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 | The poems of Madison Cawein |  |
214
WHAT DREAMS MAY COME
I have lain for an hour or twain
Awake, and the tempest is beating
On the roof and the sleet on the pane,
And the winds are three enemies meeting;
And I listen and hear it again,
My name, in the silence, repeating.
Awake, and the tempest is beating
On the roof and the sleet on the pane,
And the winds are three enemies meeting;
And I listen and hear it again,
My name, in the silence, repeating.
Then dumbness of death; and, moon-gray,
In the darkness a light like a bubble,
From which, like a single white ray,
Comes a woman in loveliness double;
Her face is the breaking of day,
Her eyes are the night and its trouble.
In the darkness a light like a bubble,
From which, like a single white ray,
Comes a woman in loveliness double;
Her face is the breaking of day,
Her eyes are the night and its trouble.
I move not; she lies with her lips
At mine; and I feel she is drawing
My life from my heart to their tips,
My heart where the horror is gnawing;
My life in a hundred slow sips,
My soul with her gaze overawing.
At mine; and I feel she is drawing
My life from my heart to their tips,
My heart where the horror is gnawing;
My life in a hundred slow sips,
My soul with her gaze overawing.
215
She binds me with merciless eyes;
She drinks of my blood; and I hear it
Drain up with a shudder and rise
To the lips, like a serpent's, that steer it;
And she lies, and she laughs as she lies,
Saying, “Lo! thy affinitized spirit.”
She drinks of my blood; and I hear it
Drain up with a shudder and rise
To the lips, like a serpent's, that steer it;
And she lies, and she laughs as she lies,
Saying, “Lo! thy affinitized spirit.”
I pray—and a gate, as of swords,—
'Mid torments and tortures huge-grated,
Clangs iron deep under; and words
Are heard as of sins that awaited
A fiend who lashed into their hordes,
And a demon who lacerated.
'Mid torments and tortures huge-grated,
Clangs iron deep under; and words
Are heard as of sins that awaited
A fiend who lashed into their hordes,
And a demon who lacerated.
I pray—and lie clammy and stark,
As a something mounts higher and higher,
Up, out of damnation and dark,
With hobbling of hoofs that is dire;
A devil, whose breath is a spark,
Whose face is of filth and of fire.
As a something mounts higher and higher,
Up, out of damnation and dark,
With hobbling of hoofs that is dire;
A devil, whose breath is a spark,
Whose face is of filth and of fire.
“To thy body's corruption! thy grave!
Thy hell! from which thou hast stolen!”
He snarls; and the night, like a wave,
Engulfs them with darkness wild swollen.—
Can it be that in sleep I'm a slave
Of a thing neither flesh nor eidolon?
Thy hell! from which thou hast stolen!”
He snarls; and the night, like a wave,
Engulfs them with darkness wild swollen.—
Can it be that in sleep I'm a slave
Of a thing neither flesh nor eidolon?
| The poems of Madison Cawein | |