Madison Julius Cawein

“ Here shall I kiss you good-night?
Or, for a while, soul to soul,
Linger and dream of delight?
13 They enter the garden again.... She, somewhat pensively.
Myths tell of walls and cities that arose
To melody. But I would build with tone,
Had I that harp, a world for us alone,
A world of love, and joy, and deep repose.
A land of lavender light, of blue-bell skies;
Pale peaks that rise against the gold of eve;
And on one height, the splendors never leave,
Our castled home o'er which the wild swan flies. ”

“ All that we feel is old;
[Pg 50] Let morning flutter from night's brown cocoon
Wide wings of flaxen gold;
The moon split through the darkness, soaring o'er,
Like some great moth and white,
These have been seen a myriad times before
And with the same delight.—
So 'tis with love—how old yet new it is!—
This only should we heed,—
To once have known, to once have felt love's bliss,
Is to be rich indeed.—
Whether we win or lose, we lose or win,
Within our gain or loss
Some purpose lies, some end unseen of sin,
Beyond our crown or cross. ”

“ I, in our season of love as a sun to her:
She, all its heaven of silvery, numberful
Stars and its moon shining golden and slumberful;
Who on my life, that was thorny and lowery,
Gazed—and made beautiful; smiled—and made flowery.
She, to my heart and my soul a divinity!
She, who—I dreamed!—seemed my spirit's affinity!—
What have I done to her? what have I done?
[Pg 68]
What can she mean by this?—what have I said to her!
I, who have idolized, worshipped, and pled to her;
Sung for her, laughed for her, sorrowed and sighed for her;
Lived for her only; would gladly have died for her! ”

“ The rose whose bloom is fled!
Of her who died; who, clasped in clay,
Lies numbered with the dead.
The dead are dead; with them 'tis well
Within their narrow room;—
No memories haunt their hearts who dwell
Within the grave and tomb.
But what of those—the dead who live!
The living dead, whose lot
Is still to love—ah, God forgive!—
To live and love, forgot!—
[Pg 104]
8 The storm is heard sounding wildly with wind and hail.
The night is wild with rain and sleet. ”

“ Less of the flesh with the Past pining near it?
Is there a joy like this?
9 Leaving the garden for the lane. He, with lightness of heart.
We will leave reason,
Sweet, for a season;
Reason were treason
Now that the nether
Spaces are clad, oh,
In silvery shadow—
We will be glad, oh,
Glad as this weather!
She, responding to his mood:
Heart unto heart, where the moonlight is slanted,
Let us believe that our souls are enchanted:—
I in the castle-keep; you are the airy
Prince who comes seeking me; Love is the Fairy
Bringing our hearts together. ”

“ Builds wan a tomb for the daylight;—each morning shaggy with fog,
That fits grey wigs to the cedars, and furs with frost each log;
That carpets with pearl the meadow, and marbles brook and bog,—
Alone at dawn—indifferent: alone at eve—I sigh:
And wait, like the wind complaining: complain and know not why:
But ailing and longing and pining because I do not die.
How dull is that sunset! dreary and cold, and hard and dead!
The ghost of the one last August that, deeply rich and red,
Like the wine of God's own vintage, poured purple overhead. ”

“ SHE
Soul unto soul—in the moon's wizard glory,
Let us believe we are parts in a story:—
I am a poem; a poet you hear it
Whispered in star and in flower; a Spirit,
Love, puts my soul in your power. ”

“ Night, night, 'tis night. The moon drifts low above us,
And all its gold is tangled in the stream:
Love, love, my love, and all the stars, that love us,
The stars smile down and every star's a dream. ”

“ Like the fallen leaves and the acorns, am worthless and feel as sear,
With a withered soul and body whose heart is one big tear.
As I stare from my window the daylight, like a bravo, its cloak puts on.
The moon, like a cautious lanthorn, glitters and then is gone.—
Will he come to-night? will he answer?—Oh, God! would it were dawn!
9 He enters. Taking her in his arms he speaks.
They said you were dying—
You shall not die!...
Why are you crying?
Why do you sigh?—
Cease that sad sighing!—
Love, it is I.
All is forgiven!—
Love is not poor ”

“ My bachelor's-buttons scattered over the garden grass,
And the marigolds that boasted their bits of burning brass;
More bitter I feel the autumn tighten 'round spirit and heart;
And regret the days remembered as lost—that stand apart,
A chapter holy and sacred, I read with eyes that smart.
Again to the woods a-trysting by the watermill I steal,
Where the lilies tumble together, the madcap wind at heel ”

“ Working in us so we seem
Aye to have loved? that we cling
Even to some fancy or dream,
Rainbowing everything
Here in our souls with its gleam?
See! how the synod is met
There of the heavens to preach us—
Freed from the earth's oubliette,
See how the blossoms beseech us—
Were it not well to forget
Winter and night as they teach us?
Dew and a bud and a star,
These,—like a beautiful thought,
Over man's wisdom how far!—
God for some purpose has wrought;
And though they're that which they are,
What are the thoughts they have brought?
[Pg 26]
Stars and the moon ”

“ And all is night, and I no longer see.
6 He looks from his window toward the sombre west.
Ridged and bleak the gray forsaken
Twilight at the night has guessed;
And no star of dusk has taken
Flame unshaken in the west.
[Pg 101]
All day long the woodlands dying
Moaned, and drippings as of grief
Tossed from barren boughs with sighing
Death of flying twig and leaf.
Ah, to live a life unbroken,
Scornful of the worst of fate!
Like that tree ... with branches oaken....
Joy's unspoken intimate.—
Who can say that man has never
Lived the life of plants and trees? ”

“ Seems hands in wild applause.
How glows that garden! though the white mists keep
The vagabonding flowers reminded of
Decay that comes to slay in open love,
When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep ”

“ Flame of the candle attracts with its guttering,
Flattering on till its body lies fluttering,
Scorched in the summer night.—Foolish, importunate,
Why did'st thou leave the cool flowers, unfortunate!—
Such has she been to me making me such to her,
Slaying me, saying I never was much to her!—
What shall I make of it? what can I make?
[Pg 69]
Love, in thy everglades, moaning and motionless,
Look, I have fallen; the evil is potionless. ”

“ Love, love, my love, ah, bid thy heart be stiller,
And, hark! the music of the resonant main.
What flowers are those that blow their balm unto us
From mouths of wild aroma, each a flame?—
That breathe of love, of love we know that drew us,
That kissed our eyes, so we might see the same. ”

“ God is praised by many a bird.
Look above you.—Pearly white,
Star on star now crystallizes
Out of darkness; and the night
Hangs them round her like devices
Of strange jewels. Vapour rises,
Glimmering, from each wood and dell—
Till to-morrow, then, farewell.
[Pg 54]
PART III LATE SUMMER
Heat lightning flickers in one cloud,
As in a flow'r a firefly;
Some rain-drops, that the rose-bush bowed,
Jar through the leaves and dimly lie;
Among the trees, now low, now loud,
The whispering breezes sigh.
The place is lone; the night is hushed;
Upon the path a rose lies crushed. ”

“ What is the air he plays?
"Love, and a song to follow,
Soul with the face a-gleam!
Come follow, come follow,
O'er hill and o'er hollow,
To the land o' the bloom and beam;
Where under the flowers you may listen for hours,
And dream, dream, dream!"
7 He speaks, letting the boat drift.
Here the shores are irised. Grasses
Clump the water dark that glasses
Broken wood and deepened distance.
Far the musical persistence
Of a field-lark lingers low
In the west where tulips blow.
[Pg 44]
White before us flames one pointed
Star; and Day hath Night anointed
King ”

“ Deepens without moon or star;
Darkness and my sorrow aiding,
We but fading phantoms are.
[Pg 102]
And within me doubt keeps saying—
"What is wrong? and what is right?
Hear the cursing! hear the praying!
All are straying on in night." ”

“ It is quite impossible to describe adequately the surpassing charm of this book. We can say simply that it will appeal to every lover of nature who sees in her manifold beauties the living glories of the work of God.
No one can write more beautiful or sparkling prose than Mrs. Spofford and never has she been so absolutely charming as in Four Days of God.
The book has about 90 illustrations by Miss A. C. Tomlinson which catch the spirit of the text to perfection and with the harmonious print and paper and binding make the book a little gem. ”

“ Song, its soul that overfloweth,
Never nightingale's heart feeleth—
Such the love the spirit groweth,
Love unconscious if it healeth.
[Pg 29]
16 He, after a pause, lightly:
An elf there is who stables the hot
Red wasp that stings on the apricot;
An elf who rowels his spiteful bay
Like a mote on a ray, away, away;
An elf who saddles the hornet lean
To din i' the ear o' the swinging bean;
Who straddles, with cap cocked all awry,
The bottle-blue back o' the dragon-fly. ”

“ Than pure gold. Star-crowned he stands
With the star-light in his hands.
Will the moon bleach through the ragged
Tree-tops ere we reach yon jagged
Rock, that rises gradually,
Pharos of our homeward valley?—
All the west is smouldering red;
Embers are the stars o'erhead.
At my soul some Protean elf is;
You're Simaetha; I am Delphis.
You are Sappho and your Phaon,
I.—We love.—There lies a ray on
All the Dark Æolian seas
'Round the violet Lesbian leas.
On we drift. I love you. Nearer
Looms our island. ”

“ That tale of Charlemagne?
That old romance, ah me! that we
Were reading? till we heard the plunge
Of summer thunder sullenly,
And left to watch the lightning lunge,
And winds bend down each tree.—
That summer! ”

“ And, o'er the doubts that sever,
Rise to the truth that's you?
Love, in my flesh so fearful,
Medicine me this pain!—
Love, with the eyes so tearful,
[Pg 98] How can my soul be cheerful,
Seeing its joy is slain!
Gone!—'twas only a vision!—
Gone! like a thought, a gleam!—
Such to our indecision
Utter no empty mission,
Truer than that they seem.
4 He sinks into deep thought.
There are shadows that compel us,
There are voices that control ”

“ An ailing phantom that will not be laid,
Since this is so, since this sad thing is so.
There, in the water, how the lank green grass
Mats its rank blades, each blade a crooked kris,
[Pg 63] Making a marsh; 'mid which the currents miss
Their rock-born melodies.
But there, and there one sees
The wide-belled mallow, as within a glass,
Long-pistiled, leaning o'er
The root-contorted shore,
As if its own pink image it would kiss.
And there the tangled wild-potato vine
Lifts conical blossoms, each a cup of wine,
As pale as moonlight is. ”

“ Careless in beauty of maturity;
The ripened roses 'round brown temples, she
Fulfils completion in a dreamy guess.
Now Time grants night the more and day the less;
The gray decides; and brown
Dim golds and drabs in dulling green express
Themselves and redden as the year goes down.
Sadder the fields where, thrusting hoary high
Their tasseled heads, the Lear-like corn-stocks die,
And, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie.—
[Pg 55] Deeper to tenderness,
Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along
The lonesome west ”

“ Louis Mirror.
"His lyrics have that touch of universality which distinguishes true poetry from mere verse. It is not too much to say that Poems of the Town are certain to take a place among the best examples of American poetry."—Editorial Chicago Chronicle. ”

“ This is a book of ringing Irish ballads that will stir the heart of every lover of true poetry. "Here and there a verse may be as frankly unadorned as the peasant cabins themselves in their homely cloaks of thatch, but every line rings true to life and home and with the tone, as heartmoving as the Angelus which holds Millet's peasants in its spell," from Mr. O'Brien's introduction.
"Father Dollard's ballads have all the fire and dash of Kipling's, with a firmer poetic touch" says Mr. ”