinkling flash,
Like champions mailed for clanking war,
Glares down large Phosphor's quiv'ring star,
Where teeth of foam the fierce seas gnash. ”

“ Pillowed with one milk cluster, floating, swooning,
Drops the low nocturne of a dreaming bird,
Ave Maria, nun-like, slumb'ring sung.
See, there the violet mound in many an eye,
A deep-blue eye, meek, delicate, and sad,
As Sorrow's own sad eyes, great with far dreams,
When haltingly she bends o'er Lethe's waves
Falt'ring to drink, and falt'ring still remains,
The Night with feet of moon-tinged mist swept o'er
Them now, but as she passed she bent and kissed
Each modest orb that selfless hung as tho'
Thought-freighted low ”

“ Wine-warm winds that sigh and sing,
Led me, wrapped in many moods,
Thro' the green sonorous woods
Of belated Spring;
Till I came where, glad with heat,
Waste and wild the fields were strewn,
Olden as the olden moon,
At my weary feet;
Wild and white with starry bloom,
One far milky-way that dashed,
When some mad wind o'er it flashed,
Into billowy foam.
I, bewildered, gazed around,
As one on whose heavy dreams
Comes a sudden burst of beams,
Like a mighty sound. ”

“ Moved thro' a soul's night-dun and made a peace—
More bland than Melancholy's white—to cease
In blanks of Time zoned with pale Memory's spark—
A foamy moon that brinks a storm with fleece.
[Pg 101]
A blaze of living thunder—not a leap—
Momental spouting balds the piléd storm,
The ghastly mountains and the livid ocean,
The pine-roared crag, then blots the sight's commotion:
A love that swiftly pouring bared the deep,
Which cleaves white Life from Death, Death from white Sleep,
And, ceasing, gave a brain one blur of storm—
Blank blast of midnight, love for Death and Sleep. ”

“ O tear-eyed goddess of the marble brow,
Who showerest snows of tresses on the night
Of anguished temples! lonely watcher, thou
Who bendest o'er the couch of life's dead light!
Who in the hollow hours of night's noon
Rockest the cradle of the child,
Whose fever-blooded eyeballs seek the moon
To cool their pulses wild.
Thou who dost stoop to kiss a sister's cheek,
Which rules the alabastar death with youth;
Thou who art mad and strangely meek,—
Empress of passions, couth, uncouth,
We kneel to thee! ”

“ The scattered stars smiled thro' the pines;
Thro' stately windows draped with vines
The rising moonlight's silver blew.
He stared at lips proud, white, and dead,
A chiseled calm that wore;
Despair moaned on the lips that said
"To meet no more."
[Pg 100]
DESERTED.
A broken rainbow on the skies of May
Touching the sodden roses and low clouds,
And in wet clouds like scattered jewels lost:
Upon the heaven of a soul the ghost
Of a great love, perfect in its pure ray,
Touching the roses moist of memory
To die within the Present's grief of clouds—
A broken rainbow on the skies of May. ”

“ Apollo never smote a lovelier strain,
When swan-necked Hebe paused her thirsty bowl
A-sparkle with its wealth of nectar-draughts
To lend a list'ners ear and smile on him,
As that the Tritons blew on wreathed horns
When Aphrodite, the cold ocean-foam
Bursting its bubbles, from the hissing snow
Whirled her nude form on Hyperion's gaze,
Naked and fresh as Indian Ocean shell
Dashed landward from its bed of sucking sponge
And branching corals by the changed monsoon.
Wind-rocked she swung her white feet on the sea,
And music raved down the slant western winds ”

“ Like some dim moon beneath a night of mist,—
And now the creatures come to feel at me—
The serpent swings above and darts his fang,
And I can naught but hold the cup and breathe."
Then thro' the blackness of the dripping cave
Tumultuous spake he, rage his utterance;
Large as the thunder when it lunging rolls,
Heavy with earthquake and portending ruin,
Tempestuous words o'er everlasting seas
Dumb with the silence of eternal ice ”

“ Her lucid chasteness feathering the wax-white foam!
As o'er a troubled brow falls calm content:
As clear-eyed chastity in this bleak world
Tinges and softens all the darker dross.
See, where the roses blow at the wood's edge
In many a languid bloom, bowed to the moon
And the dim river's lisp; sleep droops their lids
With damask lashes trimmed and fragile rayed,
[Pg 57] Which the mad, frolic bee—rough paramour—
So often kissed beneath th' enlivening sun.
How cool the breezes touch the tired head
With unseen fingers long and soft! ”

“ Thro' the echoing chambers crying
In the haunted house.
V.
Gazing down in her white shroud
From the edging cloud
Comes at night the dimpled moon,
Comes, and like a ghost is gone
'Neath the flying cloud
O'er the haunted house.
[Pg 114]
PERLE DES JARDINS.
What am I, and what is he
Who can cull and tear a heart,
As one might a rose for sport
In its royalty?
What am I, that he has made
All this love a bitter foam,
Blown about a life of loam
That must break and fade?
He who of my heart could make
Hollow crystal where his face
Like a passion had its place
Holy and then break! ”

“ A shattered helmet flies in flakes of foam
And on the frightened wind hisses away:
And o'er it all you hear the sound, the roar
Of waves that fall in onset or that strive.
On, on they come, a beautiful, mad troop!
On, on, along the sandy banks that fling
Red pebble-freckled arms far out to stay
The riotous waves that ride and hurl along
In casque and shield and wind their wat'ry horns.
And there where thousand oily eddies whirl,
And turn and turn like busy wheels of steel,
Is the Big Eddy, whose deep bottom none
As yet have felt with sounding plummet-line. ”

“ Within a grotto dim of mist and foam,
His long, thin beard, white as the flying spray
Flung to the midnight in a sounding cave
By the blind fish that leap against the winds;
Gemmed with the large dews of the cataract,
Swings in the sucking breeze, and swinging beats
[Pg 143] Time to his harp's strains quav'ring soft and sad
Beneath the talons of his pale, lean hand.
And all the waters, leaping, tingling shake
Like shivering stars within the frozen skies,
When as the Giants of Frost rule o'er the deep,
And nip their buds with fingers hoar of ice. ”

“ And cuffed the blossom from the blossoming quince;
Shatter red attar vials of the rose,
And made the clover wince.
By dusking forests, thro' whose fretful boughs
In flying fragments shot the evening's flame,
Adown the tangled lane the quiet cows
With dreary tinklings came.
The sun set late; but hardly had he gone
When o'er the moon's gold-litten crescent there,
Clean Phosphor, polished as a precious stone,
Pulsed in fair deeps of air.
As from faint stars the glory waned and waned,
The fussy insects made the garden shrill ”

“ Like crags contending 'gainst the battering main.
Torrents of helms, beaming like streams of rain,
Blue-billowing 'neath the pale moon's fitful flash;
Saw the scared moon hang over the black wood
Like a pale wreath of foam; shields, spears, and swords
Shoot green as meteors thro' the steely flood,
Or shine like ripples 'round their heathen lords
Standing like stubborn rocks, whence the wild wave
Of war circled in steel and foamed out brave on brave. ”

“ When crumpled poppies strew the halls
Of all the East, where mounts the Dawn,
And in the eve the skyey lawn
Gold kingcups heap 'neath Night's gray walls.
The silver peace of distant wolds,
Of far-seen lakes a glimmering dance,
Fresh green of undulating hills,
Old woodlands silent with romance.
Intenser stars, a lazier moon,
The moonlit torrent on the peak,
And at one's side a maiden meek
And lovely as the balmy June. ”

“ Upon a world of gloom and tears;
A kindred glance queen Isoud shows—
Come night, come morn, cease not her fears.
The fog-clouds whiten all the vale,
The sunlight draws them to its love;
The diamond dews wash ev'ry dale,
Where bays the hunt within the grove.
Her lute—the one her touch he taught
To wake beneath the stars a song
Of swan-caught music—is as naught
And on yon damask lounge is flung.
Down o'er her cheeks her hair she draws
In golden rays 'twixt lily tips,
And gazes sad on gloomy shaws
'Neath which had often touched their lips.
II.
With irised eyes, from morn to noon. ”

“ Thro' knee-deep drifts; the steeple's vane
A flitting ghost whirls in its sark.
Down from the flaky North with clash,
Swathed in his beard of flashing sleet,
With steeds of winds that jangling beat
Life from the world, and roaring dash,—
Loud Winter! ruddy as a rose
Blown by the June's mild, musky lips;
The high moon dims her horn that dips,
And fold on fold roll down the snows. ”

“ Then sunk the moon, and far away,
Beside the bickering lake, the towers
Of bandit braves shone tall and gray,
Like specters in her lonely hours.
And 'twixt the nodding grove and lake
A glimmering fawn stalked thro' the night;
And with full brow the musks did take,
Then bowed to drink—she veiled her sight
[Pg 169] And moaning said, "Death is but life!
The fawn 'mid lilies from the mere
Sucks genial draughts to dull its thirsts;
O fondest spirit, art thou near?
Draw to thy soul this soul that bursts! ”

“ Flames hissed aloft like fiery whips of snakes
Blasting and killing all the fragrant sprites
That make the dewy zephyrs their dim haunts.
O foam-fair daughters of Oceanus!
In vain you seek your mate and chide the flowers
For hiding her 'neath their broad, snowy palms;
Nor is she hidden in that pearly shell,
Which, like a pinky babe cast from the sea,
Moans at your pallid feet washed with white spray.
But, sitting by the tumbling blue of waves,
Mourn to your billows on the foamy sands
The falseness of the god who grasps the storm!
[Pg 130]
DEMETER.
Demeter sad! ”

“ Under the forest's myriad naked eaves,
Life woke and rose in gold and green and blue,
Robed in the star-light of the twinkling dew.
With timid tread adown the barren wood
Spring held her way, when, lo! before her stood
White-mantled Winter wagging his white head,
Stormy his brow, and stormily he said:—
"Sole lord of terror, and the fiend of storm,
Crowned king of despots, my envermeiled arm
Slew these vast woodlands crimsoning all their bowers! ”

“ In the dark blue light of a fragrant night
Float in and out and in.
And the dewy vine that climbs
To my lady's lattice sways,
And behind the vine there come to shine
Two pleasant eyes and gaze.
[Pg 202]
And now a perfume comes,
A swift Favonian gust;
And the shrinking grass where it doth pass
Bows slave-like to the dust.
In dreams I see her drift
A mist of drapery;
In her jeweled shawl divinely tall,
A Dian deity.
The moon broods high and full
O'er the broken Psyche cold,
And there she stands her dainty hands
And thin wrists warm with gold. ”

“ The roar of waters and the wail of pines
When whirlwinds roll the granite bowlders down
From flinty crags of storm to bellowing seas—
On noisome winds the howls of torture roll,
And rising die, cause the live dome to writhe,
And swift pour down a tempest steep of woe.
Huge Skade, of Winter daughter, giantess,
One twisting serpent hung above Loke's head,
So that the blistering slaver might splash down
Upon his chalky face, and torture him,—
For so the Asas willed for his vast crimes.
But Loke's wife, Sigin, endured not this,
And brooked not to behold her husband's pain. ”

“ Pale pleasant wines and fragrant as the June,
Their delicate life robbed from the foam-fair moon.
And from the clouds o'er this sweet world there dripp'd
An odorous music strange and feverish lipped,
That swung and swooned and panted in mad sighs,
Invoking at each wave sad rapturous eyes
Of limpid, willowy beings fair as night,
Decked spangly with crisp flower-like stars of white ”