Poems by Madison Julius Cawein Part 5

You may not know her from the stone So still she sits who does not stir, Thinking of this one thing alone-- The love that never came to her.

A TWILIGHT MOTH

Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on its state Of gold and purple in the marbled west, Thou comest forth like some embodied trait, Or dim conceit, a lily bud confessed; Or of a rose the visible wish; that, white, Goes softly messengering through the night, Whom each expectant flower makes its guest.

All day the primroses have thought of thee, Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat; All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly Veiled snowy faces,--that no bee might greet, Or b.u.t.terfly that, weighed with pollen, pa.s.sed;-- Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last, Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.

Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day's Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays Nocturnes of fragrance, thy wing'd shadow links In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith; O bearer of their order's shibboleth, Like some pale symbol fluttering o'er these pinks.

What dost them whisper in the balsam's ear That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's,-- A syllabled silence that no man may hear,-- As dreamily upon its stem it rocks?

What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant, Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant, Some specter of some perished flower of phlox?

O voyager of that universe which lies Between the four walls of this garden fair,-- Whose constellations are the fireflies That wheel their instant courses everywhere,-- Mid faery firmaments wherein one sees Mimic Bootes and the Pleiades, Thou steerest like some faery ship of air.

Gnome-wrought of moonbeam-fluff and gossamer, Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest Mab or King Oberon; or, haply, her His queen, t.i.tania, on some midnight quest.-- Oh for the herb, the magic euphrasy, That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah me!

And all that world at which my soul hath guessed!

THE OLD FARM

Dormered and verandaed, cool, Locust-girdled, on the hill; Stained with weather-wear, and dull- Streak'd with lichens; every sill Thresholding the beautiful;

I can see it standing there, Brown above the woodland deep, Wrapped in lights of lavender, By the warm wind rocked asleep, Violet shadows everywhere.

I remember how the Spring, Liberal-lapped, bewildered its Acred orchards, murmuring, Kissed to blossom; budded bits Where the wood-thrush came to sing.

Barefoot Spring, at first who trod, Like a beggermaid, adown The wet woodland; where the G.o.d, With the bright sun for a crown And the firmament for rod,

Met her; clothed her; wedded her; Her Cophetua: when, lo!

All the hill, one breathing blur, Burst in beauty; gleam and glow Blent with pearl and lavender.

Seckel, blackheart, palpitant Rained their bleaching strays; and white Snowed the damson, bent aslant; Rambow-tree and romanite Seemed beneath deep drifts to pant.

And it stood there, brown and gray, In the bee-boom and the bloom, In the shadow and the ray, In the pa.s.sion and perfume, Grave as age among the gay.

Wild with laughter romped the clear Boyish voices round its walls; Rare wild-roses were the dear Girlish faces in its halls, Music-haunted all the year.

Far before it meadows full Of green pennyroyal sank; Clover-dotted as with wool Here and there; with now a bank Hot of color; and the cool

Dark-blue shadows unconfined Of the clouds rolled overhead: Clouds, from which the summer wind Blew with rain, and freshly shed Dew upon the flowerkind.

Where through mint and gypsy-lily Runs the rocky brook away, Musical among the hilly Solitudes,--its flashing spray Sunlight-dashed or forest-stilly,--

Buried in deep sa.s.safras, Memory follows up the hill Still some cowbell's mellow bra.s.s, Where the ruined water-mill Looms, half-hid in cane and gra.s.s....

Oh, the farmhouse! is it set On the hilltop still? 'mid musk Of the meads? where, violet, Deepens all the dreaming dusk, And the locust-trees hang wet.

While the sunset, far and low, On its westward windows dashes Primrose or pomegranate glow; And above, in glimmering splashes, Lilac stars the heavens sow.

Sleeps it still among its roses,-- Oldtime roses? while the choir Of the lonesome insects dozes: And the white moon, drifting higher, O'er its mossy roof reposes-- Sleeps it still among its roses?

THE WHIPPOORWILL

I

Above lone woodland ways that led To dells the stealthy twilights tread The west was hot geranium red; And still, and still, Along old lanes the locusts sow With cl.u.s.tered pearls the Maytimes know, Deep in the crimson afterglow, We heard the homeward cattle low, And then the far-off, far-off woe Of "whippoorwill!" of "whippoorwill!"

II

Beneath the idle beechen boughs We heard the far bells of the cows Come slowly jangling towards the house; And still, and still, Beyond the light that would not die Out of the scarlet-haunted sky; Beyond the evening-star's white eye Of glittering chalcedony, Drained out of dusk the plaintive cry Of "whippoorwill," of "whippoorwill."

III

And in the city oft, when swims The pale moon o'er the smoke that dims Its disc, I dream of wildwood limbs; And still, and still, I seem to hear, where shadows grope Mid ferns and flowers that dewdrops rope,-- Lost in faint deeps of heliotrope Above the clover-sweetened slope,-- Retreat, despairing, past all hope, The whippoorwill, the whippoorwill.

REVEALMENT

A sense of sadness in the golden air; A pensiveness, that has no part in care, As if the Season, by some woodland pool, Braiding the early blossoms in her hair, Seeing her loveliness reflected there, Had sighed to find herself so beautiful.

A breathlessness; a feeling as of fear; Holy and dim, as of a mystery near, As if the World, about us, whispering went With lifted finger and hand-hollowed ear, Hearkening a music, that we cannot hear, Haunting the quickening earth and firmament.

A prescience of the soul that has no name; Expectancy that is both wild and tame, As if the Earth, from out its azure ring Of heavens, looked to see, as white as flame,-- As Perseus once to chained Andromeda came,-- The swift, divine revealment of the Spring.

HEPATICAS

In the frail hepaticas,-- That the early Springtide tossed, Sapphire-like, along the ways Of the woodlands that she crossed,-- I behold, with other eyes, Footprints of a dream that flies.

One who leads me; whom I seek: In whose loveliness there is All the glamour that the Greek Knew as wind-borne Artemis.-- I am mortal. Woe is me!

Her sweet immortality!

Spirit, must I always fare, Following thy averted looks?

Now thy white arm, now thy hair, Glimpsed among the trees and brooks?

Thou who hauntest, whispering, All the slopes and vales of Spring.

Cease to lure! or grant to me All thy beauty! though it pain, Slay with splendor utterly!

Flash revealment on my brain!

And one moment let me see All thy immortality!