The poems of Madison Cawein

Hate, born of Wrath and mother red of Crime,
In Hell was whelped ere the hot hands of Time,
Artificer of God, had coined our world
Within the formless void, and round it furled
Its lordly raiment of the day and night,
And germed its womb with beauty and delight:
And Hell sent Hate to Earth, that it might use
And serve Hell's ends, filling with flame its cruse. . . .

For her half-brother Morgane had conceived
Unnatural hatred; so much so, she grieved,
Envious and jealous, for the high renown
And might the King had gathered round his crown
Through truth and honor. And who was it said,
“Those nearest to the crown are those to dread”?—
Warm in your breast a serpent, it will sting
The breast that warms it: and albeit the King
Knew of his sister's hate, he passed it by,
Thinking that love and kindness gradually

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Would win her heart to him. He little knew
The witch he dealt with, beautiful to view,
And all the poison she could stoop to brew.
She, who, well knowing how much mightier
The King than Accolon, rejoiced that her
Wits had secured from him Excalibur,
Without which, she was certain, in the joust
The King were as a foe unarmed. Her trust
Smiled, confident of conclusion: eloquent,
Within her, whispered of success, that lent
Her heart a lofty hope; and at large eyes
Piled up imperial dreams of power and prize.
And in her carven chamber, oaken-dark,
Traceried and arrased,—when the barren park
Dripped, drenched with autumn,—for November lay
Swathed frostily in fog on every spray,—
She at her tri-arched casement sate one night,
Ere yet came courier from that test of might.
Her lord in slumber and the castle full
Of drowsy silence and the rain's dull lull:
“The King removed?—my soul!—he is removed!
Ere now dog-dead he lies. His sword hath proved
Too much for him. Yet! let him lie in state,
The great king, Arthur!—But, regenerate,

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Now crown our other monarch, Accolon!
And, with him, Love, the ermined! balmy son
Of gods, not men; and nobler hence to rule.
Love, Love almighty; beautiful to school
The hearts and souls of mortals!—Then this realm's
Iron-huskéd flower of war,—that overwhelms
The world with havoc,—will explode and bloom
The amaranth, peace, with love for its perfume.
And then, O Launcelots and Tristrams, vowed
To Gueneveres and Isouds,—now allowed
No pleasure but what hour by stolen hour,
In secret places, brings to flaming flower,—
You shall have feasts of passion evermore!
And out-thrust Love, now shivering at the door,
No more shalt stand neglected and cast off,
Insulted and derided; and the scoff
Of War, the bully, whose hands of insult fling
Off, for the iron of arms, thy hands that cling
About his brutal feet, that crush thy face,
Bleeding, into the dust.—Here, in War's place,
We will erect a shrine of sacrifice;
Love's sacrifice; a shrine of purest price;

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Where each shall lay his heart and each his soul
For Love, for earthly Love! who shall control
The world, and make it as the Heaven whole;
Being to it its stars and moon and sun,
Its firmament and all its lights in one.
And if by such Love Heaven should be debarred,
Its God, its spheres, with spiritual love instarred,
Hell will be Heaven, our Heaven, while Love shall thus
Remain earth Love, that God encouraged in us.

“And now for Urience, my gaunt old lord!—
There lies my worry.—Yet, hath he no sword
No dangerous dagger I, hid softly here,
Sharp as an adder's fang? or for his ear
No instant poison to insinuate
Ice in his pulses, and with death abate?”
So did she then determine; on that night
Of lonely autumn, when no haggard, white,
Wan, watery moon dreamed on the streaming pane;
But, on the leads, beat the incessant rain,
And the lamenting wind wailed wild among
The trees and turrets, like a phantom throng.

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So grew her face severe as skies that take
Suggestions of far storm whose thunders shake
The distant hills with wrath, and cleave with fire
A pine the moaning forest mourns as sire—
So touched her countenance that dark intent:
And in still eyes her thoughts were evident,
As in dark waters, luminous and deep,
The heavens glass themselves when o'er them sweep
The clouds of storm and austere stars they keep,—
Ghostly and gray,—locked in their steadfast gloom.
Then, as if some great wind had swept the room,
Silent, intense, she rose up from her seat.
As if dim arms had made her a retreat,
Secret as thought to move in, like a ghost,
Noiseless as sleep and subtle as the frost,
Poised like a light and borne as carefully,
She trod the gusty hall where shadowy
The hangings rolled a dim Pendragon war.
And there the mail of Urience shone. A star,
Glimmering above, a dying cresset dropped

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From the stone vault and flared. And here she stopped,
And took the sword, fresh-burnished by his page,
Long as a flame of pale, arrested rage.—
For she had thought that, when they found him dead,
His sword laid by him on the bloody bed
Would be convictive that his own hand had
Done him this violence when fever-mad.
The sword she took; and to the chamber, where
King Urience slept, she glided; like an air,
Smooth in seductive sendal; or a fit
Of faery song, a wicked charm in it,
That slays; an incantation full of guile.
She paused upon his threshold; for a while
Listened; and, sure he slept, stole in and stood
Crouched o'er his couch. About her heart the blood
Caught, strangling; then rose throbbing, thud on thud,
Up to her wide-stretched eyes, and up and up,
As wine might, whirling wildly in a cup.

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Then came rare Recollection, with a mouth.
Sweet as the honeyed sunbeams of the South
Trickling through perplexed ripples of the leaves;
To whose faint form a veil of starshine cleaves
Intricate gauze from memoried eyes to feet—
Feet softer than the sifted snows and fleet
To come and go and airy anxiously.
She, trembling to her, like a flower a bee
Nests in and makes an audible mouth of musk,
Lisping a downy message to the dusk,
Laid lips to ears and languaged memories of
Now hateful Urience:—How her maiden love
Had left Caerleon secretly for Gore,
With him, one day of autumn. How a boar,
Wild as the wildness of the solitude,
Raged at her from a cavern of the wood,
That, crimson-creepered, yawned the bristling curse
Murderous upon her. As her steed grew worse
And, terrified, fled snorting down the dell,
How she had flung herself from out the selle,
In fear, upon a bank of springy moss,
Where she lay swooning: in an utter loss
Of mind and limbs; wherein she seemed to see,

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Or saw in horror, half unconsciously,—
As one who pants beneath an incubus
And strives to shriek or move, delirious,—
The monster-thing thrust tow'rds her, tusked and fanged,
And hideous snouted: how the whole wood clanged
And buzzed and boomed a hundred sounds and lights
Lawless about her brain,—like leaves wild nights
Of hurricane harvest, shouting.—Then it seemed
A fury thundered 'twixt them—and she screamed
As round her flew th' uprooted loam that held
Leaves, twigs and matted moss; and, clanging, swelled
Continual echoes with the thud of strife,
And groan of man and brute that warred for life:
How all the air, gone mad with foam and forms,
Spun froth and, 'twixt her, wrestled hair and arms,
And hoofs and feet that crushed the leaves and shred,

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Whirling them wildly, brown, and yellow, and red.
And how she rose and leaned her throbbing head,
With all its uncoifed braids of raven hair
Disheveled, on one arm,—as white and fair
And smooth as milk,—and saw, as through a haze,
The brute thing throttled and the frowning face
Of Urience bent above it, browed with might;
One red swol'n arm, that pinned the hairy fright,
Strong as a god's, iron at the gullet's brawn:
Dug in its midriff, the close knees, updrawn,
Wedged, as with steel, the glutton sides that strove,—
A shaggy bulk,—with hoofs that drove and drove.
And then she saw how Urience swiftly slipped
One arm, the monster's tearing tusks had ripped
And ribboned redly, to the dagger's hilt,—
Which at his hip hung long, its haft gold-gilt;—
Flame-like it flashed; and then, as bright as ice,

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Plunged, and replunged; again, now twice, now thrice;
And the huge boar, stretched out in sullen death,
Lay, bubbling blood, with harsh, laborious breath.
Then how he brought her water from a well,
That rustled freshly near them as it fell
From its full-mantled urn, in his deep casque,
And begged her drink; then bathed her brow, a task
That had accompanying tears of joy and vows
Of love, and intercourse of eyes and brows,
And many kisses: then, beneath the boughs,
His wound dressed, and her steed still violent
From fear, she mounted and behind him bent
And clasped him on the same steed; and they went
On through the gold wood tow'rds the golden west,
Till, on one low hill's forest-covered crest,
Gray from the gold, his castle's battlements pressed.
And then she felt she'd loved him till had come
Fame of the love of Isoud, whom, from home,
Tristram had brought across the Irish foam;
And Guenevere's for Launcelot of the Lake:

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Then how her thought from these did seem to take
Reflex of longing; and within her wake
Desire for some great lover who should slake;
And such found Accolon.

And then she thought
How far she'd fallen, and how darkly fraught
With consequence was this. Then what distress
Were hers and his—her lover's—and success
How doubly difficult if, Arthur slain,
King Urience lived to assert his right to reign.
So she stood pondering with the sword; her lips
Breathless, and tight as were her finger-tips
About the weapon's hilt. And so she sighed,
“Nay, nay! too long hast lived who shouldst have died
Even in the womb, my sorrow! who for years
Hast leashed my life to thine, a bond of tears,
A weight of care, a knot that thus I part!
Thus harshly sever! Ugly that thou art
Into the elements naked!”

O'er his heart
The long blade paused and—then descended hard.

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Unfleshed, she flung it by her murdered lord,
And watched the blood spread darkly through the sheet,
And drip, a horror, at impassive feet
Pooling the polished oak. Regretless she
Stood, and relentless; in her ecstasy
A lovely devil: demon crowned, that cried
For Accolon, with passion that defied
Control in all her senses; clamorous as
A torrent in a cavernous mountain pass
That sweeps to wreck and ruin; at that hour
So swept her longing tow'rds her paramour.
Him whom, King Arthur had commanded when
Borne from the lists, she should receive again;
Her lover, her dear Accolon, as was just,
As was but due her for her love—and lust.
And while she stood revolving if her deed's
Secret were safe, behold! a noise of steeds,
Arms, jingling stirrups, voices loud that cursed
Fierce in the northern court. To her, athirst
For him her lover, war and power it spoke,
Him victor and so king. And then awoke
Desire to see and greet him: and she fled,
Like some wild spectre, down the stairs; and, red,
Burst on a glare of links and glittering mail,

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That shrunk her eyes and made her senses quail.
To her a bulk of iron, bearded fierce,
Down from a steaming steed into her ears,
“This from the King, O Queen!” laughed harsh and hoarse:
Two henchmen beckoned, who pitched sheer, with force,
Loud clanging at her feet, hacked, hewn, and red,
Crusted with blood, a knight in armor—dead:
Her Accolon, flung in his battered arms
By what to her seemed fiends and demon forms,
Wild-torched, who mocked; then, with the parting scoff,
“This from the King!” phantoms in fog, rode off.
[OMITTED]
And what remains?—From Camelot to Gore
That night she, wailing, fled; thence, to the shore,—
As old romances tell,—of Avalon;
Where she hath majesty gold-crowned and wan:
Clothed dark in cypress, still her lovely face

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Is young and queenly; sweeter though in grace,
And softer for the sorrow there; the trace
Of immemorial tears as for some crime,
Attempted or committed at some time,
Some old, unhappy time of long ago,
That haunts her eyes and fills them with its woe:
Sad eyes, dark, future-fixed, expectant of
That far-off hour awaited of her love,
When the forgiving Arthur cometh and
Shall rule, dim King, o'er all that golden land,
That Isle of Avalon, where none grows old,
Where spring is ever, and never a wind blows cold;
That lifts its mountains from forgotten seas
Of surgeless turquoise deep with mysteries.—
And so was seen Morgana nevermore,
Save once, when from the Cornwall coast she bore
The wounded Arthur from that last fought fight
Of Camlan in a black barge into night.
But some may see her, with a palfried band
Of serge-stoled maidens, through the drowsy land
Of autumn glimmer,—when are sadly strewn

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The red leaves, and, broad in the east, the moon
Hangs, full of frost, a lustrous globe of gleams,—
Faint on the mooning hills as shapes in dreams.

University of Virginia Library

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