THE POEMS OF

MADISON CAWEIN

VOLUME IV
POEMS OF MYSTERY AND OF
MYTH AND ROMANCE

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The Sea King

THE POEMS OF
MADISON CAWEIN

Volume IV

POEMS OF MYSTERY
AND OF MYTH AND
ROMANCE

Illustrated
WITH PHOTOGRAVURES AFTER PAINTINGS
BY ERIC PAPE

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT 1887, 1888, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1896,
1898, 1899, 1901, 1902, 1905 and 1907, by
MADISON CAWEIN

COPYRIGHT 1896, BY COPELAND AND DAY; 1898, BY
R. H. RUSSELL

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

TO
MY MOTHER

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PROEM

Not while I live may I forget

That garden which my spirit trod!

Where dreams were flowers, wild and wet,

And beautiful as God.

Not while I breathe, awake, adream,

Shall live again for me those hours,

When, in its mystery and gleam,

I met her 'mid the flowers.

Eyes, talismanic heliotrope,

Beneath mesmeric lashes, where

The sorceries of love and hope

Had made a shining lair.

And daydawn brows, whereover hung

The twilight of dark locks; wild birds,

Her lips, that spoke the rose's tongue

In fragrance-voweled words.

I will not speak of cheeks and chin,

That held me as sweet language holds;

Nor of the eloquence within

Her breasts' twin-moonéd molds.

Nor of her body's languorous

Wind-grace, that glanced like starlight through

Her clinging robe's diaphanous

Web of the mist and dew.

There is no star so pure and high

As was her look; no fragrance such

As her soft presence; and no sigh

Of music like her touch.

Not while I live may I forget

That garden of dim dreams, where I

And Song within the spirit met,

Sweet Song, who passed me by.

POEMS OF MYSTERY

HAUNTED

I

Without a moon when night comes on

There is a sighing in its trees

As of sad lips that no one sees;

And the far-dwindling forest, large

Beyond fenced fields, seems shadowy drawn

Into its shadows. Faint and wan,

By the wistariaed portico

Stealing, I go

Through gardens where the weeds are rank:

Where, here and there, in clump and bank,

Spiræas rise, whose dotted blooms

Seem clustered starlight; and the four

Syringas sweet heap, powdered o'er,

Thin flower-beakers of perfumes;

And the dead flowering-almond tree,

That once was pink as her young cheek,

Now withered leans within the glooms.—

Why must I walk here? seek and seek

Her, long since gone?—Still bower on bower

The roses climb in blushing flower.—

Ah, 'mid the roses could I see

Her eyes, her sad eyes, shine like flowers,

Or like the dew that lies for hours

Within their hearts, then it might be

I might find comfort here, although

Wistful, as if reproaching me,

Her sad eyes look, saying what none may know.

II

When midnight comes it brings a moon:

A scent is strewn

Of honey and wild-thorns broadcast

Beneath the stars. When I have passed

Under dark cedars, solemn pines,

Through dodder-drowned petunias,

Corn-flower and the columbine,

To where azaleas, choked with grass,

And peonies, like great wisps, shine,

I reach banked honeysuckle vines,

Piled deep and trammeled with the gourd

And morning-glory—one wild hoard

Of rich aroma—where the seat,

The rustic bench, where oft we sat,—

Now warped and old with rain and heat,—

Still stands upon its mossy mat:

And here I rest; and then—a word

I seem to hear;

A soft word whispered in my ear;

Her voice it seems; no thing is near;

I look around:—I have but heard

The plaintive note of some lost bird

Trickle through night,—awakened where,

'Neath its thick lair of twisted twigs,

The jarring and incessant grigs

Hum:—dream-drugged so, the haunted air

Makes all my soul as heavy as

Dew-poppied grass.

III

Once when the moon rose, fair and full,—

Like some sea-seen Hesperian pool,

A splash of gold through tangling trees,—

Or like the Island beautiful

Of Avalon in haunted seas,—

There came a sighing in the trees

As of sad lips; there was no breeze,

And yet sad sighings shook the trees.

And when, all in a mystic space,

Her orb swam, amiable white,

Right in that shattered casement, by

The broken porch the creepers lace,

Born of a moonbeam and a sigh,

I saw her face,

Pale through a mist of tears; so slight,

So immaterial, ah me!

In pensiveness, and vanished grace,

'Twas like an olden melody.

IV

I know long-angled on its floors,

Where windows face the anxious east,

The moonshine pours

White squares of glitter and, at least,

Gives glimmer to its whispering halls:

Its corridors,

Sleep-tapestried, are guled with bars

Of moonlight: by its wasted walls

Crouch shadows: and,—where streaked dusts lay

Their undisturbed, deep gray

Upon its stairs,—dim, vision-footed, glide

Faint gossamer gleams, like visible sighs,

As to and fro, athwart the skies,—

Wind-swung against the moon outside,—

The twisted branches sway

Of one great tree; I stand below,

And listen now,

Hearing a murmur come and go

Through its gnarled boughs; remembering how

Shady this chestnut made her room,

And sweet, in June, with plumes of bloom;

And how the broad and gusty flues

Of the old house sang when the rain let loose

Its winds, and each flue seemed a hoarse,

Sonorous throat, filled with the storm's wild boom,

And growled carousal; goblin tunes

The hylas pipe to rainy moons

Of March; or, in the afternoons

Of summer, singing in their course,—

Where blossoms drip,—all wet of back,—

The crickets drone in avenues

Of locusts leading to the gate.

And in the dark here where I wait

Meseems I hear the silence creep

And crepitate

From hall to hall; as one in sleep

I hear, yet hear not; feel that there

Her soul walks, waking on each stair

Strange echoes; and the stealthy crack

Of old and warping floors: I seem

To follow her; and in a dream

To see, yet see not; in the black

That drapes each room, my mind informs

With shapes, that hide behind each door

And fling from closets phantom arms.

V

I see her face, as once before,

Bewildered with its terror, pressed

To the dark, polished floor; distressed,

Clasped in her blind and covering hands;

So desolate with anguish, wrenched

With wild remorse, no man could see,

Could see and turn away like me,

No man that sees and understands

Love and its mortal agony.

Again, like some automaton,

Part of that ghostly tragedy,

Myself I see, the fool who fled,

Who sneered and fled. And then again

Came stealing back. Again, with blenched

And bending face I stand, and clenched

And icy hands, and staring eyes,

Looking upon her face, as wan

As water; eyes all wide with pain;

Cramped to dilation, packed with loss:

Again I seem to lean across

The years, and hear my heart's deep groan

Above the young gold of her head,

Above that huddled heap alone,—

Her, white and dead.

VI

Yes, there is moan

Of lamentation and hushed screams

In all its crannies; and sad shades

Haunt all its rooms, the moonlight braids,

With melancholy. Slow have flown

The weary years: and I have known

An anguish and remorse far worse

Than usual life's; and live, it seems,

Because to live is but a curse....

VII

There she lies buried; there! that ground

Gated with rusty iron, where

She and her stanch forefathers sleep;

So old, the turf scarce shows a mound;

So gray, you scarce distinguish there

A headstone where the ivies creep

And myrtles bloom. A wall of stone

Squares it around; a place for dreams;

A mossy spot of sorrow;—lone,

Nay, lonelier, wilder now it seems,

Though just the same: its roses waste

Their petals there as oft of yore;

Their placid petals, as before;

Pale, pensive petals: yonder some

Lie faint as puffs of foam

Within the moonlight, dimly traced

Beneath the boughs; some few are strown

On the usurping weeds, great grown

Around her tomb, on which two dead leaves lie....

Here let my sick heart break and die

Amid their wiltings, on her grave,

Here in her dim, old burying-ground

The druid cedars guard around

And roses and wild thorns. Alone

She shall not lie! Ah, let me moan

My life out here where rose-leaves fall,

And rest by her who was my all!

THE ELIXIR OF LOVE

He held it possible that he

Who idolizes one that's dead,

With that strange liquid instantly

Might raise them, living red:

And so he thought, "'Tis mine at last

To live and love the love that's past;

The joy without the grief and pain.

The dead shall live and love again."

For he had loved one till for him

Her face had grown his spirit-part:

Though dead, she seemed to him less dim

Than men in street and mart.

He labored on; for, truth to say,

In toil alone his pleasure lay,

His art, through which, sometime, he thought,

Back to his arms she would be brought.

He kept such trysts as phantoms keep,

Pale distances about his soul;

And moved like one who walks asleep,

Attaining no sure goal:

Yet blither than a younger heart

At crucible and glass retort

He labored; for his love was prism

To irisate toil's egoism.

He drained wan draughts from out a cup,

A globe of vague and flaming gold,

Held from the darkness, brimming up,

By something white and cold,

That wreathed faint fingers round its brim,

Slim flakes of foam; and, soft and dim,

Stooped out of fiery-bound abysses

To print his brow with icy kisses.

At last within his trembling hand

An ancient flask burnt, starry rose;

A liquid flame of ruby fanned,

Heart-like, with crimson throes:

And in the liquid, like a flower,

A starlike face bloomed for an hour,

Then slowly faded to a skull

With eyes that mocked the beautiful.

'Though all his life had been so strange,

Yet stranger now it seemed to be;—

What was it led him forth to range

'Mid graves and mystery?

What led him to that one dim tomb,

Where he could read within the gloom

The name of one who lay within

With all of silence, naught of sin?

Untainted, so it seemed, and made