The poems of Madison Cawein

The old enigmas of the deathless dawns,
And riddles of the all immortal eves,—
That still o'er Delphic lawns
Speak as the gods spoke through oracular leaves—
I read with new-born eyes,
Remembering how, a slave,
They buried me, a living sacrifice,
Once in a dead king's grave.

Or, crowned with hyacinth and helichrys,
How, towards the altar in the marble gloom,—
Hearing the magadis
Dirge through the pale amaracine perfume,—
'Mid chanting priests I trod,
With never a sigh or pause,
To give my life to pacify a god,
And save my country's cause.

Again: Cyrenian roses on wild hair,
And oil and purple smeared on breasts and cheeks,

189

How, with mad torches there,—
Reddening the cedars of Cithæron's peaks,—
With gesture and fierce glance,
Lascivious Mænad bands
Once drew and slew me in the Pyrrhic dance
With Bacchanalian hands.

III

The music now that lays
Dim lips against my ears,
Some far-off thing it says,—
Unto my soul,—of years
Long passed into the haze
Of tears.

Meseems before me are
The dark eyes of a queen,
A queen of Istakhar:
I seem to see her lean
More lovely than a star
Of mien.

A slave, I stand before
Her jeweled throne; I kneel,
And, in a song, once more
My love for her reveal;

190

How once I did adore
I feel.

Again her dark eyes gleam;
Again her red lips smile;
And in her face the beam
Of love that knows no guile;
And so she seems to dream
A while.

Out of her deep hair then
A rose she takes—and I
Am made a god 'mid men!
Her rose, that here did lie
When I, in th' wild-beasts' den,
Did die.

IV

Old paintings on its wainscots,
And, in its oaken hall,
Old arras; and the twilight
Of sorrow over all.

Old grandeur on its stairways;
And in its haunted rooms
Old souvenirs of greatness,
And ghosts of dead perfumes.

191

The winds are phantom voices
Around its carven doors;
The moonbeams, specter footsteps
Upon its polished floors.

Old cedars build around it
A solitude of sighs;
And the old hours pass through it
With immemorial eyes.

But more than this I know not;
Nor where the house may be;
Nor what its ancient secret
And ancient grief to me.

It seems my soul remembers,—
Of which this house is part,—
Once, in a former lifetime,
'Twas here I broke my heart.

V

In eons of the senses,
My spirit knew of yore,
I found the Isle of Circe
And felt her magic lore;
And still the soul remembers
What I was once before.

192

She gave me flowers to smell of
That wizard branches bore,
Of weird and wondrous beauty,
Whose stems dripped human gore—
Their scent when I remember
I know that world once more.

She gave me fruits to eat of
That grew beside the shore,
Of necromantic ripeness,
With human flesh at core—
Their taste when I remember
I know that life once more.

And then, behold! a serpent,
That glides my face before,
With eyes of tears and fire
That glare me o'er and o'er—
I look into its eyeballs,
And know myself once more.

VI

I have looked in the eyes of Poesy,
And sat in Song's high place;
And the beautiful Spirits of Music
Have spoken me face to face;

193

Yet here in my soul there is sorrow
They never can name or trace.

I have walked with the glamour Gladness,
And dreamed with the shadow Sleep;
And the presences, Love and Knowledge,
Have smiled in my heart's red keep;
Yet here in my soul there is sorrow
For the depth of their gaze too deep.

The love and the hope God grants me,
The beauty that lures me on,
And the dreams of folly and wisdom
That thoughts of the spirit don,
Are but masks of an ancient sorrow
Of a life long dead and gone.

Was it sin? or a crime forgotten?
Of a love that loved too well?
That sat on a throne of fire
A thousand years in Hell?
That the soul with its nameless sorrow
Remembers but can not tell?

University of Virginia Library

INTIMATIONS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI