Madison Cawein - The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5)

Is it tragic grief that saddens
Through your souls this autumn day?
Or the joy of death that gladdens
In exultance of decay?

Arrogant you lift defiant
Boughs against the moaning blast,
That, like some invisible giant,
Wrapped in tumult, thunders past.

Is it that in such insurgent
Fury, tossed from tree to tree,
You would quench the fiercely urgent
Pangs of some old memory?

As in toil and violent action,
That still help them to forget,
Mortals drown the dark distraction
And insistence of regret.

Last night I slept till midnight; then woke, and, far away,
A cock crowed; lonely and distant I heard a watch-dog bay:
But lonelier yet the tedious old clock ticked on to’ards day.

And what a day!—remember those morns of summer and spring,
That bound our lives together! each morn a wedding-ring
Of dew, aroma, and sparkle, and buds and birds a-wing.

Clear morns, when I strolled my garden, awaiting him, the rose
Expected too, with blushes,—the Giant-of-battle that grows
A bank of radiance and fragrance, and the Maréchal-Niel that glows.

Not in vain did I wait, departed summer, amid your phlox!
’Mid the powdery crystal and crimson of your hollow hollyhocks;
Your fairy-bells and poppies, and the bee that in them rocks.

Cool-clad ’mid the pendulous purple of the morning-glory vine,
By the jewel-mine of the pansies and the snapdragons in line,
I waited, and there he met me whose heart was one with mine.

Around us bloomed my mealy-white dusty-millers gay,
My lady-slippers, bashful of butterfly and ray;
My gillyflowers, spicy, each one, as a day of May.

Ah me! when I think of the handfuls of little gold coins, amass,
My bachelor’s-buttons scattered over the garden grass,
The marigolds that boasted their bits of burning brass;

More bitter I feel the autumn tighten on spirit and heart;
And regret those days, remembered as lost, that stand apart,
A chapter holy and sacred, I read with eyes that smart.

How warm was the breath of the garden when he met me there that day!
How the burnished beetle and humming-bird flew past us, each a ray!—
The memory of those meetings still bears me far away:

Again to the woods a-trysting by the water-mill I steal,
Where the lilies tumble together, the madcap wind at heel;
And meet him among the flowers, the rocks and the moss conceal:

Or the wild-cat gray of the meadows that the black-eyed Susans dot,
Fawn-eyed and leopard-yellow, that tangle a tawny spot
Of languid panther beauty that dozes, summer-hot....

Ah! back again in the present! with the winds that pinch and twist
The leaves in their peevish passion, and whirl wherever they list;
With the autumn, hoary and nipping, whose mausolean mist

Entombs the sun and the daylight: each morning shaggy with fog,
That fits gray wigs on the cedars, and furs with frost each log;
That velvets white the meadows, and marbles brook and bog.—

Alone at dawn—indifferent: alone at eve—I sigh:
And wait, like the wind complaining: complain and know not why:
But ailing and longing and pining because I can not die.

How dull is that sunset! dreary and cold, and hard and dead!
The ghost of those last August that, mulberry-rich and red,
The wine of God’s own vintage, poured purple overhead.

But now I sit with the sighing dead dreams of a dying year;
Like the fallen leaves and the acorns, am worthless and feel as sere,
With a soul that ’s sick of the body, whose heart is one big tear.

As I stare from my window the daylight, like a bravo, its cloak puts on.
The moon, like a cautious lanthorn, glitters, and then is gone.—
Will he come to-night? will he answer?—Ah, God! would it were dawn!

They said you were dying.—
You shall not die!…
Why are you crying?
Why do you sigh?—
Cease that sad sighing!—
Love, it is I.

All is forgiven!—
Love is not poor;
Though he was driven
Once from your door,
Back he has striven,
To part nevermore!

Will you remember
When I forget
Words, each an ember,
That you regret,
Now in November,
Now we have met?

What if love wept once!
What though you knew!
What if he crept once
Pleading to you!—
He never slept once,
Nor was untrue.

Often forgetful,
Love may forget;
Froward and fretful,
Dear, he will fret;
Ever regretful,
He will regret.

Life is completer
Through his control;
Lifted, made sweeter,
Filled and made whole,
Hearing love’s metre
Sing in the soul.

Flesh may not hear it,
Being impure;
But in the spirit,
There we are sure;
There we come near it,
There we endure.

So when to-morrow
Ceases and we
Quit this we borrow,
Mortality,
What chastens sorrow
So it may see?—

(When friends are sighing;
Round one, and one
Nearer is lying,
Nearer the sun,
When one is dying
And all is done?

When there is weeping,
Weary and deep,—
God’s be the keeping
Of those who weep!—
When our loved, sleeping,
Sleep their long sleep?—)

Love! that is dearer
Than we’re aware;
Bringing us nearer,
Nearer than prayer;
Being the mirror
That our souls share.

Still you are weeping!
Why do you weep?—
Are tears in keeping
With joy so deep?
Gladness so sweeping?
Hearts so in keep?

Speak to me, dearest!
Say it is true!
That I am nearest,
Dearest to you.—
Smile, with those clearest
Eyes of gray blue.

They did not say I could not live beyond this weary night,
But now I know that I shall die before the morning’s light.
How weak I am!—but you ’ll forgive me when I tell you how
I loved you—love you; and the pain it is to leave you now?

We could not wed!—Alas! the flesh, that clothes the soul of me,
Ordained at birth a sacrifice to this heredity,
Denied, forbade.—Ah, you have seen the bright spots in my cheeks
Glow hectic, as before comes night the west burns blood-red streaks?

Consumption.—“But I promised you my hand?”—a thing forlorn
Of life; diseased!—O God!—and so, far better so, forsworn!—
Oh, I was jealous of your love. But think: if I had died
Ere babe of mine had come to be a solace at your side!

Had it been little then—your grief, when Heaven had made us one
In everything that’s good on earth and then the good undone?
No! no! and had I had a child—what grief and agony
To know that blight born in him, too, against all help of me!