The Poems of Madison Cawein, Volume 5 (of 5) / Poems of meditation and of forest and field

Unloose the watch-dog from his chain:
The first stars wink their drowsy eyes:

A sheep-bell tinkles in the lane,
And where the shadow deepest lies
A lamp makes bright the kitchen pane:—
The whippoorwill is calling,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will,”
Where the berry-blooms are falling
On the rill;
The first faint stars are springing,
And the whippoorwill is singing,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will;”
Softly still
The whippoorwill is singing,
“Whip-poor-will.”

III

The cows are milked: the cattle fed:
The last far streaks of evening fade:
The farm-hand whistles in the shed,
And in the house the table’s laid,
Its lamp streams on the garden-bed:—
The whippoorwill is calling,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will,”
Where the dogwood blooms are falling
On the hill:
The afterglow is waning,
And the whippoorwill’s complaining,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will;”
Wild and shrill,
The whippoorwill’s complaining,
“Whip-poor-will.”

IV

The moon blooms out, a great white rose;
The stars wheel onward towards the west;
The barnyard-cock wakes once and crows;
The farm is wrapped in peaceful rest;
The cricket chirrs; the firefly glows:—
The whippoorwill is calling,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will,”
Where the bramble-blooms are falling
On the rill;
The moon her watch is keeping,
And the whippoorwill is weeping,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will:”
Lonely still,
The whippoorwill is weeping,
“Whip-poor-will.”

NOVEMBER

I

Morning

Deep in her broom-sedge, burrs, and ironweeds,
Her frost-slain asters and dead mallow-moons,
Where gray the wilding clematis balloons
The brake with puff-balls: where the slow stream leads
Her slower steps; decked with the scarlet beads,
Of hip and haw; through dolorous maroons
And desolate golds, she goes; the wailing tunes
Of all the winds about her like wild reeds.
The red wrought-iron hues that flush the green
Of blackberry briers, and the bronze that stains
The oak’s sere leaves, are in her cheeks: the gray
Of forest pools, thin-clocked with ice, is keen
In her cold eyes; and in her hair, the rain’s
Chill silver shimmers like a moonlight ray.

II

Noon

Lost in the sleepy grays and drowsy browns
Of woodlands, smoky with the autumn haze,
Where dull the last, leafed maples, smouldering, blaze
Like ghosts of sachem fires, the month uncrowns
Her frosty hair; and where the forest drowns
The road in darkness, in the rutted ways,
Filled full of freezing rain, her robe she lays
Of tattered gold, and seats herself and frowns.
And at her frown each wood and bosky hill
Shudders with prescience of approaching storm,
Her soul’s familiar fiend, who, with wild broom
Of wind and rain, works her resistless will,
Sweeping the world, and driving with fierce arm
The clouds, like leaves, through the tumultuous gloom.

III

Evening

The shivering wind sits in the oaks, whose limbs,
Twisted and tortured, nevermore are still;
Grief and decay sit with it; they, whose chill
Autumnal touch makes hectic red the rims
Of all the oak-leaves; desolating, dims
The ageratum’s blue that banks the rill;
And splits the milkweed’s pod upon the hill,
And shakes it free of the last seed that swims.
Down goes the day despondent to its close:
And now the sunset’s hands of copper build
A tower of brass, behind whose burning bars,
The Day, in fierce, barbarian repose,
Like some imprisoned Inca sits, hate-filled,
Crowned with the gold corymbus of the stars.

IV

Night

There is a booming in the forest boughs;
Tremendous feet seem trampling through the trees:
The storm is at his wildman revelries,
And earth and heaven echo his carouse.
Night reels with tumult; and, from out her house
Of cloud, the moon looks,—like a face one sees
In nightmare,—hurrying, with pale eyes that freeze,
Stooping above with white, malignant brows.
The isolated oak upon the hill,
That seemed, at sunset, in terrific lands
A Titan head black in a sea of blood,
Now seems a monster harp, whose wild strings thrill
To the vast fingering of innumerable hands—
Spirits of tempest and of solitude.

HALLOWMAS

All hushed of glee,
The last chill bee
Clings wearily
To the dying aster:
The leaves drop faster:
And all around, red as disaster,
The forest crimsons with tree on tree.

A butterfly,
The last to die,
Droops heavily by,
Weighed down with torpor:
The air grows sharper:
And the wind in the trees, like some sad harper,
Sits and sorrows with sigh on sigh.

The far crows call;
The acorns fall;
And over all
The Autumn raises
Dun mists and hazes,
Through which her soul, it seemeth, gazes
On ghosts and dreams in carnival.

The end is near:
The dying Year
Leans low to hear
Her own heart breaking,
And Beauty taking
Her flight, and all her dreams forsaking
Her soul, bowed down ’mid the sad and sere.

AUBADE

Awake! the Dawn is on the hills!
Behold, at her cool throat a rose,
Blue-eyed and beautiful she goes,
Leaving her steps in daffodils.—
Awake! arise! and let me see
Thine eyes, whose deeps epitomize
All dawns that were or are to be,
O love, all Heaven in thine eyes!—
Awake! arise! come down to me!

Behold! the Dawn is up: behold!
How all the birds around her float,
Wild rills of music, note on note,
Spilling the air with mellow gold.—
Arise! awake! and, drawing near,
Let me but hear thee and rejoice!
Thou, who bear’st captive, sweet and clear,
All song, O love, within thy voice!
Arise! awake! and let me hear!

See, where she comes, with limbs of day, The Dawn! with wild-rose hands and feet,
Within whose veins the sunbeams beat,
And laughters meet of wind and ray.
Arise! come down! and, heart to heart,
Love, let me clasp in thee all these—
The sunbeam, of which thou art part,
And all the rapture of the breeze!—
Arise! come down! loved that thou art!

WOMAN’S LOVE

Sweet lies! the sweetest ever heard,
To her he said:
Her heart remembers every word
Now he is dead.
I ask:—“If thus his lies can make
Your young heart grieve for his false sake,
Had he been true what had you done,
For true love’s sake?"—
“Upon his grave there in the sun,
Avoided now of all—but one,
I’d lay my heart with all its ache,
And let it break, and let it break.”

And falsehood! fairer ne’er was seen
Than he put on:
Her heart recalls each look and mien
Now he is gone.
I ask:—“If thus his treachery
Can hold your heart with lie on lie,
What had you done for manly love,
Love without lie?"—
“There in the grass that grows above
His grave, where all could know thereof,
I’d lay me down without a sigh,
And gladly die, and gladly die.”

AT MOONRISE

Pale faces looked up at me, up from the earth, like flowers.
Pale hands reached down to me, out of the dusk, like stars,
As over the hills, robed on with twilight, the Hours,
The Day’s last Hours departed, and the Night put up her bars.

Pale fingers beckoned me on, pale fingers, like starlit mist;
Dim voices called to me, dim as the wind’s dim rune,
As up from the trees, like a Nymph from the amethyst
Of her waters, as silver as foam, rose the round, white breast of the moon.

And I followed the pearly waving and beckon of hands,
The luring glitter and dancing glimmer of feet,
And the sibilant whisper of silence, that summoned to lands
Remoter than legend or faery, where Myth and Tradition meet.

And I came to a place where the shadow of ancient Night
Brooded o’er ruins, far wilder than castles of dreams,
Fantastic, a mansion of phantoms, where, wandering white,
I met with a shadowy presence whose voice I had followed it seems.

And the ivy waved in the wind and the moonlight laid,
Like a ghostly benediction, a finger wan
On the face of the one from whose eyes the darkness rayed,
The presence I knew for one I had known in the years long gone.

And she looked in my face and kissed me on brow and on cheek,
Murmured my name and wistfully smiled in my eyes;
And the tears welled up in my heart that was wild and weak,
And my bosom seemed bursting with yearning and my soul with sighs.

And there ’mid the ruins we sat.—Oh, strange were the words that she said!
Distant and dim and strange:—and hollow the looks that she gave:—
And I knew her then for a joy, a joy that was dead,
A hope, a beautiful hope, that my youth had laid in its grave.

THE LAMP AT THE WINDOW

Like some gaunt ghost the tempest wails
Outside my door; its icy nails
Beat on my pane. And night and storm
Around the house, with furious flails
Of wind, from which the slant sleet hails,
Stalk up and down; or, arm in arm,
Stand giant guard; the wild-beast lair
Of their fierce bosoms black and bare....
My lamp is lit. I have no fear.
Through night and storm my love draws near.

Now through the forest how they go,
With whirlwind hoofs, and maned with snow,
The beasts of tempest! winter herds,
That lift huge heads of mist and low
Like oxen; beasts of air, that blow
Ice from their nostrils; winged like birds,
And bullock-breasted, onward hurled,
That shake with tumult all the world....
My lamp is set where love can see,
Who through the tempest comes to me.

I press my face against the pane,
And seem to see, from wood and plain,
In phantom thousands, stormy pale,
The ghosts of forests, tempest-slain,
Vast wraiths of woodlands, rise and strain
And rock wild limbs against the gale;
Or, borne in fragments overhead,
Sow night with horror and with dread....
He comes! My light is as an arm
To guide him onward through the storm.

I hear the tempest from the sky
Cry, eagle-like, its battle-cry;
I hear the night, upon the peaks,
Send back its condor-like reply;
And then again come booming by
The forest’s challenge, hoarse as speaks
Hate unto hate, or wrath to wrath,
When each draws sword and sweeps the path.—
But let them rage! through darkness far
My bright light leads him like a star.

The cliffs, with all their plumes of pines,
Bow down high heads: the battle-lines
Of all the hills, that iron seams,
Shudder through all their rocky spines:
And under shields of matted vines
The vales crouch down: and all the streams
Are hushed and frozen as with fear
As from the deeps the winds draw near....
But let them come! my lamp is lit!
Nor shall their fury flutter it.

Now round and round, with stride on stride,
In Boreal armor, tempest-dyed,
I hear the thunder of their strokes—
The heavens are rocked on every side
With all their clouds; and far and wide
The earth roars back with all its oaks....
Still at the pane burns bright my light
To guide him onward through the night,
To lead love through the night and storm
Where my young heart will make him warm.

ACHIEVEMENT

He held himself splendidly forward
Both early and late;
The aim of his purpose was starward,
To master his fate.
So he wrought and he toiled and he waited,
Till he rose o’er the hordes that he hated,
And stood on the heights, as was fated,
Made one of the great.

Then, lo! on the top of the mountain,
With walls that were wide,
A city! from which, like a fountain,
Rose voices that cried:—
“He comes! Let us forth now to meet him!
Both mummer and priest let us greet him!
In the city he built let us seat him
On the throne of his pride!”

Then out of the city he builded,
Of shadows it seems,
From gates that his fancy had gilded
With thought’s brightest beams,
Strange mimes and chimeras came trooping,
With moping and mowing and stooping—
And he saw with a heart that was drooping,
That these were his dreams.

He entered; and, lo! as he entered,
They murmured his name;
And led him where, burningly centered,
An altar of flame
Made lurid a temple,—erected
Of self,—where a form he detected—
The love that his life had rejected ...
And this was his fame!

MYSTERIES

Soft and silken and silvery brown,
In shoes of lichen and leafy gown,
Little blue butterflies fluttering around her,
Deep in the forest, afar from town,
There, where a stream was trickling down,
I met with Silence, who wove a crown
Of sleep whose mystery bound her.

I gazed in her eyes, that were mossy green
As the rain that pools in the hollow between
The twisted roots of a tree that towers;
And I saw the things that none has seen,—
That mean far more than facts may mean,—
The dreams, that are true, of an age that has been,
That God has thought into flowers.

I gazed at her lips, that were dewy gray
As the mist that clings, at the close of day,
To the wet hillside when the winds cease blowing:
And I heard the things that none may say,—
That are holier far than the prayers we pray,—
The murmured music God breathes alway
Through the hearts of all things growing.

Soft and subtle and vapory white,
In shoes of shadow and gown of light,
Crimson poppies asleep around her,
Far in the forest, beneath a height,
I came on Slumber, who wove from night
A wreath of silence, that, darkly bright,
With its mystic beauty crowned her.

I looked in her face, that was pale and still
As the moon that rises above the hill
Where the pines loom sombre as sorrow:
And the things that all have known and will,
I knew for a moment—the myths that fill
And people the past of the soul and thrill
Its hope with a far to-morrow.

I heard her voice, that was strange with pain
As a wind that whispers of wreck and rain
To the leaves of the autumn rustling lonely:
And I felt the things that are felt in vain
By all—the longings that haunt the brain
Of man, that come and depart again
And are part of his dreamings only.

A SONG OF THE SNOW

I

Roaring winds that rocked the crow,
High in his eyrie,
All night long, and to and fro
Swung the cedar and drove the snow
Out of the North, have ceased to blow,
And dawn breaks fiery.

Sing, Ho, a song of the winter dawn,
When the air is still and the clouds are gone,
And the snow lies deep on hill and lawn,
And the old clock ticks, “’Tis time! ’tis time!”
And the household rises with many a yawn—
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter dawn!
Sing, Ho!

II

Deep in the East a rosy glow
Broadens and brightens,
Glints through the icicles, row on row,
Flames on the panes of the farm-house low,
And over the miles of drifted snow
Silently whitens.

Sing, Ho, a song of the winter sky,
When the last star closes its icy eye,
And deep in the road the snow drifts lie,
And the old clock ticks, “’Tis late! ’tis late!”
And the flame on the hearth leaps red, leaps high—
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter sky!
Sing, Ho!

III

Into the heav’n the sun comes slow,
All red and frowsy:
Out of the shed the muffled low
Of the cattle comes; the rooster’s crow
Sounds strangely distant beneath the snow
And dull and drowsy.

Sing, Ho, a song of the winter morn,
When the snow makes ghostly the wayside thorn,
And hills of pearl are the shocks of corn,
And the old clock ticks, “Tick-tock, tick-tock;”
And the goodman bustles about the barn—
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter morn!
Sing, Ho!

IV

Now to their tasks the farm-hands go,
Cheerily, cheerily:
With ears a-tingle and cheeks a-glow,
She with her pail and he with his hoe,
To milk the cows and to path the snow,
Merrily, merrily.

Sing, Ho, a song of the winter day,
When ermine-capped are the stacks of hay,
And the wood-smoke pillars the air with gray,
And the old clock ticks, “To work! to work!”
And the goodwife sings as she churns away—
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter day!
Sing, Ho!

THE WOOD WATER

An evil, stealthy water, dark as hate,
Sunk from the light of day,
’Thwart which is hung a ruined water-gate,
Creeps on its stagnant way.

Moss and the spawny duckweed, dim as air,
And green as copperas,
Choke its dull current; and, like hideous hair,
Tangles of twisted grass.

Above it sinister trees,—as crouched and gaunt
As huddled Terror,—lean;
Guarding some secret in that nightmare haunt,
Some horror they have seen.

Something the sunset points at from afar,
Spearing the sullen wood
And hag-gray water with a single bar
Of flame as red as blood.

Something the stars, conspiring with the moon,
Shall look on, and remain
Frozen with fear; staring as in a swoon,
Striving to flee in vain.

Something the wisp that, wandering in the night,
Above the ghastly stream,
Haply shall find; and, filled with frantic fright,
Light with its ghostly gleam.

Something that lies there under weed and ooze,
With wide and awful eyes
And matted hair, and limbs the waters bruise,
That strives yet can not rise.

THE EGRET HUNTER

Through woods the Spanish moss makes gray,
With deeps the daylight never reaches,
The water sluices slow its way,
And chokes with weeds its beaches.

’Twas here, lost in this lone bayou,
Where poison brims each blossom’s throat,
Last night I followed a firefly glow,
And oared a leaky boat.

The way was dark; and overhead
The wailing limpkin moaned and cried;
The moss, like cerements of the dead,
Waved wildly on each side.

The way was black, albeit the trees
Let here and there the moonlight through,
The shadows, ’mid the cypress-knees,
Seemed ominous of hue.

And then, behold! a boat that oozed
Slow slime and trailed rank water-weeds
Loomed on me: in which, interfused,
Great glow-worms glowed like beads.

And in its rotting hulk, upright,
His eyeless eyes fixed far before,
A dead man sat, and stared at night,
Grasping a rotting oar.

Slowly it passed; and fearfully
The moccasin slid in its wake;
The owl shrunk shrieking in its tree;
And in its hole the snake.

But I, who met it face to face,
I could not shrink nor turn aside:
Within that dark and demon place
There was nowhere to hide.

Slowly it passed; for me too slow!
The grim Death, in the moon’s faint shine,
Whose story, haply, none may know
Save th’ owl that haunts the pine.

THE MIRACLE OF THE DAWN

What would it mean for you and me
If dawn should come no more!
Think of its gold along the sea,
Its rose above the shore!
That rose of awful mystery,
Our souls bow down before.

What wonder that the Inca kneeled,
The Aztec prayed and pled
And sacrificed to it, and sealed,—
With rites that long are dead,—
The marvels that it once revealed
To them it comforted.

What wonder, yea! what awe, behold!
What rapture and what tears
Were ours, if wild its rivered gold,—
That now each day appears,—
Burst on the world, in darkness rolled,
Once every thousand years!

Think what it means to me and you
To see it even as God
Evolved it when the world was new!
When Light rose, earthquake-shod,
And slow its gradual splendor grew
O’er deeps the whirlwind trod.

What shoutings then and cymballings
Arose from depth and height!
What worship-solemn trumpetings,
And thunders, burning-white,
Of winds and waves, and anthemings
Of Earth received the Light.

Think what it means to see the dawn!
The dawn, that comes each day!—
What if the East should ne’er grow wan,
Should nevermore grow gray!
That line of rose no more be drawn
Above the ocean’s spray!

PENETRALIA

I am a part of all you see
In Nature; part of all you feel:
I am the impact of the bee
Upon the blossom; in the tree
I am the sap,—that shall reveal
The leaf, the bloom,—that flows and flutes
Up from the darkness through its roots.

I am the vermeil of the rose,
The perfume breathing in its veins;
The gold within the mist that glows
Along the west and overflows
The heaven with light; the dew that rains
Its freshness down and strings with spheres
Of wet the webs and oaten ears.

I am the egg that folds the bird,
The song that beaks and breaks its shell;
The laughter and the wandering word
The water says; and, dimly heard,
The music of the blossom’s bell
When soft winds swing it; and the sound
Of grass slow-creeping o’er the ground.

I am the warmth, the honey-scent
That throats with spice each lily-bud
That opens, white with wonderment,
Beneath the moon; or, downward bent,
Sleeps with a moth beneath its hood:
I am the dream that haunts it too,
That crystallizes into dew.

I am the seed within its pod;
The worm within its closed cocoon:
The wings within the circling clod,
The germ that gropes through soil and sod
To beauty, radiant in the noon:
I am all these, behold! and more—
I am the love at the world-heart’s core.

THE HEAVEN-BORN

Not into these dark cities,
These sordid marts and streets,
That the sun in his rising pities,
And the moon with sorrow greets,
Does she, with her dreams and flowers,
For whom our hearts are dumb,
Does she of the golden hours,
Earth’s heaven-born Beauty come.

Afar ’mid the hills she tarries,
Beyond the farthest streams,
In a world where music marries
With color that blooms and beams;
Where shadow and light are wedded,
Whose children people the Earth,
The fair, the fragrant-headed,
The pure, the wild of birth.

Where Morn with rosy kisses
Wakes ever the eyes of Day;
And, winds in her radiant tresses,
Haunts every wildwood way:
Where Eve, with her mouth’s twin roses,
Her kisses sweet with balm,
The eyes of the glad Day closes,
And, crowned with stars, sits calm.

There, lost in contemplation
Of things no mortal sees,
She dwells, the incarnation
Of idealities;
Of dreams, that long have fired
Men’s hearts with joy and pain,—
The far, the dear-desired,
Whom no man shall attain.

THE BALLAD OF THE ROSE

Booted and spurred he rode toward the west,
A rose, from the woman who loved him best,
Lay warm with her kisses there in his breast,
And the battle beacons were burning.

As over the draw he galloping went,
She, from the gateway’s battlement,
With a wafted kiss and a warning bent—
“Beware of the ford at the turning!”

An instant only he turned in his sell,
And lightly fingered his petronel,
Then settled his sword in its belt as well,
And the horns to battle were sounding.

She watched till he reached the beacon there,
And saw its gleam on his helm and hair,
Then turned and murmured, “God keep thee, Clare!
From that wolf of the hills and his hounding.”

And on he rode till he came to the hill,
Where the road turned off by the ruined mill,
Where the stream flowed shallow and broad and still,
And the battle beacon was burning.

Into the river with little heed,
Down from the hill he galloped his steed—
The water whispered on rock and reed,
“Death hides by the ford at the turning!”

And out of the night on the other side,
Their helms and corselets dim descried,
He saw ten bandit troopers ride,
And the horns to battle were blaring.

Then he reined his steed in the middle ford,
And glanced behind him and drew his sword,
And laughed as he shouted his battle-word,
“Clare! Clare! and my steel needs airing!”

Then down from the hills at his back there came
Ten troopers more. With a face of flame
Red Hugh of the Hills led on the same,
In the glare of the beacon’s burning.

Again the cavalier turned and gazed,
Then quick to his lips the rose he raised,
And kissed it, crying, “Now God be praised!
And help her there when mourning!”

Then he rose in his stirrups and loosened rein,
And shouting his cry spurred on amain
Into the troopers to slay and be slain,
While the horns to battle were blowing.

With ten behind him and ten before,
And the battle beacon to light the shore,
Small doubt of the end in his mind he bore,
With her rose in his bosom glowing.

One trooper he slew with his petronel,
And one with his sword when his good steed fell,
And they haled him, fighting, from horse and sell
In the light of the beacon’s burning.

Quoth Hugh of the Hills,—“To yonder tree
Now hang him high where she may see;
Then bear this rose and message from me—
‘The ravens feast at the turning.’”

BERTRAND DE BORN

Knight and Troubadour, to his Lady the beautiful Maenz of Martagnac.

The Poems of Madison Cawein, Volume 5 (of 5) / Poems of meditation and of forest and field

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