Madison Julius Cawein

“ The witch-faced Night and, muttering, blends
The dew and heat, whose bubbles make
The mist and musk that haunt the brake
Over the hills and away.
[Pg 17]
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.
MAY
The golden disks 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 wood-paths lead,
The golden disks of the rattlesnake-weed
Are the May's own utterance. ”

“ Whereby no lesson of this life is hard,
No struggle vain of science or of art,
That dies with failure written on its face.
[Pg 2]
QUIET
A log-hut in the solitude,
A clapboard roof to rest beneath!
This side, the shadow-haunted wood;
That side, the sunlight-haunted heath.
At daybreak Morn shall come to me
In raiment of the white winds spun;
Slim in her rosy hand the key
That opes the gateway of the sun.
Her smile shall help my heart enough
With love to labor all the day,
And cheer the road, whose rocks are rough,
With her smooth footprints, each a ray. ”

“ Who enters here shall feel his soul denied
All welcome: lo! the chiselled form of Love,
That stares in marble on the shrine above
The tomb of Beauty, where he dreamed and died!
[Pg 8]
Who enters here shall know no poppyflowers
Of Rest, or harp-tones of serene Content;
Only sad ghosts of music and of scent
Shall mock the mind with their remembered powers.
Here must he wait till striving patience carves
His name upon the century-storied floor;
His heart's blood staining one dim pane the more
In Fame's high casement while he sings and starves. ”

“ Of life, care reads with eyes whose tear-drops stain?
Shall such assist me to subdue the heights?
Long is the night, and over long the day.—
The burden of all being!—is it worse
Or better, lo! that they who toil and pray
May win not more than they who toil and curse?
A little sleep, a little love, ah me! ”

“ Sweeter than love of long ago.
The cypress of forgetfulness
Shall haunt our winter with its hue;
The apathy to us not less
Dear than the dreams our summer knew.
[Pg 32]
MONOCHROMES
I.
The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain;
Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain:
Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose.
The day was dim; now eve comes on again,
Grave as a life weighed down by many woes,—
So is the joy dead, and alive the pain. ”

“ Drops its surrendered sweetness note by note;—
And from her hands the buds of hope are strewn,
Moon-flowers, mothered of the barren moon.
So in her flowers man seats him at her feet
In star-faced worship, knowing all of this;
And now to him to die seems very sweet,
Fed with the fire of her look and kiss;
While in his heart the blood's tumultuous beat
Drowns, in her own, the drowsing serpent's hiss. ”

“ Between the shadowy bournes of Heaven and Hell,
It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell
With memory.
DAYS AND DAYS
The days that clothed white limbs with heat,
And rocked the red rose on their breast,
Have passed with amber-sandalled feet
Into the ruby-gated west.
[Pg 35]
These were the days that filled the heart
With overflowing riches of
Life; in whose soul no dream shall start
But hath its origin in love.
Now come the days gray-huddled in
The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip ”

“ Life sits with beauty and perfume
Weaving the new web of her loom.
[Pg 19]
He calls me where the waters run
Through fronding ferns where haunts the hern;
And, sparkling in the equal sun,
Song leans beside her brimming urn,
And dreams the dreams that love shall learn. ”

“ A woman's blossom breasts of snow.
Out of a rose-bud's veins I drew
The fragrant crimson beating through
The languid lips of her, whose kiss
Was as a poppy's drowsiness.
[Pg 54]
Out of the moonlight and the air
I wrought the glory of her hair,
That o'er her eyes' blue heaven lay
Like some gold cloud o'er dawn of day.
A shadow's shadow in the glass
Of sleep, my spirit saw her pass:
And, thinking of it now, meseems
We only live within our dreams.
For in that time she was to me
More real than our reality ”

“ Gaunt as a life that lives alone with grief,—
So doth the hope go and despair abide.
[Pg 33]
An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird pled;
Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red:
The frost is subtle as a serpent's breath.
The dusk was sad; now night is overhead,
Grim as a soul brought face to face with death—
So life lives on when love, its life, lies dead.
II.
Go your own ways. ”

“ To seek with high face for a star of hope?
Or up endeavor's unsubmissive slope
Advance a bosom of desire, and bow
A back of patience in a thankless task?
Alone beside the grave of love I ask,
Shalt thou? or thou?
Leave go my hands. Fain would I walk alone
The easy ways of silence and of sleep.
What though I go with eyes that cannot weep,
[Pg 34] And lips contracted with no uttered moan,
Through rocks and thorns, where every footprint bleeds,
A dead-sea path of desert night that leads
To one white stone! ”

“ Whose sleepy rune, hummed in the ear
Of silence, bees and beetles purr,
And the dry-droning locusts whirr;
Till, where the wood is very lone,
Vague monotone meets monotone,
And slumber is begot and born,
A faery child, beneath the thorn.
There is no mortal who may scorn
The witchery she spreads around
Her dim demesne, wherein is bound
The beauty of abandoned time,
As some sweet thought 'twixt rhyme and rhyme. ”

“ Past quinces where the blue-birds sing,
Where peonies are blossoming,
Unto a porch, wistaria-hung,
Around whose steps May-lilies blow,
A fair girl reaches down among,
Her arm more white than their sweet snow. ”

“ Freeze through the forest, fettering bough and brook.
He is the despot now who sits and dreams
Of Desolation and Despair, and smiles
At Poverty, who hath no place to rest,
Who wanders o'er Life's snow-made pathless miles,
[Pg 38] And sees the Home-of-Comfort's window gleams,
And hugs her rag-wrapped baby to her breast. ”

“ Whose forests deepen and whose moon goes down,
When Night's blind shadow shall usurp my own;
And, mid the dust and wreck of some old town,
The City of Dreams, I grope and fall alone.
[Pg 4]
THE WOOD
Witch-hazel, dogwood, and the maple here;
And there the oak and hickory;
Linn, poplar, and the beech-tree, far and near
As the eased eye can see.
Wild-ginger; wahoo, with its wan balloons ”