Madison Julius Cawein

“ What mines the morning heavens unfold!
What far Alaskas of the skies!
That, veined with elemental gold,
Sierra on Sierra rise.
Heap up the gold of all the world,
The ore that makes men fools and slaves;
What is it to the gold, cloud-curled,
That rivers through the sunset's caves!
Search Earth for riches all who will,
The gold that soils, that turns to dust—
Be mine the wealth no thief can steal,
The gold of God that can not rust.
BEAUTY AND ART.
The gods are dead; but still for me
Lives on in wildwood brook and tree
Each myth, each old divinity. ”

“ Beneath the twilight's first pale star,
You linger, tall and spiritual,
And hearken my guitar.
It is the hour
When every flower
Is wooed by moth or bee—
Would, would you were the flower, dear,
And I the moth to draw you near,
To draw you near to me,
My dear,
To draw you near to me.
II.
The jasmine and bignonia spill
Their balm around your windowsill;
The sill where, when magnolia-white,
In foliage mists, the moon hangs far,
You lean with bright deep eyes of night
And hearken my guitar. ”

“ Low strips of mist, that mesh the moon
Above the foaming waterfall;
And mountains that God's hand hath hewn,
And forests where the great winds call,—
Within the grasp of such as see
Are parts of a conspiracy;
To seize the soul with beauty; hold
The heart with love, and so fulfill
Within ourselves the Age of Gold,
That never died, and never will,—
So long as one true nature feels
The wonders that the world reveals. ”

“ He dirges low the flowers that have died,
Or with their ghosts holds solitary talks.
Lover of warmth, all day above the click
And crunching of the sorghum-press, through thick
Sweet steam of juice; all night when, white as chalk,
The hunter's-moon hangs o'er the rustling rick,
Within the barn 'mid munching cow and steer,—
Soft as a memory the heart holds dear,—
We hear his "Cheer, cheer, cheer." ”

“ Sugar-plum bowers drop sweets in your hand.
Dream, dream, little one, dream;
The cradle you lie in is tight at each seam,
The boat that goes sailing to Lullaby Land.
Over the sea, sweet, over the sand,
Lullaby, rockaby, over the sand.
III.
The twilight and midnight are lovers, you know,
And each to the other is true, is true!
And there on the moon through the heavens they ride,
With the little brown owls all huddled arow,
Through meadows of heaven where, every side,
Blossom the stars and the dew. ”

“ Unheard, yet full of speaking spells;
Within the rock, within the tree,
A soul of music dwells.
A mute symphonic sense that thrills
The silent frame of mortal things;
Its heart beats in the ancient hills,
In every flower sings.
To harmony all growth is set—
Each seed is but a music mote,
From which each plant, each violet,
Evolves its purple note.
Compact of melody, the rose
Woos the soft wind with strain on strain
Of crimson; and the lily blows
Its white bars to the rain.
The trees are pæans; and the grass
One long green fugue beneath the sun—
Song is their life ”

“ Beneath the moon of Spring;
The lilies pale were talking,
Were faintly murmuring.
From dimly moonlit places
They thrust long throats of white,
And lovely lifted faces
Of fragrant snow and light.
Their language was an essence,
Yet clearer than a bird's;
And from it grew a presence
As music grows from words.
A spirit born of silence
And chastity and dew
Among Elysian islands
Were not more white to view.
A spirit born of fire
And holiness and snow
Within the Heavens' desire,
Were not more pure to know. ”

“ Lifts up her moon of pearl:
Like some Rebecca at the well,
Who fills her jar of crystal shell,
Down ways of dew, o'er dale and dell,
Dusk comes with dreams of you,
Of you,
Dusk comes with dreams of you.
II.
She comes, the serious sister
Of all the stars that strew
The deeps of God, and glister
Bright on the darkling blue:
Like some loved Ruth, who heaps her arm
With golden gleanings of the farm,
Down fields of stars, where shadows swarm,
Dusk comes with thoughts of you,
Of you,
Dusk comes with thoughts of you. ”

“ Beneath a burning sky:
He bivouacs; the night comes on;
His comrades 'round him lie—
O memories of the years long gone!
O years that now go by!
The vintager of Earth is War, is War whose grapes are men;
Into his wine-vats armies go, his wine-vats steaming red:
The crimson vats of battle where he stalks, as in a den,
Drunk with the must of Hell that spurts beneath his iron tread. ”

“ Suffer its loveliness to share
The white moon of thy face,
The darkness of thy hair.
Awaken, sweet and fair!
[Pg 38]
II.
A moth, like down, swings on th' althæa's pistil,—
Ghost of a tone that haunts its bell's deep dome;—
And in the August-lily's cone of crystal
A firefly blurs, the lantern of a gnome,
Green as a gem that gleams through hollow foam.
Approach! the moment flies!
Thou sweetheart of the South!
Come! mingle with night's mysteries
The red rose of thy mouth,
The starlight of thine eyes.—
Approach! the moment flies! ”

“ Within a world of moon and mist, where dusk and daylight wed,
I see a phantom galley and its hull is banked with oars,
With ghostly oars that move to song, a song of dreams long dead:
[Pg 23]
"Oh, we are sick of rowing here!
With toil our arms are numb;
With smiting year on weary year
Salt-furrows of the foam:
Our journey's end is never near,
And will no nearer come—
Beyond our reach the shores appear
Of far Elysium." ”

“ Gleams 'mid the trees through night and rain.
The weeds are dense
Through which a fence
Of pickets rambles, none sees whence,
Before a porch, all indistinct of line,
O'er-grown and matted with wistaria-vine.
No thing is heard,
No beast or bird,
Only the rain by which are stirred
The draining leaves,
And trickling eaves
Of crib and barn one scarce perceives;
And garden-beds where old-time flow'rs hang wet
The phlox, the candytuft, and mignonette. ”

“ With his snow-pelts furred and shod,—
All the land is one with God.
THE CRICKET. I.
First of the insect choir, in the spring
We hear his faint voice fluttering in the grass,
Beneath some blossom's rosy covering
Or frond of fern upon a wildwood pass.
[Pg 10] When in the marsh, in clamorous orchestras,
The shrill hylodes pipe; when, in the haw's
Bee-swarming blooms, or tasseling sassafras,
Sweet threads of silvery song the sparrow draws,
Bow-like, athwart the vibrant atmosphere,—
Like some dim dream low-breathed in slumber's ear,—
We hear his "Cheer, cheer, cheer." ”

“ Rose-buds whence the fragrance drips,—
Helen's lips?
He who sees her needs must love her:
But, beware! avoid love's dart!
He who loves her must discover
Nature overlooked one part,
In this masterpiece of art—
Helen's heart. ”

“ Whom each expectant flower makes its guest.
[Pg 7]
All day the primroses have thought of thee,
Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat;
All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly
Veiled snowy faces,—that no bee might greet
Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;—
Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last,
Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.
Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day's
Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks
The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays
Nocturnes of fragrance, thy winged shadow links
In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith ”

“ Again all's lost; again despair
Makes death seem three times sweet—
O years of tears that crowned his hair
With laurels of defeat!
There is reward for those who dare, for those who dare and do:
Who face the dark inevitable, who fall and know no shame;
Upon their banner triumph sits and in the horn they blew,—
Naught's lost if honor be not lost, defeat is but a name.
HALLOWE'EN.
It was down in the woodland on last Hallowe'en,
Where silence and darkness had built them a lair,
That I felt the dim presence of her, the unseen,
And heard her still step on the ghost-haunted air. ”

“ A ragged fence of pickets, warped and sprung,—
On which the fragments of a gate are hung,—
Divides a hill, the fox and ground-hog haunt,
A wilderness of briers; o'er whose tops
A battered barn is seen, low-roofed and gaunt,
'Mid fields that know no crops.
Fields over which a path, o'erwhelmed with burs
And ragweeds, noisy with the grasshoppers,
Leads,—lost, irresolute as paths the cows
Wear through the woods,—unto a woodshed; then,
With wrecks of windows, to a huddled house,
Where men have murdered men. ”

“ Spread a dim carpet; where the twilight hath
Her dark abode; and, sweet as aftermath.
Wood-fragrance breathes,—has so enchanted me,
That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be
Some sylvan resting, rosy from her bath:
Has so enspelled me with tradition's dreams,
That every foam-white stream that twinkling flows,
And every bird that flutters wings of tan,
Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems
A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows
Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan. ”

“ PREPARATION.
How often hope's fair flower blooms richest where
The soul was fertilized with black despair.
DISILLUSION.
Those unrequited in their love who die
Have never drained life's chief illusion dry. ”

“ It was last Hallowe'en, the haunted, the dread,
In the wind-tattered wood by the storm-twisted pine,
That I, who am living, kept tryst with the dead,
And clasped her a moment and dreamed she was mine.
THE IMAGE IN THE GLASS. I.
The slow reflection of a woman's face
Grew, as by witchcraft, in the oval space
Of that strange glass on which the moon looked in:—
As cruel as death beneath the auburn hair
The dark eyes burned; and, o'er the faultless chin,—
Evil as night yet as the daybreak fair,—
Rose-red and sensual smiled the mouth of sin. ”

“ And conquered nations trembled at his nod.
[Pg 29]
By him the love that fills man's soul with light,
And makes a Heaven of Earth, was crucified;
Lust-crowned he lived, yea, lived in God's despite,
And old in infamies, a king he died.
Justice begins now.—Many centuries
In some vile body must his soul atone
As slave, as beggar, loathsome with disease,
Less than the dog at which we fling a stone. ”

“ We live in dreams as well as deeds, in thoughts as well as acts;
And life through things we feel, not know, is realized the most;
The conquered are the conquerors, despite the face of facts,
If they still feel their cause was just who fought for it and lost. ”

“ There,—when woodland hills encroach
On the shadowy winding waters,
And the bluets, April's daughters,
At the darling Spring's approach,
Star their myriads through the trees,—
All the land is one with peace. ”

“ Of birds and buds, of blooms and bees;
I seem to hear the blossoms blow,
And leaves unfolding on the trees.
[Pg 12]
I seem to hear the blue-bells ring
Faint purple peals of fragrance; and
The honey-throated poppies fling
Their golden laughter o'er the land.
It calls to me; it sings to me;
I hear its far voice night and day;
I can not choose but go when tree
And flower clamor, "Come, away!"
THE GRASSHOPPER.
What joy you take in making hotness hotter,
In emphasizing dullness with your buzz,
Making monotony more monotonous! ”

“ A goblin glimpse from woodland way to way.
[Pg 16]
What harlequin mood of nature qualified
Him so with happiness? and limbed him with
Such young activity as winds, that ride
The ripples, have, that dance on every side?
As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith
Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight,
Gnome-like, in darkness,—like a moonlight myth,—
Lairing in labyrinths of the under night. ”

“ Than Love or Faith or Hope,
For which we strive and grope.
[Pg 53]
The first one is Desire,—
Who takes our hand
And fills our hearts with fire
None may withstand;—
Through whom we're lifted far
Above both moon and star. ”

“ Where the warm wind drones with the honey-bee;
And the tall wild-carrots around you sway
Their lace-like flowers of cloudy gray:
By the black-cohosh with its pearly plume
A nod in the woodland's odorous gloom;
By the old rail-fence, in the elder's shade,
That the myriad hosts of the weeds invade:
Where the butterfly-weed, like a coal of fire,
Blurs orange-red through bush and brier;
Where the pennyroyal and mint smell sweet,
And blackberries tangle the summer heat,
The old road leads ”

“ DROUTH. I.
The hot sunflowers by the glaring pike
Lift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops,
Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike
Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse
Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops,
The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat
Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,—
Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,—
An empty wagon rattles through the heat.
[Pg 19]
II.
Where now the blue, blue flags? ”

“ Of Earth—the surging pulse of which we're part.
One hand, that hollows her divining eyes,
Glows like the curved moon over twilight skies;
And with her gaze she fathoms life and death—
Gulfs, where man's conscience, like a restless breath
Of wind, goes wand'ring; whispering low of things,
The irremediable, where sorrow clings.
Around her limbs a veil of woven mist
Wavers, and turns from fibered amethyst
To textured crystal ”

“ The soul in his body as light as the sigh
Of the little cloud-breeze that cools the sky,
While he bears an answering soul reply,
His soul and love's together.
III.
Oh, the evening vales, the twilight vales,
Where he labors and sweats to the thud of flails,
Singing a song of the toil that avails,
In the fruitful autumn weather;
In heart and in soul as free from fears
As the first white star in the sky that clears,
While the music of life and of love he hears,
Of life and of love together.
[Pg 94]
AFTERWORD.
What vague traditions do the golden eves. ”