Madison Julius Cawein

“ We circle and dance;
Like the foam of the fountain,
That sings of romance,
We glimmer and glance.
Swift, swift we go swinging
Down the slanted moonbeam,
In spirals faint flinging
A rainbow-rayed gleam
On sward and on stream.
You may hear, like a murmur,
The swirl of our hair; [138]
Our footfall; no firmer
Than leaves on the air
When branches blow bare.
To men who are favored
In spiritual wise,
Whose hearts have not quavered
To see us, we rise
And doff all disguise.
Come away then, come hither,
In the moon-blossomed night! ”

“ And oft the moon, when she lay in bed,
Had sighed, "Dear heart, in the orchardstead
Come dream with me of the love that's dead."
And she would stand in the moon, the dim,
Where the fruit made heavy the apple limb,
Where never again would she dream with him.
So summer passed and the autumn came;
And the wind-torn boughs were touched with flame;
But her life and her sorrow remained the same.
Or, if she changed, as it comes about
A life may change through trouble and doubt,—
As a candle flickers and then goes out ”

“ At night the blistering dew comes down
And lies as white as autumn frost
Upon the green, upon the brown—
You'd think each bush a ghost.
The crescent moon sheathes its white sword
Within a cloud; and, gray with fear,
One large blue star keeps stealthy guard
Above the house and mere.
The livid lilies rotting lie
On oozy beds of weltering leaves;
The will-o'-wisps go flickering by,—
And then the water heaves,
And, like some monstrous blossom there,
A maiden's corpse with staring eyes,
And naked breast and raven hair,
Slow in the mere doth rise. ”

“ Here all my life lies like a spilth of wine.
There is a mouth of music like a lute,
A nightingale that singeth to one flower;
Between the falling flower and the fruit,
Where love hath died, the music of an hour.
II
To sit alone with memory and a rose;
To dwell with shadows of whilom romances;
To make one hour of a year of woes
And walk on starlight, in ethereal trances,
With love's lost face fair as a moon-white rose. ”

“ Love's awful presence where ye shall adore."
Thus at her heart the vision entered in,
With lips of lust the lips of song had kissed,
And eyes of passion laughing with sweet sin,
A starry splendor robed in amethyst,
Seen like that star set in the glittering gloam—
Venus Mylitta born of fire and foam.
So shall she dream until, near middle night,—
When on the blackness of the ocean's rim
The moon, like some war-galleon all alight
With blazing battle, from the sea shall swim,—
A shadow, with inviolate lips and eyes,
Shall rise before her speaking in this wise ”

“ I
All dreams are older than the seas,
Being but newer forms of change;
Some savage dreamed mine; and 'twas these
De Leon sought where seas were strange.
All thoughts are older than the Earth
Being of beauty ages wrought;
Old when creation gave them birth,
When Homer sang them, Shakespeare thought.
II
If souls could travel as can thought,
Beyond the farthest arcs that span
Imagination, what would man
Not know and see at last?
One would explore the stars; and one
Would search the moon and one the sun
And tell us of their past. ”

“ And I thought, "This color is worn of the fays,
Whose fashion runs to dimmish grays:
A snail-brown tunic each elfin eunuch
Wears in the harem the Elf King keeps:
And a snail-gray gown each fairy clown
Dons when the elf dance whirls and leaps
In the light of the moon on the upland down.
A snail-shell house for his ouphen spouse
Each elfin builds by the snail-white moon,
Where his fairykin love he boards and beds,
Under the dandelion's wisp-white heads,
Where ever he pipes his cricket tune." ”

“ Away, over forest and foam, over tree and spray,
Far swifter than thought, far swifter than sound or than flame;
Over ocean and pine,
In arms of tumultuous shadow and shine.—
Though Sylvan and Nymph do not
Exist, and only what
Of terror and beauty I feel and I name
As parts of the storm, the awe and the rapture divine
That here in the tempest are mine,—
The two are the same, the two are forever the same. ”

“ Of some dim woe,
And spirit-like among the trees,
Strews snowy petals on the sod.
[88]
III
My soul dreams at life's blood-red heart
Of that thou art: of thee, who art
All silence: saying something fair
As phantoms know
When moon-flowers blow
And spirits meet: the beauty rare
Of which thou, too, hast grown a part.
IV
My heart, behold, is but a bloom
A pale thought clings to by a tomb,
A tomb that holds the one I love,
All wan of cheek,
Whom, wild and weak,
My heart bows down and breaks above,
Grief-haunted in the moonlit gloom. ”

“ One sloping star fell green from heav'n; and deep
The warm rose opened, for the moth to sleep;
Then she, consenting, laid her hands in his,
And lifted up her lips for their first kiss.
IV
There where they part the porch's steps are strewn
With wind-dropped petals of the purple vine;
Athwart the porch the shadow of a pine
Cleaves the white moonlight; and, like some calm rune
Heaven says to Earth, shines the majestic moon ”

“ Beyond the moon, within a land of mist,
Lies the dim Garden of all Dead Desires,
Walled round with morning's clouded amethyst,
And haunted of the sunset's shadowy fires;
There all lost things we loved hold ghostly tryst—
Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires.
Sad are the stars that day and night exist
Above the Garden of all Dead Desires;
And sad the roses that within it twist
Deep bow'rs; and sad the wind that through it quires;
But sadder far are they who there hold tryst—
Dead dreams, dead hopes, dead loves, and dead desires. ”

“ The stars and the moon
Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls:
Under whose sapphirine walls,
June, hesperian June,
Robed in divinity wanders. Daily and nightly
The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star,
The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are,
Fill the land with languorous light and perfume.—
Is it the melody mute of bourgeoning leaf and of bloom?
The music of Nature, that silently shapes in the gloom
Immaterial hosts
Of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep,
That I hear, that I hear? ”

“ 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 flame and snow,
In the moon's ambrosial glow,
Both her shapely loins low-looped
With the balmy blossoms, drooped,
Of the deep amaracus.
Spiritual, yet sensual, [281]
Lo, she ever greets me thus
In my vision; white and tall,
Her delicious body there,—
Raimented with amorous air,—
To my mind expresses all
The allurements of the world. ”

“ Sphinx-riddles of the soul within the gloom,—
Upon dead lips no dust of Love's dead bloom;
And in dead hands no shards of Faith's rent flask; [186]
But Hope, who still stands at her starry task,
Weaving the web of promise on her loom!
Thrice bless'd! who, 'though he hear the tomb proclaim
How all is Death's and Life Death's other name,
Can yet reply: "O Grave, these things are yours!
But that is left which life indeed assures—
Love, through whose touch I shall arise the same!
Love, of whose self was wrought the universe!" ”

“ Is richly laid: and, near the chair, a glass,
An oval mirror framed in ebony:
And, dim and deep,—investing all the room
With ghostly life of woven women and men, [348]
And strange, fantastic gloom, where shadows move,—
Dark tapestry,—which in the gusts—that twinge
A dropping cresset's slender star of light—
Seems swayed of cautious hands, assassin-like,
That bide their hour.
She alone, deep-haired
As golden dawn, and whiter than a rose,
Divinely breasted as the Queen of Love,
Lies robeless in the glimmer of the moon,
Like Danaë within the golden shower. ”

“ There we stopped. I drained a beaker
Old as Earth: the draught was fire: [381]
On my soul the burning liquor
Acted like a new desire.
On again! The darkness lifted
Like an up-rolled banner. Scattered
Overhead, in points that shifted,
Shone the stars through tempest tattered.
Then the moon rose. Slowly, slowly,
Of a wild and copper color,
Rose the moon, in melancholy
Deeps; and all the stars grew duller.
And we passed,—an instant's scanning,—
Swift as thought, the spider-arches
Of the ray-built bridges spanning
Space between her lunar marches. ”

“ Then dumbness of death; and, moon-gray,
In the darkness a light like a bubble,
From which, like a single white ray,
Comes a woman in loveliness double;
Her face is the breaking of day,
Her eyes are the night and its trouble. ”

“ Good, sirs!—Marry!—'Twas the cock!—
Hey, away! the moon's lost fire!—
Ho! the cock! our dial and clock—
Hide beneath this brier!
[149]
ON THE EVE OF ST. JOHN (Scandinavian)
Dizzily round,
On the elf-hills, white in the mellow moonlight,
To a sweet, unholy, ravishing sound
Of wizard voices from underground,
Their mazy dance the Elle-maids wound
On St. John's Eve.
Beautiful white,
Like a wreath of mist by the starbeams kissed,
Their frail, sweet faces bloomed out of the night,
With floating tresses of firefly light,
That puffed like foam to the left and the right,
On St. John's Eve. ”

“ And every wind that haunts the ways
Of leaf and bough, once having kissed
Her virgin nudity, goes whist [236]
With wonder and amaze.
There blows no breeze which hath not learned
Her name's sweet melody, and yearned
To kiss her mouth that laughs and says,
"Iothera, Iothera."
No wild thing of the wood, no bird,
Or brown or blue, or gold or gray,
Beneath the sun's or moon's pale ray,
That hath not loved and heard;
They are her pupils; she can say
No new thing but, within a day,
They have its music, word for word,
Harmonious as Iothera. ”

“ Mine eyes are accurst
With longings for visions that far in the night are forsaken;
And mine ears, in listening lost,
Yearn, yearn for the note of a chord that will never awaken.
[296]
II
Like palpable music thou comest, like moon-light; and far,—
Resonant bar upon bar,—
The vibrating lyre
Of the spirit responds with melodious fire,
As thy fluttering fingers now grasp it and ardently shake,
With flame and with flake,
The chords of existence, the instrument star-sprung,
Whose frame is of clay, so wonderfully molded from mire.
III
Vested with vanquishment, come, O Desire, Desire! ”

“ Grew our lives away from each,
Far away as it was fated.
XX
There is no gladness in the day
Now you're away;
Dull is the morn, the noon is dull,
Once beautiful;
And when the sunset fills the skies
With dusking dyes, [75]
With tired eyes and tired heart
I sit alone, I sigh apart,
And wish for you,
For only you.
Ah! darker now the night comes on
Since you are gone;
Sad are the stars, the moon is sad,
Once wholly glad;
And when the stars and moon are set,
And earth lies wet,
With heart's regret and soul's hard ache,
I dream alone, I lie awake,
And think of you,
Of only you. ”

“ Harsh fields, that lean before the woods' advance
As wild-men fly from hunters, tossing locks
Through which their eyes of yellow fire glance;
Great blurs of briers and lugubrious rocks,—
A bristling blackness,—with a pool beneath,
Whereo'er the wisps, like something evil, dance;
And then a house like the wrecked face of death.
II
There where the moon hangs sinister, o'er parched
And haggard thorns,—a golden battle-bow,
Or shield of bronze, old wars have scarred and scorched,— [113]
What crime hath cursed it ... who shall ever know?—
Night only! ”

“ And beauty, prayer-like, blossoms where death was.—
Nature divined her coming; yea, the dusk
Seemed thinking of that happiness: behold,
No cloud it had to blot its marigold
Moon—great and golden—o'er the slopes of musk;
Whereon earth's voice made music; tree and stream
Lilting the same low lullaby again,
To coax the wind, who romped among the hills
All day—a tired child—to sleep and dream:
When through the moonlight of the locust-lane
She came, as spring comes through her daffodils.
III
White as a lily molded of Earth's milk
That eve the moon bloomed in a hyacinth sky ”

“ And under the willows, that gloom and glance,
The will-o'-the-wisps hold a devil's-dance;—
They say that that crime is reacted again.
And each cranny and chink of the mill doth wink
With the light o' hell, or the lightning's blink,
And a woman's shrieks are heard through the rain:
When the howl of the hound comes over the hill,
No man will walk by Harrod's mill. ”