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

I forget. No one may say
That such things can not be true:—
Here a flower dies to-day,
There, 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 can 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 glamour 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 planets to preach us:—
Freed from the earth’s oubliette,
See how the blossoms beseech us!—
Were it not well to forget
Winter and death as they teach us?

Dew and a bud and a star,
All,—like a beautiful thought,
Over man’s wisdom how far!—
God for some purpose hath wrought.—
Could we but know why they are,
And that they end not in naught!

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, lyred of love,
That rose to music.—Were that power my own,
Had I that harp, that magic barbiton,
What had I builded for our lives thereof?—

In docile shadows under bluebell skies,
A home upon the poppied edge of eve,
Beneath pale peaks the splendors never leave,
’Mid lemon orchards whence the egret flies.

Where, pitiless, the ruined hand of death
Should never reach. No bud, no flower fade:
Where all were perfect, pure and unafraid:
And life serener than an angel’s breath.

The days should move to music: song should tame
The nights, attentive with their listening stars:
And morn outrival eve in opal bars,
Each preaching beauty with rose-tongues of flame.

O home! O life! desired and to be!
How shall we reach you?—Far the way and dim.—
Give me your hand, sweet! let us follow him,
Love with the madness 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.

Warlock 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
Of the harp of Beauty,
Of 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.

Who the loser, who the winner,
If the ardor fail as preacher?—
None who loved was yet beginner,
Though another’s love-beseecher:
Love’s revealment ’s of the inner
Life and God Himself is teacher.

Heine said “no flower knoweth
Of the fragrance it revealeth;
Song, its heart that overfloweth,
Never nightingale’s heart feeleth”—
Such is love the spirit groweth,
Love unconscious if it healeth.

An elf there is who stables the hot
Red wasp that sucks 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
And dins i’ the ear o’ the swinging bean;
Who straddles, with cap cocked, all awry,
The bottle-green 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 bumblebee:
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 or 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,
In silvery blurs, through beds of moss,
Their tiny moons the glow-worms trail.—
’Tis time to part, to say good night.
Good night.

You say we can not marry, now
That roses and the June are here?
To your decision I must bow.—
Ah, well!—perhaps ’t is best, my dear.
Let’s swear again each old love vow
And love another year.

Another year of love with you!
Of dreams and days, 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 dewy dark,
Far crowing of some punctual cock;
Then up, as early as the lark
To meet you by our rock.

The rock, where first we met at tryst;
Where first I wooed and won your love.—
Remember how the moon and mist
Made mystery of the heaven above
As now to-night?—Where first I kissed
Your lips, you trembling like a dove.