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

Look up. You scarce can see the sky,
Through trees that lean, dark, dense and high;
That, coiled with grape and trailing vine,
Build vast a roof of shade and shine;
A house of leaves, where shadows walk,
And whispering winds and waters talk.

There is no path. The saplings choke
The trunks they spring from. There an oak,
Floods from the Alleghanies bore,
Lies rotting; and that sycamore,
Which lays its bulk from shore to shore,—
Uprooted by the rain,—perchance
May be the bridge to some romance:
Its heart of punk, a spongy white,
Glows, ghostly foxfire, in the night.

Now opening through a willow fringe
The waters creep, one tawny tinge
Of sunset; and on either marge
The cottonwoods make walls of shade,
With breezy balsam pungent: large,
The gradual hills loom; darkly fade
The waters wherein herons wade,
Or wing, like Faëry birds, from grass
That mats the shore by which we pass.

On we pass; we rippling pass,
On sunset waters still as glass.
A vesper-sparrow flies above,
Soft twittering, to its woodland love.
A tufted-titmouse calls afar;
And from the west, like some swift star,
A glittering jay flies screaming. Slim
The sand-snipes and kingfishers skim
Before us; and some twilight thrush—
Who may discover where such sing?—
The silence rinses with a gush
Of limpid music bubbling.

On we pass.—Now let us oar
To yonder strip of ragged shore,
Where, from a rock with lichens hoar,
A ferny spring falls, babbling frore
Through woodland mosses. Gliding by
The sulphur-colored firefly
Lights its pale lamp where mallows gloom,
And wild-bean and wild-mustard bloom.—
Some hunter there within the woods
Last fall encamped, those ashes say
And campfire boughs.—The solitudes
Grow dreamy with the death of day.

Over the fields of millet
A young bird tries its wings;
And wild as a woodland rillet,
Its first mad music rings rings—
Soul of my soul, where the meadows roll
What is the song it sings?

“Love, and a glad good-morrow,
Heart where the rapture is!
Good-morrow, good-morrow!
Adieu to sorrow!
Here is the road to bliss:
Where all day long you may hearken my song,
And kiss, kiss, kiss;”

Over the fields of clover,
Where the wild bee drones and sways,
The wind, like a shepherd lover,
Flutes on the fragrant ways—
Heart of my heart, where the blossoms part,
What is the air he plays?

“Love, and a song to follow,
Soul with the face a-gleam!
Come follow, come follow,
O’er hill and through hollow,
To the land o’ the bloom and beam:
Where, under the flowers, you may listen for hours,
And dream, dream, dream!”

Here the shores are irised; grasses
Clump the water gray, that glasses
Broken wood and deepened distance.
Far the musical persistence
Of a field-lark lingers low
In the west’s rich tulip-glow.

White before us flames one pointed
Star; and Day hath Night anointed
King; from out her azure ewer
Pouring starry fire, truer
Than pure gold. Star-crowned he stands
With the starlight in his hands.

Will the moon bleach through the ragged
Tree-tops ere we reach yon jagged
Rock that rises gradually,
Pharos of our homeward valley?—
All the west is smouldering red;
Embers are the stars o’erhead.

At my soul some Protean elf is:
You ’re Simætha; I am Delphis,
You are Sappho and your Phaon,
I.—We love.—There lies our way, on,—
Let us say,—Æolian seas,
To the violet Lesbian leas.

On we drift. I love you. Nearer
Looms our Island. Rosier, clearer,
The Leucadian cliff we follow,
Where the temple of Apollo
Shines—a pale and pillared fire....
Strike, oh, strike the Lydian lyre!—
Out of Hellas blows the breeze
Singing to the Sapphic seas.

Night, night, ’t is night. The moon drifts low above us,
And all its gold is tangled in the stream:
Love, love, my love, and all the stars, that love us,
The stars smile down and every star ’s a dream.

In odorous purple, where the falling warble
Of water cascades and the plunged foam glows,
A columned ruin lifts its sculptured marble
Friezed with the chiselled rebeck and the rose.

Sleep, sleep, sweet sleep sleeps at the drifting tiller,
And in our sail the Spirit of the Rain—
Love, love, my love, ah, bid thy heart be stiller,
And, hark! the music of the singing main.

What flowers are those that blow their balm unto us,
From mouths of wild aroma, each a flame?—
Or is it Love that breathes? sweet Love who drew us,
Who kissed our eyes and made us see the same?

Dreams; dreams we dream! no dream that we would banish!
The temple and the nightingale are there!
Our love hath made them, nevermore to vanish,
Real as yon moon, this wild-rose in your hair.

Night, night, ’tis night!—and Love’s own star ’s before us,
Its starred reflection in the starry stream.—
Yes, yes, ah yes! his presence shall watch o’er us,
To-night, to-night, and every night we dream.

Behold the offerings of the common hills!
Whose lowly names have made them three times dear:
One evening-primrose and an apron-full
Of violets; and there, in multitudes,
Dim-seen in moonlight, sweet cerulean wan,
The bluet, making heaven of every dell
With morn’s ambrosial blue: dew-dropping plumes
Of the mauve beard’s-tongue; and the red-freaked cups
Of blackberry-lilies all along the creek,
Where, lulled, the freckled silence sleeps, and vague
The water flows, when, at high noon, the cows
Wade knee-deep, and the heat is honied with
The drone of drowsy bees and dizzy flies.
How bright the moon is on that fleur-de-lis;
Blue, streaked with crystal like a summer day:
And is it moonlight there? or is it flowers?
White violets? lilies? or a daisy bed?
And now the wind, with softest lullaby,
Swings all their cradled heads and rocks-to-sleep
Their fragrant faces and their golden eyes,
Curtained, and frailly wimpled with the dew.

Simple suggestions of a life most fair!
Flowers, you speak of love and untaught faith,
Whose habitation is within the soul,
Not of the Earth, yet for the Earth indeed....

What is it halcyons my heart? makes calm,
With calmness not of knowledge, all my soul
This night of nights?—Is ’t love? or faith? or both?—
The lore of all the world is less than these
Simple suggestions of a life most fair,
And love most sweet that I have learned to know!

Yes, I have known its being so;
Long ago was I seeing so—
Beckoning on to a fairer land,
Out of the flowers it waved its hand;
Bidding me on to life and love,
Life with the hope of the love thereof.