Madison Cawein - The Triumph of Music, and Other Lyrics

There lay in a vale 'twixt lone mountains
A garden entangled with flowers,
Where the whisper of echoing fountains
Stirred softly the musk-breathing bowers.
Where torrents cast down from rock-masses,
From caverns of red-granite steeps,
With thunders sonorous clove passes
And maddened dark gulfs with rash leaps,
With the dolorous foam of their leaps.

And, oh, when the sunrays came heaping
The foam of those musical chasms,
With a scintillant dust as of diamonds,
It seemed that white spirits were sweeping
Down, down thro' those voluble chasms,
Wild weeping in resonant spasms.
And the wave from the red-hearted granite
In veins rolled tumbling around;
Meandered thro' shade-haunted forests
Where many rock barriers did span it
To dash it in froth and in sound:
Where the nights with their great moons could wan it,
Or star its dusk stillness profound.

And here in the night would I wander
On woodways where fragrances kissed,
By shadows where murmurings kissed;
And here would I tarry to ponder
When the moon in blue vales made a mist;
Dim in forests of rank, rocking cedars,
Whose wildness made glad with their scent,
Whose boughs in the tempests were bent
Like the pennons and plumes of fierce leaders,
In the battle all ragged and rent.

And so when the moonshine was floating
Far up on the mountain's bleak head,
On the uttermost foam of the torrent,
Would I string a wild harp while was gloating
The moon on my blossomy bed.
Or I lay where a fountain of blossoms
Rained rustling from arches aloft,
From the thick-scented arbors aloft,
And I sang as the blossoms' white bosoms
Pressed silk-smooth to mine and lay soft:
I sang as their redolence stung me,
And laughed on my blossomy couch,
Till the fragrance and music had flung me
Into shadows of sleep with their touch,
The magic of exquisite touch…

One night as I wondered and wandered
In this my rare Aidenn of flowers,
I saw where I lingered and pondered
A youth cast asleep mid the bowers:
A youth on a mantle of satin,
A poppy-red robe in the flowers.

So I kissed his thin eyelids full tender,
I kissed his high forehead and pale,
I sighed as I kissed his black splendor
Of curls that were kissed of the gale,
That were moved of the balm-breathing gale.
And he woke and cried out as if haunted: —
"Oh God! for one note of that song!
For a sob of that languishing song!
Whose tumult of sorrow enchanted,
And swept my weak spirit along!"

Than I sate me upon the red satin
And plunged a long look in his eyes;
I bowed on the weft of red satin
And kindled his love with my sighs.
With fingers of lightness set sobbing
The chords of my harp in a song,
Till I found that my heart was a-throbbing
And sobbing to sing like a tongue,
Was sobbing to mix with the song.

Then he cried, and his dark eyes keen glistened,
"Lost! lost! for that perilous music!
Oh God! for that tyrannous strain!
To which in my dreams I have listened,
Ah, wretch! I have listened with pain!"
And he tost on the garment of satin
His deep raven darkness of hair,
And the song at my lips was ungathered,
And I sate there to marvel and stare.

Then I wrenched from my soul a wild glory
Of music delirious with words,
Of music that wailed a soul's story,
And trembled with god-uttered words,
Or fell like the battling of swords.
And in with it mixed all the beauty
Of farewells and ravenous sighs,
The heart that was broken for booty,
Tears, rapture to know that one dies,
Hell, heaven and laughter and cries.

In music the heart-ache of passion,
The terror of souls that are lost,
Cold, dizzying anguish of dying,
All torments that beauty could fashion,
Hot manacles of love and their cost.
The bliss and the fury of dashing
A soul into riotous love,
While the smiting of harp-chords and crashing
Of song like the winds were enwove
With the stars that fall sounding above.

Ah! why did the poppy-crowned slumber
Seal up the rare light of his eyes
With its silver of vapory pinions,
The creature that sung in each number,
To nest in his tired-out eyes,
Like a bird that is sick of the skies.
Yet he murmured so sad and so thrilling,
"Oh God! for a lifetime of song!
Oh life! for a world of such song!
For a heaven or hell and the killing,
Mad angel or devil of song!
Oh, the rapture engendered in throwing
On bubbles of music and song
A soul to the anguish of loving,
Until like a flower, full blowing,
It is lost in a whirlwind most strong,
It dies in a thunder of song!"

I had flung in my song the emotion
Triumphant of heart and of soul,
And I recked not the passionate ocean
That rolled to abysses of dole,
To infinite torture and dole.

So I sang and I harped till all weary
I sunk on the red of that robe,
Crouched down at his feet on the satin,
While he slumbered with eyelashes teary
Fringed dark o'er each eye-ball's dark globe.
Then I wondered and said, "It is dreary
To see him so still on this robe."
And I sobbed and I sobbed, "Is he living,
Or have I but slain with my song!"
And it seemed that a demon was striving
To strangle my heart with a thong,
With terror and sorrow of wrong.

And I rent the wild harp in my madness,
From his ashen brows furrowed the hair;
Soft wafted dark curls from pale temples —
They rustled with death – and the sadness
Of his face so hopelessly fair!
How I wailed to the stars of the heaven
How they scoffed at and answered my grief
In letters of flame, "Unforgiven!
Thou deathless, whose voice is a thief,
Forever and ever grief!"

So I wept on the instrument broken,
The instrument sweet of his death,
The dagger that stabbed not to kill him,
The dagger of song which had spoken,
And ravished away his life's breath.
So I wept, and my curls thick and golden
Stormed entangled and showered 'mid his;
My arms around him were enfolden,
My lips clave to his with a kiss,
With the life and the love of a kiss.

When the season was dry and the sun was hot
And the hornet sucked gaunt on the apricot,
And the ripe peach dropped to its seed a-rot,
With a lean red wasp that stung and clung;
When the hollyhocks, ranked in the garden-plot,
More seed-pods had than blossoms, I wot,
A weariness weighed on the tongue,
That the drought of the season begot.

When the black grape bulged with the juice that burst
Through its thick blue skin that was cracked with thirst,
And the round gold pippins, the summer had nursed,
In the yellowing leaves o' the orchards hung;
When the reapers, their lips with whistling pursed,
To their sun-tanned brows in the corn were immersed,
A lightness came over the tongue,
And one sung as much as one durst.