Madison Cawein - Undertones

Long are the days, and three times long the nights.
The weary hours are a heavy chain
Upon the feet of all Earth's dear delights,
Holding them ever prisoners to pain.
What shall beguile me to believe again
In hope, that faith within her parable writes
Of life, care reads with eyes whose tear-drops stain?
Shall such assist me to subdue the heights?
Long is the night, and over long the day. —
The burden of all being! – is it worse
Or better, lo! that they who toil and pray
May win not more than they who toil and curse?
A little sleep, a little love, ah me!
And the slow weigh up the soul's Calvary!

Even as a child he loved to thrid the bowers,
And mark the loafing sunlight's lazy laugh;
Or, on each season, spell the epitaph
Of its dead months repeated in their flowers;
Or list the music of the strolling showers,
Whose vagabond notes strummed through a twinkling staff;
Or read the day's delivered monograph
Through all the chapters of its dædal hours.
Still with the same child-faith and child-regard
He looks on Nature, hearing, at her heart,
The beautiful beat out the time and place,
Whereby no lesson of this life is hard,
No struggle vain of science or of art,
That dies with failure written on its face.

A log-hut in the solitude,
A clapboard roof to rest beneath!
This side, the shadow-haunted wood;
That side, the sunlight-haunted heath.

At daybreak Morn shall come to me
In raiment of the white winds spun;
Slim in her rosy hand the key
That opes the gateway of the sun.

Her smile shall help my heart enough
With love to labor all the day,
And cheer the road, whose rocks are rough,
With her smooth footprints, each a ray.

At dusk a voice shall call afar,
A lone voice like the whippoorwill's;
And, on her shimmering brow one star,
Night shall descend the western hills.

She at my door till dawn shall stand,
With Gothic eyes, that, dark and deep,
Are mirrors of a mystic land,
Fantastic with the towns of sleep.

Not his the part to win the goal,
The flaming goal that flies before,
Into whose course the apples roll
Of self that stay his feet the more.

Beyond himself he shall not win
Whose flesh is as a driven dust,
That his own soul must wander in,
Seeing no farther than his lust.

Is mine the part of no companion hand
Of help, except my shadow's silent self?
A moonlight traveller in Fancy's land
Of leering gnome and hollow-laughing elf;

Whose forests deepen and whose moon goes down,
When Night's blind shadow shall usurp my own;
And, mid the dust and wreck of some old town,
The City of Dreams, I grope and fall alone.

Witch-hazel, dogwood, and the maple here;
And there the oak and hickory;
Linn, poplar, and the beech-tree, far and near
As the eased eye can see.

Wild-ginger; wahoo, with its wan balloons;
And brakes of briers of a twilight green;
And fox-grapes plumed with summer; and strung moons
Of mandrake flowers between.

Deep gold-green ferns, and mosses red and gray, —
Mats for what naked myth's white feet? —
And, cool and calm, a cascade far away
With even-falling beat.

Old logs, made sweet with death; rough bits of bark;
And tangled twig and knotted root;
And sunshine splashes and great pools of dark;
And many a wild-bird's flute.

Here let me sit until the Indian, Dusk,
With copper-colored feet, comes down;
Sowing the wildwood with star-fire and musk,
And shadows blue and brown.

Then side by side with some magician dream,
To take the owlet-haunted lane,
Half-roofed with vines; led by a firefly gleam,
That brings me home again.

There is a flute that follows me
From tree to tree:
A water flute a spirit sets
To silver lips in waterfalls,
And through the breath of violets
A sparkling music calls:
"Hither! halloo! Oh, follow!
Down leafy hill and hollow,
Where, through clear swirls,
With feet like pearls,
Wade up the blue-eyed country girls.
Hither! halloo! Oh, follow!"

There is a pipe that plays to me
From tree to tree:
A bramble pipe an elfin holds
To golden lips in berry brakes,
And, swinging o'er the elder wolds,
A flickering music makes:
"Come over! Come over
The new-mown clover!
Come over the new-mown hay!
Where, there by the berries,
With cheeks like cherries,
And locks with which the warm wind merries,
Brown girls are hilling the hay,
All day!
Come over the fields and away!
Come over! Come over!"

How some succeed who have least need,
In that they make no effort for!
And pluck, where others pluck a weed,
The burning blossom of a star,
Grown from no earthly seed.

For some shall reap that never sow;
And some shall toil and not attain, —
What boots it in ourselves to know
Such labor here is not in vain,
When we still see it so!

Unto the portal of the House of Song,
Symbols of wrong and emblems of unrest,
And mottoes of despair and envious jest,
And stony masks of scorn and hate belong.

Who enters here shall feel his soul denied
All welcome: lo! the chiselled form of Love,
That stares in marble on the shrine above
The tomb of Beauty, where he dreamed and died!

Who enters here shall know no poppyflowers
Of Rest, or harp-tones of serene Content;
Only sad ghosts of music and of scent
Shall mock the mind with their remembered powers.

Here must he wait till striving patience carves
His name upon the century-storied floor;
His heart's blood staining one dim pane the more
In Fame's high casement while he sings and starves.

Under rocks whereon the rose,
Like a strip of morning, glows;
Where the azure-throated newt
Drowses on the twisted root;
And the brown bees, humming homeward,
Stop to suck the honey-dew;
Fern and leaf-hid, gleaming gloamward,
Drips the wildwood spring I knew,
Drips the spring my boyhood knew.

Myrrh and music everywhere
Haunt its cascades; – like the hair
That a naiad tosses cool,
Swimming strangely beautiful,
With white fragrance for her bosom,
For her mouth a breath of song; —
Under leaf and branch and blossom
Flows the woodland spring along,
Sparkling, singing, flows along.

Still the wet wan morns may touch
Its gray rocks, perhaps; and such
Slender stars as dusk may have
Pierce the rose that roofs its wave;
Still the thrush may call at noontide,
And the whippoorwill at night;
Nevermore, by sun or moontide,
Shall I see it gliding white,
Falling, flowing, wild and white.