The poems of Madison Cawein

The wind blew free that morn that we,
High-hearted, sailed away;
Bound for that Island named the Blest,
Remote within the unknown West,
Beyond the golden day.

There, we were told, each dream of old,
Each deed and dream of youth,
Each myth of life's divinest prime,
And every romance, dear to time,
Put on immortal truth.

The love undone; the aim unwon;
The hope that turned despair;
The thought unborn; the dream that died;
The unattained, unsatisfied,
Should be accomplished there.

So we believed. And, undeceived,
A little crew set sail;
A little crew with hearts as stout
As any yet that faced a doubt
And tore away its veil.

411

And time went by; and sea and sky
Had worn our masts and decks;
When, lo! one morn with canvas torn,
A phantom ship, we came forlorn
Into the Sea of Wrecks.

There, day and night, the mist lay white,
And pale stars shone at noon;
The sea around was foam and fire,
And overhead hung, thin as wire,
A will-o'-wisp of moon.

And through the mist, all white and whist,
Gaunt ships, with sea-weed wound,
With rotting masts, upon whose spars
The corposants lit spectre stars,
Sailed by without a sound.

And all about,—now in, now out,—
Their ancient hulls, was shed
The worm-like glow of green decay,
That writhed and glimmered in the gray
Of canvas overhead.

And each that passed, in hull and mast,
Seemed that wild ship that flees
Before the tempest—seamen tell—

412

Deep-cargoed with the curse of Hell,
Through roaring rain and seas.

Ay! many a craft we left abaft
Upon that haunted sea;
But never a hulk that clewed a sail,
Or waved a hand, or answered hail,
And never a man saw we.

At last we came where—pouring flame—
In darkness and in storm,
Vast a volcano westward reared
An awful summit, lava-seared,
Like some terrific arm.

And we could feel beneath our keel
The ocean throb and swell,
As if the Earthquake there uncoiled
Its monster bulk, or Titans toiled
At the red heart of Hell.

Like madmen now we turned our prow
North, towards an ocean weird
Of Northern Lights and icy blasts;
And for ten moons with reeling masts
And leaking hold we steered.

413

Then black as blood through streaming scud
Land loomed above our boom,
An isle of iron gulfs and crags
And cataracts, like wind-tossed rags,
And caverns lost in gloom.

And burning white on every height,
And white in every cave,
A naked spirit, like a flame,
Now gleamed, now vanished; went and came
Above the windy wave.

No mortal thing of foot or wing
Made glad its steep or strand;
But voices, voices seemingly—
Vague voices of the sky and sea—
Peopled the demon land.

Yea, everywhere, in earth and air,
A lamentation wept;
That, gathering strength above, below,
Now like a mighty wind of woe,
Around the island swept.

And in that sound, it seemed, was bound
All life's despair of art;
The bitterness of joy that died;

414

The anguish of faiths crucified;
And love that broke its heart.

The ghost it seemed of all we'd dreamed,
Of all we had desired;
That—turned a curse, an empty cry—
With wailing words went trailing by
In hope's dead robes attired.

And could this be the land that we
Had sought for soon and late?
That Island of the Blest, the fair,
Where we had hoped to ease our care
And end the fight with fate.

O lie that lured! O pain endured!
O toil and tears and thirst!
Where we had looked for blesséd ground
The Island of the Damned we found,
And in the end—were curst!

University of Virginia Library

THE ISLE OF VOICES