The poems of Madison Cawein

An intimation of some previous life?
Or dark dream—by my waking soul divined—
Of some uncertain sleep? in which the sin
Of some past life, a life that some one lived—
Not I, yet I,—long, long ago in Spain,
I live again. . . . Wherein again I see
From heathen battles to Toledo's gates,—
Damascened corselet broken, his camail
And armet shattered,—deep within the eve's
Anger of brass, that burned around his helm,
A hurrying flame,—a galloping glitter,—one
Ride arrow-wounded. And the city catch
Wild tumult from his coming, wilder fear—
A cry before him and a wail behind,
Of walls beleaguered; ravin; conquered kings:
Triumphant Taric; shackled Spain—revenge.

And I, a Moslem slave, a miser Jew's,
Housed near the Tagus—squalid and alone,
Save for his slave,—a dog he beat and starved,—

135

Leaner than my lank shadow when the moon,
A battle beacon, westerns; all my bones
A visible hunger; famished with the fear,
Soul-garb of slaves, I bore him—I, who held
Him, heart and soul, more hated than his God,
Stood silent. Fools had laughed. I saw my way.

War-times grow weapons, and the blade I found
Was hacked but pointed.—Well I knew his ways:
The nightly nuptials of his jars of gems
And bags of doublas.—Well I knew his ways.
No figure, woven in the hangings, where
He hugged his riches in that secret room,
Was half so still as I, who gauntly stole
Behind him, humped and stooping; and his heart
Clove to the center, stabbing from behind,
Thrice thro' his tattered tunic, murrey-dyed.
Forward he fell, his old face 'mid his gold,
Grayer and thinner than the moon of morn,
While slow the blood dripped, oozing through the cloth,
Black, and thick-clotting round the oblong wounds.
Great pearls of Oman, whiter than the moon;

136

Rubies of Badakhshân, whose bezels wept
Slim tears of poppy-purpled flame; and rich,
Rose, ember-pregnant carbuncles, wherein
Fevered a captive crimson, blurred with light
The table's raven cloth. Dim bugles wan
Of cat-eyed hyacinths; moon-emeralds
With starry greenness stabbed; in limpid stains
Of liquid lilac, Persian amethysts;
Fire-opals, savage and mesmeric with
Voluptuous flame, long, sweet and sensuous as
Deep eyes of Orient women; sapphires beamed
With talismanic violet, from tombs,
Deev-guarded, of primordial Solimans,
Scattered the velvet: and like gledes amid,—
Splintering the light from rainbow-arrowed orbs,—
Length-agonized with fire, diamonds of
Golconda. . . . (One a dervish once had borne
Seven days, beneath a red Arabian sun,
Seven nights, beneath a round Arabian moon,
Under his tongue; an Emeer's ransom, held
Of some wild tribe.—Bleached in the perishing waste,
A Bedouin Arab found sand-strangled bones,
A skeleton, vulture-torn, fierce in whose skull
One eyeball blazed—the diamond. At Aleppo

137

Bartered . . . a bauble for his desert love.)
Jacinth and Indian pearl, gem heaped on gem,
Flashed, rutilating in the taper's light,—
Unearthly splinters of a rainbowed flame,—
A blaze of irised fire; and his face,
Long-haired, white-sunk among them. And I took
All! yea! all! all!—jewel and gold and gem!—
Although his curse burned in them! 'though, meseemed,
Each burning jewel glared a separate curse.
[OMITTED]

Can dead men work us evil from the grave?
Can crime infest us so that fear will slay? . . .
Richer than all Castile and yet—not dare
Drink but from cups of Roman murra,—spar
Bowl-sprayed with fibrile gold,—spar sensitive
To poison! I, no fool! and yet—a fool
To fear a dead Jew's malice! . . . Yet, how else?
Feasting within the music of my halls,
While perfumed beauty danced in sinuous robes,
Diaphanous, more tenuous than those famed
Of loomed Amorgos or of silken Kos,
Draining the unflawed murrhine, Xeres-brimmed,
Had I reeled poisoned, dying wolf'sbane-slain!

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A PRE-EXISTENCE