The poems of Madison Cawein

He stood where all the rare voluptuous west,
Like some mad Mænad, wine-stained to the breast,
Laughed with delirious lips of ruby must,
Wherein, it seemed, the fierceness of all lust
Burnt like a feverish wine, exultant whirled
High in a golden goblet, gem-impearled.
And all the west, and all the amorous west,
Caressed his beauty, dreamed upon his breast;
And there he bloomed, a thing of rose and snows,
A passion-flower of men of snowy rose,
Beneath the casement of her old red tower,
Whereat the lady sat, as fair a flower
As ever bloomed in Provence; and the lace
Mist-like about her hair, half-hid her face
And the emotions that his singing raised,
So that he knew not if she blamed or praised.
And where the white rose, climbing over and over

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Up to her wide-flung lattice, like a lover,
And stalks of lavender and fleurs-de-lis
Held honey-cups up for the violent bee,
Within her garden by the ivied wall,
Where many a fountain, falling musical,
Flamed rubies in the eve against it flung,
Like some wild nightingale the minstrel sung:—

“The passion, oh, of gently smoothing through
Long locks of brown, soft hands as lovers do!
Thy dark, deep locks, rich-jeweled as the dusk
Is scintillant with stars! Oh, frenzy rare
Of clasping slender fingers round thy hair!—
What balm, what breath of winds from summer seas!
What silken softness and what sorceries
Doth it contain!—Ah God! ah God! to lie
Wrapped strand on strand deep in thy hair and die!
Ay me, oh, ay!

“Oh, happy madness and, oh, rapturous pain,
With white hands smoothing back thy locks, to drain
Into thine eyes my soul!—Oh, perilous eyes!
As agates polished; where the thoughts that rise,

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Within thy heart are imaged; thoughts that pass
As magic pictures in a witch's glass.—
What siren sweetness, wailed to lyres of gold,
What naked beauty that the Greeks of old,
God-bosomed, through the bursting foam did see,
Could sway my soul with half their mastery!
Ay, ay, ay me!

“Far o'er the sea, of old time, once a witch,
The fair Ææan, Circe, dwelt; so rich
In marvellous magic, she was like a god,
And made or unmade mortals with a nod:
Turned all her lovers into bird or brute.—
More cruel thou, who mak'st my heart a lute,
That lies before thee, hushed and sadly mute!
Who let'st it lie, yet from its soul might draw
More magic music than Acrasia,
Or Circe knew, that filled them with its bliss,
Didst thou but take me to thine arms and kiss!
Ay, ay, I wis!”

Knee-deep amid the dews, the flowers there,
Beneath the stars that now were everywhere
Flung through the perfumed heavens of angel hands,

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And, linked in tangled labyrinths and bands
Of soft rose-hearted flame and glimmer, rolled
One vast immensity of mazy gold,
He sang; like some hurt creature, desolate,
Heart-aching for the loss of some wild mate
Hounded and speared to death of heartless men
In old romantic Arden waste; and then
Turned to the moon that, like a polished stone
Of precious worth, low in the heaven shone,
A pale poetic face and passed away
From the urned terrace and the fountains' spray.

And that fair lady in dim drapery,
High in the old red tower—did she sigh
To see him fading through the purple night,
His lute faint-twinkling in th' uncertain light,
Then lost amid the rose-pleached avenues,
Dark walls of ivy, hedged with low-clipped yews?
And left alone with but the whispering rush
Of fountains and the evening's hyacinth hush,
Did she complain unto the stars above,
All the lone night, of that forbidden love?
Or down the rush-strewn stairs, where arras old
Waved with her mantled passage, fold on fold,
Beyond the tower's iron-studded gate,

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That snarled with rust, did she steal forth and wait
Deep in the dingled lavender and rose
For him, her troubadour? . . . . Who knows? who knows?

University of Virginia Library

THE TROUBADOUR