Myth and Romance: Being a Book of Verses

Over the bay as our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine,
Gray and low flew the heron wailing
Under the skies of Augustine.—
Naught was spoken. We watched the simple
Gulls wing past. Your hat's white wimple
Shadowed your eyes. And your lips, a-dimple,
Smiled and seemed from your soul to wean
An inner beauty, an added sheen,
As over the bay our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine.

IV

Over the bay as our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine,
Red on the marshes the day flared, failing
Under the skies of Augustine.—
Was it your thought, or the transitory
Gold of the West, like a dreamy story,
Bright on your brow, that I read? the glory
And grace of love, like a rose-crowned queen
Pictured pensive in mind and mien?
As over the bay our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine.

V

Over the bay as our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine,
Wan on the waters the mist lay veiling
Under the skies of Augustine.—
Was it the joy that begot the sorrow?—
Joy that was filled with the dreams that borrow
Prescience sad of a far To-morrow,—
There in the Now that was all too keen,
That shadowed the fate that might intervene?
As over the bay our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine.

VI

Over the bay as our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine,
The marsh-hen cried and the tide was ailing
Under the skies of Augustine.—
And so we parted. No vows were spoken.
No faith was plighted that might be broken.
But deep in our hearts each bore a token
Of life and of love and of all they mean,
Beautiful, thornless and ever green,
As over the bay our boat went sailing
Under the skies of Augustine.

St. Augustine, Fla.

Words

I cannot tell what I would tell thee,
What I would say, what thou shouldst hear:
Words of the soul that should compell thee,
Words of the heart to draw thee near.

For when thou smilest, thou, who fillest
My life with joy, and I would speak,
'T is then my lips and tongue are stillest,
Knowing all language is too weak.

Look in my eyes: read there confession:
The truest love has least of art:
Nor needs it words for its expression
When soul speaks soul and heart speaks heart.

Reasons

II

From your sweet lips no word hath ever fallen
To tell my heart its love is not in vain—
The bee that wooes the flow'r hath honey and pollen
To cheer him on and bring him back again:
But what have I, your other friends above,
To feed my love, to feed my love?

III

Still, still you are my dream and my desire;
Your love is an allurement and a dare
Set for attainment, like a shining spire,
Far, far above me in the starry air:
And gazing upward, 'gainst the hope of hope,
I breast the slope, I breast the slope.

In
May

I

When you and I in the hills went Maying,
You and I in the sweet May weather,
The birds, that sang on the boughs together,
There in the green of the woods, kept saying
All that my heart was saying low,
Love, as glad as the May's glad glow,—
And did you know?
When you and I in the hills went Maying.

II

There where the brook on its rocks went winking,
There by its banks where the May had led us,
Flowers, that bloomed in the woods and meadows,
Azure and gold at our feet, kept thinking
All that my soul was thinking there,
Love, as pure as the May's pure air,—
And did you care?
There where the brook on its rocks went winking.

III

Whatever befalls through fate's compelling,
Should our paths unite or our pathways sever,
In the Mays to come I shall feel forever
The wildflowers thinking, the wildbirds telling
The same fond love that my heart then knew,
Love unspeakable, deep and true,—
But what of you?
Whatever befalls through fate's compelling.

Will You
Forget?

In years to come, will you forget,
Dear girl, how often we have met?
And I have gazed into your eyes
And there beheld no sad regret
To cloud the gladness of their skies,
While in your heart—unheard as yet—
Love slept, oblivious of my sighs?—
In years to come, will you forget?

Ah, me! I only pray that when,
In other days, some man of men
Has taught those eyes to laugh and weep
With joy and sorrow, hearts must ken
When love awakens in their deep,—
I only pray some memory then,
Or sad or sweet, you still will keep
Of me and love that might have been.

Clouds of the
Autumn Night

Clouds of the autumn night,
Under the hunter's moon,—
Ghostly and windy white,—
Whither, like leaves wild strewn,
Take ye your stormy flight?

Out of the west, where dusk,
From her rich windowsill,
Leaned with a wand of tusk,
Witch-like, and wood and hill
Phantomed with mist and musk.

Into the east, where morn
Sleeps in a shadowy close,
Shut with a gate of horn,
'Round which the dreams she knows
Flutter with rose and thorn.

Blow from the west, oh, blow,
Clouds that the tempest steers!
And with your rain and snow
Bear of my heart the tears,
And of my soul the woe.

Into the east then pass,
Clouds that the night winds sweep!
And on her grave's sear grass,
There where she lies asleep.
There let them fall, alas!

The Glory
and the Dream

There in the past I see her as of old,
Blue-eyed and hazel-haired, within a room
Dim with a twilight of tenebrious gold;
Her white face sensuous as a delicate bloom
Night opens in the tropics. Fold on fold
Pale laces drape her; and a frail perfume,
As of a moonlit primrose brimmed with rain,
Breathes from her presence, drowsing heart and brain.

Her head is bent; some red carnations glow
Deep in her heavy hair; her large eyes gleam;—
Bright sister stars of those twin worlds of snow,
Her breasts, through which the veinéd violets stream;—
I hold her hand; her smile comes sweetly slow
As thoughts of love that haunt a poet's dream;
And at her feet once more I sit and hear
Wild words of passion—dead this many a year.

Snow
and Fire

Deep-hearted roses of the purple dusk
And lilies of the morn;
And cactus, holding up a slender tusk
Of fragrance on a thorn;
All heavy flowers, sultry with their musk,
Her presence puts to scorn.

For she is like the pale, pale snowdrop there,
Scentless and chaste of heart;
The moonflower, making spiritual the air,
Like some pure work of art;
Divine and holy, exquisitely fair,
And virtue's counterpart.

Yet when her eyes gaze into mine, and when
Her lips to mine are pressed,—
Why are my veins all fire then? and then
Why should her soul suggest
Voluptuous perfumes, maddening unto men,
And prurient with unrest?

Restraint

Dear heart and love! what happiness to sit
And watch the firelight's varying shade and shine
On thy young face; and through those eyes of thine—
As through glad windows—mark fair fancies flit
In sumptuous chambers of thy soul's chaste wit
Like graceful women: then to take in mine
Thy hand, whose pressure brims my heart's divine
Hushed rapture as with music exquisite!
When I remember how thy look and touch
Sway, like the moon, my blood with ecstasy,
I dare not think to what fierce heaven might lead
Thy soft embrace; or in thy kiss how much
Sweet hell,—beyond all help of me,—might be,
Where I were lost, where I were lost indeed!

Why Should
I Pine?

Why should I pine? when there in Spain
Are eyes to woo, and not in vain;
Dark eyes, and dreamily divine:
And lips, as red as sunlit wine;

Sweet lips, that never know disdain:
And hearts, for passion over fain;
Fond, trusting hearts that know no stain
Of scorn for hearts that love like mine.—
Why should I pine?

Because all dreams I entertain
Of beauty wear thy form, Elain;
And e'en their lips and eyes are thine:
So though I gladly would resign
All love, I love, and still complain,
"Why should I pine?"

When Lydia
Smiles

When Lydia smiles, I seem to see
The walls around me fade and flee;
And, lo, in haunts of hart and hind
I seem with lovely Rosalind,
In Arden 'neath the greenwood tree:
The day is drowsy with the bee,
And one wild bird flutes dreamily,
And all the mellow air is kind,
When Lydia smiles.

Ah, me! what were this world to me
Without her smile!—What poetry,
What glad hesperian paths I find
Of love, that lead my soul and mind
To happy hills of Arcady,
When Lydia smiles!

The
Rose

You have forgot: it once was red
With life, this rose, to which you said,—
When, there in happy days gone by,
You plucked it, on my breast to lie,—
"Sleep there, O rose! how sweet a bed
Is thine!—And, heart, be comforted;
For, though we part and roses shed
Their leaves and fade, love cannot die.—"
You have forgot.

So by those words of yours I'm led
To send it you this day you wed.
Look well upon it. You, as I,
Should ask it now, without a sigh,
If love can lie as it lies dead.—
You have forgot.

A Ballad
of Sweethearts

Summer may come, in sun-blonde splendor,
To reap the harvest that Springtime sows;
And Fall lead in her old defender,
Winter, all huddled up in snows:
Ever a-south the love-wind blows
Into my heart, like a vane asway
From face to face of the girls it knows—
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.

If Carrie smile or Maud look tender,
Straight in my bosom the gladness glows;
But scarce at their side am I all surrender
When Gertrude sings where the garden grows:
And my heart is a bloom, like the red rose shows
For her hand to gather and toss away,
Or wear on her breast, as her fancy goes—
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.

Let Laura pass, as a sapling slender,
Her cheek a berry, her mouth a rose,—
Or Blanche or Helen,—to each I render
The worship due to the charms she shows:
But Mary's a poem when these are prose;
Here at her feet my life I lay;
All of devotion to her it owes—
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.

How can my heart of my hand dispose?
When Ruth and Clara, and Kate and May,
In form and feature no flaw disclose—
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.

Her
Portrait

Were I an artist, Lydia, I
Would paint you as you merit,
Not as my eyes, but dreams, descry;
Not in the flesh, but spirit.

The canvas I would paint you on
Should be a bit of heaven;
My brush, a sunbeam; pigments, dawn
And night and starry even.

Your form and features to express,
Likewise your soul's chaste whiteness,
I'd take the primal essences
Of darkness and of brightness.

I'd take pure night to paint your hair;
Stars for your eyes; and morning
To paint your skin—the rosy air
That is your limbs' adorning.

To paint the love-bows of your lips,
I'd mix, for colors, kisses;
And for your breasts and finger-tips,
Sweet odors and soft blisses.

And to complete the picture well,
I'd temper all with woman,—
Some tears, some laughter; heaven and hell,
To show you still are human.

A Song
for Yule

I

Sing, Hey, when the time rolls round this way,
And the bells peal out, 'Tis Christmas Day;
The world is better then by half,
For joy, for joy;
In a little while you will see it laugh—
For a song's to sing and a glass to quaff,
My boy, my boy.
So here's to the man who never says nay!—
Sing, Hey, a song of Christmas-Day!

II

Sing, Ho, when roofs are white with snow,
And homes are hung with mistletoe;
Old Earth is not half bad, I wis—
What cheer! what cheer!
How it ever seemed sad the wonder is—
With a gift to give and a girl to kiss,
My dear, my dear.
So here's to the girl who never says no!
Sing, Ho, a song of the mistletoe!

III

No thing in the world to the heart seems wrong
When the soul of a man walks out with song;
Wherever they go, glad hand in hand,
And glove in glove,
The round of the land is rainbow-spanned,
And the meaning of life they understand
Is love, is love.
Let the heart be open, the soul be strong,
And life will be glad as a Christmas song.

The Puritans'
Christmas

Their only thought religion,
What Christmas joys had they,
The stern, staunch Pilgrim Fathers who
Knew naught of holiday?—

A log-church in the clearing
'Mid solitudes of snow,
The wild-beast and the wilderness,
And lurking Indian foe.

No time had they for pleasure,
Whom God had put to school;
A sermon was their Christmas cheer,
A psalm their only Yule.

They deemed it joy sufficient,—
Nor would Christ take it ill,—
That service to Himself and God
Employed their spirits still.

And so through faith and prayer
Their powers were renewed,
And souls made strong to shape a World,
And tame a solitude.

A type of revolution,
Wrought from an iron plan,
In the largest mold of liberty
God cast the Puritan.

A better land they founded,
That Freedom had for bride,
The shackles of old despotism
Struck from her limbs and side.

With faith within to guide them,
And courage to perform,
A nation, from a wilderness,
They hewed with their strong arm.

For liberty to worship,
And right to do and dare,
They faced the savage and the storm
With voices raised in prayer.

For God it was who summoned,
And God it was who led,
And God would not forsake the love
That must be clothed and fed.

Great need had they of courage!
Great need of faith had they!
And lacking these—how otherwise
For us had been this day!

Spring

(After the German of Goethe, Faust, II)

When on the mountain tops ray-crowned Apollo
Turns his swift arrows, dart on glittering dart,
Let but a rock glint green, the wild goats follow
Glad-grazing shyly on each sparse-grown part.

Rolled into plunging torrents spring the fountains;
And slope and vale and meadowland grow green;
While on ridg'd levels of a hundred mountains,
Far fleece by fleece, the woolly flocks convene.

With measured stride, deliberate and steady,
The scattered cattle seek the beetling steep,
But shelter for th' assembled herd is ready
In many hollows that the walled rocks heap:

The lairs of Pan; and, lo, in murmuring places,
In bushy clefts, what woodland Nymphs arouse!
Where, full of yearning for the azure spaces,
Tree, crowding tree, lifts high its heavy boughs.

Old forests, where the gnarly oak stands regnant
Bristling with twigs that still repullulate,
And, swoln with spring, with sappy sweetness pregnant,
The maple blushes with its leafy weight.

And, mother-like, in cirques of quiet shadows,
Milk flows, warm milk, that keeps all things alive;
Fruit is not far, th' abundance of the meadows,
And honey oozes from the hollow hive.

Lines

Within the world of every man's desire
Three things have power to lift his soul above,
Through dreams, religion, and ecstatic fire,
The star-like shapes of Beauty, Truth, and Love.

I never hoped that, this side far-off Heaven,
These three,—whom all exalted souls pursue,—
I e'er should see; until to me 't was given,
Lady, to meet the three, made one, in you.

When Ships put
out to Sea

I

It's "Sweet, good-bye," when pennants fly
And ships put out to sea;
It's a loving kiss, and a tear or two
In an eye of brown or an eye of blue;—
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.

II

It's "Friend or foe?" when signals blow
And ships sight ships at sea;
It's clear for action, and man the guns,
As the battle nears or the battle runs;—
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.

III

It's deck to deck, and wrath and wreck
When ships meet ships at sea;
It's scream of shot and shriek of shell,
And hull and turret a roaring hell;—
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.

IV

It's doom and death, and pause a breath
When ships go down at sea;
It's hate is over and love begins,
And war is cruel whoever wins;—
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.

The
"Kentucky"

(Battleship, launched March 24, 1898.)

I

Here's to her who bears the name
Of our State;
May the glory of her fame
Be as great!
In the battle's dread eclipse,
When she opens iron lips,
When our ships confront the ships
Of the foe,
May each word of steel she utters carry woe!
Here's to her!

II

Here's to her, who, like a knight
Mailed of old,
From far sea to sea the Right
Shall uphold.
May she always deal defeat,—
When contending navies meet,
And the battle's screaming sleet
Blinds and stuns,—
With the red, terrific thunder of her guns.
Here's to her!

III

Here's to her who bears the name
Of our State;
May the glory of her fame
Be as great!
Like a beacon, like a star,
May she lead our squadrons far,—
When the hurricane of war
Shakes the world,—
With her pennant in the vanward broad unfurled.
Here's to her!

Quatrains

I

Moths and Fireflies

Since Fancy taught me in her school of spells
I know her tricks—These are not moths at all,
Nor fireflies; but masking Elfland belles
Whose link-boys torch them to Titania's ball.

II

Autumn Wild-Flowers

Like colored lanterns swung in Elfin towers,
Wild morning-glories light the tangled ways,
And, like the rosy rockets of the Fays,
Burns the sloped crimson of the cardinal-flowers.

III

The Wind in the Pines

When winds go organing through the pines
On hill and headland, darkly gleaming,
Meseems I hear sonorous lines
Of Iliads that the woods are dreaming.

IV

Opportunity

Behold a hag whom Life denies a kiss
As he rides questward in knighterrant-wise;
Only when he hath passed her is it his
To know, too late, the Fairy in disguise.

V

Dreams

They mock the present and they haunt the past,
And in the future there is naught agleam
With hope, the soul desires, that at last
The heart pursuing does not find a dream.

VI

The Stars

These—the bright symbols of man's hope and fame,
In which he reads his blessing or his curse—
Are syllables with which God speaks His name
In the vast utterance of the universe.

VII

Beauty

High as a star, yet lowly as a flower,
Unknown she takes her unassuming place
At Earth's proud masquerade—the appointed hour
Strikes, and, behold, the marvel of her face.

Processional

Universes are the pages
Of that book whose words are ages;
Of that book which destiny
Opens in eternity.

There each syllable expresses
Silence; there each thought a guess is;
In whose rhetoric's cosmic runes
Roll the worlds and swarming moons.

There the systems, we call solar,
Equatorial and polar,
Write their lines of rushing light
On the awful leaves of night.

There the comets, vast and streaming,
Punctuate the heavens' gleaming
Scroll; and suns, gigantic, shine,
Periods to each starry line.

There, initials huge, the Lion
Looms and measureless Orion;
And, as 'neath a chapter done,
Burns the Great-Bear's colophon.

Constellated, hieroglyphic,
Numbering each page terrific,
Fiery on the nebular black,
Flames the hurling zodiac.

In that book, o'er which Chaldean
Wisdom pored and many an eon
Of philosophy long dead,
This is all that man has read:—

He has read how good and evil,—
In creation's wild upheaval,—
Warred; while God wrought terrible
At foundations red of Hell.

He has read of man and woman;
Laws and gods, both beast and human;
Thrones of hate and creeds of lust,
Vanished now and turned to dust.

Arts and manners that have crumbled;
Cities buried; empires tumbled:
Time but breathed on them its breath;
Earth is builded of their death.

These but lived their little hour,
Filled with pride and pomp and power;
What availed them all at last?
We shall pass as they have past.

Still the human heart will dream on
Love, part angel and part demon;
Yet, I question, what secures
Our belief that aught endures?

In that book, o'er which Chaldean
Wisdom pored and many an eon
Of philosophy long dead,
This is all that man has read.

OTHER BOOKS OF VERSE BY MADISON CAWEIN

Days and Dreams Cloth, gilt top, $1.00
Moods and Memories     "          "   1.00
Red Leaves and Roses     "          "   1.00
Poems of Nature and Love     "          "   1.00
Intimations of the Beautiful     "          "   1.00

PUBLISHED BY

G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS,

27 & 29, West Twenty-third Street, New York, N. Y

Sent by mail, postpaid, to any address on receipt of price.

SOME NOTICES OF MR. CAWEIN'S VERSES

"I should like to praise the poetry of Madison Cawein, of Kentucky, which is as remote as Greece from the actual everyday life of his region; as remote from it as the poetry of Keats was from the England of his day, and which is yet so richly, so passionately true to the presence and essence of nature as she can be known only in the Southern West. I named Keats with no purpose of likening this young poet to him, but since he is named it is impossible not to recognize that they are of the same Hellenic race; full of like rapture in sky and field and stream, and of a like sensitive reluctance from whatever chills the joy of sense in youth, in love, in melancholy. I know Mr. Cawein has faults, and very probably he knows it, too; his delight in color sometimes plunges him into mere paint; his wish to follow a subtle thought or emotion sometimes lures him into empty dusks; his devotion to nature sometimes contents him with solitudes bereft of the human interest by which alone the landscape lives. But he is, to my thinking, a most genuine poet, and one of these few Americans, who, even in their over-refinement, could never be mistaken for Europeans; who perhaps by reason of it are only the more American."—William Dean Howells in Literature.

"From the poetry of our day I select that of Madison Cawein as an example of conspicuous merit. Many American readers have enjoyed Mr. Cawein's productions.... But the appreciation of his poetry has never been as great as its merits would indicate. His poems are rather too good to be caught up on the babbling tongue and cast forth into mere popularity. They are caviare to the general; and yet they have in them the best elements of popular favor.

"Cawein is a classicist. He will have it that poems, however humble the theme, however tender the sentiment, shall wear a tasteful Attic dress. I do not intimate that Mr. Cawein's mind has been too much saturated with the classical spirit or that his native instincts have been supplanted with Greek exotics and flowers out of the renaissance, but rather that his own mental constitution is of a classical as well as a romantic mould.

"The themes of Cawein's poetry are generally taken from the world of romance. If there be any modern bard who can recreate a mediæval castle and give to its inhabitants the sentiments which were theirs in the twelfth century, Cawein is the poet who can. He takes delight in the East. He is the Omar Khayyam of the Ohio Valley. He is as much of a Mohammedan as a Christian. He knows the son of Abdallah better than he knows Cromwell; and has more sympathy with a Khalif than with a Colonel. He dwells in the romantic regions of life; but the romance is real. The hope is a true hope. The dream is a true dream. The picture is a painting, and not a chromo. The love is a passion, and not a dilettante episode. Cawein's art is a genuine art. His verse is exquisite. Out of the three hundred and thirteen poems in the five volumes under consideration there may be found hardly a false or broken harmony...."—John Clark Ridpath, LL.D., in The Arena.

"The rattlesnake-weed and the bluet-bloom were unknown to Herrick and to Wordsworth, but such art as Mr. Cawein's makes them at home in English poetry. There is passion, too, and thought in his equipment...."—William Archer in the Pall Mall Magazine.

"I find in the best pieces an intoxicating sense of beauty, a richness, that is rarely achieved, although every young poet nowadays strives after it. I find, too, a daring use of language which sometimes, nay often, conducts to genuine and startling felicities."—Edmund Gosse.

Myth and Romance: Being a Book of Verses

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