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

There, in the water, how the lank sword-grass
Mats its long blades, each blade a crooked kris,
Making a marsh; ’mid which the currents miss
Their rock-born melodies.
But there and there, one sees
The wide-belled mallow, as within a glass,
Long-pistiled, leaning o’er
The root-contorted shore,
As if its own pink image it would kiss.
And there the tangled wild-potato vine
Lifts beakered blossoms, each a cup of wine,
As pale as moonlight is:—
No mandrake, curling convolutions up,
Loops heavier blossoms, each a conical cup
That swoons moon-nectar and a serpent’s hiss.—
And there tall gipsy lilies, all a-sway,
Of coppery hue
Streaked as with crimson dew,
Mirror fierce faces in the deeps,
O’er which they lean, bent in inverted view.—
And where the stream around those rushes creeps,
The dragon-fly, in endless error, keeps
Sewing the pale-gold gown of day
With tangled stitches of a burning blue:
Its brilliant body is a needle fine,
A thread of azure ray,
Black-pinioned, shuttling the shade and shine.
But here before me where my pensive shade
Looks up at me, the stale stream, stagnant, lies,
Deep, dark, but clear and silent; streaked with hues
Of ragweed pollen, and of spawny ooze,
Through which the seeping bubbles, bursting, rise.—
All flowers here refuse
To grow or blossom; beauties, too, are few,
That haunt its depths: no glittering minnows braid
Its sleepy crystal; and no gravels strew
With colored orbs its bottom. Half afraid
I shrink from my own eyes
There in its cairngorm of reflected skies.—
I know not why, and yet it seems I see—
What is ’t I see there moving stealthily?

I know not what!—But where the kildees wade,
Slim in the foamy scum,
From that direction hither doth it come,
Whate’er it is, that makes my soul afraid.
Nearer it draws to where those low rocks ail,
Warm rocks, on which some water-snake hath clomb,
Basking its spotted body, coiling numb,
Brown in the brindled shade.—
At first it seemed a prism on the grail,
A bubble’s prism, like the shadow made
Of water-striders; then a trail,
An angled sparkle in a webby veil
Of duckweed, green as verdigris, it swayed
Frog-like through deeps, to crouch, a flaccid, pale,
Squat bulk below....
I gaze, and though I would, I can not go.
Reflected trees and skies,
And breeze-blown clouds that lounge at sunny loss,
Seem in its stolid eyes,
Its fishy gaze, that holds me in strange wise.
Ghoul-like it seems to rise,
And now to sink; its eldritch features fail,
Then come again in rhythmic waviness,
With arms like tentacles that seem to press
Thro’ weed and water: limbs that writhe and fade,
And clench, and twist, and toss,
Root-like and gnarled, and cross and inter-cross
Through flabby hair of smoky moss.

How horrible to see this thing at night!
Or when the sunset slants its brimstone light
Above the pool! when, blue, in phantom flight,
The will-o’-the-wisps, perhaps, above it reel.
Then, haply, would it rise, a rotting green,
Up, up, and gather me with arms of steel,
Soft steel, and drag me where the wave is white,
Beneath that boulder brown, that plants a keel
Against the ripple there, a shoulder lean.—
No, no! I must away before ’tis night!
Before the fireflies dot
The dark with sulphur blurrings bright!
Before, upon that height,
The white wild-carrots vanish from the sight;
And boneset blossoms, tossing there in clusters,
Fade to a ridge, a streak of ghostly lustres:
And, in that sunlit spot,
Yon cedar tree is not!
But a huge cap instead, that, half-asleep,
Some giant dropped while driving home his sheep:
And ’mid those fallow browns
And russet grays, the fragrant peak
Of yonder timothy stack,
Is not a stack, but something hideous, black,
That threatens and, grotesquely demon, frowns.

I must away from here.—
Already dusk draws near.
The owlet’s dolorous hoot
Sounds quavering as a gnome’s wild flute;
The toad, within the wet,
Begins to tune its goblin flageolet:
The slow sun sinks behind
Those hills; and, like a withered cheek
Of Quaker quiet, sorrow-burdened, there
The spectral moon ’s defined
Above those trees,—as in a wild-beast’s lair
A golden woman, dead, with golden hair,—
Above that mass of fox-grape vines
That, like a wrecked appentice, roofs those pines.—
Oh, I am faint and weak.—
I must away, away!
Before the close of day!—
Already at my back
I feel the woods grow black;
And sense the evening wind,
Guttural and gaunt and blind,
Whining behind me like an unseen wolf.
Deeper now seems the gulf
Into whose deeps I gaze;
From which, with madness and amaze,
That seems to rise, the horror there,
With webby hands and mossy eyes and hair.—
Oh, will it pierce,
With all its feelers fierce,
Beyond the pool’s unhallowed water-streak?—

Yes; I must go, must go!
Must leave this ghastly creek,
This place of hideous fear!
For everywhere I hear
A dripping footstep near,
A voice, like water, gurgling at my ear,
Saying, “Come to me! come and rest below!
Sleep and forget her and with her thy woe!”—
I try to fly.—I can not.—Yes, and no!—
What madness holds me!—God! that obscene, slow,
Sure mastering chimera there,
Perhaps, has fastened round my neck,
Or in my matted hair,
Some horrible feeler, dire, invisible!—
Off, off! thou hoop of Hell!
Thou devil’s coil!…
Back, back into thy cesspool! Off of me!—
See, how the waters thrash and boil!
At last! at last! thank God! my soul is free!
My mind is freed of that vile mesmerism
That drew me to—what end? my God! what end?
Haply ’twas merely fancy, that strange fiend:
My fancy, and a prism
Of sunset in the stream, a firefly fleck,
That now, a lamp of golden fairy oil,
Lights me my homeward way, the way I flee.
No more I stare, magnetic-fixed; nor reck,
Nor little care to foil
The madness there! the murder there! that slips
Back to its lair of slime, that seeps and drips,
That sought in vain to fasten on my lips.

What can it mean for me? what have I done to her?
I, in our season of love as a sun to her:
She, all my heaven of silvery, numberless
Stars and its moon, shining golden and slumberless;
Who on my life, that was thorny and lowery,
Came—and made beautiful; smiled—and made flowery.
She, to my heart and my soul a divinity!
She, who—I dreamed!—seemed my spirit-affinity!—
What have I done to her? what have I done?

What can she mean by this?—what have I said to her?
I, who have idolized, worshiped, and pled to her;
Sung with her, laughed with her, sorrowed and sighed for her;
Lived for her only; and gladly had died for her!
See! she has written me thus! she has written me—
Sooner would dagger or serpent had smitten me!—
Would you had shriveled ere ever you’d read of it,
Eyes, that are wide to the grief and the dread of it!—
What have I said to her? what have I said?
What shall I make of it? I who am trembling,
Fearful of losing.—A moth, the dissembling
Flame of a taper attracts with its guttering,
Flattering on till its body lies fluttering,
Scorched in the summer night.—Foolish, importunate,
Why didst thou quit the cool flowers, unfortunate!—
Such has she been to me, making me such to her!—
Slaying me, saying I never was much to her!—
What shall I make of it? what can I make?