The poems of Madison Cawein

The soul of love is harmony: as such
All melodies, that with wide pinions beat
Against the heart's red gateway to the soul,—
That, opening, bids them enter in and sing,—
Are portions of the soul, and while they stay,
Lords of its action molding all at will.

There is a symphony, I know not whose,
That seems to bear my spirit far away,
To regions not of Earth nor yet of Heaven,
Where neither am I I, nor air, nor clay,
My soul, a portion of the waves of song,
Reverberating 'twixt the earth and moon.

First, sweeping marches, loud with martial boast,
Triumphal clamors and the shout of joy,
As when,—in bannered cities, welcoming home,—
Bright ranks of victory and cavalcades
Of splendid battle march to roll of drums
And clang of cymbals and sonorous horns.

154

Then sudden thunder; adverse hosts of storm;
And lightning cleaving the tempestuous gloom;
Earthquake, and roar of ruin as if Thebes
And Karnac crashed their Titan temples down,
Pillar and groinéd nave and fretted dome,
On all their gods of gold and worshippers.

Then from the wreck, unutterably slow,
An exhalation seems to beat, of sound,
An audible perfume; slowly as the fang
Of dusty gold the lily's cone puts forth
To drink the sunlight and to lure the bee:
A mist of music, delicate as the shapes
Who ride the rainbow bubbles of the foam
Of mountain cataracts; or, who, heeled with flame,
Wing-tipped with fire, make couriers of the winds,
And, zoned with opal, chariot the morning star.

Then soft complaints that fill the waiting heart
With dreams of love long-cherished; love-dreams found
On morning mountains, splendid with the dawn.
Then tender chords that weigh the eyelids down
With sleep's pale kisses, softer than the buds
That open to the spring, the kiss of May;

155

And sweeter than sweet vows of fondest faith
Kept evermore; or looks, whose witchery
Might lure old saints down to the lowest Hell
For one last glance: then notes like haunting eyes,
Great, melancholy eyes of love long lost,
Darker than night, and brimming o'er with dreams;
Or faces, stooping in a silver mist
At Care's thin brow, and gazing in his eyes,
Sad where he sits before the smouldering logs,
At Yuletide, when the sleet taps on the pane,
And all the loved are gone, and he 's alone,
Alone, save for the memories that rise
Faint in the ashes and the spark-starred smoke.

Then, from these chords, these mortal ecstasies,
Dim as the half-forgotten dreams of youth,
Voices of expectation chorus up,—
The diapason of a mighty choir,—
'Mid organ throbbings, ever beating low
Like the huge heart of Ocean; pulsings wove
Of deep, æolian thunders: and my soul
Seems wafted far beneath the sea of seas,
To chasms and caves of crystal, ocean-carved,
Filled with dark lamentations of the deep,

156

Deep, dolorous seas, that throb like some vast harp,
Wild, oceanic, and with stormy sighs
Of labyrinthine music shake the world.
One with the tumult,—under circling tiers
Of beryl and chrysoberyl, splashed and hung
Pale with pelagian gems and feathery shells,
And spars of moony radiance,—on I drift,
A voice 'mid voices, chord amid the chords,
A wave, a wild vibration of the strain,
Part of the ray, the rose of melody,
An utterance amid that utterance
Of choral harmony: now rising up,—
As 't were a spire of silver symphony
Blown from a reed of hollow pearl and fire
By some still spirit dwelling within the moon,—
To the vast vault of echoes: dying now
Down to the underworld of silence, deep
With wild, unburdened sobbings; then, once more,
Sweeping the vault with tumult, like a bird
With maddened wings, that beat and bleed in vain
Against the bars; or like the human soul,
Oppressed and bulked within its cage of clay,
That longs and strains to burst its bonds and soar.

157

Then tones that shape before my inner sight
The moonlit gardens of the spirit, Sleep,
Far on a star man's eyes have never seen:
White Sleep, who leads me 'mid her poppies, weighed
With dewy slumber; from whose chalices
She culls white dreams to lay on human hearts
In pearly clusters sparkling now with tears
And now with smiles; the blossoms of her soul.
She, on her shadowy pinions, winging high,
Bears me from pole to pole of her white star,
The continents like clouds beneath our feet,
The seas like mists; then drops me, meteor-like,
A million leagues, through all the gulfs of God,
Down, down to Earth again; a sound of stars,
Streaming from burning orbits into night,
About my soul, about my soul like fire.

Oh, then what agony and bitter woe,
Regret and noise of desolation, vast
As when all that one loves is torn away
Forever with “farewell forevermore”!
Oh, strife and panic of impending doom!
Wherein rush by pale brows with tresses torn;
Pale faces browed with raven, rended hair,
That cringe or fly before the wrath of God,
Or stand white-lifted to the bolts of Heaven,

158

Ploughing the tempest, chasmed with torrent flame
As 't were with rocking earthquake. All around
Ruin and terror, moans and awful eyes,
Fierce, moveless eyes that seem to curse their God:
Then sounds, as 't were, of burning tears that fall
Through blinding blackness: then—long thunder strokes
As of a bell that tolls “'T is Judgment Day!”
Sonorous bell-beats heard through night and storm,
O'er hands high lifted as it were in prayer
Or battling with their doom: still tolling on,
The knell of dying Earth and of the Dawn;
The Dawn that will not break, that comes no more;
Never again; the beautiful, wild Dawn,
The young, the holy, radiant and wonderful,
First born of Heaven's children, daughters of Light:
The Rose of God, the dream and youth of Day,
Whom Night hath slain and Darkness laid away,
Crying, “No more shall she awake the world!
No more! no more!—The Dawn, aurora-wreathed,
Lies dead with all her flow'rs! and Death and I,

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Darkness and Death, Lords of Oblivion,
Heart-shaking monarchs of the universe,
Throned on the ruins of the world, shall rule
From everlasting unto everlasting now!—
Look on our faces, Nations, and despair!”

University of Virginia Library

THE SYMPHONY