The poems of Madison Cawein

I met him here at Ammendorf one spring.
It was the end of April and the Harz,
Treed to their ruin-crested summits, seemed
One pulse of tender green and delicate gold,
Beneath a heaven that was like the face
Of girlhood waking into motherhood.
Along the furrowed meadow, freshly ploughed,
The patient oxen, loamy to the knees,
Plodded or lowed or snuffed the fragrant soil;
And in each thorn-tree hedge the wild bird sang
A song to spring, full of its own wild self
And soul, that heard the blossom-laden May's
Heart beating like a star at break of day,
As, kissing red the roses, she drew near,
Her mouth's ripe rose all dewdrops and perfume.
Here at this inn and underneath this tree
We took our wine, the morning prismed in its
Flame-crystalled gold.—A goodly vintage that!
Tang with the ripeness of full twenty years.
Rare! I remember! wine that spurred the blood,

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That brought the heart glad to the songful lip,
And made the eyes unlatticed casements whence
A man's true soul smiled, breezy as the blue.
As royal a Rhenish, I will vouch to say,
As that, old legends tell, which Necromance
And Magic keep, gnome-guarded, in huge casks
Of antique make deep in the Kyffhäuser,
Webbed, frosty gray, with salt-petre and mold,
The Cellar of the Knights near Sittendorf.—

So solaced by that wine we sat an hour
He told me his intent in coming here.
His name was Rudolf; and his native place,
Franconia; but no word of parentage:
Only his mind to don the buff and green
And live a forester with us and be
Enfellowed in the Duke of Brunswick's train,
And for the Duke's estate even now was bound.

Tall was he for his age and strong and brown,
And lithe of limb; and with a face that seemed
Hope's counterpart—but with the eyes of doubt:
Deep stealthy disks, instinct with starless night,
That seemed to say, “We're sure of Earth—at least

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For some short while, my friend; but afterward—
Nay! ransack not to-morrow till to-day
Lest it engulf thy joy before it is!”—
And when he spoke, the fire in his eyes
Worked restless as a hunted animal's;
Or like the Count von Hackelnburg's,—the eyes
Of the Wild Huntsman,—his that turn and turn
Feeling the unseen presence of a fiend.

And then his smile! a thrust-like thing that curled
His lips with heresy and incredible lore
When Christ's or th' Virgin's holy name was said,
Exclaimed in reverence or admonishment:
And once he sneered,—“What is this God you mouth,
Employ whose name to bless yourselves or damn?
A curse or blessing?—It hath passed my skill
T' interpret what He is. And then your faith—
What is this faith that helps you unto Him?
Distinguishment unseen, design unlawed.

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Why, earth, air, fire, and water, heat and cold,
Hint not at Him: and man alone it is
Who needs must worship something. And for me—
No God like that whom man hath kinged and crowned!
Rather your Satan cramped in Hell—the Fiend!
God-countenanced as he is, and tricked with horns.
No God for me, bearded as Charlemagne,
Throned on a tinsel throne of gold and jade,
Earth's pygmy monarchs imitate in mien
And mind and tyranny and majesty,
Aping a God in a sonorous Heaven.
Give me the Devil in all mercy then,
Bad as he is! for I will none of such!”
And laughed an oily laugh of easy jest
To bow out God and let the Devil in.

Then, as it chanced, old Kurt had come that morn
With some six of his jerkined foresters
From the Thuringian forest; wet with dew,
And fresh as morn with early travel; bound
For Brunswick, Dummburg and the Hakel passed.

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Chief huntsman he then to our lord the Duke,
And father of the loveliest maiden here
In Ammendorf, the sunny Ilsabe:
Her mother dead, the gray-haired father prized
His daughter more than all that men hold dear;
His only happiness, who was beloved
Of all as Lora of Thuringia was,
For gentle ways that spoke a noble soul,
Winning all hearts to love her and to praise,
As might a great and beautiful thought that holds
Us by the simplest words.—Blue were her eyes
As the high glory of a summer day.
Her hair,—serene and braided over brows
White as a Harz dove's wing,—an auburn brown,
And deep as mists the sun has drenched with gold:
And her young presence, like embodied song,
Filled every heart she smiled on with sweet calm,
Like some Tyrolean melody of love,
Heard on an Alpine path at close of day

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When homing shepherds pipe to tinkling flocks:
Being with you a while, so, when she left,—
How shall I say it?—'twas as when one hath
Beheld an Undine on the moonlit Rhine,
Who, ere the mind adjusts a thought, is gone,
And to the soul it seems it was a dream.

Some thirty years ago it was;—and I,
Commissioner of the Duke—(no sinecure
I can assure you)—had scarce reached the age
Of thirty,—that we sat here at our wine;
And 't was through me that Rudolf,—whom at first,
From some rash words dropped then in argument,
The foresterhood was like to be denied,—
Was then enfellowed. “Yes,” said I, “he's young.
Kurt, he is young: but look you! what a man!
What arms! what muscles! what a face—for deeds!
An eye—that likes me not; too quick to turn!—
But that may be the restless soul within:
A soul perhaps with virtues that have been
Severely tried and could not stand the test;

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These be thy care, Kurt: and if not too deep
In vices of the flesh, discover them,
As divers bring lost riches up from ooze.—
Thou hast a daughter; let him be thy son.”

A year thereafter was it that I heard
Of Rudolf's passion for Kurt's Ilsabe;
Then their betrothal. And it was from this,—
(How her fair memory haunts my old heart still!—
Sweet Ilsabe! whose higher womanhood,
True as the touchstone which philosophers feign
Transmutes to gold base metals it may touch,
Had turned to good all evil in this man,)—
Surmised I of the excellency which
Refinement of her purer company,
And contact with her innocence, had resolved
His fiery nature to, conditioning slave.
And so I came from Brunswick—as, you know,
Is custom of the Duke or, by his seal
Commissioned proxy, his commissioner—
To test the marksmanship of Rudolf, who
Succeeded Kurt with marriage of his child,
An heir of Kuno.—He?—Great-grandfather
To Kurt; and of this forest-keepership

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The first possessor; thus established here—
Or this the tale they tell on winter nights:—

Kuno, once in the Knight of Wippach's train,
Rode on a grand hunt with the Duke, who came,—
Grandfather of the father of our Duke,—
With much magnificence of knights and squires,
Great velvet-vestured nobles, cloaked and plumed,
To hunt Thuringian deer. Then morn,—so rathe
To bid good-morrow to the husbandman
Heavy with slumber,—was too slow for these,
And on the wind-trod hills recumbent yawned
Aroused an hour too soon: ashamed, disrobed,
Rubbed the stiff sleep from eyes that still would close;
Like some young milkmaid whom the cock hath waked,
Who sits within her loft and, half asleep,
Stretches and hears the house below her stir,
Yet sits and yawns, reluctant still to rise.—
Horns sang and deer-hounds tugged a whimpering leash,

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Or, loosened, bounded through the baying glens:
And ere the mountain mists, compact of white,
Broke wild before the azure spears of day,
The far-off hunt, that woke the woods to life,
Seemed but the heart-beat of the ancient hills.

And then, near noon, within a forest brake,
The ban-dogs roused a red gigantic stag,
Lashed to whose back with gnarly-knotted cords,
And borne along like some pale parasite,
A man shrieked: tangle-bearded, and his hair
A mane of forest-burrs. The man himself,
Emaciated and half-naked from
The stag's mad flight through headlong rocks and trees,
One bleeding bruise, his eyes two holes of fire.
For such the law then: when the peasant chased
Or slew the dun deer of his tyrant lords,
If caught, as punishment the withes and spine
Of some strong stag, a gift to him of game
Enough till death—death in the antlered herd,
Or slow starvation in the haggard hills.
Then was the great Duke glad, and forthwith cried

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To all his hunting-train a rich reward
For him who slew the stag and saved the man,
But death for him who slew both man and beast.
So plunged the hunt after the hurrying slot,
A shout and glimmer through the sounding woods,—
Like some wild torrent that the hills have loosed,
Death for its goal.—'Twas late; and none had yet
Risked that hard shot,—too desperate the risk
Beside the poor life and a little gold,—
When this young Kuno, with hot eyes, wherein
Hunt and impatience kindled reckless flame,
Cried, “Has the dew made wet each powder-pan?
Or have we left our marksmanship at home?
Here's for its heart! the Fiend direct my ball!”—
And fired into a covert packed with briers,
An intertangled wall of matted night,
Wherein the eye might vainly strive and strive
To pierce one fathom, gaze one foot beyond:
But, ha! the huge stag staggered from the brake,

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Heart-hit, and fell: and that wan wretch, unbound,
Rescued, was cared for. Then his grace, the Duke,
Charmed with the eagle aim, called Kuno up,
And there to him and his forever gave
The forest-keepership.

But envious tongues
Were soon at wag; and whispered went the tale
Of how the shot was “free”; and how the balls
Used by young Kuno were “free” bullets—which
To say is: Lead by magic molded, in
The presence and directed of the Fiend.
Of some effect these tales, and of some force
Even with the Duke, who lent an ear so far
As to ordain Kuno's descendants all
To proof of skill ere their succession to
The father's office. Kurt himself hath shot
The silver ring out o' the popinjay's beak—
A good shot he, you see, who would succeed.

The Devil guards his secrets close as God.
For who can say what elementaries,

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Demonic, lurk in desolate dells and hills
And shadowy woods? malignant forces who,
Malicious vassals of satanic power,
Are agents to that Evil none may name,
Who signs himself, through these, a slave to those,
Those mortals who call in the aid of Hell,
And for some earthly, transitory gift,
Barter their souls and all their hopes of Heaven.

Of these enchanted bullets let me speak:
There may be such: our earth hath things as strange,
Perhaps, and stranger, that we doubt not of,
While we behold,—not only 'neath the thatch
Of Ignorance's hovel,—but within
The stately halls of Wisdom's palaces,
How Superstition sits an honored guest.

A cross-way, so they say, among the hills;
A cross-way in a solitude of pines;
And on the lonely cross-way you must draw
A bloody circle with a bloody sword;
And round the circle, runic characters,
Weird and symbolic: here a skull, and there

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A scythe, and cross-bones, and an hour-glass here:
And in the centre, fed with coffin-wood,
Stolen from the grave of—say a murderer,
A fitful fire. Eleven of the clock
The first ball leaves the mold—the sullen lead
Mixed with three bullets that have hit their mark,
And blood the wounded Sacramental Host,
Stolen, and hence unhallowed, oozed when shot
Fixed to a riven pine. Ere midnight strike,
With never a word until that hour sound,
Must all the balls be cast; and these must be
In number three and sixty; three of which
The Fiend's dark agent, demon Sammael,
Claims for his master and stamps for his own
To hit aside their mark, askew for harm.
The other sixty shall not miss their mark.

No cry, no word, no whisper, even though
Vague, gesturing shapes, that loom like moonlit mists,
Their faces human but of animal form,
Whinnying and whining lusts, faun-faced, goat-formed,
Rise thick around and threaten to destroy.

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No cry, no word, no whisper should there come,
Weeping, a wandering shadow like the girl
You love, or loved, now lost to you, her eyes
Hollow with tears; sad, palely beckoning
With beautiful arms, or censuring; her face
Wild with despondent love: who, if you speak
Or waver from that circle—hideous change!—
Shrinks to a wrinkled hag, whose harpy hands
Shall tear you limb from limb with horrible mirth.
Nor be deceived if some far midnight bell
Strike that anticipated hour; nor leave
By one short inch the circle, for, unseen
Though now they be, Hell's minions still are there,
Watching with flaming eyes to seize your soul.
But when the hour of midnight sounds, will come
A noise of galloping hoofs and outriders,
Shouting: six midnight steeds,—their nostrils, pits
Of burning blood,—postilioned, roll a stage,
Black and with groaning wheels of spinning fire:

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“Room there!—What, ho!—Who bars the mountain way?—
On over him!”—But fear not, nor fare forth;
'Tis but the last trick of your bounden slave.
And ere the red moon rushes from the clouds
And dives again, high the huge leaders leap,
Their fore-hoofs flashing and their eyeballs flame,
And, spun a spiral spark into the night,
Hissing the phantasm flies and fades away.
Some say there comes no stage; that Hackelnburg,
Wild-Huntsman of the Harz, comes dark as storm,
With rain and wind and demon dogs of Hell;
The terror of his hunting-horn, an owl,
And the dim deer he hunts, rush on before:
The forests crash, and whirlwinds are the leaves,
And all the skies a-thunder, as he hurls,
Straight on the circle, horse and hounds and stag.
And at the last, plutonian-cloaked, there comes,—
Infernal fire streaming from his eyes,—
Upon a stallion gaunt and lurid black,
The minister of Satan, Sammael,

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Who greets you, and informs you, and assures.

Enough! these wives' tales told, to what I've seen:
To Ammendorf I came; and Rudolf here
With Kurt and his assembled men in buff
And woodland green were gathered at this inn.
The abundant Year—like some sweet wife,—a-smile
At her brown baby, Autumn, in her arms,
Stood 'mid the garnered harvests of her fields
Dreaming of days that pass like almoners
Scattering their alms in minted gold of flowers;
Of nights, that forest all the skies with stars,
Wherethrough the moon—bare-bosomed huntress—rides,
One cloud before her like a flying fawn.
Then I proposed the season's hunt; till eve
The test of Rudolf's skill postponed; at which
He seemed embarrassed. And 'twas then I heard
How he an execrable marksman was;
And tales that told of close, incredible shots,
That missed their mark; or how the flint-lock oft

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Flamed harmless powder, while the curious deer
Stood staring, as in pity of such aim,
Or as inviting him to try once more.
Howbeit, he that day acquitted him
Of all this gossip; in that day's long hunt
Missing no shot, however rashly made
Or distant through the intercepting trees.
And the piled, various game brought down of all
Good marksmen of Kurt's train had not sufficed,
Doubled, nay, trebled, there to match his heap.
And marvelling the hunters saw, nor knew
How to excuse them. My indulgence giv'n,
Some told me that but yesterday old Kurt
Had made his daughter weep and Rudolf frown,
By vowing end to their bethrothéd love,
Unless that love developed better skill
Against the morrow's test; his ancestors'
High fame should not be tarnished. So he railed;
Then bowed his gray head and sat moodily:
But, looking up, forgave all when he saw
Tears in his daughter's eyes and Rudolf gone
Out in the night, black with approaching storm.

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Before this inn, crowding the green, they stood,
The holiday village come to view the trial:
Fair maidens and their comely mothers with
Their sweethearts and their husbands. And I marked
Kurt and his daughter here; his florid face
All creased with smiles at Rudolf's great success;
Hers, radiant with happiness; for this
Her marriage eve—so had her father said—
Should Rudolf come successful from the hunt.

So pleased was I with what I'd seen him do,
The trial of skill superfluous seemed; and so
Was on the bare brink of announcing, when
Out of the western heaven's deepening red,—
Like a white message dropped of scarlet lips,—
A wild dove clove the luminous winds and there,
Upon that limb, a peaceful moment sat.
Then I, “Thy rifle, Rudolf! pierce its head!”
Cried pointing, “and chief-forester art thou!”
Why did he falter with a face as strange
And strained as terror's? did his soul divine
What was to be, with tragic prescience?—
What a bad dream it all seems now!—Again

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I see him aim. Again I hear her cry,
“My dove! O Rudolf, do not kill my dove!”
And from the crowd, like some sweet dove herself,
A fluttering whiteness, rushed our Ilsabe—
Too late! the rifle cracked. . . . The unhurt dove
Rose, beating frightened wings—but Ilsabe! . . .
My God! the sight! . . . fell smitten; sudden red,
Sullying the whiteness of her bridal bodice,
Showed where the ball had pierced her innocent heart.

And Rudolf?—Ah, of him you still would know?
—When he beheld this thing which he had done,
Why, he went mad—I say—but others not.
An hour he raved of how her life had paid
For the unholy missiles he had used,
And how his soul was three times lost and damned.
I say that he went mad and fled forthwith
Into the haunted Harz.—Some say, to die
The prey of demons of the Dummburg ruin.

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I,—one of those less superstitious,—say,
He in the Bodé—from that blackened rock,—
Whereon were found his hunting-cap and horn,—
The Devil's Dancing Place, did leap and die.

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