Poems by Madison Julius Cawein Part 27

The shivering wind sits in the oaks, whose limbs, Twisted and tortured, nevermore are still; Grief and decay sit with it; they, whose chill Autumnal touch makes hectic-red the rims Of all the oak leaves; desolating, dims The ageratum's blue that banks the rill; And splits the milkweed's pod upon the hill, And shakes it free of the last seed that swims.

Down goes the day despondent to its close: And now the sunset's hands of copper build A tower of bra.s.s, behind whose burning bars The day, in fierce, barbarian repose, Like some imprisoned Inca sits, hate-filled, Crowned with the gold corymbus of the stars.

II

There is a booming in the forest boughs; Tremendous feet seem trampling through the trees: The storm is at his wildman revelries, And earth and heaven echo his carouse.

Night reels with tumult; and, from out her house Of cloud, the moon looks,--like a face one sees In nightmare,--hurrying, with pale eyes that freeze Stooping above with white, malignant brows.

The isolated oak upon the hill, That seemed, at sunset, in terrific lands A t.i.tan head black in a sea of blood, Now seems a monster harp, whose wild strings thrill To the vast fingering of innumerable hands-- Spirits of tempest and of solitude.

THE DEATH OF LOVE

So Love is dead, the Love we knew of old!

And in the sorrow of our hearts' hushed halls A lute lies broken and a flower falls; Love's house stands empty and his hearth lies cold.

Lone in dim places, where sweet vows were told, In walks grown desolate, by ruined walls Beauty decays; and on their pedestals Dreams crumble and th' immortal G.o.ds are mold.

Music is slain or sleeps; one voice alone, One voice awakes, and like a wandering ghost Haunts all the echoing chambers of the Past-- The voice of Memory, that stills to stone The soul that hears; the mind, that, utterly lost, Before its beautiful presence stands aghast.

UNANSWERED

How long ago it is since we went Maying!

Since she and I went Maying long ago!-- The years have left my forehead lined, I know, Have thinned my hair around the temples graying.

Ah, time will change us: yea, I hear it saying-- "She too grows old: the face of rose and snow Has lost its freshness: in the hair's brown glow Some strands of silver sadly, too, are straying.

The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled, Has lost the litheness of its loveliness: And all the gladness that her blue eyes held Tears and the world have hardened with distress."-- "True! true!" I answer, "O ye years that part!

These things are chaned--but is her heart, her heart?"

UNCALLED

As one, who, journeying westward with the sun, Beholds at length from the up-towering hills, Far-off, a land unspeakable beauty fills, Circean peaks and vales of Avalon: And, sinking weary, watches, one by one, The big seas beat between; and knows it skills No more to try; that now, as Heaven wills, This is the helpless end, that all is done: So 'tis with him, whom long a vision led In quest of Beauty; and who finds at last She lies beyond his effort; all the waves Of all the world between them: while the dead, The myriad dead, who people all the past With failure, hail him from forgotten graves.