Myth and Romance Part 1

Myth and Romance.

by Madison Cawein.

_PROEM._

_There is no rhyme that is half so sweet As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat; There is no metre that's half so fine As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine; And the loveliest lyric I ever heard Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.-- If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach My heart their beautiful parts of speech.

And the natural art that they say these with, My soul would sing of beauty and myth In a rhyme and a metre that none before Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore, And the world would be richer one poet the more._

VISIONS AND VOICES

_Myth and Romance_

I

When I go forth to greet the glad-faced Spring, Just at the time of opening apple-buds, When brooks are laughing, winds are whispering, On babbling hillsides or in warbling woods, There is an unseen presence that eludes:-- Perhaps a Dryad, in whose tresses cling The loamy odors of old solitudes, Who, from her beechen doorway, calls; and leads My soul to follow; now with dimpling words Of leaves; and now with syllables of birds; While here and there--is it her limbs that swing?

Or restless sunlight on the moss and weeds?

II

Or, haply, 't is a Naiad now who slips, Like some white lily, from her fountain's gla.s.s, While from her dripping hair and b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hips, The moisture rains cool music on the gra.s.s.

Her have I heard and followed, yet, alas!

Have seen no more than the wet ray that dips The shivered waters, wrinkling where I pa.s.s; But, in the liquid light, where she doth hide, I have beheld the azure of her gaze Smiling; and, where the orbing ripple plays, Among her minnows I have heard her lips, Bubbling, make merry by the waterside.

III

Or now it is an Oread--whose eyes Are constellated dusk--who stands confessed, As naked as a flow'r; her heart's surprise, Like morning's rose, mantling her brow and breast: She, shrinking from my presence, all distressed Stands for a startled moment ere she flies, Her deep hair blowing, up the mountain crest, Wild as a mist that trails along the dawn.

And is't her footfalls lure me? or the sound Of airs that stir the crisp leaf on the ground?

And is't her body glimmers on yon rise?

Or dog-wood blossoms snowing on the lawn?

IV

Now't is a Satyr piping serenades On a slim reed. Now Pan and Faun advance Beneath green-hollowed roofs of forest glades, Their feet gone mad with music: now, perchance, Sylva.n.u.s sleeping, on whose leafy trance The Nymphs stand gazing in dim ambuscades Of sun-embodied perfume.--Myth, Romance, Where'er I turn, reach out bewildering arms, Compelling me to follow. Day and night I hear their voices and behold the light Of their divinity that still evades, And still allures me in a thousand forms.

_Genius Loci_

I

What wood-G.o.d, on this water's mossy curb, Lost in reflections of earth's loveliness, Did I, just now, unconsciously disturb?

I, who haphazard, wandering at a guess, Came on this spot, wherein, with gold and flame Of buds and blooms, the season writes its name.-- Ah, me! could I have seen him ere alarm Of my approach aroused him from his calm!

As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap, Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warm As wildwood rose, and filled the air with balm Of his sweet breath as with ethereal sap.

II

Does not the moss retain some vague impress, Green dented in, of where he lay or trod?

Do not the flow'rs, so reticent, confess With conscious looks the contact of a G.o.d?

Does not the very water garrulously Boast the indulgence of a deity?

And, hark! in burly beech and sycamore How all the birds proclaim it! and the leaves Rejoice with clappings of their myriad hands!

And shall not I believe, too, and adore, With such wide proof?--Yea, though my soul perceives No evident presence, still it understands.

III

And for a while it moves me to lie down Here on the spot his G.o.d-head sanctified: Mayhap some dream he dreamed may lingert brown And young as joy, around the forestside; Some dream within whose heart lives no disdain For such as I whose love is sweet and sane; That may repeat, so none but I may hear-- As one might tell a pearl-strung rosary-- Some epic that the trees have learned to croon, Some lyric whispered in the wild-flower's ear, Whose murmurous lines are sung by bird and bee, And all the insects of the night and noon.

IV

For, all around me, upon field and hill, Enchantment lies as of mysterious flutes; As if the music of a G.o.d's good-will Had taken on material attributes In blooms, like chords; and in the water-gleam, That runs its silvery scales from stream to stream; In sunbeam bars, up which the b.u.t.terfly, A golden note, vibrates then flutters on-- Inaudible tunes, blown on the pipes of Pan, That have a.s.sumed a visible ent.i.ty, And drugged the air with beauty so, a Faun, Behold, I seem, and am no more a man.

_The Rain-Crow_

I

Can freckled August,--drowsing warm and blonde Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead, In her hot hair the oxeyed daisies wound,-- O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heed To thee? when no plumed weed, no feather'd seed Blows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond, That gleams like flint between its rim of gra.s.ses, Through which the dragonfly forever pa.s.ses Like splintered diamond.

II

Drouth weights the trees, and from the farmhouse eaves The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day, Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leaves Limp with the heat--a league of rutty way-- Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves-- Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain, In thirsty heaven or on burning plain, That thy keen eye perceives?

III