Madison Julius Cawein

“ Blood-coloured oaks, that stand against a sky of gold and brass;
Gaunt slopes, on which the bleak leaves glow of brier and sassafras,
And broom-sedge strips of smoky-pink and pearl-gray clumps of grass
In which, beneath the ragged sky, the rain pools gleam like glass.
From West to East, from wood to wood, along the forest-side,
The winds,—the sowers of the Lord,—with thunderous footsteps stride; [201]
Their stormy hands rain acorns down; and mad leaves, wildly dyed,
Like tatters of their rushing cloaks, stream round them far and wide. ”

“ Moon in a cloud, a cloud of snow,
Mist in the vale where the rivulet sounds,
Dropping from ledge to ledge below,
Turning to gold in the sunset's glow,
Are not so soft as her footstep sounds.
Sound o' May winds in the blossoming trees,
Is not so sweet as her laugh that rings;
Song o' wild birds on the morning breeze,
Birds and brooks and murmur o' bees,
Are harsh to her voice when she laughs or sings.
The rose of my heart is she, my dawn!
My star o' the east, my moon above! ”

“ Between a willow-tree and beech,
Moss-grown and leaky lies a boat
The thick-grown lilies keep afloat.
And through its waters, half awake,
Slow swims the spotted water-snake;
And near its edge, like some gray streak,
Stands gaunt the still fly-up-the-creek. [82]
Between the lily-pads and blooms
The water-spirits set their looms,
That weave the lace-like light that dims
The glimmering leaves of under limbs.
Each lily is the hiding-place
Of some dim wood-imp's elvish face,
That watches you with gold-green eyes
Where bubbles of its breathing rise. ”

“ The mist and musk that haunt the brake
Over the hills and away.
Oh, come with me, and let us go
Beyond the sunset lying low,
Beyond the twilight and the night
Into Love's kingdom of long light
Over the hills and away. [194]
MAY
The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed,
That spangle the woods and dance—
No gleam of gold that the twilights hold
Is strong as their necromance:
For, under the oaks where the woodpaths lead,
The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed
Are the May's own utterance. ”

“ Of the sunset and the moon's up-coming,
Shall the storm, with boisterous hoof-beats, under
Thy dark roof dance, Faun-like, to the humming
Of the Pan-pipes of the rain and thunder.
Oft the Satyr-spirit, beauty-drunken,
Of the Spring called; and the music measure
Of thy sap made answer; and thy sunken
Veins grew vehement with youth, whose pressure
Swelled thy gnarly muscles, winter-shrunken. ”

“ The bloom from which he drank his body's fill—
A flashing humming-bird among the flowers.
A moon, moth-white, that through long mists of fleece
Moves amber-girt into a bulk of black,
And, lost to vision, rims the black with froth:—
A love that swept its moon, like some great moth,
Across the heaven of her soul's young peace;
And, smoothly passing, in the clouds did cease
Of time, through which its burning light comes back—
A moon, moth-white, that moves through mists of fleece. ”

“ Above the wildflower, sidewise with its strain
Of dewy happiness, to kiss again
Each drop to death; or, under rainy boughs,
With fingers, fragrant as the woodland rain,
Gather the sparkles from the sycamore,
To set within each core
Of crimson roses girdling her hips,
Where each bud dreams and drips.
[44] Smoothing her blue-black hair,—where many a tusk
Of iris flashes,—like the falchions' sheen
Of Faery 'round blue banners of its Queen,—
Is it a Naiad singing in the dusk,
That haunts the spring, where all the moss is musk
With footsteps of the flowers on the banks? ”

“ The moon goes down; and like another moon
The crescent of the river twinkles there,
Unchanged as when the eyes of Daniel Boone
Beheld it flowing fair. [61]
A COIGN OF THE FOREST
The hills hang woods around, where green, below
Dark, breezy boughs of beech-trees, mats the moss,
Crisp with the brittle hulls of last year's nuts;
The water hums one bar there; and a glow
Of gold lies steady where the trailers toss
Red, bugled blossoms and a rock abuts;
In spots the wild-phlox and oxalis grow
Where beech-roots bulge the loam, protrude across
The grass-grown road and roll it into ruts. ”

“ Into night's heart,—the sun burst, angry roon;
And every cedar, with its weight of wet,
Against the sunset's fiery splendour set,
Frightened to beauty, seemed with rubies strewn:
Then in drenched gardens, like sweet phantoms met,
Dim odours rose of pink and mignonette;
And in the East a confidence, that soon
Grew to the calm assurance of the moon. [198]
TO FALL
Sad-hearted spirit of the solitudes,
Who comest through the ruin-wedded woods!
Gray-gowned with fog, gold-girdled with the gloom
Of tawny twilights; burdened with perfume
Of rain-wet uplands, chilly with the mist ”

“ With deep eyes, lovelier than cerulean pansies,
Shadow and fire, yet merciless as poison;
With red lips sweeter than Arabian storax,
Yet bitterer than myrrh. O tears and kisses!
O eyes and lips, that haunt my soul for ever!
Again Spring walks transcendent on the mountains:
The woods are hushed: the vales are blue with shadows:
Above the heights, steeped in a thousand splendours, [182]
Like some vast canvas of the gods, hangs burning
The sunset's wild sciography: and slowly
The moon treads heaven's proscenium,—night's stately
White queen of love and tragedy and madness. ”

“ The frail leaf-cricket in the weeds rings a faint fairy bell;
And like a torch of phantom ray the milkweed's windy shell
Glimmers; while, wrapped in withered dreams, the wet autumnal smell
Of loam and leaf, like some sad ghost, steals over field and dell.
The oaks, against a copper sky—o'er which, like some black lake
Of Dis, bronze clouds, like surges fringed with sullen fire, break [202] —
Loom sombre as Doom's citadel above the vales that make
A pathway to a land of mist the moon's pale feet shall take. ”

“ Slow-syllabled of weed and bloom.
But, in the night, at languid rest,—
When like a spirit's naked breast
The moon slips from a silver mist,—
With star-bound brow, and star-wreathed wrist,
If you should see her rise and wave
You welcome—ah! what thing could save
You then? for evermore her slave! [192]
AT SUNSET
Into the sunset's turquoise marge
The moon dips, like a pearly barge
Enchantment sails through magic seas
To fairyland Hesperides,
Over the hills and away.
Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown,
The young-eyed Dusk comes slowly down ”

“ Among the river's lily flowers,
Or on their whiteness walks:
Above dark forest pools, gray rocks
Wall in, she leans with dripping locks,
And listening to the echo, talks
With her own face—Iothera.
There is no forest of the hills,
No valley of the solitude,
Nor fern nor moss, that may elude
Her searching step that stills: [117]
She dreams among the wild-rose brakes
Of fountains that the ripple shakes,
And, dreaming of herself, she fills
The silence with 'Iothera.' ”

“ Through the glow-worm gleams and glowers
Of the starlight;—wood-perfumes
Swoon around her and frail showers
Of the leaflet-tilted rain.
Lo! like love, she comes again
Through the pale voluptuous dusk,
Sweet of limb with breasts of musk.
With her lips, like blossoms, breathing
Honeyed pungence of her kiss,
And her auburn tresses wreathing
Like umbrageous helichrys,
There she stands, like fire and snow,
In the moon's ambrosial glow, [113]
Both her shapely loins low-looped
With the balmy blossoms, drooped,
Of the deep amaracus. ”

“ I fancy, when the whippoorwill
In some old tree sings wild and shrill,
With glow-worm eyes that dot the dark,—
Each holding high a firefly spark [83]
To torch its way,—the wood-imps come:
And some float rocking here; and some
Unmoor the lily leaves and oar
Around the old boat by the shore.
They climb through oozy weeds and moss;
They swarm its rotting sides and toss
Their firefly torches o'er its edge
Or hang them in the tangled sedge.
The boat is loosed. The moon is pale. ”

“ Flashed rushing silver, vines and vines and vines
Of purple vintage swollen with cool wines;
Pale pleasant wines and fragrant as late June,
Their delicate tang drawn from the wine-white moon.
And from the clouds o'er this sweet world there dripped
An odorous music, strangely feverish-lipped,
That swung and swooned and panted in mad sighs;
Investing at each throb the air with eyes,
And forms of sensuous spirits, limpid white,
Clad on with raiment as of starry night ”

“ Cawein's vocation to poetry was irresistible. I do not know that he ever tried to resist it. I have even the idea that a little more resistance would have been salutary for a talent which nothing could have discouraged, and which opposition might have taught the arts of compression and selection. Mr. Cawein suffered at first, I think, from lack of criticism more than from lack of eulogy. From his early writings I seem to gather an impression of a Louisville more ready to praise what was second-rate than what was first-rate, and practically, indeed, without any scale of appreciation whatever. ”

“ Of mist and of frost is its.
He hath tippled the buxom beauty,
And gotten her hug and her kiss—
The wide world's royal booty
To pile at her feet for this. [58]
ALONG THE OHIO
Athwart a sky of brass long welts of gold;
A path of gold the wide Ohio lies;
Beneath the sunset, billowing manifold,
The dark-blue hilltops rise.
And westward dips the crescent of the moon
Through great cloud-feathers, flushed with rosy ray,
That close around the crystal of her lune
The redbird wings of Day. ”

“ Within the west, stands dreaming lone and far,
Clad on with green and silver, and the Heaven
Is brightly brooched with one gold-glittering star.
I will lie down beside some mountain lake,
'Round which the tall pines sigh,
And breathing musk of rain from boughs that shake
Storm balsam from on high,
Make friends of Dream and Contemplation high
And Music, listening to the mocking-bird,—
Who through the hush sends its melodious cry,—
And so forget a while that other word,
That all loved things must die. ”

“ Now, dyed with burning carbuncle, a limbo-litten pane,
Within its walls of storm, the West opens to hill and plain,
On which the wild-geese ink themselves, a far triangled train,
And then the shuttering clouds close down—and night is here again. [203]
THE HILLS
There is no joy of earth that thrills
My bosom like the far-off hills! ”

“ He brings the ancient gods to Kentucky, and it is marvellous how quickly they learn to be at [xx] home there. Here is Bacchus, with a spicy fragment of calamus-root in his hand, trampling down the blue-eyed grass, and skipping, with the air of a hunter born, into the hickory thicket, to escape Artemis, whose robes, as she passes swiftly with her dogs through the woods, startle the humming-birds, silence the green tree-frogs, and fill the hot still air with the perfumes of peppermint and penny-royal. ”

“ Or under boughs, reclining cool,
A Hamadryad, like a pool
Of moonlight, palely beautiful?
Or Limnad, with her lilied face,
More lovely than the misty lace
That haunts a star and gives it grace?
Or is it some Leimoniad
In wildwood flowers dimly clad?
Oblong blossoms white as froth,
Or mottled like the tiger-moth;
Or brindled as the brows of death,
Wild of hue and wild of breath:
Here ethereal flame and milk
Blent with velvet and with silk; [111]
Here an iridescent glow
Mixed with satin and with snow:
Pansy, poppy and the pale
Serpolet and galingale ”

“ Cawein has had more to gain from the [xviii] passage of years in self-criticism than in inspiring enthusiasm. The fount was in him from the first; but it bubbled forth before he had digged a definite channel for it. Sometimes, to this very day, he sports with the principles of syntax as Nature played games so long ago with the fantastic caverns of the valley of the Green River or with the coral-reefs of his own Ohio. He has bad rhymes, amazing in so delicate an ear; he has awkwardness of phrase not expected in one so plunged in contemplation of the eternal harmony of Nature. ”

“ With old-world myths born of the mist and moon.
Lascivious eyes and mouths of sensual rose
Smile into mine; and breasts of luring light,
And tresses streaming golden to the night,
Persuade me onward where the forest glows.
And then it seems along the haunted hills
There falls a flutter as of beautiful feet,
As if tempestuous troops of Mænads meet
To drain deep bowls and shout and have their wills. [100]
And then I feel her limbs will be revealed
Like some great snow-white moth among the trees ”

“ We occasionally meet with a poet in the history of literature, of whom we are inclined to say, Charming as he is, he would have developed his talent more evenly and conspicuously,—with greater decorum, perhaps,—if he had been accompanied from the first by other young men like-minded, who would have formed for him an atmosphere and cleared for him a space. ”