Poems by Madison Julius Cawein Part 16

DAYS AND DAYS

The days that clothed white limbs with heat, And rocked the red rose on their breast, Have pa.s.sed with amber-sandaled feet Into the ruby-gated west.

These were the days that filled the heart With overflowing riches of Life, in whose soul no dream shall start But hath its origin in love.

Now come the days gray-huddled in The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip; Who pin beneath a gypsy chin The frosty marigold and hip.

The days, whose forms fall shadowy Athwart the heart: whose misty breath Shapes saddest sweets of memory Out of the bitterness of death.

AUTUMN SORROW

Ah me! too soon the autumn comes Among these purple-plaintive hills!

Too soon among the forest gums Premonitory flame she spills, Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims With wet the moonflower's elfin moons; And, like exhausted starlight, dims The last slim lily-disk; and swoons With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies, And build the west's cadaverous fires, Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes, And hands that wake an ancient lyre, Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

THE TREE-TOAD

I

Secluded, solitary on some underbough, Or cradled in a leaf, 'mid glimmering light, Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching how The slow toadstool comes bulging, moony white, Through loosening loam; or how, against the night, The glowworm gathers silver to endow The darkness with; or how the dew conspires To hang, at dusk, with lamps of chilly fires Each blade that shrivels now.

II

O vague confederate of the whippoorwill, Of owl and cricket and the katydid!

Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrill Vibrating note and send'st it where, half hid In cedars, twilight sleeps--each azure lid Drooping a line of golden eyeball still.-- Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voice Within the Garden of the Hours apoise On dusk's deep daffodil.

III

Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over.

Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon Of twilight's hush, and little intimate Of eve's first fluttering star and delicate Round rim of rainy moon!

IV

Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour When they may gambol under haw and thorn, Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower?

Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower The liriodendron is? from whence is borne The elfin music of thy bell's deep ba.s.s, To summon Faeries to their starlit maze, To summon them or warn.

THE CHIPMUNK

I

He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence, Or on the fallen tree,--brown as a leaf Fall stripes with russet,--gambols down the dense Green twilight of the woods. We see not whence He comes, nor whither (in a time so brief) He vanishes--swift carrier of some Fay, Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief-- A goblin glimpse upon some wildwood way.

II

What harlequin mood of nature qualified Him so with happiness? and limbed him with Such young activity as winds, that ride The ripples, have, dancing on every side?

As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight, Gnome-like, in darkness,--like a moonlight myth,-- Lairing in labyrinths of the under night.

III

Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a hole Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps; Lulled by near noises of the laboring mole Tunneling its mine--like some ungainly Troll-- Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps Picking its rusty and monotonous lute; Or slower sounds of gra.s.s that creeps and creeps, And trees unrolling mighty root on root.

IV

Such is the music of his sleeping hours.

Day hath another--'tis a melody He trips to, made by the a.s.sembled flowers, And light and fragrance laughing 'mid the bowers, And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree.

Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze (The silent music of Earth's ecstasy) The Satyr's soul, the Faun of cla.s.sic days.

THE WILD IRIS

That day we wandered 'mid the hills,--so lone Clouds are not lonelier, the forest lay In emerald darkness round us. Many a stone And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way: And many a bird the glimmering light along Showered the golden bubbles of its song.

Then in the valley, where the brook went by, Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,-- An isolated slip of fallen sky, Epitomizing heaven in its sum,-- An iris bloomed--blue, as if, flower-disguised, The gaze of Spring had there materialized.

I have forgotten many things since then-- Much beauty and much happiness and grief; And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men, Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief.

"'Tis winter now," so says each barren bough; And face and hair proclaim 'tis winter now.

I would forget the gladness of that spring!

I would forget that day when she and I, Between the bird-song and the blossoming, Went hand in hand beneath the soft May sky!-- Much is forgotten, yea--and yet, and yet, The things we would we never can forget.

Nor I how May then minted treasuries Of crowfoot gold; and molded out of light The sorrel's cups, whose elfin chalices Of limpid spar were streaked with rosy white: Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort, And mandrake moons with which her brows were girt.

But most of all, yea, it were well for me, Me and my heart, that I forget that flower, The blue wild iris, azure fleur-de-lis, That she and I together found that hour.

Its recollection can but emphasize The pain of loss, remindful of her eyes.

DROUTH

I

The hot sunflowers by the glaring pike Lift shields of sultry bra.s.s; the teasel tops, Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops, The locusts cymbal; now gra.s.shoppers beat Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,-- Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,-- An empty wagon rattles through the heat.

II

Where now the blue wild iris? flowers whose mouths Are moist and musky? Where the sweet-breathed mint, That made the brook-bank herby? Where the South's Wild morning-glories, rich in hues, that hint At coming showers that the rainbows tint?

Where all the blossoms that the wildwood knows?

The frail oxalis hidden in its leaves; The Indian-pipe, pale as a soul that grieves; The freckled touch-me-not and forest rose.