THE POEMS OF
MADISON CAWEIN
VOLUME II
NEW WORLD IDYLLS AND
POEMS OF LOVE
[Illustration]
Ah, girlhood, through the rosy haze
Come like a moonbeam slipping. Page 3
_One Day and Another_
THE POEMS OF
MADISON CAWEIN
_Volume II_
NEW WORLD
IDYLLS AND POEMS
OF LOVE
_Illustrated_
WITH PHOTOGRAVURES AFTER PAINTINGS
BY ERIC PAPE
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1896,
1898, 1899, 1901, 1902, 1905 and 1907, BY MADISON CAWEIN
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY COPELAND AND DAY; 1898, BY R. H RUSSELL; 1901,
BY RICHARD G. BADGER AND COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
WITH ENDURING FRIENDSHIP, LOVE AND LOYALTY
TO
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
CONTENTS
NEW WORLD IDYLLS
PAGE
BROTHERS, THE 246
DEAD MAN’S RUN 241
DEEP IN THE FOREST 196
EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK, AN 180
FEUD, THE 237
IDYLL OF THE STANDING-STONE, THE 161
LYNCHERS 239
MOSBY AT HAMILTON 235
NIELLO, A 192
ONE DAY AND ANOTHER 1
RAID, THE 244
RED LEAVES AND ROSES 116
SIREN SANDS 217
SOME SUMMER DAYS 171
WAR-TIME SILHOUETTES 224
WILD THORN AND LILY 122
WRECKAGE 209
POEMS OF LOVE
AFTER DEATH 482
AMONG THE ACRES OF THE WOOD 343
AN AUTUMN NIGHT 519
ANDALIA AND THE SPRINGTIME 304
APART 356
APOCALYPSE 327
AT HER GRAVE 386
AT NINEVEH 476
AT PARTING 509
AT SUNSET 405
AT THE STILE 288
AT TWENTY-ONE 351
AT TWILIGHT 391
BLIND GOD, THE 357
BURDEN OF DESIRE, THE 274
CAN I FORGET? 328
CARA MIA 358
CARISSIMA MEA 517
CARMEN 473
CASTLE OF LOVE, THE 295
CAVERNS OF KAF, THE 431
CHORDS 382
CHRISTMAS CATCH, A 378
“COME TO THE HILLS” 512
CONCLUSION 529
CONFESSION, A 388
CONSECRATION 298
CONSTANCE 362
CONTRASTS 516
CREOLE SERENADE 321
DAUGHTER OF THE SNOW, THE 414
DAUGHTER OF THE STATES, A 521
DAY AND NIGHT 392
DEAD AND GONE 406
EPILOGUE 261
EVASION 513
FERN-SEED 290
FINALE 527
FLORIDIAN 374
FOREST POOL, THE 403
GERTRUDE 267
GLORY AND THE DREAM, THE 501
GHOST WEATHER 402
GYPSYING 278
HEART’S DESIRE, THE 395
HEART OF MY HEART 269
HELEN 365
HER EYES 354
HER VESPER SONG 499
HER VIOLIN 492
HER VIVIEN EYES 496
IDEAL DIVINATION 324
“IF I WERE HER LOVER” 337
IN A GARDEN 335
IN AUTUMN 488
INDIFFERENCE 401
IN MAY 503
IN JUNE 331
IN THE GARDEN OF GIRLS 511
KINSHIP 352
LAST DAYS 390
LORA OF THE VALES 313
LOST LOVE 283
LOVE 268
LOVE AND A DAY 369
LOVE IN A GARDEN 372
LYANNA 447
LYDIA 364
MARCH AND MAY 486
MARGERY 360
MASKS 469
MEETING IN SUMMER 494
MEMORIES 485
MESSENGERS 355
METAMORPHOSIS 350
MIGNON 367
MIRIAM 524
MY ROSE 329
NOCTURNE 348
NOËRA 340
OLD MAN DREAMS, THE 483
OLIVIA IN THE AUTUMN 306
ONE NIGHT 407
ORIENTAL ROMANCE 317
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 397
OVERSEAS 285
PASTORAL LOVE 302
PLEDGES 315
PORPHYROGENITA 292
PUPIL OF PAN, A 312
QUARREL, THE 522
REASONS 497
REED CALL FOR APRIL 490
RESTRAINT 330
ROMANTIC LOVE 300
SALAMANDER, THE 438
SENORITA 479
“SHE IS SO MUCH” 353
SINCE THEN 481
SIRENS, THE 346
SNOW AND FIRE 502
SONG FOR YULE, A 380
SPIRITS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS, THE 454
SPIRIT OF THE STAR, THE 417
SPIRIT OF THE VAN, THE 423
STROLLERS 271
SUCCUBA, THE 464
SUMMER SEA, THE 525
SYLVIA OF THE WOODLAND 308
THE PARTING 412
THE RIDE 507
THE TRYST 276
“THIS IS THE FACE OF HER” 399
THREE BIRDS 393
TOLLMAN’S DAUGHTER, THE 319
TRANSUBSTANTIATION 368
UNCERTAINTY 280
UNREQUITED 394
WATER WITCH, THE 459
“WERE I AN ARTIST” 505
“WHEN SHE DRAWS NEAR” 489
WHEN SHIPS PUT OUT TO SEA 376
WHY? 347
WILL O’ THE WISPS 333
WILL YOU FORGET? 515
WITNESSES 310
WORDS 345
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
AH, GIRLHOOD, THROUGH THE ROSY HAZE
COME LIKE A MOONBEAM SLIPPING. (See page 3) _Frontispiece_
PAGE
WHERE THE WOODCOCK CALL. (See page 161) 160
SOMETHING DREW ME, UNRETURNING,
FILLED ME WITH A FINER FLAME. (See page 419) 350
I LOOK INTO THY HEART AND THEN I KNOW
THE WONDROUS POETRY OF THE LONG-AGO.
(See page 497) 490
NEW WORLD IDYLLS
_O lyrist of the lowly and the true,
The song I sought for you
Still bides unsung. What hope for me to find,
Lost in the dædal mind,
The living utterance with lovely tongue,
To sing,--as once he sung,
Rare Ariosto, of Knight-Errantry,--
How you in Poesy,
Song’s Paladin, Knight of the Dream and Day,
The shield of magic sway!
Of that Atlantes’ power, sweet and terse,
The skyey-builded verse!
The shield that dazzles, brilliant with surprise,
Our unanointed eyes.--
Oh, could I write as it were worthy you,
Each word, a spark of dew,--
As once Ferdusi wrote in Persia,--
Would string each rosy spray
Of each unfolding flower of my song;
And Iran’s bulbul tongue
Would sob its heart out o’er the fountain’s slab
In gardens of Afrasiab._
ONE DAY AND ANOTHER
_A Lyrical Eclogue_
PART I
LATE SPRING
The mottled moth at eventide
Beats glimmering wings against the pane;
The slow, sweet lily opens wide,
White in the dusk like some dim stain;
The garden dreams on every side
And breathes faint scents of rain:
Among the flowering stocks they stand;
A crimson rose is in her hand.
I
_Outside her garden. He waits musing_:
Herein the dearness of her is;
The thirty perfect days of June
Made one, in maiden loveliness
Were not more sweet to clasp and kiss,
With love not more in tune.
Ah me! I think she is too true,
Too spiritual for life’s rough way:
So say her eyes,--her soul looks through,--
Two bluet blossoms, watchet-blue,
Are not more pure than they.
So kind, so beautiful is she,
So soft and white, so fond and fair,
Sometimes my heart fears she may be
Not long for Earth, and secretly
Sweet sister to the air.
II
_Dusk deepens. A whippoorwill calls._
The whippoorwills are calling where
The golden west is graying;
“’Tis time,” they say, “to meet him there--
Why are you still delaying?
“He waits you where the old beech throws
Its gnarly shadow over
Wood violet and the bramble rose,
Frail lady-fern and clover.
“Where elder and the sumac peep
Above your garden’s paling,
Whereon, at noon, the lizards sleep,
Like lichen on the railing.
“Come! ere the early rising moon’s
Gold floods the violet valleys;
Where mists, like phantom picaroons
Anchor their stealthy galleys.
“Come! while the deepening amethyst
Of dusk above is falling--
’Tis time to tryst! ’tis time to tryst!”
The whippoorwills are calling.
They call you to these twilight ways
With dewy odor dripping--
Ah, girlhood, through the rosy haze
Come like a moonbeam slipping.
III
_He enters the garden, speaking dreamily_:
There is a fading inward of the day,
And all the pansy sunset clasps one star;
The twilight acres, eastward, glimmer gray,
While all the world to westward smoulders far.
Now to your glass will you pass for the last time?
Pass! humming some ballad, I know.
Here where I wait it is late and is past time--
Late! and the moments are slow, are slow.
There is a drawing downward of the night;
The bridegroom Heaven bends down to kiss the moon:
Above, the heights hang silver in her light;
Below, the vales stretch purple, deep with June.
There in the dew is it you hiding lawny?
You? or a moth in the vines?--
You!--by your hand! where the band twinkles tawny!
You!--by your ring, like a glow-worm that shines!
IV
_She approaches, laughing. She speaks_:
You’d given up hope?
_He_
Believe me!
_She_
Why! is your love so poor?
_He_
No. Yet you _might_ deceive me!
_She_
As many a girl before.--
Ah, dear, you will forgive me?
_He_
Say no more, sweet, say no more!
_She_
Love trusts; and that’s enough, my dear.
Trust wins through love; whereof, my dear,
Love holds through trust: and love, my dear,
Is--all my life and lore.
_He_
Come, pay me or I’ll scold you.--
Give me the kiss you owe.--
You run when I would hold you?
_She_
No! no! I say! now, no!--
How often have I told you,
You must not use me so?
_He_
More sweet the dusk for this is,
For lips that meet in kisses.--
Come! come! why run from blisses
As from a dreadful foe?
V
_She stands smiling at him, shyly, then speaks_:
How many words in the asking!
How easily I can grieve you!--
My “yes” in a “no” was a-masking,
Nor thought, dear, to deceive you.--
A kiss?--the humming-bird happiness here
In my heart consents.... But what are words,
When the thought of two souls in speech accords?
Affirmative, negative--what are they, dear?
I wished to say “yes,” but somehow said “no.”
The woman within me knew you would know,
Knew that your heart would hear.
_He speaks_:
So many words in the doing!--
Therein you could not deceive me;
Some things are sweeter for the pursuing:
I knew what you meant, believe me.--
Bunched bells of the blush pomegranate, to fix
At your throat.... Six drops of fire they are....
Will you look--where the moon and its following star
Rise silvery over yon meadow ricks?
While I hold--while I bend your head back, so....
For I know it is “yes” though you whisper “no,”
And my kisses, sweet, are six.
VI
_Moths flutter around them. She speaks_:
Look!--where the fiery
Glow-worm in briery
Banks of the moon-mellowed bowers
Sparkles--how hazily
Pinioned and airily
Delicate, warily,
Drowsily, lazily,
Flutter the moths to the flowers.
White as the dreamiest
Bud of the creamiest
Rose in the garden that dozes,
See how they cling to them!
Held in the heart of their
Hearts, like a part of their
Perfume, they swing to them
Wings that are soft as a rose is.
Dim as the forming of
Dew in the warming of
Moonlight, they light on the petals;
All is revealed to them;
All!--from the sunniest
Tips to the honiest
Heart, whence they yield to them
Spice, through the darkness that settles.
So to our tremulous
Souls come the emulous
Agents of love; through whose power
All that is best in us,
All that is beautiful,
Selfless and dutiful,
Is manifest in us,
Even as the scent of a flower.
VII
_Taking her hand he says_:
What makes you beautiful?
Answer, now, answer!--
Is it that dutiful
Souls are all beautiful?
Is it romance or
Beauty of spirit,
Which souls, that merit,
Of heaven inherit?--
Have you an answer?
_She, roguishly_:
What makes you lovable?
Answer, now, answer!--
Is it not provable
That man is lovable
Just because chance, or
Nature, makes woman
Love him?--Her human
Part’s to illumine.--
Have you an answer?
VIII
_Then, regarding him seriously, she continues_:
Could I recall every joy that befell me
There in the past with its anguish and bliss,
Here in my heart it hath whispered to tell me,--
They were no joys like this.
Were it not well if our love could forget them,
Veiling the _Was_ with the dawn of the _Is_?
Dead with the past we should never regret them,
Being no joys like this.
Now they are gone and the Present stands speechful,
Ardent of word and of look and of kiss,--
What though we know that their eyes are beseechful!--
They were no joys like this.
Were it not well to have more of the spirit,
Living high Futures this earthly must miss?
Less of the flesh, with the Past pining near it?
Knowing no joys like this!
IX
_Leaving the garden for the lane. He, with lightness of heart_:
We will leave reason,
Sweet, for a season:
Reason were treason
Now that the nether
Spaces are clad, oh,
In silvery shadow--
We will be glad, oh,
Glad as this weather!
_She, responding to his mood_:
Heart unto heart! where the moonlight is slanted,
Let us believe that our souls are enchanted:--
I in the castle-keep; you are the airy
Prince who comes seeking me; love is the fairy
Bringing us two together.
_He_
Starlight in masses
Over us passes;
And in the grass is
Many a flower.--
Now will you tell me
How ’d you enspell me?
What once befell me
There in your bower?
_She_
Soul unto soul!--in the moon’s wizard glory,
Let us believe we are parts in a story:--
I am a poem; a poet you hear it
Whispered in star and in flower; a spirit,
Love, puts my soul in your power.
X
_He, suddenly and very earnestly_:
Perhaps we lived in the days
Of the Khalif Haroun er Reshid;
And loved, as the story says
Did the Sultan’s favorite one
And the Persian Emperor’s son,
Ali ben Bekkar, he
Of the Kisra dynasty.
Do you know the story?--Well,
_You_ were Haroun’s Sultana.
When night on the palace fell,
A slave, through a secret door,--
Low-arched on the Tigris’ shore,--
By a hidden winding stair
Brought me to your bower there.
Then there was laughter and mirth,
And feasting and singing together,
In a chamber of wonderful worth;
In a chamber vaulted high
On columns of ivory;
Its dome, like the irised skies,
Mooned over with peacock eyes;
Its curtains and furniture,
Damask and juniper.
Ten slave girls--so many blooms--
Stand, holding tamarisk torches,
Silk-clad from the Irak looms;
Ten handmaidens serve the feast,
Each maid like a star in the east;
Ten lutanists, lutes a-tune,
Wait, each like the Ramadan moon.
For you, in a stuff of Merv
Blue-clad, unveiled and jeweled,
No metaphor made may serve:
Scarved deep with your raven hair,
The jewels like fireflies there--
Blossom and moon and star,
The Lady Shemsennehar.
The zone that girdles your waist
Would ransom a Prince and Emeer;
In your coronet’s gold enchased,
And your bracelet’s twisted bar,
Burn rubies of Istakhar;
And pearls of the Jamshid race
Hang looped on your bosom’s lace.
You stand like the letter I;
Dawn-faced, with eyes that sparkle
Black stars in a rosy sky;
Mouth, like a cloven peach,
Sweet with your smiling speech;
Cheeks, that the blood presumes
To make pomegranate blooms.
With roses of Rocknabad,
Hyacinths of Bokhara,--
Creamily cool and clad
In gauze,--girls scatter the floor
From pillar to cedarn door.
Then, a pomegranate bloom in each ear,
Come the dancing-girls of Kashmeer.
Kohl in their eyes, down the room,--
That opaline casting-bottles
Have showered with rose-perfume,--
They glitter and drift and swoon
To the dulcimer’s languishing tune;
In the liquid light like stars
And moons and nenuphars.
Carbuncles, tragacanth-red,
Smoulder in armlet and anklet:
Gleaming on breast and on head,
Bangles of coins, that are angled,
Tinkle: and veils, that are spangled,
Flutter from coiffure and wrist
Like a star-bewildered mist.
Each dancing-girl is a flower
Of the Tuba from vales of El Liwa.--
How the bronzen censers glower!
And scents of ambergris pour,
And of myrrh, brought out of Lahore,
And of musk of Khoten! how good
Is the scent of the sandalwood!
A lutanist smites her lute,
Sings loves of Mejnoon and Leila:--
Her voice is an Houri flute;--
While the fragrant flambeaux wave,
Barbaric, o’er free and slave,
O’er fabrics and bezels of gems
And roses in anadems.
Sherbets in ewers of gold,
Fruits in salvers carnelian;
Flagons of grotesque mold,
Made of a sapphire glass,
Brimmed with wine of Shirâz;
Shaddock and melon and grape
On plate of an antique shape.
Vases of frosted rose,
Of alabaster graven,
Filled with the mountain snows;
Goblets of mother-of-pearl,
One filigree silver-swirl;
Vessels of gold foamed up
With spray of spar on the cup.
Then a slave bursts in with a cry:
“The eunuchs! the Khalif’s eunuchs!--
With scimitars bared draw nigh!
Wesif and Afif and he,
Chief of the hideous three,
Mesrour!--the Sultan ’s seen
’Mid a hundred weapons’ sheen!”
Did we part when we heard this?--No!
It seems that my soul remembers
How I clasped and kissed you, so....
When they came they found us--dead,
On the flowers our blood dyed red;
Our lips together, and
The dagger in my hand.
XI
_She, musingly_:
How it was I can not tell,
For I know not where nor why;
But I know we loved too well
In some world that does not lie
East or west of where we dwell,
And beneath no earthly sky.
Was it in the golden ages?--
Or the iron?--that I heard,--
In the prophecy of sages,--
Haply, how had come a bird,
Underneath whose wing were pages
Of an unknown lover’s word.
I forget. You may remember
How the earthquake shook our ships;
How our city, one huge ember,
Blazed within the thick eclipse:
When you found me--deep December
Sealed my icy eyes and lips.
I forget. No one may say
That such things can not be true:--
Here a flower dies to-day,
There, to-morrow, blooms anew....
Death is silent.--Tell me, pray,
Why men doubt what God can do?
XII
_He, with conviction_:
As to that, nothing to tell!
You being all my belief,
Doubt can not enter or dwell
Here where your image is chief;
Here where your name is a spell,
Potent in joy and in grief.
Is it the glamour of spring
Working in us so we seem
Aye to have loved? that we cling
Even to some fancy or dream,
Rainbowing everything,
Here in our souls, with its gleam?
See! how the synod is met
There of the planets to preach us:--
Freed from the earth’s oubliette,
See how the blossoms beseech us!--
Were it not well to forget
Winter and death as they teach us?
Dew and a bud and a star,
All,--like a beautiful thought,
Over man’s wisdom how far!--
God for some purpose hath wrought.--
Could we but know why they are,
And that they end not in naught!
Stars and the moon; and they roll
Over our way that is white.--
Here shall we end the long stroll?
Here shall I kiss you good night?
Or, for a while, soul to soul,
Linger and dream of delight?
XIII
_They reënter the garden. She speaks somewhat pensively_:
Myths tell of walls and cities, lyred of love,
That rose to music.--Were that power my own,
Had I that harp, that magic barbiton,
What had I builded for our lives thereof?--
In docile shadows under bluebell skies,
A home upon the poppied edge of eve,
Beneath pale peaks the splendors never leave,
’Mid lemon orchards whence the egret flies.
Where, pitiless, the ruined hand of death
Should never reach. No bud, no flower fade:
Where all were perfect, pure and unafraid:
And life serener than an angel’s breath.
The days should move to music: song should tame
The nights, attentive with their listening stars:
And morn outrival eve in opal bars,
Each preaching beauty with rose-tongues of flame.
O home! O life! desired and to be!
How shall we reach you?--Far the way and dim.--
Give me your hand, sweet! let us follow him,
Love with the madness and the melody.
XIV
_He, observing the various dowers around them_:
Violets and anemones
The surrendered Hours
Pour, as handsels, round the knees
Of the Spring, who to the breeze
Flings her myriad flowers.
Like to coins, the sumptuous day
Strews with blossoms golden
Every furlong of his way,--
Like a Sultan gone to pray
At a Kaaba olden.
Warlock Night, with spark on spark,
Clad in dim attire,
Dots with stars the haloed dark,--
As a priest around the Ark
Lights his lamps of fire.
These are but the cosmic strings
Of the harp of Beauty,
Of that instrument which sings,
In our souls, of love, that brings
Peace and faith and duty.
XV
_She, seriously_:
Duty?--Comfort of the sinner
And the saint!--When grief and trial
Weigh us, and within our inner
Selves,--responsive to love’s viol,--
Hope’s soft voice grows thin and thinner.
It is kin to self-denial.
Self-denial! Through whose feeling
We are gainer though we ’re loser;
All the finer force revealing
Of our natures. No accuser
Is the conscience then, but healing
Of the wound of which we ’re chooser.
Who the loser, who the winner,
If the ardor fail as preacher?--
None who loved was yet beginner,
Though another’s love-beseecher:
Love’s revealment ’s of the inner
Life and God Himself is teacher.
Heine said “no flower knoweth
Of the fragrance it revealeth;
Song, its heart that overfloweth,
Never nightingale’s heart feeleth”--
Such is love the spirit groweth,
Love unconscious if it healeth.
XVI
_He, looking smilingly into her eyes, after a pause, lightly_:
An elf there is who stables the hot
Red wasp that sucks on the apricot;
An elf, who rowels his spiteful bay,
Like a mote on a ray, away, away;
An elf, who saddles the hornet lean
And dins i’ the ear o’ the swinging bean;
Who straddles, with cap cocked, all awry,
The bottle-green back o’ the dragon-fly.
And this is the elf who sips and sips
From clover-horns whence the perfume drips;
And, drunk with dew, in the glimmering gloam
Awaits the wild-bee’s coming home;
In ambush lies where none may see,
And robs the caravan bumblebee:
Gold bags of honey the bees must pay
To the bandit elf of the fairy-way.
Another ouphen the butterflies know,
Who paints their wings with the hues that glow
On blossoms: squeezing from tubes of dew
Pansy colors of every hue
On his bloom’s pied pallet, he paints the wings
Of the butterflies, moths, and other things.
This is the elf that the hollyhocks hear,
Who dangles a brilliant in each one’s ear;
Teases at noon the pane’s green fly,
And lights at night the glow-worm’s eye.
But the dearest elf, so the poets say,
Is the elf who hides in an eye of gray;
Who curls in a dimple or slips along
The strings of a lute to a lover’s song;
Who smiles in her smile and frowns in her frown,
And dreams in the scent of her glove or gown;
Hides and beckons, as all may note,
In the bloom or the bow of a maiden’s throat.
XVII
_She, pensively, standing among the flowers_:
Soft through the trees the night wind sighs,
And swoons and dies.
Above, the stars hang wanly white;
Here, through the dark,
A drizzled gold, the fireflies
Rain mimic stars in spark on spark.--
’Tis time to part, to say good night.
Good night.
From fern to flower the night-moths cross
At drowsy loss.
The moon drifts, veiled, through clouds of white;
And pearly pale,
In silvery blurs, through beds of moss,
Their tiny moons the glow-worms trail.--
’Tis time to part, to say good night.
Good night.
XVIII
_He, at parting, as they proceed down the garden_:
You say we can not marry, now
That roses and the June are here?
To your decision I must bow.--
Ah, well!--perhaps ’t is best, my dear.
Let’s swear again each old love vow
And love another year.
Another year of love with you!
Of dreams and days, of sun and rain!
When field and forest bloom anew,
And locust clusters pelt the lane,
When all the song-birds wed and woo,
I’ll not take “no” again.
Oft shall I lie awake and mark
The hours by no clanging clock,
But, in the dim and dewy dark,
Far crowing of some punctual cock;
Then up, as early as the lark
To meet you by our rock.
The rock, where first we met at tryst;
Where first I wooed and won your love.--
Remember how the moon and mist
Made mystery of the heaven above
As now to-night?--Where first I kissed
Your lips, you trembling like a dove.
So, then, we will not marry now
That roses and the June are here,
That warmth and fragrance weigh each bough?
And, yet, your reason is not clear ...
Ah, well! We ’ll swear anew each vow
And wait another year.