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 | The poems of Madison Cawein |  |
140
FRAGMENTS
I
The curtains of my couch sway heavily:'Tis death, who parts the curtains of my soul.—
Sleep, like a gray expression of ghost lips
Heard through the moonlight of a haunted room,
Seems near yet far away. Would God 't were day!
II
“Stay not too long, love, stay not long away!”Lightly my heart said when we kissed farewell.
But now my heart is heavy with hard news—
Oh! bitterness of kisses that were sweet!
III
Tear from my heart and under furious feetTrample the golden record of our love,
Love's book of golden days, despair! despair!
141
IV
Night is a grave physician, who contrivesThe drug of sleep to heal day's bruises with,
The drug of death for life's delirium.—
V
On lost expanses of a phantom landLife stands; and, overhead, one sinister star,
A baleful beacon, burns: heav'n seems a hand
Of jeweled darkness pointing her her way,
Mournful, through shadows of lugubrious hills
And rising tempest, to a house, a shape
Placid and pale and silent utterly.
VI
O undivulging, unresponsive fate,Is gold another name for power and crime?
Life, dust long dedicated unto death?
And death? is it all darkness without light?
Whereto all things go groping, love and joy
And beauty, glow-worms, flickering each its spark?
Precious as gold does anything avail?
Steadfast as tablets of the eternal stars,
What deeds of man, when time hath touched them, last?
| The poems of Madison Cawein | |