Though in her bosom be
Love-thoughts and dreams that stir
Longings that know not me:
Love hath no place in her,
No place for me.
Do I the love-light see;
Never her soul replies
To the sad soul in me:
Never with soul and eyes
Speaks she to me.
I but a moth, a bee;
High in her heaven she glows,
Blooms far away from me:
She is a star, a rose,
Never for me.
To my heart's misery?
Dreaming how sweet it were
Had she a thought of me:
Why will I think of her!
Why, why, ah me!
MEETING IN THE WOODS
A hollow where the touchmenots
Swung horns of honey filled with dew;
And where—like foot-prints—violets blue
And bluets made sweet sapphire blots,
'Twas there that she had passed he knew.
On either side, breathed rapture of
Her passage: 'twas her hand or dress
That touched some tree—a slight caress—
That made the wood-birds sing above;
Her step that made the flowers up-press.
Foam-footed, bounding through the wood,
A brook, like some wild girl at play,
Went laughing loud its roundelay;
And there upon its bank she stood,
A sunbeam clad in woodland gray.
Grew to a wildrose by the stream;
And to his breast a moment's space
He gathered her; and all the place
Seemed conscious of some happy dream
Come true to add to Earth its grace.
A MAID WHO DIED OLD
That life has carved with care and doubt!
So weary waiting, night and morn,
For that which never came about!
Pale lamp, so utterly forlorn.
In which God's light at last is out.
On either side the sunken brows!
And soldered eyes, so deep and dim,
No word of man could now arouse!
And hollow hands, so virgin slim,
Forever clasped in silent vows!
For baby lips to kiss and press!
That never felt, yet dreamed thereof,
The human touch, the child caress—
That lie like shriveled blooms above
The heart's long-perished happiness.
For purposes of death and birth,
That never knew, and could but crave
Those things perhaps that make life worth—
Rest now, alas! within the grave,
Sad shell that served no end of Earth.
COMMUNICANTS
Or feel, who lie beneath the ground?
Perhaps the flowers, the leaves, and grass
That close them round.
The moods of them we know not of;
Or lilies sweetly syllable
Their thoughts of love
Of all they feel may be a part;
Each red rose be the testament
Of some rich heart.
Perhaps, of saddest things they say;
Wild leaves may word some dead romance
In some dim way.
Through frost may speak to grass and stream;
The snow may be the silent sound
Of all they dream.
THE DEAD DAY
Of cloudy granite and of gold.
Where twilight's priestly hours inter
The day like some great king of old,
The new moon swings above his tomb;
While, organ-stops of God's own choir,
Star after star throbs in the gloom.
A nun whose face is calm and fair—
And kneeling at the dead day's feet
Her soul goes up in silent prayer.
And flowery fragrance, and—above
All Earth—the ecstasy and dream
That haunt the mystic heart of love.
KNIGHT-ERRANT
The spectres of the forest, dark and dim,
And shadows of vast death environ him—
Onward he spurs victorious over doom.
Before his eyes that love's far fires illume—
Where courage sits, impregnable and grim—
The form and features of her beauty swim,
Beckoning him on with looks that fears consume.
The thought of her distress, her lips to kiss,
Mails him with triple might; and so at last
To Lust's huge keep he comes; its giant wall,
Wild-towering, frowning from the precipice;
And through its gate, borne like a bugle blast,
O'er night and hell he thunders to his all.
THE END OF SUMMER
The hollyhocks; the balsam's pearly bredes
Of rose-stained snow are little sacs of seeds
Collapsing at a touch; the lote, that sods
The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods
And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds,
Around the sleepy water and its reeds.
Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods.
Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer's dead!
The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre,
Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire:
While from the East, as from a garden bed,
Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon—like some
Great golden melon—saying, "Fall has come."
LIGHT AND WIND
The daylight falls, beryl and chrysoprase,
The glamour and the glimmer of its rays
Seem visible music, tangible melodies:
Light that is music; music that one sees—
Wagnerian music—where forever sways
The spirit of romance, and gods and fays
Take form, clad on with dreams and mysteries.
And now the wind's transmuting necromance
Touches the light and makes it fall and rise,
Vocal, a harp of multitudinous waves
That speaks as ocean speaks—an utterance
Of far-off whispers, mermaid-murmuring sighs—
Pelagian, vast, deep-down in coral caves.
SUPERSTITION
When the wood whispers like a wandering mind,
And silence sits and listens to the wind,
Or, 'mid the rocks, to some wild torrent's flight;
Bat-browed thou wadest with thy wisp of light
Among black pools the moon can never find;
Or, owlet-eyed, thou hootest to the blind
Deep darkness from some cave or haunted height.
He who beholds but once thy fearsome face,
Never again shall walk alone! but wan
And terrible attendants shall be his—
Unutterable things that have no place
In God or Beauty—that compel him on,
Against all hope, where endless horror is.
UNCALLED
Beholds at length from the up-towering hills,
Far off, a land unspeakable beauty fills,
Circean peaks and vales of Avalon:
And, sinking weary, watches, one by one,
The big seas beat between; and knows it skills
No more to try; that now, as Heaven wills,
This is the helpless end, that all is done:
So 'tis with him, whom long a vision led
In quest of Beauty, and who finds at last
She lies beyond his effort. All the waves
Of all the world between them: While the dead,
The myriad dead, who people all the Past
With failure, hail him from forgotten graves.
LOVE DESPISED
This love, this god and fiend, that makes a hell
Of many a life, in ways no tongue can tell,
No mind divine, nor any word impart.
Would not one think the slights that make hearts smart,
The ice of love's disdain, the wint'ry well
Of love's disfavor, love's own fire would quell?
Or school its nature, too, to its own art.
Why will men cringe and cry forever here
For that which, once obtained, may prove a curse?
Why not remember that, however fair,
Decay is wed to Beauty? That each year
Takes somewhat from the riches of her purse,
Until at last her house of pride stands bare?
THE DEATH OF LOVE
And in the sorrow of our hearts' hushed halls
A lute lies broken and a flower falls;
Love's house is empty and his hearth is cold.
Lone in dim places, where sweet vows were told.
In walks grown desolate, by ruined walls,
Beauty decays; and on their pedestals
Dreams crumble, and th' immortal gods are mould.
Music is slain or sleeps; one voice alone,
One voice awakes, and like a wandering ghost
Haunts all the echoing chambers of the Past—
The voice of Memory, that stills to stone
The soul that hears; the mind that, utterly lost,
Before its beautiful presence stands aghast.
GERALDINE, GERALDINE
Do you remember where
The willows used to screen
The water flowing fair?
The mill-stream's banks of green
Where first our love begun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?
Do you remember how
From th' old bridge we would lean—
The bridge that's broken now—
To watch the minnows sheen,
And the ripples of the Run,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?
Do you remember too
The old beech-tree, between
Whose roots the wild flowers grew?
Where oft we met at e'en,
When stars were few or none,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?
The bark has grown around
The names I cut therein,
And the truelove-knot that bound;
The love-knot, clear and clean,
I carved when our love begun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?
The roof of the farmhouse gray
Is fallen and mossy green;
Its rafters rot away:
The old path scarce is seen
Where oft our feet would run,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.
Through each old tree and bough
The lone winds cry and keen—
The place is haunted now,
With ghosts of what-has-been,
With dreams of love-long-done,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.
There, in your world of wealth,
There, where you move a queen,
Broken in heart and health,
Does there ever rise a scene
Of days, your soul would shun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?
Here, 'mid the rose and rue,
Would God that your grave were green.
And I were lying too!
Here on the hill, I mean,
Where oft we laughed i' the sun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.
ALLUREMENT
From gardens fair as Falerina's,
Now by a blossom, now a bird,
To come to her, who long has lured
With magic sweeter than Alcina's.
I know not what may mean the voices
She sends as messengers serene,
That through the silvery silence lean,
To tell me where her heart rejoices.
Must take the path that is appointed!
God grant I find her realm some day!
Where, by her love, as by a ray,
My soul shall be anointed.
BLACK VESPER'S PAGEANTS.
An Indian face towards Earth and dies;
The west, like some gaunt vase, inurns
Its ashes under smouldering skies,
Athwart whose bowl one red cloud streams,
Strange as a shape some Aztec dreams.
And night comes on with wind and rain;
The mulberry-colored leaves are hurled
Like frantic hands against the pane.
And through the forests, bending low,
Night stalks like some gigantic woe.
A hoar bloom like a witch's-light,
From weed and flower the rain-wind rakes
Dead sweetness—as a wildman might,
From out the leaves, the woods among,
Dig some dead woman, fair and young.
Alone! except for thoughts, that are
Akin to such wild nights and days;
A portion of the storm that far
Fills Heaven and Earth tumultuously,
And my own soul with ecstasy.
OTHER VOLUMES
BY
MADISON CAWEIN
THE GARDEN OF DREAMS
Printed on hand-made paper; bound in watered silk; only a few copies remaining; price, $1.25 (net)
WEEDS BY THE WALL
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PUBLISHERS
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WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, in the North American Review for January, 1902.
"One never praises an author for certain things without afterward doubting if they were the characteristic things, or whether just the reverse might not be said. Praise is, in fact, a delicate business, and I, who am rather fond of dealing in it, never feel quite safe. Not only is it questionable at the moment, but the later behavior of the author is sometimes such that one is sorry not to have made it blame. It is always with a shrinking, which I try to hide from the public, that I take up the fresh venture of a poet whom I have once bet on. But there is a joy when I find that I have not lost my wager, which is full compensation for the anxiety suffered. This joy has lately been mine in the latest little book of Mr. Madison Cawein, whose work I long ago confessed my pleasure in. I am not sure that he has transcended the limits which he then seemed to give himself as the lover, the prophet, of beauty in the woods and waters and skies of the southern Mid-West. I do not know that he need have done more than unlock the riches of emotion within these limits. What I am sure of is that in 'Weeds by the Wall' he has more deeply charmed me with an art perfected from that I felt in 'Blooms of the Berry' ten or fifteen years since. Many little books of his have come (I hope not also gone) between the first and last, and none of them has failed to make me glad of his work; and now, again, I am finding the same impassioned moods in the same impassive presences. To my knowledge, no such nature poems have been written within the time since Mr. Cawein began to write as his are, or from such an intimacy with the 'various language' which nature speaks. There are other good poems in the book, poems which would have made reputes in the eighteenth century, and which it would be a shame not to own good in the twentieth; but those which speak for 'The Cricket,' ' A Twilight Moth,' 'The Grasshopper,' 'The Tree-Toad,' 'The Screech Owl,' 'The Chipmunk,' 'Drouth,' 'Before the Rain,' and the like, are in a voice which interprets the very soul of what we call the inarticulate things, though they seem to have enunciated themselves so distinctly to this poet. It is cheap to note his increasing control of his affluent imagery and the growing mastery that makes him so fine an artist. These things were to be expected from his early poems, but what makes one think he will go far and long, and outlive both praise and blame, is the blending of a sense of the Kentucky civilization in such a poem as 'Feud.'... Civilization may not be quite the word for the condition of things suggested here, but there can be no doubt of the dramatic and the graphic power that suggests it, and that imparts a personal sense of the tragic squalor, the sultry drouth, the forlorn wickedness of it all. By such a way as this lies Mr. Cawein's hope of rise from nature up to man, if it is up; and also, as I perceive too late, lies confusion for the critic who said that the poet does not transcend the limits he once seemed to give himself."