The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Triumph of Music, and Other Lyrics
Title: The Triumph of Music, and Other Lyrics
Author: Madison Julius Cawein
Release date: September 10, 2011 [eBook #37371]
Language: English
Credits: E-text prepared by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org)
E-text prepared by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Kentuckiana Digital Library
(http://kdl.kyvl.org)
| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Kentuckiana Digital Library. See http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;view=toc;idno=b92-184-30604827 |
The Triumph of Music
AND
Other Lyrics.
BY MADISON J. CAWEIN.
"The Oat is Heard above the Lyre."—Swinburne.
[LIMITED.]
JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY.
1888
INSCRIBED
TO
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
with
Friendship and Esteem.
COPYRIGHT 1888 BY M. J. CAWEIN.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
The Triumph of Music, 1
What You Will, 10
In the South, 12
Pan, 15
Pax Vobiscum, 18
Mirabile Dictu, 20
Questionings, 22
Waiting, 23
In Late Fall, 26
Midwinter, 27
Longing, 28
In Middle Spring, 29
Tyranny, 31
Visions, 32
The Old Byway, 34
Diurnal, 36
The Wood Path, 38
Deficiency, 40
He Who Loves, 42
The Monastery Croft, 43
The Dryad, 44
"The Sweet o' the Year," 46
With the Seasons, 48
Unattainable, 51
Beyond, 53
Shadows, 56
Check and Counter-Check, 58
Semper Idem, 60
Two Lives, 62
Forevermore, 64
A Blown Rose, 68
To-morrow, 69
Mnemosyne, 69
The Sirens, 70
The Vintager, 71
A Stormy Sunset, 72
On a Dial, 73
Unutterable, 74
Midsummer, 75
A Fairy Cavalier, 78
The Farmstead, 80
Five Fancies: I. The Gladiolas, 87
II. The Morning-Glories, 88
III. The Tiger-Lily, 89
IV. Vengeance, 90
V. A Dead Lily, 92
My Suit, 94
The Family Burying-Ground, 96
The Water-Maid, 98
The Sea-King, 100
Where and What? 103
The Spring, 107
Lillita, 109
Artemis, 112
In November, 116
A Character, 117
A Mood, 120
A Thought, 122
Song, 123
Face to Face, 125
The Changeling, 130
St. John's Eve, 133
Lalage, 137
Miriam, 144
The Wind, 146
Music, 149
To ——, 153
Yule, 155
The Troubadour, 160
Why? 165
From Unbelief to Belief, 166
The King, 169
THE TRIUMPH OF MUSIC.
There lay in a vale 'twixt lone mountains
A garden entangled with flowers,
Where the whisper of echoing fountains
Stirred softly the musk-breathing bowers.
Where torrents cast down from rock-masses,
From caverns of red-granite steeps,
With thunders sonorous clove passes
And maddened dark gulfs with rash leaps,
With the dolorous foam of their leaps.
The foam of those musical chasms,
With a scintillant dust as of diamonds,
It seemed that white spirits were sweeping
Down, down thro' those voluble chasms,
Wild weeping in resonant spasms.
And the wave from the red-hearted granite
In veins rolled tumbling around;
Meandered thro' shade-haunted forests
Where many rock barriers did span it
To dash it in froth and in sound:
Where the nights with their great moons could wan it,
Or star its dusk stillness profound.
On woodways where fragrances kissed,
By shadows where murmurings kissed;
And here would I tarry to ponder
When the moon in blue vales made a mist;
Dim in forests of rank, rocking cedars,
Whose wildness made glad with their scent,
Whose boughs in the tempests were bent
Like the pennons and plumes of fierce leaders,
In the battle all ragged and rent.
Far up on the mountain's bleak head,
On the uttermost foam of the torrent,
Would I string a wild harp while was gloating
The moon on my blossomy bed.
Or I lay where a fountain of blossoms
Rained rustling from arches aloft,
From the thick-scented arbors aloft,
And I sang as the blossoms' white bosoms
Pressed silk-smooth to mine and lay soft:
I sang as their redolence stung me,
And laughed on my blossomy couch,
Till the fragrance and music had flung me
Into shadows of sleep with their touch,
The magic of exquisite touch....
In this my rare Aidenn of flowers,
I saw where I lingered and pondered
A youth cast asleep mid the bowers:
A youth on a mantle of satin,
A poppy-red robe in the flowers.
I kissed his high forehead and pale,
I sighed as I kissed his black splendor
Of curls that were kissed of the gale,
That were moved of the balm-breathing gale.
And he woke and cried out as if haunted:—
"Oh God! for one note of that song!
For a sob of that languishing song!
Whose tumult of sorrow enchanted,
And swept my weak spirit along!"
And plunged a long look in his eyes;
I bowed on the weft of red satin
And kindled his love with my sighs.
With fingers of lightness set sobbing
The chords of my harp in a song,
Till I found that my heart was a-throbbing
And sobbing to sing like a tongue,
Was sobbing to mix with the song.
"Lost! lost! for that perilous music!
Oh God! for that tyrannous strain!
To which in my dreams I have listened,
Ah, wretch! I have listened with pain!"
And he tost on the garment of satin
His deep raven darkness of hair,
And the song at my lips was ungathered,
And I sate there to marvel and stare.
Of music delirious with words,
Of music that wailed a soul's story,
And trembled with god-uttered words,
Or fell like the battling of swords.
And in with it mixed all the beauty
Of farewells and ravenous sighs,
The heart that was broken for booty,
Tears, rapture to know that one dies,
Hell, heaven and laughter and cries.
The terror of souls that are lost,
Cold, dizzying anguish of dying,
All torments that beauty could fashion,
Hot manacles of love and their cost.
The bliss and the fury of dashing
A soul into riotous love,
While the smiting of harp-chords and crashing
Of song like the winds were enwove
With the stars that fall sounding above.
Seal up the rare light of his eyes
With its silver of vapory pinions,
The creature that sung in each number,
To nest in his tired-out eyes,
Like a bird that is sick of the skies.
Yet he murmured so sad and so thrilling,
"Oh God! for a lifetime of song!
Oh life! for a world of such song!
For a heaven or hell and the killing,
Mad angel or devil of song!
Oh, the rapture engendered in throwing
On bubbles of music and song
A soul to the anguish of loving,
Until like a flower, full blowing,
It is lost in a whirlwind most strong,
It dies in a thunder of song!"
Triumphant of heart and of soul,
And I recked not the passionate ocean
That rolled to abysses of dole,
To infinite torture and dole.
I sunk on the red of that robe,
Crouched down at his feet on the satin,
While he slumbered with eyelashes teary
Fringed dark o'er each eye-ball's dark globe.
Then I wondered and said, "It is dreary
To see him so still on this robe."
And I sobbed and I sobbed, "Is he living,
Or have I but slain with my song!"
And it seemed that a demon was striving
To strangle my heart with a thong,
With terror and sorrow of wrong.
From his ashen brows furrowed the hair;
Soft wafted dark curls from pale temples—
They rustled with death—and the sadness
Of his face so hopelessly fair!
How I wailed to the stars of the heaven
How they scoffed at and answered my grief
In letters of flame, "Unforgiven!
Thou deathless, whose voice is a thief,
Forever and ever grief!"
The instrument sweet of his death,
The dagger that stabbed not to kill him,
The dagger of song which had spoken,
And ravished away his life's breath.
So I wept, and my curls thick and golden
Stormed entangled and showered 'mid his;
My arms around him were enfolden,
My lips clave to his with a kiss,
With the life and the love of a kiss.
WHAT YOU WILL.
And the hornet sucked gaunt on the apricot,
And the ripe peach dropped to its seed a-rot,
With a lean red wasp that stung and clung;
When the hollyhocks, ranked in the garden-plot,
More seed-pods had than blossoms, I wot,
A weariness weighed on the tongue,
That the drought of the season begot.
Through its thick blue skin that was cracked with thirst,
And the round gold pippins, the summer had nursed,
In the yellowing leaves o' the orchards hung;
When the reapers, their lips with whistling pursed,
To their sun-tanned brows in the corn were immersed,
A lightness came over the tongue,
And one sung as much as one durst.
And icicles eaves of the big barn tipped,
And loud hens flew over the snow or slipped,
And the north wind hooted and bit and stung,
And the ears of the milkmaid, Miriam, nipped,
And the chappy cheeks of the farm boy whipped,
A goddess unloosened the tongue,
And one's mouth with wild honey was lipped.
IN THE SOUTH.
[Serenade.]
With heavy lemon odors rare;
Wan heliotropes Arabian musk
Exhale into the dreamy air;
A sad wind with long wooing husk
Swoons in the roses there.
Star-censers oozing rich perfumes;
The clematis, long petaled, swings
Deep clusters of dark purple blooms;
With flowers like moons or sylphide wings
Magnolias light the glooms.
Thy balmy hair,
Unbounden deep on deep,
Than blossoms fair,
Who sweetest fragrance weep,
Will fill the night with prayer.
Awake, awake from sleep!
Some dryad's bosoms grow confessed
Nude in the dark magnolia tree,
That rustles with the murmurous West,—
Or is it but a dream of thee
That thy white beauty guessed?
A million feverish gems, which burst
From night's deep ebon caskets old,
With inner fires that seem to thirst;
Tall oleanders to their gold
Drift buds where dews are nursed.
Where long her rod
Queen Mab sways o'er their skies
In realms of Nod!
Confessed, such majesties
Will fill the night with God.
Unseal, unseal thine eyes!
PAN.
Where the sunlight's amber laces
Deeps of darkest violet;
Where the ugly Satyr chases
Shining Dryads, fair as Graces,
Whose lithe limbs with dew are wet;
Piper in hid mountain places,
Where the blue-eyed Oread braces
Winds which in her sweet cheeks set
Of Aurora rosy traces,
Whiles the Faun from myrtle mazes
Watcheth with an eye of jet:
What art thou and these dim races,
Thou, O Pan! of many faces,
Who art ruler yet?
Heard thy hollow syrinx quiver
Trickling music in the trees?
Where dark hazel copses shiver,
Have I heard its dronings sever
The warm silence, or the bees?
Ripple murmurings, that never
Could be born of fall or river,
Whisperings and subtleties,
Melodies so very clever,
None can doubt that thou, the giver,
Master Nature's keys.
PAX VOBISCUM.
The Springtide stained I know,
Two bits of mystic skies
On which the green turf lies,
Whereon the violets blow.
From thy sweet heart that rose,
With that faint fragrance fraught,
Its sad poetic thought
Of peace and deep repose.
From thy delicious hair—
Lost sunlight 'neath the sod
Shot up this golden-rod
To toss it everywhere.
The snowdrop's whiteness stole—
Much kinder than the rest—
Thy innocence confessed,
The pureness of thy soul.
MIRABILE DICTU.
An island in death-lonesome seas;
No towered towns are hers confessed,
No castled forts and palaces.
Hers, simple worshipers at best,
The buds, the birds, the bees.
So heavenly beautiful, and shed
So sweetly from her honeyed tongue,
The savage creatures, it is said,
Hark marble-still their wilds among,
And nightingales fall dead.
I only feel that she is there;
For when my heart is most alone
There broods communion on the air,
Concedes an influence not its own,
Miraculously fair.
And then again to fly and fly
Beyond the flight of cloud or wing,
Far under azure arcs of sky.
Its love at her chaste feet to fling,
Behold her face and die.
QUESTIONINGS.
Canary-colored down the sky;
When nights are starless utterly,
And sleeted winds cut moaning by,
One's memory keeps one company,
And conscience puts his "when" and "why."
Wakes superstition in the head,
A Gorgon face of hueless stone
With staring eyes to terror wed,
Stamped on her brow God's words, "Unknown!
Behind the dead, behind the dead."
That leans upon our dead, the clod
And air have taken as a whole
Through some mysterious period:—
Life! with thy questions of control:
Death! with thy unguessed laws of God.
WAITING.
Our souls are yearning,
Sad hearts would bound and smile
With red blood burning;
Around the tedious dial
No slow hands turning.
What joy to know
Her heart's streams pulse away
In winds that blow,
See graceful limbs of May
Revealed to glow.
What wealth she has;
The dog-tooth violets pink,
Wind-flowers like glass,
About the wood brook's brink
Dark sassafras.
Heav'n on heav'n rolled,
Nights, whose feet flash with dew,
Whose long locks hold
Aromas cool and new,
A moon's curved gold.
I long and long
To see the red-bud's torch
Flame far and strong,
Hear on my vine-climbed porch
The blue-bird's song.
And cease from such;
Dream of her and to leap
At her white touch?
Ah me! then wake and weep,
Weep overmuch.
IN LATE FALL.
Such days as kill it and its songs;
A death which knows a sweeter part
Of days to which such death belongs.
As with the rain the frozen flowers;
Time moves so slowly one but fears
The burthen on his wasted powers.
And that is found which once was feared:—
A farewell to thy gray, gray head,
A goodnight to thy goodly beard!