Madison Julius Cawein

“ The brain of thought, the knowledge of its woe?
None! none! ah me! that my sick heart may know!—
The wearying sameness!—yet this thing is so!
This thing is so, and still the waters flow,
The leaves drop slowly down; the daylight throbs
With sun and wind, and yet this thing is so!{62}
There is no sympathy in heaven or earth
For human sorrow! all we see is mirth,
Or madness; cruelty or lust;
Nature is heedless of her children’s grief;
Man is to her no more than is a leaf,
That buds and has its summer, that is brief,
Then falls, and mixes with the common dust. ”

“ But ailing and longing and pining because I can not die.
How dull is that sunset! dreary and cold, and hard and dead!
The ghost of those last August that, mulberry-rich and red,
The wine of God’s own vintage, poured purple overhead.
But now I sit with the sighing dead dreams of a dying year;
Like the fallen leaves and the acorns, am worthless and feel as sere,
With a soul that ’s sick of the 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? ”

“ Through heavy orange, rose, and red,
And leave the heavens violet gray
Above a gypsy-lily bed:
Then they will go; and he will say
Such words to her as none has said.
A million stars the night will win
Above them; and one firefly
Pulse like a tangled starbeam in
The cedar dark against the sky:
Then he will lift her dimpled chin
And take the kiss she ’ll not deny.
And when the moon, like the great book
Of Judgment, golden with the light
Of God, lies open o’er yon nook
Of darkest wood and wildest height,
Together they will cross the brook
And reach the gate and kiss good night. ”

“ She, all my heaven of silvery, numberless{70}
Stars and its moon, shining golden and slumberless;
Who on my life, that was thorny and lowery,
Came—and made beautiful; smiled—and made flowery.
She, to my heart and my soul a divinity!
She, who—I dreamed!—seemed my spirit-affinity!—
What have I done to her? what have I done?
What can she mean by this?—what have I said to her?
I, who have idolized, worshiped, and pled to her;
Sung with her, laughed with her, sorrowed and sighed for her;
Lived for her only; and gladly had died for her!
See! she has written me thus! ”

“ In her garden’s moon-white space
Strangest flowers bloom: huge lilies,
Each one with a human face;
Knots of spirit-amaryllis;
Cactus-bulks with pulpy blooms
Gnome-like in the silver glooms;
And dim deeps of daffadillies,
Fay-like, brimming faint perfumes.
But to me their fragrance seems
Poison; and their lambent lustre,
Spun of twilight and of dreams,
Poison; and each pearly cluster
Hides a serpent’s fang. And I,
Looking from an oriel, sigh;
For my soul is fain to muster
Heart to breathe of them and die.
Then I feel big eyes, as bright
As the sea-stars. ”

“ The rose-hued colors of the May,
And May was all her universe.
And then he left her: and, like blood,
In her deep hair, the rose; whose bud
Was badge to her: while unto him,
His middle-age, must still remain
The red-leaf, withering at the rim,
As symbol of the all-in-vain.
III
“Such days as these,” she said, and bent
Among her marigolds, all dew,
And dripping zinnia stems, “were meant
For spring not autumn; days we knew
In childhood; these endearing those;
Much dearer since they have grown old:
Days, once imperfect with the rose,
Now perfect with the marigold.” ”

“ Watching the moon rise like a yellow leaf.{234}
The rising moon, against which, like despair,
High on the hill, a woman, darkly drawn,
The wild leaves round her, stood; with features wan,
And tattered dress and wind-distracted hair.
As still as death, and looking, not through tears,
For the young face of one she knows is lost,
While in her heart the melancholy frost
Gathers of all the unforgotten years.
What if she heard to-night a hurrying hoof,
Wild as the whirling of the withered leaf,
Bring her a more immedicable grief,
A shattered shape to live beneath her roof! ”

“ How horrible to see this thing at night!
Or when the sunset slants its brimstone light
Above the pool! when, blue, in phantom flight,
The will-o’-the-wisps, perhaps, above it reel.
Then, haply, would it rise, a rotting green,
Up, up, and gather me with arms of steel,
Soft steel, and drag me where the wave is white,
Beneath that boulder brown, that plants a keel
Against the ripple there, a shoulder lean.—
No, no! I must away before ’tis night!
Before the fireflies dot
The dark with sulphur blurrings bright!
Before, upon that height,
The white wild-carrots vanish from the sight ”

“ How once a wild-rose blew, love,
Dim in a haunted dell;
To which a bee was true, love.
The bee, so it befell,
Was I: the rose was you, love!...
The flowers remember well.
IV
To moon and flower and star
We are not what we are.—
Sometimes, from o’er that sea, love,
Whose golden sands are far,—
From shores of Destiny, love,—
The dreams that know no bar,
Will waft a truth that glistens
To Memory who listens,
Reminding you and me, love,
We are not what we are. ”

“ And with wicked laughter looking on this thing that she had done,
Like a visible aroma lingered sparkling in the sun;
How she stooped to kiss the pathos of an elf-lock of his beard,
All in mockery, at parting, and mock pity of his weird:
But her magic had forgotten that “who bends to give a kiss
Will bring down the curse upon them of the person whose it is”:
So the silence tells the secret.—And at night the fairies see
How the tossing bloom is Vivien, who is struggling to be free,
In the thorny arms of Merlin, who, forever, is the tree. ”

“ That belts the autumn land.
And they had passed by Devil’s Den,
And come to Dead Man’s Run,
When in the brush rose up two men,
Each with a levelled gun.
“Down! down! my sister!” cries the one;—
She gives the reins a twirl.—
The other shouts, “He shot my son!
And now he steals my girl!”
The rifles crack: she will not wail:
He will not cease to ride:
But, oh! her face is pale, is pale,
And the red blood stains her side.
“Sit fast, sit fast by me, sweetheart!
The road is rough to ride!”—
The road is rough by gulch and bluff,
And her hair blows wild and wide. ”

“ Touched the soul that dreamed within me;
All the magic that might win me
Whispered to my heart with sighs—
Darkness can not make them lies!...
Bring me moly, hellebore!
Mix them for my soul’s nepenthe,
For my spirit’s dread Amenti,
For the curse that comes once more
With unutterable lore!{439}
Sunlight, starlight or the moon,
Stormlight, firelight or the sheening
Witchlight intimate no meaning
Of her glory’s plenilune;
Of her soul’s unriddled rune,
And most awful beauty! ”

“ Where, lulled, the freckled silence sleeps, and vague
The water flows, when, at high noon, the cows
Wade knee-deep, and the heat is honied with
The drone of drowsy bees and dizzy flies.
How bright the moon is on that fleur-de-lis;
Blue, streaked with crystal like a summer day:
And is it moonlight there? or is it flowers?
White violets? lilies? or a daisy bed?
And now the wind, with softest lullaby,
Swings all their cradled heads and rocks-to-sleep{43}
Their fragrant faces and their golden eyes,
Curtained, and frailly wimpled with the dew.
Simple suggestions of a life most fair! ”