Madison Cawein - One Day & Another - A Lyrical Eclogue

Was it in the golden ages
Or the iron? – I had heard, —
In the prophecy of sages, —
Haply, how had come a bird,
Underneath whose wing were pages
Of an unknown lover's word.

I forget. You may remember
How the earthquake shook our ships;
How our city, one huge ember,
Blazed within the thick eclipse.
When you found me – deep December
Sealed my icy eyes and lips.

I forget. No one may say
That such things can not be true: —
Here a flower dies to-day,
And to-morrow blooms anew…
Death is silent. – Tell me, pray,
Why men doubt what God can do?

As to that, nothing to tell,
You being all my belief;
Doubt may not enter or dwell
Here where your image is chief;
Here where your name is a spell,
Potent in joy and in grief.

Is it the glamor of spring
Working in us so we seem
Aye to have loved? that we cling
Even to some fancy or dream,
Rainbowing everything
Here in our souls with its gleam?

See! how the synod is met
There of the heavens to preach us —
Freed from the earth's oubliette,
See how the blossoms beseech us —
Were it not well to forget
Winter and night as they teach us?

Dew and a bud and a star,
These, – like a beautiful thought,
Over man's wisdom how far! —
God for some purpose has wrought;
And though they're that which they are,
What are the thoughts they have brought?

Stars and the moon; and they roll
Over our way that is white.
Here shall we end the long stroll?
Here shall I kiss you good-night?
Or, for a while, soul to soul,
Linger and dream of delight?

Myths tell of walls and cities that arose
To melody. But I would build with tone,
Had I that harp, a world for us alone,
A world of love, and joy, and deep repose.

A land of lavender light, of blue-bell skies;
Pale peaks that rise against the gold of eve;
And on one height, the splendors never leave,
Our castled home o'er which the wild swan flies.

There, pitiless, the ruined hand of death
Should never reach. No bud, no thing should fade;
All should be perfect, pure, and unafraid;
And life serener than an angel's breath.

The days should move to music; wildly tame
The nights should move to music and the stars;
And morn and evening in their opal cars,
Like heralds, banner God's eternal name.

O world! O life! desired and to be!
How shall we reach thee? – dark the way and dim.
– Give me your hand, love, let us follow him,
Love with the mystery and the melody.

Violets and anemones
The surrendered hours
Pour, as handsels, round the knees
Of the Spring, who to the breeze
Flings her myriad flowers.

Like to coins the sumptuous day
Strews with blossoms golden
Every furlong of his way, —
Like a Sultan gone to pray
At a Kaaba olden.

And the night, with spark on spark,
Clad in dim attire,
Dots with Stars the haloed dark, —
As a priest around the Ark
Lights his lamps of fire.

These are but the cosmic strings
To the harp of Beauty,
To that instrument which sings
In our souls of love that brings
Peace and faith and duty.

Duty? – Comfort of the sinner
And the saint! – when grief and trial
Weigh us, and within our inner
Selves, – responsive to love's viol, —
Hope's soft voice grows thin and thinner,
It is kin to self-denial.

Self-denial! – through whose feeling
We are gainer though we're loser;
All the finer force revealing
Of our natures. No accuser
Is the conscience then, but healing
Of the wound of which we're chooser.

Some one said no flower knoweth
Of the fragrance it revealeth;
Song, its soul that overfloweth,
Never nightingale's heart feeleth —
Such the love the spirit groweth,
Love unconscious if it healeth.

An elf there is who stables the hot
Red wasp that stings on the apricot;
An elf who rowels his spiteful bay
Like a mote on a ray, away, away;
An elf who saddles the hornet lean
To din i' the ear o' the swinging bean;
Who straddles, with cap cocked all awry,
The bottle-blue back o' the dragon-fly.

And this is the elf who sips and sips
From clover-horns whence the perfume drips;
And, drunk with dew, in the glimmering gloam
Awaits the wild-bee's coming home;
In ambush lies, where none may see,
And robs the caravan bumble-bee —
Gold bags of honey the bees must pay
To the bandit elf of the fairy way.

Another ouphen the butterflies know,
Who paints their wings with the hues that glow
On blossoms. – Squeezing from tubes of dew
Pansy colors of every hue
On his bloom's pied pallet, he paints the wings
Of the butterflies, moths, and other things.
This is the elf that the hollyhocks hear,
Who dangles a brilliant in each one's ear;
Teases at noon the pane's green fly,
And lights at night the glow-worm's eye.

But the dearest elf, so the poets say,
Is the elf who hides in an eye of gray;
Who curls in a dimple and slips along
The strings of a lute to a lover's song;
Who smiles in her smile, and frowns in her frown,
And dreams in the scent of her glove or gown;
Hides and beckons as all may note
In the bloom or the bow of a maiden's throat.

Soft through the trees the night wind sighs,
And swoons and dies.
Above, the stars hang wanly white;
Here, through the dark,
A drizzled gold, the fireflies
Rain mimic stars in spark on spark. —
'Tis time to part, to say good-night.
Good-night.

From fern to flower the night-moths cross
At drowsy loss.
The moon drifts veiled through clouds of white;
And pearly pale,
A silver blur, through beds of moss,
Their tiny moons the glow-worms trail. —
'Tis time to part, to say good-night.
Good-night.

You say you cannot wed me, now
That roses and the June are here?
To your decision I must bow. —
Ah, well! 'tis just as well, my dear:
We'll swear again each old love vow,
And wait another year.

Another year of love with you!
Of dreams and doubts, of sun and rain!
When field and forest bloom anew,
And locust clusters pelt the lane,
When all the song-birds wed and woo,
I'll not take "no" again.

Oft shall I lie awake and mark
The hours by no clanging clock,
But in the dim and distant dark
The crowing of some punctual cock;
Then up as early as the lark
To meet you by our rock.