The poems of Madison Cawein

Ah, shall I follow, on the hills,
The Spring, as wild wings follow?
Where wild-plum trees make wan the hills,
Crab-apple trees the hollow,
Haunts of the bee and swallow?

In red-bud brakes and flowery
Acclivities of berry;
In dogwood dingles, showery
With dew, where wrens make merry?
Or drifts of swarming cherry?

In valleys of wild-strawberries,
And of the clumped May-apple;
Or cloud-like trees of hawberries,
With which the south-winds grapple,
That brook and pathway dapple?

197

With eyes of far forgetfulness,—
Like some white wood-thing's daughter,
Whose feet are bee-like fretfulness,—
To see her run like water
Through boughs that slipped or caught her.

O Spring, to seek, yet find you not,
To search and still continue;
To glimpse, to touch, but bind you not,
To lose and then to win you,
All sweet evasion in you.

In pearly, peach-blush distances
You gleam; the woods are braided
Of myths, of dream-existences;—
There, where the brook is shaded,
Some splendor surely faded.

O presence, like the primrose's,
Once more I feel your power!
In rainy scents of dim roses
I breathe you for an hour,
Elusive as a flower.

II
THE WOOD SPIRIT

Ah me! I still remember
How flushed, before the shower,

198

The dusk was; like a scarlet rose,
Or blood-red poppy-flower.

Now heaven is starred; the moonlight
Lays blurs upon the grain—
You may not know it from white frost,
The moonlight on the rain.

And all the forest utters
A restless moan in rest,
For all the deep, dark shadow lies
Like iron on its breast.

I mark the moveless shadow,
I mark the unreaped corn,
Then something whispers overhead,
“Come to me, mortal-born.”

I sit alone and listen;
The low leaves sound and sigh;
The dew drips from the bearded grain,
A mist slips from the sky.—

I hear her whisper, whisper,
And breathe in some dim place;
Her feet are easier than the dew,
And than the mist her face.

199

I may not clasp her ever,
This spirit made for song,
Who dwelleth in the young, young oak
The old, old oaks among.

Her limbs are molded moonlight;
Her breasts are silver moons:
She glimmers and she glitters where
The purple shadow swoons.

And since she knows I love her,
She says my soul has died,
And laughs and mocks me in the mist
That haunts the forest-side.

When winds run mad in woodlands
And all the great boughs swing,
I see her wild hair blow and blow
Black as a raven's wing.

When winds are tamed and tethered
And stars are keen as frost,
I search and seek within the wood,
There where my soul was lost.

I seek her, and she flies me;
I follow; and the whole
Dim woodland echoes with her voice,
Soft calling to my soul.

200

III
OWL ROOST

The slope is a mass of vines:
If you walk in the daylight there,
A gleam as of twilight shines
Through the vines massed everywhere:
Each trunk, that a creeper twines,
Is a column, strong to bear
The dome of its leaves that wave,
Cathedral-dim and grave.

Black moss makes silent the feet:
And, above, the fox-grapes lace
So thick that the noonday heat
Is chill as a murdered face:
And the winds for miles repeat
The fugue of a rolling bass:
The deep leaves twinkle and turn
But over no flower or fern.

An angular spider weaves
Great webs between the trees,
Webs that are witches' sieves:
And honey-and bumblebees
Go droning among the leaves,
Like the fairies' oboës:

201

At dark the owlets croon
To the stars and the sickle-moon.

At dark I will not go
There where the branches sigh;
Where naught but the glow-worms glow,
Each one like a demon's eye:
O'er which, like a battle-bow,
With an arrow that it lets fly,
The new-moon and one star
Hang and glimmer afar.

At dawn, if my mood be dim,
And the day be a cloudless one,
There where the sad winds hymn
I'll walk, but its shade will shun;
Its shade, where I feel the grim
Horror of something done
Here in the years long past,
That the place conceals to the last.

IV
MOSS AND FERN

Where rise the brakes of bramble there,
Wrapped with the trailing rose,

202

Through cane where waters ramble, there
Where deep the green cress grows,
Who knows?
Perhaps, unseen of eyes of man,
Hides Pan.

Perhaps the creek, whose pebbles make
A foothold for the mint,
May bear,—where soft its trebles make
Confession,—some vague hint—
(The print,
Goat-hoofed, of one who lightly ran)—
Of Pan.

Where, in the hollow of the hills
Ferns deepen to the knees,
What sounds are those above the hills,
And now among the trees?—
No breeze!—
The syrinx, haply, none may scan,
Of Pan.

In woods where waters break upon
The hush like some soft word;
Where sun-shot shadows shake upon
The moss, who has not heard—
No bird!—

203

The flute, as breezy as a fan,
Of Pan?

Far in, where mosses lay for us
Still carpets, cool and plush;
Where bloom and branch and ray for us
Swoon in the noonday flush,
The hush
May sound the satyr hoof a span
Of Pan.

In woods where thrushes sing to us,
And brooks dance sparkling heels;
Where wild aromas cling to us,
And all our worship kneels,—
Who steals
Upon us, haunch and face of tan,
But Pan?

V
WOODLAND WATERS

Through leaves of the nodding trees,
Where blossoms sway in the breeze,
Pink bag-pipes made for the bees,
Whose slogan is droning and drawling:
Where the columbine scatters its bells,

204

And the wild bleeding-heart its shells,
O'er mosses and rocks of the dells
The brook of the forest is falling.

You can hear it under the hill
When the wind in the wood is still,
And, strokes of a fairy drill,
Sounds the bill of the yellow-hammer:
By the solomon's-seal it slips,
Cohosh and the grass that drips—
Like the words of an Undine's lips,
Is the sound of its falls that stammer.

I lie in the woods: and the scent
Of the honeysuckle is blent
With the sound: and a Sultan's tent
Is my dream, with the East enmeshéd:—
A slave-girl sings; and I hear
The languor of lute-strings near,
And a dancing-girl of Cashmere
In the harem of good Er Reshid.

From ripples of Irak lace
She flashes the amorous grace
Of her naked limbs and her face,
While her golden anklets tinkle:
Then over mosaic floors

205

Open seraglio doors
Of cedar: by twos, by fours,—
Like stars that tremble and twinkle,—

While the dulcimers sing, unseen,
The handmaids come of the Queen
'Neath silvern lamps, one sheen
Of jewels of Afrite treasure:
And I see the Arabia rise
Of the Nights that were rich and wise,
Beautiful, dark, in the eyes
Of Zubeideh, the Queen of Pleasure.

VI
THE THORN-TREE

The night is sad with silver and the day is glad with gold,
And the woodland silence listens to a legend never old,
Of the Lady of the Fountain, whom the fairy people know,
With her limbs of samite whiteness and her hair of golden glow,
Whom the boyish South-wind seeks for and the girlish-stepping rain,

206

Whom the sleepy leaves still whisper men shall never see again;
She whose Vivien charms were mistress of the magic Merlin knew,
That could change the dew to glow-worms and the glow-worms into dew.

There 's a thorn-tree in the forest, and the fairies know the tree,
With its branches gnarled and wrinkled as a face with sorcery;
But the May-time brings it clusters of a rainy fragrant white,
Like the bloom-bright brows of beauty or a hand of lifted light.
And all day the silence whispers to the sun-ray of the morn
How the bloom is lovely Vivien and how Merlin is the thorn:
How she won the doting wizard with her naked loveliness
Till he told her demon secrets that but made his magic less.

How she charmed him and enchanted in the thorn-tree's thorns to lie
Forever with his passion that should never dim or die:

207

And with wicked laughter looking on this thing that she had done,
Like a visible aroma lingered sparkling in the sun;
How she stooped to kiss the pathos of an elflock of his beard,
All in mockery, at parting, and mock pity of his weird:
But her magic had forgotten that “who bends to give a kiss
Will bring down the curse upon them of the person whose it is”:
So the silence tells the secret.—And at night the fairies see
How the tossing bloom is Vivien, who is struggling to be free,
In the thorny arms of Merlin, who, forever, is the tree.

VII
THE HAMADRYAD

She stood among the longest ferns
The valley held; and in her hand
One blossom like the light that burns,
Vermilion, o'er a sunset land;
And round her hair a twisted band

208

Of pink-pierced mountain-laurel blooms:
And darker than dark pools, that stand
Below the star-communing glooms,
Her eyes beneath her hair's perfumes.

I saw the moon-pearl sandals on
Her flower-white feet, that seemed too chaste
To tread pure gold: and, like the dawn
On splendid peaks that lord a waste
Of solitude lost gods have graced,
Her face: she stood there, faultless-hipped,
Bound with the cestused silver,—chased
With acorn-cup and crown, and tipped
With oak-leaves,—whence her chiton slipped.

Limbs that the gods call loveliness!—
The grace and glory of all Greece
Wrought in one marble form were less
Than her perfection!—'Mid the trees
I saw her; and time seemed to cease
For me—And, lo! I lived my old
Greek life again of classic ease,
Barbarian as the myths that rolled
Me back into the Age of Gold.

University of Virginia Library

DEEP IN THE FOREST

I SPRING ON THE HILLS

II THE WOOD SPIRIT

III OWL ROOST

IV MOSS AND FERN

V WOODLAND WATERS

VI THE THORN-TREE

VII THE HAMADRYAD