The poems of Madison Cawein

Heat lightning flickers in one cloud,
As in a flower a firefly;
Some rain-drops, that the rose-bush bowed,
Jar through the leaves and dimly lie:
Among the trees, now low, now loud,
The whispering breezes sigh.
The place is lone; the night is hushed;
Upon the path a rose lies crushed.

I

Musing, he strolls among the quiet lanes by farm and field:

Now rests the season in forgetfulness,
Careless in beauty of maturity;
The ripened roses round brown temples, she
Fulfils completion in a dreamy guess.
Now Time grants night the more and day the less:
The gray decides; and brown,

Dim golds and drabs in dulling green express
Themselves and redden as the year goes down.
Sadder the fields where, thrusting hoary high
Their tasseled heads, the Lear-like corn-stocks die,
And, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie.—
Deeper to tenderness,
Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along
The lonesome west; sadder the song
Of the wild red-bird in the leafage yellow.—
Deeper and dreamier, ay!
Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky
Above lone orchards where the cider-press
Drips and the russets mellow.

Nature grows liberal: from the beechen leaves
The beech-nuts' burrs their little pockets thrust,
Bulged with the copper of the nuts that rust;
Above the grass the spendthrift spider weaves
A web of silver for which dawn designs
Thrice twenty rows of pearls: beneath the oak,
That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines,—
The polished acorns, from their saucers broke,
Strew oval agates.—On sonorous pines
The far wind organs; but the forest near
Is silent; and the blue-white smoke

Of burning brush, beyond that field of hay,
Hangs like a pillar in the atmosphere;
But now it shakes—it breaks and all the vines
And tree-tops tremble;—see! the wind is here!
Billowing and boisterous; and the smiling day
Rejoices in its clamor. Earth and sky
Resound with glory of its majesty,
Impetuous splendor of its rushing by.—
But on those heights the forest still is still,
Expectant of its coming. ... Far away
Each anxious tree upon each waiting hill
Tingles anticipation, as in gray
Surmise of rapture. Now the first gusts play,
Like laughter low, about their rippling spines;
And now the wildwood, one exultant sway,
Shouts—and the light at each tumultuous pause,
The light that glooms and shines,
Seems hands in wild applause.

How glows that garden! though the white mists keep
The vagabonding flowers reminded of
Decay that comes to slay in open love,

When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep;
Unheeding still, their cardinal colors leap
And laugh encircled of the scythe of death,—
Like lovely children he prepares to reap,—
Staying his blade a breath
To mark their beauty ere, with one last sweep,
He lays them dead and turns away to weep.—
Let me admire,—
Before the sickle of the coming cold
Shall mow them down,—their beauties manifold:
How like to spurts of fire
That scarlet salvia lifts its blooms, which heap
Yon square of sunlight. And, as sparkles creep
Through charring parchment, up that window's screen
The cypress dots with crimson all its green,
The haunt of many bees.
Cascading dark those porch-built lattices,
The nightshade bleeds with berries; drops of blood,
Hanging in clusters, 'mid the blue monk'shood.

There, in that garden old,
The bright-hued clumps of zinnias unfold
Their formal flowers; and the marigold
Lifts its pinched shred of orange sunset caught
And elfed in petals. The nasturtium,
All pungent leaved and acrid of perfume,
Hangs up its goblin bonnet, fairy-brought
From Gnomeland. There, predominant red,
And arrogant, the dahlia lifts its head,
Beside the balsam's rose-stained horns of honey,
Deep in the mumuring, sunny
Dry wildness of the weedy flower-bed;
Where crickets and the weed-bugs, noon and night,
Shrill dirges for the flowers that soon will die,
And flowers already dead.—
I seem to hear the passing Summer sigh:
A voice, that seems to weep,
“Too soon, too soon the Beautiful passes by!
And soon, amid her bowers,
Will dripping Autumn mourn with all her flowers.”—
If I, perchance, might peep
Beneath those leaves of podded hollyhocks,
That the bland wind with odorous whispers rocks,

I might behold her,—white
And weary,—Summer, 'mid her flowers asleep,
Her drowsy flowers asleep,
The withered poppies knotted in her locks.

II

He
is reminded of another day with her:

The hips were reddening on this rose,
Those haws were hung with fire,
That day we went this way that goes
Up hills of bough and brier.
This hooked thorn caught her gown and seemed
Imploring her to linger;
Upon her hair a sun-ray streamed
Like some baptizing finger.

This false-foxglove, so golden now
With yellow blooms, like bangles,
Was bloomless then. But yonder bough,—
The sumac's plume entangles,—
Was like an Indian's painted face;
And, like a squaw, attended
That bush, in vague vermilion grace,
With beads of berries splendid.

And here we turned to mount that hill,
Down which the wild brook tumbles;
And, like to-day, that day was still,
And mild winds swayed the umbels
Of these wild-carrots, lawny gray:
And there, deep-dappled o'er us,
An orchard stretched; and in our way
Dropped ripened fruit before us.

With muffled thud the pippin fell,
And at our feet rolled dusty;
A hornet clinging to its bell,
The pear lay bruised and rusty:
The smell of pulpy peach and plum,
From which the juice oozed yellow,—
Around which bees made sleepy hum,—
Made warm the air and mellow.

And then we came where, many-hued,
The wet wild morning-glory
Hung its balloons in shadows dewed
For dawning's offertory:
With bush and bramble, far away,
Beneath us stretched the valley,
Cleft of one creek, as clear as day,
That rippled musically.

The brown, the bronze, the green, the red
Of weed and brier ran riot
To walls of woods, whose pathways led
To nooks of whispering quiet:
Long waves of feathering goldenrod
Ran through the gray in patches,
As in a cloud the gold of God
Burns, that the sunset catches.

And there, above the blue hills rolled,
Like some far conflagration,
The sunset, flaming marigold,
We watched in exultation:
Then, turning homeward, she and I
Went in love's sweet derangement—
How different now seem earth and sky,
Since this undreamed estrangement.

III

He
enters the woods. He sits down despondently:

Here where the day is dimmest,
And silence company,
Some might find sympathy
For loss, or grief the grimmest,
In each great-hearted tree—

Here where the day is dimmest—
But, ah, there 's none for me!

In leaves might find communion,
Returning sigh for sigh,
For love the heavens deny;
The love that yearns for union,
Yet parts and knows not why.—
In leaves might find communion—
But, ah, not I, not I!

My eyes with tears are aching.—
Why has she written me?
And will no longer see?—
My heart with grief is breaking,
With grief that this should be.—
My eyes with tears are aching—
Why has she written me?

IV

He
proceeds in the direction of a stream:
Better is death than sleep,
Better for tired eyes.—
Why do we weep and weep
When near us the solace lies?
There, in that stream, that, deep,—

Reflecting woods and skies,—
Could comfort all our sighs.
The mystery of things,
Of dreams, philosophies,
To which the mortal clings,
That can unriddle these.—
What is 't the water sings?
What is 't it promises?—
End to my miseries!

V

He
seats himself on a rock and gazes steadily into the stream:

And here alone I sit and it is so!—
O vales and hills! O valley-lands and knobs!
What cure have you for woe?
What balm that robs
The brain of thought, the knowledge of its woe?
None! none! ah me! that my sick heart may know!—
The wearying sameness!—yet this thing is so!
This thing is so, and still the waters flow,
The leaves drop slowly down; the daylight throbs
With sun and wind, and yet this thing is so!

There is no sympathy in heaven or earth
For human sorrow! all we see is mirth,
Or madness; cruelty or lust;
Nature is heedless of her children's grief;
Man is to her no more than is a leaf,
That buds and has its summer, that is brief,
Then falls, and mixes with the common dust.
Here, at this culvert's mouth,
The shadowy water, flowing toward the south,
Seems deepest, stagnant-stayed.—
What is it yonder that makes me afraid?
Of my own self afraid?—I do not know!—
What power draws me to the striate stream?
What evil? or what dream?
Me! dropping pebbles in the quiet wave,
That echoes, strange as music in a cave,
Hollow and thin; vibrating in the shade,
As if 't were tears that fell, and, falling, made
A crystal sound, a shadow wail of woe,
Wrung from the rocks and waters there below;
An ailing phantom that will not be laid;
Complaining ghosts of sobs that fill my breast,—
That will not forth,—and give my heart no rest.

There, in the water, how the lank sword-grass
Mats its long blades, each blade a crooked kris,
Making a marsh; 'mid which the currents miss
Their rock-born melodies.
But there and there, one sees
The wide-belled mallow, as within a glass,
Long-pistiled, leaning o'er
The root-contorted shore,
As if its own pink image it would kiss.
And there the tangled wild-potato vine
Lifts beakered blossoms, each a cup of wine,
As pale as moonlight is:—
No mandrake, curling convolutions up,
Loops heavier blossoms, each a conical cup
That swoons moon-nectar and a serpent's hiss.—
And there tall gipsy lilies, all a-sway,
Of coppery hue
Streaked as with crimson dew,
Mirror fierce faces in the deeps,
O'er which they lean, bent in inverted view.—
And where the stream around those rushes creeps,
The dragon-fly, in endless error, keeps
Sewing the pale-gold gown of day
With tangled stitches of a burning blue:

Its brilliant body is a needle fine,
A thread of azure ray,
Black-pinioned, shuttling the shade and shine.
But here before me where my pensive shade
Looks up at me, the stale stream, stagnant, lies,
Deep, dark, but clear and silent; streaked with hues
Of ragweed pollen, and of spawny ooze,
Through which the seeping bubbles, bursting, rise.—
All flowers here refuse
To grow or blossom; beauties, too, are few,
That haunt its depths: no glittering minnows braid
Its sleepy crystal; and no gravels strew
With colored orbs its bottom. Half afraid
I shrink from my own eyes
There in its cairngorm of reflected skies.—
I know not why, and yet it seems I see—
What is 't I see there moving stealthily?

I know not what!—But where the kildees wade,
Slim in the foamy scum,
From that direction hither doth it come,
Whate'er it is, that makes my soul afraid.

Nearer it draws to where those low rocks ail,
Warm rocks, on which some water-snake hath clomb,
Basking its spotted body, coiling numb,
Brown in the brindled shade.—
At first it seemed a prism on the grail,
A bubble's prism, like the shadow made
Of water-striders; then a trail,
An angled sparkle in a webby veil
Of duckweed, green as verdigris, it swayed
Frog-like through deeps, to crouch, a flaccid, pale,
Squat bulk below. ...
I gaze, and though I would, I can not go.
Reflected trees and skies,
And breeze-blown clouds that lounge at sunny loss,
Seem in its stolid eyes,
Its fishy gaze, that holds me in strange wise.
Ghoul-like it seems to rise,
And now to sink; its eldritch features fail,
Then come again in rhythmic waviness,
With arms like tentacles that seem to press
Thro' weed and water: limbs that writhe and fade,
And clench, and twist, and toss,

Root-like and gnarled, and cross and inter-cross
Through flabby hair of smoky moss.

How horrible to see this thing at night!
Or when the sunset slants its brimstone light
Above the pool! when, blue, in phantom flight,
The will-o'-the-wisps, perhaps, above it reel.
Then, haply, would it rise, a rotting green,
Up, up, and gather me with arms of steel,
Soft steel, and drag me where the wave is white,
Beneath that boulder brown, that plants a keel
Against the ripple there, a shoulder lean.—
No, no! I must away before 't is night!
Before the fireflies dot
The dark with sulphur blurrings bright!
Before, upon that height,
The white wild-carrots vanish from the sight;
And boneset blossoms, tossing there in clusters,
Fade to a ridge, a streak of ghostly lustres:
And, in that sunlit spot,
Yon cedar tree is not!
But a huge cap instead, that, half-asleep,
Some giant dropped while driving home his sheep:
And 'mid those fallow browns

And russet grays, the fragrant peak
Of yonder timothy stack,
Is not a stack, but something hideous, black,
That threatens and, grotesquely demon, frowns.

I must away from here.—
Already dusk draws near.
The owlet's dolorous hoot
Sounds quavering as a gnome's wild flute;
The toad, within the wet,
Begins to tune its goblin flageolet:
The slow sun sinks behind
Those hills; and, like a withered cheek
Of Quaker quiet, sorrow-burdened, there
The spectral moon 's defined
Above those trees,—as in a wild-beast's lair
A golden woman, dead, with golden hair,—
Above that mass of fox-grape vines
That, like a wrecked appentice, roofs those pines.—
Oh, I am faint and weak.—
I must away, away!
Before the close of day!—
Already at my back
I feel the woods grow black;
And sense the evening wind,

Guttural and gaunt and blind,
Whining behind me like an unseen wolf.
Deeper now seems the gulf
Into whose deeps I gaze;
From which, with madness and amaze,
That seems to rise, the horror there,
With webby hands and mossy eyes and hair.—
Oh, will it pierce,
With all its feelers fierce,
Beyond the pool's unhallowed water-streak?—

Yes; I must go, must go!
Must leave this ghastly creek,
This place of hideous fear!
For everywhere I hear
A dripping footstep near,
A voice, like water, gurgling at my ear,
Saying, “Come to me! come and rest below!
Sleep and forget her and with her thy woe!”—
I try to fly.—I can not.—Yes, and no!—
What madness holds me!—God! that obscene, slow,
Sure mastering chimera there,
Perhaps, has fastened round my neck,
Or in my matted hair,
Some horrible feeler, dire, invisible!—
Off, off! thou hoop of Hell!

Thou devil's coil! ...
Back, back into thy cesspool! Off of me!—
See, how the waters thrash and boil!
At last! at last! thank God! my soul is free!
My mind is freed of that vile mesmerism
That drew me to—what end? my God! what end?
Haply 'twas merely fancy, that strange fiend:
My fancy, and a prism
Of sunset in the stream, a firefly fleck,
That now, a lamp of golden fairy oil,
Lights me my homeward way, the way I flee.
No more I stare, magnetic-fixed; nor reck,
Nor little care to foil
The madness there! the murder there! that slips
Back to its lair of slime, that seeps and drips,
That sought in vain to fasten on my lips.

VI

Taking a letter from his pocket, he hurries away:

What can it mean for me? what have I done to her?
I, in our season of love as a sun to her:
She, all my heaven of silvery, numberless

Stars and its moon, shining golden and slumberless;
Who on my life, that was thorny and lowery,
Came—and made beautiful; smiled—and made flowery.
She, to my heart and my soul a divinity!
She, who—I dreamed!—seemed my spirit-affinity!—
What have I done to her? what have I done?

What can she mean by this?—what have I said to her?
I, who have idolized, worshiped, and pled to her;
Sung with her, laughed with her, sorrowed and sighed for her;
Lived for her only; and gladly had died for her!
See! she has written me thus! she has written me—
Sooner would dagger or serpent had smitten me!—
Would you had shriveled ere ever you 'd read of it,
Eyes, that are wide to the grief and the dread of it!—
What have I said to her? what have I said?

What shall I make of it? I who am trembling,
Fearful of losing.—A moth, the dissembling
Flame of a taper attracts with its guttering,
Flattering on till its body lies fluttering,
Scorched in the summer night.—Foolish, importunate,
Why didst thou quit the cool flowers, unfortunate!—
Such has she been to me, making me such to her!—
Slaying me, saying I never was much to her!—
What shall I make of it? what can I make?

Love, in thy everglades, moaning and motionless,
Look, I have fallen; the evil is potionless:
I, with no thought but the day that did lock us in,
Set naked feet 'mid the cottonmouth-moccasin,
Under the roses, the Cherokee, eying me:—
I,—in the heav'n with the egrets that, flying me,
Winging like blooms from magnolias, rose slenderly,
Pearl and pale pink: where the mocking-bird tenderly

Sang, making vistas of mosses melodious,
Wandered,—unheeding my steps,—in the odious
Ooze and the venom. I followed the wiry
Violet curve of thy star falling fiery—
So was I lost in night! thus am undone!

Have I not told to her—living alone for her—
Purposed unfoldments of deeds I had sown for her
Here in the soil of my soul? their variety
Endless—and ever she answered with piety.
See! it has come to this—all the tale's suavity
At the ninth chapter grows hateful with gravity;
Cruel as death all our beautiful history—
Close it!—the final is more than a mystery.—
Yes; I will go to her; yes; and will speak.

VII

After the final meeting; the day following:

I seem to see her still; to see
That blue-hung room. Her perfume comes
From lavender folds, draped dreamily,—

A-blossom with brocaded blooms,—
Some stuff of orient looms.

I seem to hear her speak; and back,
Where sleeps the sun on books and piles
Of porcelain and bric-à-brac,
A tall clock ticks above the tiles,
Where Love's framed profile smiles.

I hear her say, “Ah, had I known!—
I suffer too for what has been—
For what must be.”—A wild ache shone
In her sad gaze that seemed to lean
On something far, unseen.

And as in sleep my own self seems
Outside my suffering self.—I flush
'Twixt facts and undetermined dreams,
And stand, as silent as that hush
Of lilac light and plush.

Smiling, but suffering, I feel,
Beneath that face, so sweet and sad,
In those pale temples, thoughts, like steel,
Pierce burningly. ... I had gone mad
Had I once thought her glad.—

Unconsciously, with eyes that yearn
To look beyond the present far,
For one faint future hope, I turn—
There, in her garden, one fierce star,
A cactus, red as war,

Vermilion as a storm-sunk sun,
Flames torrid splendor,—brings to life
A sunset; memory of one
Rich eve she said she 'd be my wife;
An eve with beauty rife.

Again amid the heavy hues,
Soft crimson, seal, and satiny gold
Of flowers there, I stood 'mid dews
With her; deep in her garden old,
While sunset's flame unrolled.

And now! ... It can not be! and yet
To see 'tis so!—In heart and brain
To know 'tis so!—While, warm and wet,
I seem to smell those scents again,
Verbena scents and rain.

I turn, in hope she'll bid me stay.
Again her cameo beauty mark
Set in that smile.—She turns away.

No farewell! no regret! no spark
Of hope to cheer the dark!

That sepia sketch—conceive it so—
A jaunty head with mouth and eyes
Tragic beneath a rose-chapeau,
Silk-masked, unmasking—it denies
The look we half surmise,

We know is there. 'Tis thus we read
The true beneath the false; perceive
The ache beneath the smile.—Indeed!
Whose soul unmasks? ... Not mine!—I grieve,—
Oh God!—but laugh and leave. ...

VIII

He
walks aimlessly on:

Beyond those knotted apple-trees,
That partly hide the old brick barn,
Its tattered arms and tattered knees
A scarecrow tosses to the breeze
Among the shocks of corn.

My heart is gray as is the day,
In which the rain-wind drearily

Makes all the rusty branches sway,
And in the hollows, by each way,
The dead leaves rustle wearily.

And soon we'll hear the far wild-geese
Honk in frost-bitten heavens under
Arcturus; when my walks must cease,
And by the fireside's log-heaped peace
I'll sit and nod and ponder.—

When every fall of this loud creek
Is silent with the frost; and tented
Brown acres of the corn stretch bleak
And shaggy with the snows, that streak
The hillsides, hollow-dented;

I'll sit and dream of that glad morn
We met by banks with elder snowing;
That dusk we strolled through flower and thorn,
By tasseled meads of cane and corn,
To where the stream was flowing.

Again I'll oar our boat among
The dripping lilies of the river,
To reach her hat, the grape-vine long
Struck in the stream; we'll row to song;
And then ... I'll wake and shiver.

Why is it that my mind reverts
To that sweet past? while full of parting
The present is: so full of hurts
And heartache, that what it asserts
Adds only to the smarting.

How often shall I sit and think
Of that sweet past! through lowered lashes
What-might-have-been trace link by link;
Then watch it gradually sink
And crumble into ashes.

Outside I'll hear the sad wind weep
Like some lone spirit, grieved, forsaken;
Then, shuddering, to bed will creep,
To lie awake, or, haply, sleep
A sleep by visions shaken.

By visions of the past, that draw
The present in a hue that 's wanting;
A scarecrow thing of sticks and straw,—
Like that just now I, passing, saw,—
Its empty tatters flaunting.

IX

He
compares the present day with a past one:

The sun a splintered splendor was
In trees, whose waving branches blurred

Its disc, that day we went together,
'Mid wild-bee hum and whirring buzz
Of locusts, through the fields that purred
With summer in the perfect weather.

So sweet it was to look, and lean
To her young face and feel the light
Of eyes that met my own unsaddened!
Her laugh that left lips more serene;
Her speech that blossomed like the white
Life-everlasting there and gladdened.

Maturing summer, you were fraught
With more of beauty then than now
Parades the pageant of September:
Where What-is-now contrasts in thought
With What-was-once, that bloom and bough
Can only help me to remember.

X

He
pauses before a deserted house by the wayside:

Through ironweeds and roses
And scraggy beech and oak,
Old porches it discloses
Above the weeds and roses
The drizzling raindrops soak.

Neglected walks a-tangle
With dodder-strangled grass;
And every mildewed angle
Heaped with dead leaves that spangle.
The paths that round it pass.

The creatures there that bury
Or hide within its rooms
And spidered closets—very
Dim with old webs—will hurry
Out when the evening glooms.

Owls roost on beam and basement;
Bats haunt its hearth and porch;
And, by each ruined casement,
Flits, in the moon's enlacement,
The wisp, like some wild torch.

There is a sense of frost here,
And winds that sigh alway
Of something that was lost here,
Long, long ago was lost here,
But what, they can not say.

My foot, perhaps, would startle
Some owl that mopes within;
Some bat above its portal,

That frights the daring mortal,
And guards its cellared sin.

The creaking road winds by it
This side the dusty toll.—
Why do I stop to eye it?
My heart can not deny it—
The house is like my soul.

XI

He
proceeds on his way:

I bear a burden—look not therein!
Naught will you find save sorrow and sin;
Sorrow and sin that wend with me
Wherever I go. And misery,
A gaunt companion, my wretched bride,
Goes ever with me, side by side.

Sick of myself and all the earth,
I ask my soul now: Is life worth
The little pleasure that we gain
For all our sorrow and our pain?
The love, to which we gave our best,
That turns a mockery and a jest?

XII

Among the twilight fields:

The things we love, the loveliest things we cherish,
Pass from us soonest, vanish utterly.
Dust are our deeds, and dust our dreams that perish
Ere we can say They be!

I have loved man and learned we are not brothers—
Within myself, perhaps, may lie the cause;—
Then set one woman high above all others,
And found her full of flaws.

Made unseen stars my keblahs of devotion;
Aspired to knowledge, and remained a clod:
With heart and soul, led on by blind emotion,
The way to failure trod.

Chance, say, or fate, that works through good and evil;
Or destiny, that nothing may retard,
That to some end, above life's empty level,
Perhaps withholds reward.

University of Virginia Library

3. PART III LATE SUMMER

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3. PART III
LATE SUMMER