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

What makes you beautiful?
Answer, now, answer!—
Is it that dutiful
Souls are all beautiful?
Is it romance or
Beauty of spirit,
Which souls, that merit,
Of heaven inherit?—
Have you an answer?

She, roguishly :

What makes you lovable?
Answer, now, answer!—
Is it not provable
That man is lovable
Just because chance, or
Nature, makes woman
Love him?—Her human
Part’s to illumine.—
Have you an answer?

Could I recall every joy that befell me
There in the past with its anguish and bliss,
Here in my heart it hath whispered to tell me,—
They were no joys like this.

Were it not well if our love could forget them,
Veiling the Was with the dawn of the Is ?
Dead with the past we should never regret them,
Being no joys like this.

Now they are gone and the Present stands speechful,
Ardent of word and of look and of kiss,—
What though we know that their eyes are beseechful!—
They were no joys like this.

Were it not well to have more of the spirit,
Living high Futures this earthly must miss?
Less of the flesh, with the Past pining near it?
Knowing no joys like this!

We will leave reason,
Sweet, for a season:
Reason were treason
Now that the nether
Spaces are clad, oh,
In silvery shadow—
We will be glad, oh,
Glad as this weather!

Heart unto heart! where the moonlight is slanted,
Let us believe that our souls are enchanted:—
I in the castle-keep; you are the airy
Prince who comes seeking me; love is the fairy
Bringing us two together.

Starlight in masses
Over us passes;
And in the grass is
Many a flower.—

Now will you tell me
How ’d you enspell me?
What once befell me
There in your bower?

Soul unto soul!—in the moon’s wizard glory,
Let us believe we are parts in a story:—
I am a poem; a poet you hear it
Whispered in star and in flower; a spirit,
Love, puts my soul in your power.

Perhaps we lived in the days
Of the Khalif Haroun er Reshid;
And loved, as the story says
Did the Sultan’s favorite one
And the Persian Emperor’s son,
Ali ben Bekkar, he
Of the Kisra dynasty.

Do you know the story?—Well,
You were Haroun’s Sultana.
When night on the palace fell,
A slave, through a secret door,—
Low-arched on the Tigris’ shore,—
By a hidden winding stair
Brought me to your bower there.

Then there was laughter and mirth,
And feasting and singing together,
In a chamber of wonderful worth;
In a chamber vaulted high
On columns of ivory;
Its dome, like the irised skies,
Mooned over with peacock eyes;
Its curtains and furniture,
Damask and juniper.

Ten slave girls—so many blooms—
Stand, holding tamarisk torches,
Silk-clad from the Irak looms;
Ten handmaidens serve the feast,
Each maid like a star in the east;
Ten lutanists, lutes a-tune,
Wait, each like the Ramadan moon.

For you, in a stuff of Merv
Blue-clad, unveiled and jeweled,
No metaphor made may serve:
Scarved deep with your raven hair,
The jewels like fireflies there—
Blossom and moon and star,
The Lady Shemsennehar.

The zone that girdles your waist
Would ransom a Prince and Emeer;
In your coronet’s gold enchased,
And your bracelet’s twisted bar,
Burn rubies of Istakhar;
And pearls of the Jamshid race
Hang looped on your bosom’s lace.

You stand like the letter I;
Dawn-faced, with eyes that sparkle
Black stars in a rosy sky;
Mouth, like a cloven peach,
Sweet with your smiling speech;
Cheeks, that the blood presumes
To make pomegranate blooms.

With roses of Rocknabad,
Hyacinths of Bokhara,—
Creamily cool and clad
In gauze,—girls scatter the floor
From pillar to cedarn door.
Then, a pomegranate bloom in each ear,
Come the dancing-girls of Kashmeer.

Kohl in their eyes, down the room,—
That opaline casting-bottles
Have showered with rose-perfume,—
They glitter and drift and swoon
To the dulcimer’s languishing tune;
In the liquid light like stars
And moons and nenuphars.

Carbuncles, tragacanth-red,
Smoulder in armlet and anklet:
Gleaming on breast and on head,
Bangles of coins, that are angled,
Tinkle: and veils, that are spangled,
Flutter from coiffure and wrist
Like a star-bewildered mist.

Each dancing-girl is a flower
Of the Tuba from vales of El Liwa.—
How the bronzen censers glower!
And scents of ambergris pour,
And of myrrh, brought out of Lahore,
And of musk of Khoten! how good
Is the scent of the sandalwood!

A lutanist smites her lute,
Sings loves of Mejnoon and Leila:—
Her voice is an Houri flute;—
While the fragrant flambeaux wave,
Barbaric, o’er free and slave,
O’er fabrics and bezels of gems
And roses in anadems.

Sherbets in ewers of gold,
Fruits in salvers carnelian;
Flagons of grotesque mold,
Made of a sapphire glass,
Brimmed with wine of Shirâz;
Shaddock and melon and grape
On plate of an antique shape.

Vases of frosted rose,
Of alabaster graven,
Filled with the mountain snows;
Goblets of mother-of-pearl,
One filigree silver-swirl;
Vessels of gold foamed up
With spray of spar on the cup.

Then a slave bursts in with a cry:
“The eunuchs! the Khalif’s eunuchs!—
With scimitars bared draw nigh!
Wesif and Afif and he,
Chief of the hideous three,
Mesrour!—the Sultan ’s seen
’Mid a hundred weapons’ sheen!”

Did we part when we heard this?—No!
It seems that my soul remembers
How I clasped and kissed you, so....
When they came they found us—dead,
On the flowers our blood dyed red;
Our lips together, and
The dagger in my hand.

How it was I can not tell,
For I know not where nor why;
But I know we loved too well
In some world that does not lie
East or west of where we dwell,
And beneath no earthly sky.

Was it in the golden ages?—
Or the iron?—that I 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.