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

III

They meet again under the greenwood tree. He speaks:

 
Here at last! And do you know
That again you ’ve kept me waiting?
Wondering, anticipating
That your “yes” meant “no.”
 
 
Now you ’re here we ’ll have our day....
Let us take this daisied hollow,
And beneath these beeches follow
This wild strip of way
 
 
To the stream; wherein are seen
Stealing gar and darting minnow;
Over which snake-feeders winnow
Wings of black and green.
 
 
Like a cactus flames the sun;
And the mighty weaver, Even,
Tenuous colored, there in heaven,
His rich weft ’s begun....
 
 
How I love you! from the time—
You remember, do you not?—
When, within your orchard-plot,
I was reading rhyme,
 
 
As I told you. And ’t was thus:—
“By the blue Trinacrian sea,
Far in pastoral Sicily
With Theocritus”—
 
 
That I answered you who asked.
But the curious part was this:—
That the whole thing was amiss;
That the Greek but masked
 
 
Tales of old Boccaccio:
Tall Decameronian maids
Strolled for me among the glades,
Smiling, sweet and slow.
 
 
And when you approached,—my book
Dropped in wonder,—seemingly
To myself I said, “’Tis she!”
And arose to look
 
 
In Lauretta’s eyes and—true!
Found them yours.—You shook your head,
Laughing at me, as you said,
“Did I frighten you?”
 
 
You had come for cherries; these
Coatless then I climbed for while
You still questioned with a smile,
And still tried to tease.
 
 
Ah, love, just two years have gone
Since then.... I remember, you
Wore a dress of billowy blue
Muslin.—Was it “lawn”?—
 
 
And your apron still I see—
All its whiteness cherry-stained—
Which you held; wherein I rained
Ripeness from the tree.
 
 
And I asked you—for, you know,
To my eyes your serious eyes
Said such deep philosophies—
If you ’d read Rousseau.
 
 
You remember how a chance,
Somewhat like to mine, one June
Happened him at castle Toune,
Over there in France?
 
 
And a cherry dropping fair
On your cheek, I, envying it,
Cried—remembering Rousseau’s wit—
“Would my lips were there!” …
 
 
Here we are at last. We ’ll row
Down the stream.—The west has narrowed
To one streak of rose, deep-arrowed.—
There ’s our skiff below.
 

IV

Entering the skiff, she speaks:

 
Waters flowing dark and bright
In the sunlight or the moon,
Fill my soul with such delight
As some visible music might;
As some slow, majestic tune
Made material to the sight.
 
 
Blossoms colored like the skies,
Sunset-hued and tame or wild,
Fill my soul with such surmise
As the mind might realize
If one’s thoughts, all undefiled,
Should take form before the eyes.
 
 
So to me do these appeal;
So they sway me every hour:
Letting all their beauty steal
On my soul to make it feel
Through a rivulet or flower,
More than any words reveal.
 

V

He speaks, rowing:

 
See, sweetheart, how the lilies lay
Their lambent leaves about our way;
Or, pollen-dusty, bob and float
Their nenuphars around our boat.—
The middle of the stream is reached
Three strokes from where our boat was beached.
 
 
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.
 

She speaks:

 
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.
 

He speaks:

 
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.
 

VI

She sings:

 
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!”
 

VII

He speaks, letting the boat drift:

 
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.
 

VIII

Landing, he sings:

 
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.
 

She sings:

 
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?
 

He speaks:

 
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.
 

IX

Homeward through flowers; she speaks:

 
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!
 

X

He speaks, musingly:

 
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.
 
 
What is the value of knowing it,
If you are shy in showing it?—
Need of the earth unfolds the flower,
Dewy sweet, at the proper hour;
And, in the world of the human heart,
Love is the flower’s counterpart.
 
 
So when the soul is heedable,
Then is the heart made readable.—
I in the book of your heart have read
Words that are truer than truth hath said:
Measures of love, the spirit’s song,
Writ of your soul to haunt me long.
 
 
Love can hear each laudable
Thought of the loved made audible,
Spoken in wonder, or joy, or pain,
And reëcho it back again:
Ever responsive, ever awake,
Ever replying with ache for ache.
 

XI

She speaks, dreamily:

 
Earth gives its flowers to us
And heaven its stars. Indeed,
These are as lips that woo us,
Those are as lights that lead,
With love that doth pursue us,
With hope that still doth speed.
 
 
Yet shall the flowers lie riven,
And lips forget to kiss;
The stars fade out of heaven,
And lights lead us amiss—
As love for which we ’ve striven;
As hope that promises.
 

XII

He laughs, wishing to dispel her seriousness:

 
If love I have had of you, you had of me,
Then doubtless our loving were over;
One would be less than the other, you see;
Since what you returned to your lover
Were only his own; and—
 

XIII

She interrupts him, speaking impetuously:

 
But if I lose you, if you part with me,
I will not love you less
Loving so much now. If there is to be
A parting and distress,—
What will avail to comfort or relieve
The soul that’s anguished most?—
The knowledge that it once possessed, perceive,
The love that it has lost.
You must acknowledge, under sun and moon
All that we feel is old;
Let morning flutter from night’s brown cocoon
Wide wings of flaxen gold;
The moon burst through the darkness, soaring o’er,
Like some great moth and white,
These have been seen a myriad times before
And with renewed delight.—
So ’tis with love;—how old yet new it is!—
This only should we heed,—
To once have known, to once have felt love’s bliss,
Is to be rich indeed.—
Whether we win or lose, we lose or win,
Within our gain or loss
Some purpose lies, some end unseen of sin,
Beyond our crown or cross.
 

XIV

Nearing her home, he speaks:

 
True, true!—Perhaps it would be best
To be that lone star in the west;
Above the earth, within the skies,
Yet shining here in your blue eyes.
 
 
Or, haply, better here to blow
A flower beneath your window low;
That, brief of life and frail and fair,
Finds yet a heaven in your hair.
 
 
Or well, perhaps, to be the breeze
That sighs its soul out to the trees;
A voice, a breath of rain or drouth,
That has its wild will with your mouth.
 
 
These things I long to be. I long
To be the burthen of some song
You love to sing; a melody,
Sure of sweet immortality.
 

XV

At the gate. She speaks:

 
Sunday shall we ride together?
Not the root-rough, rambling way
Through the wood we went that day,
In last summer’s sultry weather.
 
 
Past the Methodist camp-meeting,
Where religion helped the hymn
Gather volume; and a slim
Minister, with textful greeting,
 
 
Welcomed us and still expounded.—
From the service on the hill
We had passed three hills and still
Loud, though far, the singing sounded.
 
 
Nor that road through weed and berry
Drowsy days led me and you
To the old-time barbecue,
Where the country-side made merry.
 
 
Dusty vehicles together;
Darkies with the horses near
Tied to trees; the atmosphere
Redolent of bark and leather,
 
 
And of burgoo and of beef; there
Roasting whole within the trench;
Near which spread the long pine bench
Under shading limb and leaf there.
 
 
As we went the homeward journey
You exclaimed, “They intermix
Pleasure there and politics,
Love and war: our modern tourney.”
 
 
And the fiddles!—through the thickets,
How they thumped the old quadrille!
Scraping, droning on the hill,
It was like a swarm of crickets....
 
 
Neither road! The shady quiet
Of that path by beech and birch,
Winding to the ruined church
Near the stream that sparkles by it.
 
 
Where the silent Sundays listen
For the preacher—Love—we bring
In our hearts to preach and sing
Week-day shade to Sabbath glisten.
 

XVI

He, at parting:

 
Yes, to-morrow. Early morn.—
When the House of Day uncloses
Portals that the stars adorn,—
Whence Light’s golden presence throws his
Flaming lilies, burning roses,
At the wide wood’s world of wall,
Spears of sparkle at each fall:
 
 
Then together we will ride
To the wood’s cathedral places;
Where, like prayers, the wildflowers hide,
Sabbath in their fairy faces;
Where, in truest, untaught phrases,
Worship in each rhythmic word,
God is praised by many a bird.
 
 
Look above you.—Pearly white,
Star on star now crystallizes
Out of darkness: Afric night
Hangs them round her like devices
Of strange jewels. Vapor rises,
Glimmering, from each wood and dell.—
Till to-morrow, then, farewell.
 

XVII

She tarries at the gate a moment, watching him disappear down the lane. He sings, and the sound of his singing grows fainter and fainter and at last dies away in the distance:

 

 
Say, my heart, O my heart,
These be the eves for speaking!
There is no wight will work us spite
Beneath the sunset’s streaking.
 
 
Yes, my sweet, O my sweet,
Now is the time for telling!
To walk together in starry weather
Down lanes with elder smelling.
 
 
O my heart, yes, my heart,
Now is the time for saying!
When lost in dreams each wildflower seems
And every blossom praying.
 
 
Lean, my sweet, listen, sweet,—
No sweeter time than this is,—
So says the rose, the moth that knows,—
To take sweet toll in kisses.
 

PART III
LATE SUMMER

 
Heat lightning flickers in one cloud,
As in a flower a firefly;
Some rain-drops, that the rose-bush bowed,
Jar through the leaves and dimly lie:
Among the trees, now low, now loud,
The whispering breezes sigh.
The place is lone; the night is hushed;
Upon the path a rose lies crushed.
 

I

Musing, he strolls among the quiet lanes by farm and field:

 
Now rests the season in forgetfulness,
Careless in beauty of maturity;
The ripened roses round brown temples, she
Fulfils completion in a dreamy guess.
Now Time grants night the more and day the less:
The gray decides; and brown,
Dim golds and drabs in dulling green express
Themselves and redden as the year goes down.
Sadder the fields where, thrusting hoary high
Their tasseled heads, the Lear-like corn-stocks die,
And, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie.—
Deeper to tenderness,
Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along
The lonesome west; sadder the song
Of the wild red-bird in the leafage yellow.—
Deeper and dreamier, ay!
Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky
Above lone orchards where the cider-press
Drips and the russets mellow.
 
 
Nature grows liberal: from the beechen leaves
The beech-nuts’ burrs their little pockets thrust,
Bulged with the copper of the nuts that rust;
Above the grass the spendthrift spider weaves
A web of silver for which dawn designs
Thrice twenty rows of pearls: beneath the oak,
That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines,—
The polished acorns, from their saucers broke,
Strew oval agates.—On sonorous pines
The far wind organs; but the forest near
Is silent; and the blue-white smoke
Of burning brush, beyond that field of hay,
Hangs like a pillar in the atmosphere;
But now it shakes—it breaks and all the
vines And tree-tops tremble;—see! the wind is here!
Billowing and boisterous; and the smiling day
Rejoices in its clamor. Earth and sky
Resound with glory of its majesty,
Impetuous splendor of its rushing by.—
But on those heights the forest still is still,
Expectant of its coming.... Far away
Each anxious tree upon each waiting hill
Tingles anticipation, as in gray
Surmise of rapture. Now the first gusts play,
Like laughter low, about their rippling spines;
And now the wildwood, one exultant sway,
Shouts—and the light at each tumultuous pause,
The light that glooms and shines,
Seems hands in wild applause.
 
 
How glows that garden! though the white mists keep
The vagabonding flowers reminded of
Decay that comes to slay in open love,
When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep;
Unheeding still, their cardinal colors leap
And laugh encircled of the scythe of death,—
Like lovely children he prepares to reap,—
Staying his blade a breath
To mark their beauty ere, with one last sweep,
He lays them dead and turns away to weep.—
Let me admire,—
Before the sickle of the coming cold
Shall mow them down,—their beauties manifold:
How like to spurts of fire
That scarlet salvia lifts its blooms, which heap
Yon square of sunlight. And, as sparkles creep
Through charring parchment, up that window’s screen
The cypress dots with crimson all its green,
The haunt of many bees.
Cascading dark those porch-built lattices,
The nightshade bleeds with berries; drops of blood,
Hanging in clusters, ’mid the blue monk’s-hood.
 
 
There, in that garden old,
The bright-hued clumps of zinnias unfold
Their formal flowers; and the marigold
Lifts its pinched shred of orange sunset caught
And elfed in petals. The nasturtium,
All pungent leaved and acrid of perfume,
Hangs up its goblin bonnet, fairy-brought
From Gnomeland. There, predominant red,
And arrogant, the dahlia lifts its head,
Beside the balsam’s rose-stained horns of honey,
Deep in the murmuring, sunny,
Dry wildness of the weedy flower-bed;
Where crickets and the weed-bugs, noon and night,
Shrill dirges for the flowers that soon will die,
And flowers already dead.—
I seem to hear the passing Summer sigh:
A voice, that seems to weep,
“Too soon, too soon the Beautiful passes by!
And soon, amid her bowers,
Will dripping Autumn mourn with all her flowers.”—
If I, perchance, might peep
Beneath those leaves of podded hollyhocks,
That the bland wind with odorous whispers rocks,
I might behold her,—white
And weary,—Summer, ’mid her flowers asleep,
Her drowsy flowers asleep,
The withered poppies knotted in her locks.
 

II

He is reminded of another day with her:

 
The hips were reddening on this rose,
Those haws were hung with fire,
That day we went this way that goes
Up hills of bough and brier.
This hooked thorn caught her gown and seemed
Imploring her to linger;
Upon her hair a sun-ray streamed
Like some baptizing finger.
 
 
This false-foxglove, so golden now
With yellow blooms, like bangles,
Was bloomless then. But yonder bough,—
The sumac’s plume entangles,—
Was like an Indian’s painted face;
And, like a squaw, attended
That bush, in vague vermilion grace,
With beads of berries splendid.
 
 
And here we turned to mount that hill,
Down which the wild brook tumbles;
And, like to-day, that day was still,
And mild winds swayed the umbels
Of these wild-carrots, lawny gray:
And there, deep-dappled o’er us,
An orchard stretched; and in our way
Dropped ripened fruit before us.
 
 
With muffled thud the pippin fell,
And at our feet rolled dusty;
A hornet clinging to its bell,
The pear lay bruised and rusty:
The smell of pulpy peach and plum,
From which the juice oozed yellow,—
Around which bees made sleepy hum,—
Made warm the air and mellow.
 
 
And then we came where, many-hued,
The wet wild morning-glory
Hung its balloons in shadows dewed
For dawning’s offertory:
With bush and bramble, far away,
Beneath us stretched the valley,
Cleft of one creek, as clear as day,
That rippled musically.
 
 
The brown, the bronze, the green, the red
Of weed and brier ran riot
To walls of woods, whose pathways led
To nooks of whispering quiet:
Long waves of feathering goldenrod
Ran through the gray in patches,
As in a cloud the gold of God
Burns, that the sunset catches.
 
 
And there, above the blue hills rolled,
Like some far conflagration,
The sunset, flaming marigold,
We watched in exultation:
Then, turning homeward, she and I
Went in love’s sweet derangement—
How different now seem earth and sky,
Since this undreamed estrangement.