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Title: The Triumph of Music, and Other Lyrics

Author: Madison Julius Cawein

Release date: September 10, 2011 [eBook #37371]

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIUMPH OF MUSIC, AND OTHER LYRICS ***

E-text prepared by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci,

and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

(http://www.pgdp.net)

from page images generously made available by

Kentuckiana Digital Library

(http://kdl.kyvl.org)

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Images of the original pages are available through Kentuckiana Digital Library. See http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;view=toc;idno=b92-184-30604827

The Triumph of Music

AND

Other Lyrics.

BY MADISON J. CAWEIN.

"THE OAT IS HEARD ABOVE THE LYRE."—Swinburne.

[LIMITED.]

JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY.

1888

INSCRIBED

TO

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

WITH

FRIENDSHIP AND ESTEEM.

COPYRIGHT 1888 BY M. J. CAWEIN.

CONTENTS.

PAGE.

The Triumph of Music, 1

What You Will, 10

In the South, 12

Pan, 15

Pax Vobiscum, 18

Mirabile Dictu, 20

Questionings, 22

Waiting, 23

In Late Fall, 26

Midwinter, 27

Longing, 28

In Middle Spring, 29

Tyranny, 31

Visions, 32

The Old Byway, 34

Diurnal, 36

The Wood Path, 38

Deficiency, 40

He Who Loves, 42

The Monastery Croft, 43

The Dryad, 44

"The Sweet o' the Year," 46

With the Seasons, 48

Unattainable, 51

Beyond, 53

Shadows, 56

Check and Counter-Check, 58

Semper Idem, 60

Two Lives, 62

Forevermore, 64

A Blown Rose, 68

To-morrow, 69

Mnemosyne, 69

The Sirens, 70

The Vintager, 71

A Stormy Sunset, 72

On a Dial, 73

Unutterable, 74

Midsummer, 75

A Fairy Cavalier, 78

The Farmstead, 80

Five Fancies: I. The Gladiolas, 87

II. The Morning-Glories, 88

III. The Tiger-Lily, 89

IV. Vengeance, 90

V. A Dead Lily, 92

My Suit, 94

The Family Burying-Ground, 96

The Water-Maid, 98

The Sea-King, 100

Where and What? 103

The Spring, 107

Lillita, 109

Artemis, 112

In November, 116

A Character, 117

A Mood, 120

A Thought, 122

Song, 123

Face to Face, 125

The Changeling, 130

St. John's Eve, 133

Lalage, 137

Miriam, 144

The Wind, 146

Music, 149

To ——, 153

Yule, 155

The Troubadour, 160

Why? 165

From Unbelief to Belief, 166

The King, 169

THE TRIUMPH OF MUSIC.

I

There lay in a vale 'twixt lone mountains

A garden entangled with flowers,

Where the whisper of echoing fountains

Stirred softly the musk-breathing bowers.

Where torrents cast down from rock-masses,

From caverns of red-granite steeps,

With thunders sonorous clove passes

And maddened dark gulfs with rash leaps,

With the dolorous foam of their leaps.

II

And, oh, when the sunrays came heaping

The foam of those musical chasms,

With a scintillant dust as of diamonds,

It seemed that white spirits were sweeping

Down, down thro' those voluble chasms,

Wild weeping in resonant spasms.

And the wave from the red-hearted granite

In veins rolled tumbling around;

Meandered thro' shade-haunted forests

Where many rock barriers did span it

To dash it in froth and in sound:

Where the nights with their great moons could wan it,

Or star its dusk stillness profound.

III

And here in the night would I wander

On woodways where fragrances kissed,

By shadows where murmurings kissed;

And here would I tarry to ponder

When the moon in blue vales made a mist;

Dim in forests of rank, rocking cedars,

Whose wildness made glad with their scent,

Whose boughs in the tempests were bent

Like the pennons and plumes of fierce leaders,

In the battle all ragged and rent.

IV

And so when the moonshine was floating

Far up on the mountain's bleak head,

On the uttermost foam of the torrent,

Would I string a wild harp while was gloating

The moon on my blossomy bed.

Or I lay where a fountain of blossoms

Rained rustling from arches aloft,

From the thick-scented arbors aloft,

And I sang as the blossoms' white bosoms

Pressed silk-smooth to mine and lay soft:

I sang as their redolence stung me,

And laughed on my blossomy couch,

Till the fragrance and music had flung me

Into shadows of sleep with their touch,

The magic of exquisite touch....

V

One night as I wondered and wandered

In this my rare Aidenn of flowers,

I saw where I lingered and pondered

A youth cast asleep mid the bowers:

A youth on a mantle of satin,

A poppy-red robe in the flowers.

VI

So I kissed his thin eyelids full tender,

I kissed his high forehead and pale,

I sighed as I kissed his black splendor

Of curls that were kissed of the gale,

That were moved of the balm-breathing gale.

And he woke and cried out as if haunted:—

"Oh God! for one note of that song!

For a sob of that languishing song!

Whose tumult of sorrow enchanted,

And swept my weak spirit along!"

VII

Than I sate me upon the red satin

And plunged a long look in his eyes;

I bowed on the weft of red satin

And kindled his love with my sighs.

With fingers of lightness set sobbing

The chords of my harp in a song,

Till I found that my heart was a-throbbing

And sobbing to sing like a tongue,

Was sobbing to mix with the song.

VIII

Then he cried, and his dark eyes keen glistened,

"Lost! lost! for that perilous music!

Oh God! for that tyrannous strain!

To which in my dreams I have listened,

Ah, wretch! I have listened with pain!"

And he tost on the garment of satin

His deep raven darkness of hair,

And the song at my lips was ungathered,

And I sate there to marvel and stare.

IX

Then I wrenched from my soul a wild glory

Of music delirious with words,

Of music that wailed a soul's story,

And trembled with god-uttered words,

Or fell like the battling of swords.

And in with it mixed all the beauty

Of farewells and ravenous sighs,

The heart that was broken for booty,

Tears, rapture to know that one dies,

Hell, heaven and laughter and cries.

X

In music the heart-ache of passion,

The terror of souls that are lost,

Cold, dizzying anguish of dying,

All torments that beauty could fashion,

Hot manacles of love and their cost.

The bliss and the fury of dashing

A soul into riotous love,

While the smiting of harp-chords and crashing

Of song like the winds were enwove

With the stars that fall sounding above.

XI

Ah! why did the poppy-crowned slumber

Seal up the rare light of his eyes

With its silver of vapory pinions,

The creature that sung in each number,

To nest in his tired-out eyes,

Like a bird that is sick of the skies.

Yet he murmured so sad and so thrilling,

"Oh God! for a lifetime of song!

Oh life! for a world of such song!

For a heaven or hell and the killing,

Mad angel or devil of song!

Oh, the rapture engendered in throwing

On bubbles of music and song

A soul to the anguish of loving,

Until like a flower, full blowing,

It is lost in a whirlwind most strong,

It dies in a thunder of song!"

XII

I had flung in my song the emotion

Triumphant of heart and of soul,

And I recked not the passionate ocean

That rolled to abysses of dole,

To infinite torture and dole.

XIII

So I sang and I harped till all weary

I sunk on the red of that robe,

Crouched down at his feet on the satin,

While he slumbered with eyelashes teary

Fringed dark o'er each eye-ball's dark globe.

Then I wondered and said, "It is dreary

To see him so still on this robe."

And I sobbed and I sobbed, "Is he living,

Or have I but slain with my song!"

And it seemed that a demon was striving

To strangle my heart with a thong,

With terror and sorrow of wrong.

XIV

And I rent the wild harp in my madness,

From his ashen brows furrowed the hair;

Soft wafted dark curls from pale temples—

They rustled with death—and the sadness

Of his face so hopelessly fair!

How I wailed to the stars of the heaven

How they scoffed at and answered my grief

In letters of flame, "Unforgiven!

Thou deathless, whose voice is a thief,

Forever and ever grief!"

XV

So I wept on the instrument broken,

The instrument sweet of his death,

The dagger that stabbed not to kill him,

The dagger of song which had spoken,

And ravished away his life's breath.

So I wept, and my curls thick and golden

Stormed entangled and showered 'mid his;

My arms around him were enfolden,

My lips clave to his with a kiss,

With the life and the love of a kiss.

WHAT YOU WILL.

I

When the season was dry and the sun was hot

And the hornet sucked gaunt on the apricot,

And the ripe peach dropped to its seed a-rot,

With a lean red wasp that stung and clung;

When the hollyhocks, ranked in the garden-plot,

More seed-pods had than blossoms, I wot,

A weariness weighed on the tongue,

That the drought of the season begot.

II

When the black grape bulged with the juice that burst

Through its thick blue skin that was cracked with thirst,

And the round gold pippins, the summer had nursed,

In the yellowing leaves o' the orchards hung;

When the reapers, their lips with whistling pursed,

To their sun-tanned brows in the corn were immersed,

A lightness came over the tongue,

And one sung as much as one durst.

III

When the skies of December gray dripped and dripped,

And icicles eaves of the big barn tipped,

And loud hens flew over the snow or slipped,

And the north wind hooted and bit and stung,

And the ears of the milkmaid, Miriam, nipped,

And the chappy cheeks of the farm boy whipped,

A goddess unloosened the tongue,

And one's mouth with wild honey was lipped.

IN THE SOUTH.

[SERENADE.]

The dim verbena drugs the dusk

With heavy lemon odors rare;

Wan heliotropes Arabian musk

Exhale into the dreamy air;

A sad wind with long wooing husk

Swoons in the roses there.

The jasmine at thy casement flings

Star-censers oozing rich perfumes;

The clematis, long petaled, swings

Deep clusters of dark purple blooms;

With flowers like moons or sylphide wings

Magnolias light the glooms.

Awake, awake from sleep!

Thy balmy hair,

Unbounden deep on deep,

Than blossoms fair,

Who sweetest fragrance weep,

Will fill the night with prayer.

Awake, awake from sleep!

And dreaming here it seems to me

Some dryad's bosoms grow confessed

Nude in the dark magnolia tree,

That rustles with the murmurous West,—

Or is it but a dream of thee

That thy white beauty guessed?

In southern heavens above are rolled

A million feverish gems, which burst

From night's deep ebon caskets old,

With inner fires that seem to thirst;

Tall oleanders to their gold

Drift buds where dews are nursed.

Unseal, unseal thine eyes,

Where long her rod

Queen Mab sways o'er their skies

In realms of Nod!

Confessed, such majesties

Will fill the night with God.

Unseal, unseal thine eyes!

PAN.

1

Haunter of green intricacies,

Where the sunlight's amber laces

Deeps of darkest violet;

Where the ugly Satyr chases

Shining Dryads, fair as Graces,

Whose lithe limbs with dew are wet;

Piper in hid mountain places,

Where the blue-eyed Oread braces

Winds which in her sweet cheeks set

Of Aurora rosy traces,

Whiles the Faun from myrtle mazes

Watcheth with an eye of jet:

What art thou and these dim races,

Thou, O Pan! of many faces,

Who art ruler yet?

2

Tell me, piper, have I ever

Heard thy hollow syrinx quiver

Trickling music in the trees?

Where dark hazel copses shiver,

Have I heard its dronings sever

The warm silence, or the bees?

Ripple murmurings, that never

Could be born of fall or river,

Whisperings and subtleties,

Melodies so very clever,

None can doubt that thou, the giver,

Master Nature's keys.

3

What glad awes of storm are given

Thy mad power, which has striven,—

Where the craggy forests glare,—

In wild mockery, when Heaven

Splits with thunder wedges driven

Red through night and rainy air!

What art thou, whose presence, even

While its fear the heart hath riven,

Heals it with a prayer?

PAX VOBISCUM.

1

Her violets in thine eyes

The Springtide stained I know,

Two bits of mystic skies

On which the green turf lies,

Whereon the violets blow.

2

I know the Summer wrought

From thy sweet heart that rose,

With that faint fragrance fraught,

Its sad poetic thought

Of peace and deep repose.

3

That Autumn, like some god,

From thy delicious hair—

Lost sunlight 'neath the sod

Shot up this golden-rod

To toss it everywhere.

4

That Winter from thy breast

The snowdrop's whiteness stole—

Much kinder than the rest—

Thy innocence confessed,

The pureness of thy soul.

MIRABILE DICTU.

There lives a goddess in the West,

An island in death-lonesome seas;

No towered towns are hers confessed,

No castled forts and palaces.

Hers, simple worshipers at best,

The buds, the birds, the bees.

And she hath wonder-worlds of song

So heavenly beautiful, and shed

So sweetly from her honeyed tongue,

The savage creatures, it is said,

Hark marble-still their wilds among,

And nightingales fall dead.

I know her not, nor have I known;

I only feel that she is there;

For when my heart is most alone

There broods communion on the air,

Concedes an influence not its own,

Miraculously fair.

Then fain is it to sing and sing,

And then again to fly and fly

Beyond the flight of cloud or wing,

Far under azure arcs of sky.

Its love at her chaste feet to fling,

Behold her face and die.

QUESTIONINGS.

Now when wan winter sunsets be

Canary-colored down the sky;

When nights are starless utterly,

And sleeted winds cut moaning by,

One's memory keeps one company,

And conscience puts his "when" and "why."

Such inquisition, when alone,

Wakes superstition in the head,

A Gorgon face of hueless stone

With staring eyes to terror wed,

Stamped on her brow God's words, "Unknown!

Behind the dead, behind the dead."

And, oh! that weariness of soul

That leans upon our dead, the clod

And air have taken as a whole

Through some mysterious period:—

Life! with thy questions of control:

Death! with thy unguessed laws of God.

WAITING.

Were we in May now, while

Our souls are yearning,

Sad hearts would bound and smile

With red blood burning;

Around the tedious dial

No slow hands turning.

Were we in May now, say,

What joy to know

Her heart's streams pulse away

In winds that blow,

See graceful limbs of May

Revealed to glow.

Were we in May now, think

What wealth she has;

The dog-tooth violets pink,

Wind-flowers like glass,

About the wood brook's brink

Dark sassafras.

Nights, which the large stars strew

Heav'n on heav'n rolled,

Nights, whose feet flash with dew,

Whose long locks hold

Aromas cool and new,

A moon's curved gold.

This makes me sad in March;

I long and long

To see the red-bud's torch

Flame far and strong,

Hear on my vine-climbed porch

The blue-bird's song.

What else then but to sleep

And cease from such;

Dream of her and to leap

At her white touch?

Ah me! then wake and weep,

Weep overmuch.

This is why day by day

Time lamely crawls,

Feet clogged with winter clay

That never falls,

While the dim month of May

Me far off calls.

IN LATE FALL.

Such days as break the wild bird's heart;

Such days as kill it and its songs;

A death which knows a sweeter part

Of days to which such death belongs.

And now old eyes are filled with tears,

As with the rain the frozen flowers;

Time moves so slowly one but fears

The burthen on his wasted powers.

And so he stopped;—and thou art dead!

And that is found which once was feared:—

A farewell to thy gray, gray head,

A goodnight to thy goodly beard!

MIDWINTER.

The dew-drop from the rose that slips

Hath not the sparkle of her lips,

My lady's lips.

Than her long braids of yellow hold

The dandelion hath not more gold,

Her braids like gold.

The blue-bell hints not more of skies

Than do the flowers in her eyes,

My lady's eyes.

The sweet-pea blossom doth not wear

More dainty pinkness than her ear,

My lady's ear.

So, heigho! then, tho' skies be gray,

My heart's a garden that is gay

This sorry day.

LONGING.

When rathe wind-flowers many peer

All rain filled at blue April skies,

As on one smiles one's lady dear

With the big tear-drops in her eyes;

When budded May-apples, I wis,

Be hidden by lone greenwood creeks,

Be bashful as her cheeks we kiss,

Be waxen as her dimpled cheeks;

Then do I pine for happier skies,

Shy wild-flowers fair by hill and burn;

As one for one's sweet lady's eyes,

And her white cheeks might pine and yearn.

IN MIDDLE SPRING.

When the fields are rolled into naked gold,

And a ripple of fire and pearl is blent

With the emerald surges of wood and wold

Like a flower-foam bursting violent;

When the dingles and deeps of the woodlands old

Are glad with a sibilant life new sent,

Too rare to be told are the manifold

Sweet fancies that quicken redolent

In the heart that no longer is cold.

How it knows of the wings of the hawk that swings

From the drippled dew scintillant seen;

Why the red-bird hides where it sings and sings

In melodious quiverings of green;

How the wind to the red-bud and dogwood brings

Big pearls of worth and corals of sheen,

Whiles he lisps to the strings of a lute that rings

Of love in the South who is queen,

Where the fountain of poesy springs.

Go seek in the ray for a sworded fay

The chestnut's buds into blooms that rips;

And look in the brook that runs laughing gay

For the nymph with the laughing lips;

In the brake for the dryad whose eyes are gray,

From whose bosom the perfume drips;

The faun hid away where the grasses sway

Thick ivy low down on his hips,

Pursed lips on a syrinx at play.

So ho, for the rose, the Romeo rose,

And the lyric he hides in his heart;

And ho, for the epic the oak tree knows,

Sonorous and mighty in art.

The lily with woes that her white face shows

Hath a satire she yearns to impart,

But none of those, her hates and her foes,

For a heart that sings but for sport,

And shifts where the song-wind blows.

TYRANNY.

There is not aught more merciless

Than such fast lips that will not speak,

That stir not if I curse or bless

A God that made them weak.

More madd'ning to one there is naught,

Than such white eyelids sealed on eyes,

Eyes vacant of the thing named thought,

An exile in the skies.

Ah, silent tongue! ah, ear so dull!

How angel utterances low

Have wooed you! they more beautiful

Than mortal harsh with woe!

VISIONS.

When the snow was deep on the flower-beds,

And the sleet was caked on the brier;

When the frost was down in the brown bulbs' heads,

And the ways were clogged with mire;

When the wind to syringa and bare rose-tree

Brought the phantoms of vanished flowers,

And the days were sorry as sorry could be,

And Time limped cursing his fardle of hours:

Heigho! had I not a book and the logs?

And I swear that I wasn't mistaken,

But I heard the frogs croaking in far-off bogs,

And the brush-sparrow's song in the braken.

And I strolled by paths which the Springtide knew,

In her mossy dells, by her ferny passes,

Where the ground was holy with flowers and dew,

And the insect life in the grasses.

And I knew the Spring as a lover who knows

His sweetheart, to whom he has given

A kiss on the cheek that warmed its white rose,

In her eyes brought the laughter of heaven.

For a poem I'd read, a simple thing,

A little lyric that had the power

To make the brush-sparrow come and sing,

And the winter woodlands flower.

THE OLD BYWAY

Its rotting fence one scarcely sees

Through sumach and wild blackberries,

Thick elder and the white wild-rose,

Big ox-eyed daisies where the bees

Hang droning in repose.

The limber lizards glide away

Gray on its moss and lichens gray;

Warm butterflies float in the sun,

Gay Ariels of the lonesome day;

And there the ground squirrels run.

The red-bird stays one note to lift;

High overhead dark swallows drift;

'Neath sun-soaked clouds of beaten cream,

Through which hot bits of azure sift,

The gray hawks soar and scream.

Among the pungent weeds they fill

Dry grasshoppers pipe with a will;

And in the grass-grown ruts, where stirs

The basking snake, mole-crickets shrill;

O'er head the locust whirrs.

At evening, when the sad West turns

To dusky Night a cheek that burns,

The tree-toads in the wild-plum sing,

And ghosts of long-dead flowers and ferns

The wind wakes whispering.

DIURNAL.

I

A molten ruby clear as wine

Along the east the dawning swims;

The morning-glories swing and shine,

The night dews bead their satin rims;

The bees rob sweets from shrub and vine,

The gold hangs on their limbs.

Sweet morn, the South,

A royal lover,

From his fragrant mouth,

Sweet morn, the South

Breathes on and over

Keen scents of wild honey and rosy clover.

II

Beside the wall the roses blow

Long summer noons the winds forsake;

Beside the wall the poppies glow

So full of fire their hearts do ache;

The dipping butterflies come slow,

Half dreaming, half awake.

Sweet noontide, rest,

A slave-girl weary

With her babe at her breast;

Sweet noontide, rest,

The day grows dreary

As soft limbs that are tired and eyes that are teary.

III

Along lone paths the cricket cries

Sad summer nights that know the dew;

One mad star thwart the heavens flies

Curved glittering on the glassy blue;

Now grows the big moon on the skies.

The stars are faint and few.

Sweet night, breathe thou

With a passion taken

From a Romeo's vow;

Sweet night, breathe thou

Like a beauty shaken

Of amorous dreams that have made her waken.

THE WOOD-PATH.

Here doth white Spring white violets show,

Broadcast doth white, frail wind-flowers sow

Through starry mosses amber-fair,

As delicate as ferns that grow,

Hart's-tongue and maiden-hair.

Here fungus life is beautiful,

White mushroom and the thick toad-stool

As various colored as wild blooms;

Existences that love the cool,

Distinct in rank perfumes.

Here stray the wandering cows to rest,

The calling cat-bird builds her nest

In spice-wood bushes dark and deep;

Here raps the woodpecker his best,

And here young rabbits leap.

Tall butternuts and hickories,

The pawpaw and persimmon trees,

The beech, the chestnut, and the oak,

Wall shadows huge, like ghosts of bees

Through which gold sun-bits soak.

Here to pale melancholy moons.

In haunted nights of dreamy Junes,

Wails wildly the weird whippoorwill,

Whose mournful and demonic tunes

Wild woods with phantoms fill.

DEFICIENCY.

Ah, God! were I away, away,

By woodland-belted hills!

There might be more in Thy bright day

Than my poor spirit thrills.

The elder coppice, banks of blooms,

The spice-wood brush, the field

Of tumbled clover, and perfumes

Hot, weedy pastures yield.

The old rail-fence whose angles hold

Bright briar and sassafras,

Sweet priceless wild flowers blue and gold

Starred through the moss and grass.

The ragged path that winds unto

Lone cow-behaunted nooks,

Through brambles to the shade and dew

Of rocks and woody brooks.

To see the minnows turn and gleam

White sparkling bellies, all

Shoot in gray schools adown the stream

Let but a dead leaf fall.

The buoyant pleasure and delight

Of floating feathered seeds.

Capricious wanderers soft and white

Born of silk-bearing weeds.

Ah, God! were I away, away,

Among wild woods and birds!

There were more soul within Thy day

Than one might bless with words.

HE WHO LOVES.

For him God's birds each merry morn

Make of wild throats melodious flutes

To trill such love from brush and thorn

As might brim eyes of brutes:

Who would believe of such a thing,

That 'tis her heart which makes them sing?

For him the faultless skies of noon

Grow farther in eternal blue,

As heavens that buoy the balanced moon,

And sow the stars and dew:

Who would believe that such deep skies

Are miracles only through her eyes?

For him mad sylphs adown domed nights

Stud golden globules radiant,

Or glass-green transient trails of lights

Spin from their orbs and slant:

Who would believe a soul were hers

To make for him a universe?

THE MONASTERY CROFT.

1

Big-stomached, like friars

Who ogle a nun,

Quaff deep to their bellies' desires

From the old abbey's tun,

Grapes fatten with fires

Warm-filtered from moon and from sun.

2

As a novice who muses,—

Lips a rosary tell,

While her thoughts are—a love she refuses?

—Nay! mourns as not well:

The ripe apple looses

Its holding to rot where it fell.

THE DRYAD.

I have seen her limpid eyes

Large with gradual laughter rise

Through wild-roses' nettles,

Like twin blossoms grow and stare,

Then a hating, envious air

Whisked them into petals.

I have seen her hardy cheek

Like a molten coral leak

Through the leafage shaded

Of thick Chickasaws, and then,

When I made more sure, again

To a red plum faded.

I have found her racy lips,

And her graceful finger-tips,

But a haw and berry;

Glimmers of her there and here,

Just, forsooth, enough to cheer

And to make me merry.

Often on the ferny rocks

Dazzling rimples of loose locks

At me she hath shaken,

And I've followed—'twas in vain—

They had trickled into rain

Sun-lit on the braken.

Once her full limbs flashed on me,

Naked where some royal tree

Powdered all the spaces

With wan sunlight and quaint shade,

Such a haunt romance hath made

For haunched satyr-races.

There, I wot, hid amorous Pan,

For a sudden pleading ran

Through the maze of myrtle,

Whiles a rapid violence tossed

All its flowerage,—'twas the lost

Cooings of a turtle.

"THE SWEET O' THE YEAR."

I

How can I help from laughing while

The daffodilies at me smile;

The tickled dew winks tipsily

In clusters of the lilac-tree;

The crocuses and hyacinths

Storm through the grassy labyrinths

A mirth of gold and violet;

And roses, bud by bud,

Flash from each dainty-lacing net

Red lips of maidenhood?

II

How can I help from singing when

The swallow and the hawk again

Are noisy in the hyaline

Of happy heavens clear as wine;

The robin lustily and shrill

Pipes on the timber-bosomed hill;

And o'er the fallow skim the bold,

Mad orioles that glow

Like shining shafts of ingot gold

Shot from the morning's bow?

III

How can I help from loving, dear,

Since love is of the sweetened year?

The very vermin feel her power,

And chip and chirrup hour by hour:

It is the grasshopper at noon,

The cricket's at it in the moon,

Whiles lizzards glitter in the dew,

And bats be on the wing;

Such days of joy are short and few.

Grant me thy love this spring.

WITH THE SEASONS.

I

You will not love me, sweet.

When this fair year is past;

Or love now at my feet

At others' feet be cast.

You will not love me, sweet,

When this fair year is past.

II

Now 'tis the Springtide, dear,

The crocus cups hold flame

Brimmed to the pregnant year.

Who crimsons as with shame.

Now 'tis the Springtide, dear,

The crocus cups hold flame.

III

Ah, heart, the Summer's queen,

At her brown throat one rose;

The poppies now are seen

With seed-pods thrust in rows.

Dear heart, the Summer's queen,

At her brown throat one rose.

IV

Now Autumn reigns, a prince

Fierce, gipsy-dark; live gold

Weighs down the fruited quince,

The last chilled violet's told.

The Autumn reigns, a prince,

A despot crowned with gold.

V

Alas! rude Winter's king,

Snow-driven from chin to head;

No wild birds pipe and sing,

The wild winds sing instead.

Ah me! rude Winter's king,

Snow-driven from chin to head.

VI

Weep now, you once who smiled,

Sweet hope that had few fears!

And this the end, my child!—

Thyself, my shame and tears!

Weep now, you once who smiled,

Sweet hope, that had few fears!

UNATTAINABLE.

I

What though the soul be tired

For that to which 'twas fired,

The far, dear, still desired,

Beyond the heaven's scope;

Beyond us and above us,

The thing we would have love us,

That will know nothing of us,

But only bids us hope.

II

It still behooves us ever

From loving ne'er to sever,

To love it though it never

Reciprocate our care;

For love, when freely given,

Lets in soft hints of heaven

In memories that leaven

Black humors of despair.

III

For in this life diurnal

All earthly, gross, infernal,

Conflicts with that eternal

To make its love as lust;

To rot the fairest flower

Of thought which is a power,

All happiness to sour,

And burn our eyes with dust.

IV

Believe, some power higher

Breathes in us this desire

With purpose strange as fire,

And soft though seeming hard;

Who to such starved endeavor

And wasted love, that never

Seems recompensed, forever

Gives in His way reward.

BEYOND.

Hangs stormed with stars the night,

Deep over deep,

A majesty, a might,

To feel and keep.

2

Ah! what is such and such,

Love, canst thou tell?

That shrinks—though 'tis not much—

To weep farewell.

3

That hates the dawn and lark;

Would have the wail,—

Sobbed through the ceaseless dark,—

O' the nightingale.

4

Yes, earth, thy life were worth

Not much to me,

Were there not after earth

Eternity.

5>

God gave thee life to keep—

And what hath life?—

Love, faith, and care, and sleep

Where dreams are rife.

6

Death's sleep, whose shadows start

The tears in eyes

Of love, that fill the heart

That breaks and dies.

7

And faith is never given

Without some care,

That leadeth us to heaven

By ways of prayer.

8

The nightingale and dark

Are thine then here;

Beyond, the light and lark

Eternal there.

SHADOWS.

1

Ha! help!—'twas palpable!

A ghost that thronged

Up from the mind or hell

Of one I wronged!

2

'Tis past and—silence!—naught!—

A vision born

Of the scared mind o'erwrought

With dreams forlorn:

3

The bastard brood of Death

And Sleep that wakes

Grim fancies with its breath,

And reason shakes.

4

Would that the grave could rot

Like flesh the soul,

Gnaw through with worms and not

Leave it thus whole,

5

More than it was in earth

Beyond the grave,

Much more in death than birth

To conscience slave!

CHECK AND COUNTER-CHECK.

1

Vent all your coward's wrath

Upon me so!—

Yes, I have crossed your path

And will not go!

2

Storm at me hate, and name

Me all that's vile,

"Lust," "filth," "disease," and "shame,"

I only smile.

3

Me brute rage can not hurt,

It only flings

In your own eyes blind dirt

That bites and stings.

4

Rave at your like such whine,

Your fellow-men,

This wrath!—great God! and mine!—

What is it then?

5

No words! no oaths! such hate

As devils smile

When raw success cries "wait!"

And "afterwhile!"

6

A woman I and ill,

A courtesan

You wearied of, would kill,

And you—a man!

7

You, you—unnamable!

A thing there's not,

Too base to burn in Hell,

Too vile to rot.

SEMPER IDEM.

1

Hold up thy head and crush

Thy heart's despair;

From thy wan temples brush

The tear-wet hair.

2

Look on me thus as I

Gaze upon thee;

Nor question how nor why

Such things can be.

3

Thou thought'st it love!—poor fool!

That which was lust!

Which made thee, beautiful,

Vile as the dust!

4

Thy flesh I craved, thy face!—

Love shrinks at this—

Now on thy lips to place

One farewell kiss!—

5

Weep not, but die!—'tis given—

And so—farewell!—

Die!—that which makes death heaven,

Makes life a hell.

TWO LIVES.

1

"There is no God," one said,

And love is lust;

When I am dead I'm dead,

And all is dust.

"Be merry while you can

Before you're gray;

With some wild courtesan

Drink care away."

2

One said, "A God there is,

And God is love;

Death is not death, but bliss,

And life above.

"Above all flesh is mind;

And faith and truth

God's gifts to poor mankind

That make life youth."

3

One from a harlot's side

Arose at morn;

One cursing God had died

That night forlorn.

FOREVERMORE.

I

O heart that vainly follows

The flight of summer swallows,

Far over holts and hollows,

O'er frozen buds and flowers;

To violet seas and levels,

Where Love Time's locks dishevels

With merry mimes and revels

Of aphrodisiac Hours.

II

O Love who, dreaming, borrows

Dead love from sad to-morrows,

The broken heart that sorrows,

The blighted hopes that weep;

Pale faces pale with sleeping;

Red eyelids red with weeping;

Dead lips dead secrets keeping,

That shake the deeps of sleep!

III

O Memory that showers

About the withered hours

White, ruined, sodden flowers,

Dead dust and bitter rain;

Dead loves with faces teary;

Dead passions wan and dreary;

The weary, weary, weary,

Dead heart-ache and the pain!

IV

O give us back the blisses,

Lost madness of moist kisses,

The youth, the joy, the tresses,

The fragrant limbs of white;

The high heart like a jewel

Alive with subtle fuel,

Lips beautiful and cruel,

Eyes' incarnated light!

V

Instead of tears, wild laughter

The old hot passions after,

The houri sweets that dafter

Made flesh and soul a slave!

Enough of tearful sorrows;

Enough of rank to-morrows;

The life that whines and borrows

But memories of the grave!

VI

The grave that breaks no netting

Of care or spint's fretting,

No long, long sweet forgetting

For those who would forget;

And those who stammer by it

Hope of an endless quiet,

Within them voiceless riot

When they and it have met.

VII

And God we pray beseeching,—

But Life with finger reaching,

Stone-stern, remaineth teaching

Our hearts to turn to stone;

Then fain are we to follow

The last, lorn, soaring swallow

Past bourns of holt and hollow

Forevermore alone.

A BLOWN ROSE.

Lay but a finger on

That pallid petal sweet,

It trembles gray and wan

Beneath the passing feet.

But soft! blown rose, we know

A merriment of bloom,

A life of sturdy glow,—

But no such dear perfume.

As some good bard, whose page

Of life with beauty's fraught,

Grays on to ripe old age

Sweet-mellowed through with thought.

So when his hoary head

Is wept into the tomb,

The mind, which is not dead,

Sheds round it rare perfume.

TO-MORROW.

A Lorelei full fair she sits

Throned on the stream that dimly rolls;

Still, hope-thrilled, with her wild harp knits

To her from year to year men's souls.

They hear her harp, they hear her song,

Led by the wizard beauty high,

Like blind brutes maddened rush along,

Sink at her cold feet, gasp and die.

MNEMOSYNE.

In classic beauty, cold, immaculate,

A voiceful sculpture, stern and still she stands,

Upon her brow deep chiseled love and hate,

That sorrow o'er dead roses in her hands.

THE SIRENS.

Wail! wail! and smite your lyres' sonorous gold,

And beckon naked beauty from the sea

In arms and breasts and hips of godly mold,

Dark, strangling hair carousing to the knee.

In vain! in vain! and dull in unclosed ears

To one loved voice sweet calling o'er the foam,

Which in my heart like some strong hand appears

To gently, firmly draw my vessel home.

THE VINTAGER.

Among the fragrant grapes she bows;

Long, violet clusters heap her hands;

About her satyr throats and brows

Flush at her smiled commands.

And from her sun-burnt throat at times,

As bubbles burst on new-made wine,

A happy fit of merry rhymes

Rings down the hills of vine.

From out one heart, remorseless sweet,

She plucked the big-grape passion there;

Trod in the wine-press of her feet,

It grew into despair:

Until she drained its honeyed must,

Which, tingling inward part by part,

Fierce mounted thro' her glowing bust

And centered in her heart.

A STORMY SUNSET.

1

Soul of my body! what a death

For such a day of envious gloom,

Unbroken passion of the sky!

As if the pure, kind-hearted breath

Of some soft power, ever nigh,

Had, cleaving in the bitter sheath,

Burst from its grave a gorgeous bloom.

2

The majesty of clouds that swarm.

Expanding in a furious length

Of molten-metal petals, flows

Unutterable, and where the warm,

Full fire is centered, swims and glows

The evening star fresh-faced with strength,

A shimmering rain-drop of the storm.

ON A DIAL.

1

To-morrow and to-morrow

Is but to-day:

The world wags but to borrow

Time that grows gray:—

Grammercy! time's but sorrow

And—well away!

2

Since time hales but to sadness

And to decay,

Men needs wax fools for madness,

Laugh, curse, and pray;

Death grapples with their badness—

The Devil's to pay.

UNUTTERABLE.

There is a sorrow in the wind to-night

That haunteth me; she, like a penitent,

Heaps on rent hairs the snow's thin ashes white

And moans and moans, her swaying body bent.

And Superstition gliding softly shakes

With wasted hands, that vainly grope and seek,

The rustling curtains; of each cranny makes

Cold, ghostly lips that wailing fain would speak.

MIDSUMMER.

The red blood clings in her cheeks and stings

Through their tan with a fever that lightens,

And the clearness of heaven-born mountain springs

In her dark eyes dusks and brightens.

And her limbs are the limbs of an Atalanta who swings

With the youths in the sinewy games,

When the hot air sings thro' the hair it flings,

And the circus roars hoarse with their names,

As they fly to the goal that flames.

A voice as deep as wan waters that sweep

Thro' the musical reeds of a river;

A song of red reapers that bind and reap,

With the ring of curved scythes that quiver.

The note-like lisp of the pippins that leap,

Ripe-mellowed to gold, to the ground;

The murmurous sleep that the cool leaves keep

On close lips that trickle with sound.

And sweet is the beat of her glowing feet,

And her smiles as wide heavens are gracious;

And the creating might of her hands of heat

As a god's or a goddess's spacious.

The elastic veins thro' her heart that beat

Are rich with a perishless fire,

And her bosoms most sweet are the ardent seat

Of a mother that never will tire.

Wherever she fares her soft voice bears

High powers of being that thicken

In fruits, as the winds made Thessalian mares

Of old mysteriously quicken;

The apricots' juice and the juice of the pears,

The wine great grape-clusters hold,

These, these are her cares, and her wealth she declares

In her corn's vast billows of gold.

All hail to her lips, and her fruitful hips,

And her motherly thickness of tresses;

All hail to the sweetness that slips and drips

From her breasts which the light caresses.

A toiler, whose fair arm heaps and whips

Great chariots that heavily creak;

A worker, who sweats on the groaning ships.

And never grows weary or weak.

A FAIRY CAVALIER.

By a mushroom in the moon,

White as bud from budded berry,

Silver buckles on my shoon,—

Ho! the moon shines merry.

Here I sit and drink my grog,—

Stocks and tunic ouphen yellow,

Skinned from belly of a frog,—

Quite a fine, fierce fellow.

My good cloak a bat's wing gave,

And a beetle's wings my bonnet,

And a moth's head grew the brave,

Gallant feather on it.

Faith! I have rich jewels rare,

Rings and carcanets all studded

Thick with spiders' eyes, that glare

Like great rubies blooded.

And I swear, sirs, by my blade,

"Sirrah, a good stabbing hanger!"—

From a hornet's stinger made,—

When I am in anger.

Fill the lichen pottles up!

Honey pressed from hearts of roses;

Cheek by jowl, up with each cup

Till we hide our noses.

Good, sirs!—marry!—'tis the cock!

Hey, away! the moon's lost fire!

Ho! the cock our dial and clock—

Hide we 'neath this brier.

THE FARMSTEAD.

Yes, a lovely homestead; there

In the Spring your lilacs blew

Plenteous perfume everywhere;

There your gladiolas grew,

Parallels of scarlet glare.

And the moon-hued primrose cool,

Satin-soft and redolent;

Honey-suckles beautiful,

Balming all the air with scent;

Roses red or white as wool.

Roses glorious and lush,

Rich in tender-tinted dyes,

Like a gay, tempestuous rush

Of unnumbered butterflies

Lighting on each bending bush.

Here the fire-bush and the box,

And the wayward violets;

Clumps of star-enameled phlox,

And the myriad flowery jets

Of the twilight four-o'clocks.

Ah, the beauty of the place

When the June made one great rose

Full of musk and mellow grace,

In the garden's humming close,

Of her comely mother face!

Bubble-like the hollyhocks

Budded, burst and flaunted wide

Gypsy beauty from their stocks.

Morning-glories, bubble-dyed,

Swung in honey-hearted flocks.

Tawny tiger-lilies flung

Doublets slashed with crimson on;

Graceful slave-girls fair and young,

Like Circassians, in the sun

Alabaster lilies swung.

Ah, the droning of the bee

In his dusty pantaloons

Tumbling in the fleurs-de-lis;

In the drowsy afternoons

Dreaming in the pink sweet-pea.

Ah, the moaning wild-wood dove

With its throat of amethyst

Ruffled like a shining cove,

Which a wind to pearl hath kissed,

Moaning, moaning of its love.

And the insects' gossip thin,

From the summer hotness hid,

In the leafy shadows green,

Then at eve the katydid

With its hard, unvaried din.

Often from the whispering hills

Lorn within the golden dusk,—

Gold with gold of daffodils,—

Thrilled into the garden's musk

The wild wail of whippoorwills.

From the purple tangled trees,

Like the white, full heart of night,

Solemn with majestic peace,

Swam the big moon veined with light,

Like some gorgeous golden fleece.

You were there with me, and you,

In the magic of the hour,

Almost swore that you could view

Beading on each blade and flower

Moony blisters of the dew.

And each Fairy of our home—

Fire-fly—its torch then lit

In the honey-scented gloam,

Dashing down the dusk with it,

Like an instant flaming foam.

And we heard the calling, calling,

Of the wild owl in the brake

Where the trumpet-vine hung crawling;

Down the ledge into the lake

Heard the sighing streamlet falling.

Then we wandered to the creek,

Where the water-lilies growing,

Like fair maidens white and weak,—

Naked in the brooklet's flowing,—

Stooped to bathe a bashful cheek.

And the moonbeams rippling golden

Fell in saint-sweet aureoles

On chaste bosoms half beholden,

Till, meseemed, the dainty souls

Of pale moon-fays, there enfolden

In such beauty, dimly fainted

Baby-cribbed within each bud,

Till a night wind piney-tainted,

Swooning over field and flood,

Rocked them to a slumber sainted.

Then a low, melodious bell

Of some sleeping heifer tinkled

In some berry-briered dell,

As her satin dewlap wrinkled

With the cud that made it swell.

And returning home we heard

In a beech tree at the gate

Some brown, dream-behaunted bird

Singing of its absent mate,

Of the mate that never heard.

And you see, now I am gray,

Why within the old, old place,

With such memories I stay,

Fancy out your absent face

Long since passed away.

You were mine—yes, still are mine:

And this frosty memory

Reels about you as with wine

Warmed into wild eyes which see

All of you that is divine.

Yes, I love it, and have grown

Melancholy in that love

And that memory alone

Of perfection such, whereof

You could sanctify a stone.

And where'er your poppies swing—

There we walk,—as if a bee

Fanned them with his puny wing,—

Down your garden shadowy

In the hush the evenings bring.

FIVE FANCIES.

I

THE GLADIOLAS.

As tall as the lily, as tall as the rose,

And almost as tall as the hollyhocks,

Ranked breast to breast in sentinel rows

Stand the gladiola stocks.

And some are red as the humming-bird's blood

And some are pied as the butterfly race,

And each is shaped like a velvet hood

Gold-lined with delicate lace.

For you know the goblins that come like musk

To tumble and romp in the flowers' laps,

When you see big fire-fly eyes in the dusk,

Hang there their goblin caps.

II

THE MORNING-GLORIES.

They bloom up the fresh, green trellis

In airy, vigorous ease,

And their fragrant, sensuous honey

Is best beloved of the bees.

Oh! the rose knows the dainty secret

How the morning-glory blows,

For the rose told me the secret,

And the jessamine told the rose.

And the jessamine said at midnight,

Ere the red cock woke and crew,

That the fays of queen Titania

Came there to bathe in the dew.

And the merry moonlight glistened

On wet, long, yellow hair,

And their feet on the flowers drowsy

Trod softer than any air.

And their petticoats, gay as bubbles,

They hung up every one

On the morning-glories' tendrils

Till their moonlight bath were done.

But the red cock crew too early,

And the fays left hurriedly,

And this is why in the morning

Their petticoats there you see.

III

THE TIGER-LILY.

A sultan proud and tawny

At elegant ease he stands,

With his bare throat brown and scrawny,

And his indolent, leaf-like hands.

And the eunuch tulips that listen

In their gaudy turbans so,

With their scimetar leaves that glisten,

Are guards of his seraglio;

Where sultana roses musky,

Voluptuous in houri charms,

With their bold breasts deep and dusky,

Impatiently wait his arms.

Tall, beautiful, sad, and slender,

His Greek-girl dancing slaves,

For the white-limbed lilies tender

His royal hand he waves.

While he watches them, softly smiling,

His favorite rose that hour

With a butterfly gallant is wiling

In her attar-scented bower.

IV

VENGEANCE.

I

Let it sink, let it sink

On the pungent-petaled pink

By those poppy puffs;

Fairy-fashioned downiness,

Light, weak moth in furry dress

Of white fluffy stuffs.

II

Where the thin light slipping sweet

Dimples prints of Fairy feet

On the white-rose blooms,

One dim blossom delicate

Droops a face all pale with hate,

Dead with sick perfumes.

III

And I read the riddle wove

In this rose's course of love

For the fickle pink:—

Thou the rose's phantom art

Stealing to the pink's false heart

Vampire-like to drink.

V

A DEAD LILY.

I

The South had saluted her mouth

Till her mouth was sweet with the South.

II

And the North with his breathings low

Made the blood in her veins like his snow.

III

And the West with his smiles and his art

Poured his honey of life in her heart.

IV

And the East had in whisperings told

His secrets more precious than gold.

V

So she grew to a beautiful thought

Which a godhead of love had wrought.

VI

As strange how the power begot it

As why—but to kill it and rot it.

MY SUIT.

Faith! the Dandelion is

To my mind too lowly;

Then the winsome Violet

Is, forsooth, too holy.

There's the Touch-me-not—go to!

What! a face that's speckled

Like a buxom milking-maid's

Which the sun hath freckled!

And the Tiger-lily's wild,

Flirts, is fierce and haughty;

And the Sweet-Brier Rose, I swear,

Pricks you and is naughty.

Columbine a fool's cap hath,

Then she is too merry;

Gossip, I would sooner woo

Some plebeian Berry.

There's the shy Anemone,—

Well—her face shows sorrow;

Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day,

Dead and gone to-morrow.

And that big-eyed, fair-cheeked wench,

The untoward Daisy,

She's been wooed, aye! overmuch—

Then she is too lazy.

Pleasant persons are they all,

And their virtues many;

Faith, I know but good of all,

And naught ill of any.

Marry! 'tis a May-apple,

Fair-skinned as a Saxon,

Whom I woo, a fragrant thing

Delicate and waxen.

THE FAMILY BURYING-GROUND.

A wall of crumbling stones doth keep

Watch o'er long barrows where they sleep,

Old chronicled grave-stones of its dead,

On which oblivious mosses creep

And lichens gray as lead.

Warm days the lost cows as they pass

Rest here and browse the juicy grass

That springs about its sun-scorched stones;

Afar one hears their bells' deep brass

Waft melancholy tones.

Here the wild morning-glory goes

A-rambling as the myrtle grows,

Wild morning-glories pale as pain,

With holy urns, that hint at woes,

The night hath filled with rain.

Here are blackberries largest seen,

Rich, winey dark, whereon the lean

Black hornet sucks, noons sick with heat,

That bend not to the shadowed green

The heavy bearded wheat.

At dark, for its forgotten dead,

A requiem, of no known wind said,

Through ghostly cedars moans and throbs,

While to thin starlight overhead

The shivering screech-owl sobs.

THE WATER-MAID.

There she rose as white as death,

Stars above and stars beneath;

Where the ripples brake in splendor

To a million, million starlets

Twinkling on lake-lilies tender,

Rocking to the ripple barlets.

She, brow-belted with white lilies,

Rose and oared a shining shoulder

To a downward-purpling boulder:

With slim fingers soft and milky,

Haled her from the spray-sprent lilies

To a ledge, and sitting silky

Sang unto the list'ning lilies,

Sang and sang beneath the heaven,

Belted, wreathed with lilies seven;

Falsely sang a wild, wild ditty

To a wool-white moon;

Till a child both frail and pretty

Found her singing on the boulder,—

Dark locks on a milky shoulder,—

'Neath the wool-white moon.

And the creature singing there

Strangled him in her long hair.

THE SEA-KING.

1

In green sea-caverns dim,

Deep down,

A monarch pale and slim,

Whose soul's a frown,

He ruleth cold and grim

In foamy crown:

In green sea-caverns dim,

Deep down.

2

He hears the Mermaid sing

So sad!

Far off like some curs'd thing,

That ne'er is glad,

A vague, wild murmuring,

That drives men mad:

He hears the Mermaid sing

So sad!

3

Strange monster bulks are there,

That yawn

Or roll huge eyes that glare

And then are gone;

Weird foliage passing fair

Where clings the spawn:

Strange monster bulks are there,

That yawn.

4

What cares he for wrecked hulls

These years!

Red gold the water dulls!

Grim, dead-men jeers

On jaws of a thousand skulls

Of mariners!

What cares he for wrecked hulls

These years!

5

Man's tears are loved of him,

Deep down;

Set in the foamy rim

Of his frail crown

To pearls the tear-drops dim

Freeze at his frown:

Man's tears are loved of him,

Deep down.

6

Here be the halls of Sleep

Full mute,

Chill, shadowy, and deep,

Where hangs no lute

To make the still heart leap

Of man or brute:

Here be the halls of Sleep

Full mute.

WHERE AND WHAT?

Her ivied towers tall

Old forests belt and bar,

And oh! the West's dim mountain crests

That line the blue afar.

Her gardens face dark cliffs,

That seeth against a sea

As blue and deep as the eyes of Sleep

With saddening mystery.

Red sands roll leagues on leagues

Ribbed of the wind and wave;

The near warm sky bends from on high

The pale brow of a slave.

And when the morning's beams

Lie crushed on crag and bay,

A wail of flutes and soft-strung lutes

O'er the lone land swoons away.

The woods are 'roused from rest,

A scent of earth and brine,

By brake and lake the wild things wake,

And torrents leap and shine.

But she in one gray tower

White-faced knows how he died,

And a murderous scorn on her lips is born

To curse his heart that lied.

She smiles and sorrows not:

"Ah, death! to know," she moans,

"The gluttonous grave of the bitter wave

Laughs loud above his bones!"

She laughs and hating yearns

Out toward the surf's far reach,

Like one in sleep, who, wild to weep,

Hath only moans for speech.

And when the sun had set,

And crocus heavens had fed

Their wan fire soon to a thorn-thin moon,

The flocking stars that led,

A breeze set in from sea

Most odorous with spice,

And streamed among big stars that hung

Thin mists as white as ice.

And then her eyes waxed large

With one last hideous hope,

And her throat she bent toward the firmament,

Star-scattered scope on scope.

The haunted night, that felt

The rapture so accursed,

Shook, loosening one green star that spun

Wild down the dusk and burst.

Fair was her face as Sin's;

"Ah, wretch!" she wailed, "to know

A wormy seat at Death's lean feet

May not undo such woe!

"The devil-wrangling pit

Much dearer than God's deeps

Of serious skies, where thought ne'er dies

And memory never sleeps!

"And dearer far than both,

Than Heaven or Hell, the jest,

The godless lot to rot and rot,

And not be cursed or blessed!"

THE SPRING.

"O Fons Bandusiæ!"

Push back the brambles, berry-blue,

The hollowed spring is full in view;

Deep tangled with luxuriant fern

Its rock-imbedded crystal urn.

Not for the loneliness that keeps

The coigne wherein its silence sleeps;

Not for wild butterflies that sway

Their pansy pinions all the day

Above its mirror; nor the bee,

Nor dragon-fly which passing see

Themselves reflected in its spar;

Not for the one white, liquid star

That twinkles in its firmament,

Nor moon-shot clouds so slowly sent

Athwart it when the kindly night

Beads all its grasses with the light,

Small jewels of the dimpled dew;

Not for the day's reflected blue,

Nor the quaint, dainty colored stones

That dance within it where it moans;

Not for all these I love to sit

In silence and to gaze in it.

But, know, a nymph with merry eyes

Meets mine within its laughing skies;

A graceful, naked nymph who plays

All the long fragrant summer days

With instant sight of bees and birds,

And speaks with them in water-words.

One for whose nakedness the air

Weaves moony mists, and on whose hair,

Unfilleted, the night will set

That lone star as a coronet.

LILLITA.

Can I forget how, when you stood

'Mid orchards whence spring bloom had fled,

Stars made the orchards seem a-bud,

And weighed the sighing boughs o'erhead

With shining ghosts of blossoms dead!

Or when you bowed, a lily tall,

Above your August lilies slim,

Transparent pale, that by the wall

Like softest moonlight seemed to swim,

Brimmed with faint fragrance to the brim.

And in the cloud that lingered low—

A silent pallor in the West—

There stirred and beat a golden glow

Of some great heart that could not rest,

A heart of gold within its breast.

Your heart, your life was in the wild,

Your joy to hear the whip-poor-will

Lament its love, when wafted mild

The harvest drifted from the hill:

The deep, deep wildwood where had trod

The red deer o'er the fallen hush

Of Fall's torn leaves, when the low tod

Was frosty 'neath each berried bush.

At dusk the whip-will still complains

Above your lolling lilies, where

Their faces white the moonlight stains,

The dreamy stream flows far and fair

Whisp'ring of rest an easeful air ...

O music of the falling rain,

At night unto her painless rest

Sound sweet and sad, then is she fain

To see the wild flowers on her breast

Lift moist, pure faces up again

To breathe to God their fragrance blest.

Thick-pleated beeches long have crossed

Old, mighty arms above her tomb

Where oft I watch at night her ghost

Bow to the wild-flower's full-blown bloom

A mist of curls, where Summer lost

Her tangled sunbeams and perfume.

ARTEMIS.

Oft of the hiding Oread wast thou seen

At earliest morn, a tall imperial shape,

High-buskined, dew-dripped, and on close, chaste curls,

Long blackness of thick hair, the tipsy drops

Caught from the dipping sprays of under bosks,

Kissed of thy cheek and of thy shoulder brushed,

Thy rosy cheek as haughty Hera's fair,

Thy snow-soft shoulder luminous as light.

Oft did the shaggy hills and solitudes

Of Arethusa shout and ring and reel,

Reverberate and echo merrily

With the mad chiding of thy merry hounds,

Big mouthed and musical, that on the stag,

Or bristling wild-boar furious grew in quest,

And thou, as keen, fleet-footed and clean-limbed,

Thou, thou, O goddess, with thy quivered crew,

Most loveliest maids and fit to wed with gods,

Rushed, swinging on the wind free limbs and lithe,

Long as thy radiant locks flung free to blow

And lighten in the wine-sharp air of morn.

Ai me! their throats, their lusty, dimpled throats,

That made the hills sing and the wood-ways dance

As if to Orphic strains, and gave them life!

Ai me! their bosoms' deepness and the soft,

Sweet, happy beauty of their delicate limbs,

That stormed the forest vacancies with light,

Swift daylight of their splendor and made blow,

Within the glad sonorous solitudes,

Old germs of flowerets a century cold.

The woodland Naiad whispered by her rock;

The Hamadryad, limpid-eyed and wild,

Expectant rustled by her usual oak,

And laughed in wonder; and mad Pan himself

Reeled piping fiercely down the dingled deeps

With rollicking eye that rolled a brutish lust.

And did the unwed maiden, musing where

Her father's well, beyond the god-graced hills

Bubbled and babbled, hear the full, high cry

Of the chaste huntress, while her dripping jar

Unheeded brimmed, vowed with her chastity,

And shorn gold hair to veil her virgin feet.

But, ah! not when the saucy daylight swims,

Filling the forests with a glamorous green,

Let me behold thee, goddess! but, when dim

The slow night settles on the haunted wild,

And walks in sober sark, and heatful stars

Shine out intensely and the echoy waste

Far off, far off, in shudders palpitates

Unto the Limnad's song unmerciful,

Unmerciful and mad and bitter sweet!

Then come in all thy godhead, beautiful!

Thou beautiful and gentle, as thou cam'st

To lorn Endymion, who, in Lemnos once,

Lone in the wizard magic of the wild,

Wandered a gentle boy, unfriended, sad.

It grew far off adown the stirring trees,

Thy silent beauty blossoming flowerlike,

Between the tree trunks and the lacing limbs,

Bright in the leaves that kissed for very joy

And drunkenness of glory thus revealed.

He saw it all, the naked brow and limbs,

The polished silver of thy glossy breast,

Alone, uncompanied of handmaidens;

Like some full, splendid fruit Hesperian

Not e'en for deities; thy sweet far voice

Came tinkling on his wistful ear and lisped

Like leaves that cling and slip to cling again.

And on such perilous beauty that must kill,

The poisonous favor of thy godliness,

Feasting his every sense through eyes and ears,

His soul exalted waxed and amorous,—

Like the high gods who quaff deep golden bowls

Of rosy nectar,—with immortal love,—

And what remained, ah, what remained but death!

IN NOVEMBER.

No windy white of wind-blown clouds is thine,

No windy white but low and sodden gray,

That holds the melancholy skies and kills

The wild song and the wild bird; yet, ai me!

Thy melancholy skies and mournful woods,

Brown, sighing forests dying that I love!

Thy long thick leaves deep, deep about my feet,

Slow, weary feet that halt or falter on;

Thy long, sweet, reddened leaves that burn and die

With silent fever of the sickened wold.

I love to hear in all thy windy coigns,

Rain-wet and choked with bleached and rotting weeds,

The baby-babble of the many leaves,

That, fallen on barren ways, like fallen hopes

Once held so high on all the Summer's heart

Of strong majestic trees, now come to such,

Would fainly gossip in hushed undertones,—

Sad weak yet sweet as natures that have known

True tears and hot in bleak remorseless days,—

Of all their whilom glory vanished so.

A CHARACTER.

He lived beyond us and we stood

As pygmies to his every mood,

Mere pupils at his beck and nod,

That spoke the influence of a god.

And oft we wondered, when his thought

Made our humanity seem naught,

If he, like Uther's mystic son,

Were not a birth for Avalon.

When wand'ring 'neath the sighing trees,

His soul waxed genial with the breeze,

That, voiceful, from the piney glades

Companioned seemed of Oreads;

A Dryad life lived in each oak,

And with its many leaf-tongues spoke,

Glorying the deity whose power

Gave it its life in sun and shower.

By every violet-hallowed brook,

Where every bramble-matted nook

Rippled and laughed with water-sounds,

He walked as one on sainted grounds,

Fearing intrusion on the spell

That kept some fountain-spirit's well,

Or woodland genius sitting where

Brown racy berries kissed his hair.

And when the wind far o'er the hill

Had fall'n and left the wildwood still

As moonlight jets on quiet moss,—

Beneath the pied boughs arched across

Long limpid vistas, brimmed with ripe

Green-swimming sunbeams, heard the pipe

Of some hid follower of Pan

And worshiper, half brute half man;

Who, hairy-haunched, a savage rhyme

Puffed in his reed to rudest time;

With swollen jowl and rolling eye

Danced boisterous where the silver sky

Smiled in the forest's broken roof;

The strident branch beneath his hoof

Snapped on the sod which, interfused

Between black roots, was crushed and bruised.

And often when he wandered through

Old forests at the fall of dew,—

A lone Endymion who sought

A higher beauty yet uncaught,—

Some night, we thought, most surely he

Were favored of her deity,

And in the holy solitude

Her sudden presence, long pursued,

Unto his eyes would be confessed;

The awful moonlight of her breast

Come high with majesty and hold

His heart's blood till his heart were cold,

Unpulsed, unsinewed, all undone,

And snatch his soul to Avalon.

A MOOD.

Bowed hearts that hold the saddest memories

Are the most beautiful; and such make sweet

Light happy moods of alien natures which

Their sadness contacts, and so sanctifies.

And such to me is an old, gabled house,

Deserted and neglected and unknown

Within the dreamy hollow of its hills,

Dark, cedared hills and fruitless orchards sear;

With but its host of shrouded memories

Haunting its low and desolate rooms and halls,

Its roomy hearths and cob-webbed crevices.

Here in dim rainy noons I love to sit,

And hear the running rain along the roof,

The creak and crack of noises that are born

Of unseen and mysterious agencies;

The dripping footfalls of the wind adown

Lone winding stairways massy-banistered;

A clapping door and then a sudden hush

That brings a pleasant terror stiffening through

The tingling veins and staring from the eyes.

Then comes the running rain along the roof's

Rain-rotten gables and on rain-stained walls

Invokes vague images and memories

Of all its sometime lords and mistresses,

Until the stale material will assume

All that's clairvoyant, and the fine-strung ear

In quaint far rooms or dusty corridors

Hear wrinkled ladies all beruffled trail

Long haughty silks "miraculously stiff."

A THOUGHT.

And I have thought of youth which strains

Nearer its God to rise,—

What were ambition and its pains

Were life a cowardice!

The grander souls that rose above

Thought's noblest heights to tread,

Found their endeavor in their love,

And truth behind the dead.

A secret glory in the tomb,

A night that dawns in light,

An intense presence veiled with gloom,

And not an endless night....

Nepenthe of this struggling world,

Thou who dost stay mad Care

When her fury's scourge above is curled

And we see her writhing hair!

SONG.

I

Far over the summer sea,

Ere the white-eyed stars wax pale,

From the groves where a nightingale

Wails a mystical melody,

I turn my ghostly sail

Away, away,

To follow a face I see

Far over the summer sea.

II

Far over the summer sea,

Ere the cliff which highest soars

From the foam re-echoing shores

Reddens all rosily,

Where the witch-white water roars,

Far on, far on,

Thro' the night I follow thee

Far over the summer sea.

III

Far over the summer sea,

When the great gold moon low lies

In the purple-deepened skies

I drift on tearfully

Till a spirit form doth rise

Low down, low down,

'Twixt the orbèd moon and me

Far over the summer sea.

IV

Far over the summer sea

With thy foam-cold limbs wound sweet

'Round hair and throat and feet

To slay me utterly;

At each mad, hot heart beat

A kiss, a kiss,

To drain the soul with thee,

Deep, deep in the summer sea.

FACE TO FACE.

Dead! and all the haughty fate

Fair on throat and face of wax,

White, calm hands crossed still and lax,

Cold, impassionate!

Dead! and no word whispered low

At the dull ear now could wake

One responsive chord or make

One wan temple glow.

Dead! and no hot tear would stir

All that woman sweet and fair,

Woman soul from feet to hair

Which was once of her.

God! and thus to die! and I—

I must live though life be but

One long, hard, monotonous rut,

There to plod and—die!

Creeds are well in such a case;

But no sermon could have wrought

More of faith than you have taught

With your pale, dead face.

And I see it as you see—

One mistake, so very small!

Yet so great it mangled all,

Left you this and me!

Oft I pondered saying, "Sure

She could never live such life!"

And the truth stabbed like a knife

When I found you pure.

Pure, so pure! and me bemoiled,

Loathly as loathed vermin, just

As weak souls are left of lust—

Loveless, low, and soiled.

Nay! I loved you then and love!—

Grand, great eyes, I see them yet,

Set like luminous gems of jet

In wax lids above.

Lips—O poor, dumb, chideless lips!

Once as red as life could make,

Moist as wan wild roses wake

When the wild dew drips.

Hair—imperial, full, and warm

As a Grace's, where one stone

Precious lay ensnared and shone

Like a star in storm.

Eyes—at parting big with pain;

God! I see them and the tear

In them—big as eyes of deer

Led by lights and slain!

Life so true! I falsely cursed—

Lips that, curled with scorn and pride,

Hurt me though I said they lied,

While the true heart burst.

Rest! my heart has suffered too:

And this life had woe enough

For the little dole of love

Given to me and you.

Can you hear me? can you know

What I am and how it came,

You, beyond me like a flame,

You, before me like the snow!

Dead! and all my heart a cup

Hollowed for sad, bitter tears,

Bitter in the bitter years

Slowly brimming up.

Sleep! 'tis well! but might have been

Better!—yes, God knows it might!

Better for me in His sight

And my soul more clean.

Sleep in very peace! but I

With Earth's other fools will stay,

Live 'mid laughter, day by day

Mocking laugh and—die.

You will know me now, I know,

But in life had never known

How, indeed, I was alone—

But, 'tis better so.

And I know you what you were,

Faithful and—it were no use,

Only to yourself abuse,—

I shall tell you there.

There beyond the lightning and

The long clouds and utter skies,

Moons and suns and stars that rise,

Where we'll understand.

THE CHANGELING.

I

There were Faëries two or three,

And a high moon white as wool,

Or a bloom in Faëry,

Where the star-thick blossoms be

Star-like beautiful.

II

There were Faëries two or three,

And a wind as fragrant as

Spicy wafts from Arcady

Rocked the sleeping honey bee

In the clover grass.

III

There were Faëries two or three,

Wee white caps and red wee shoon,

Buckles at each dainty knee,

"We are come to comfort thee,

With the silver moon."

IV

There were Faëries two or three,

Buttercups brimmed up with dew,

Winning faces sweet to see,

Then mine eyes closed heavily:

"Faëries, what would you?"

V

There were Faëries two or three,

And my babe was dreaming deep,

White as whitest ivory,

In its crib of ebony

Rocked and crooned on sleep.

VI

There were Faëries two or three

Standing in the mocking moon,

And mine eyes closed drowsily,

Drowsily and suddenly

There my babe was gone.

VII

Now no Faëries two or three

Loitered in the moon alone;

Jesu, Marie, comfort me!

What is this instead I see—

Ugly skin and bone.

VIII

There were Faëries two or three

Stood with buckles on red shoon,

But with evil sorcery

My sweet babe to Faëry

They did steal right soon.

ST. JOHN'S EVE.

I

Dizzily round

On the elf-hills white in the yellow moonlight

To a sweet, unholy, ravishing sound

Of wizard voices from underground,

Their mazy dance the Elle-maids wound

On St. John's Eve.

II

Beautiful white,

Like a wreath of mist by the starbeams kissed;

And frail, sweet faces bloomed out on the night

From floating tresses of glow-worm light,

That puffed like foam to the left and the right

On St. John's Eve.

III

Warily there

They flashed like a rill which the moonbeams fill,

But I saw what a mockery all of them were

With their hollow bodies, when the moonlit air

Rayed out through their eyes with a sudden glare

On St. John's Eve.

IV

Solemnly sweet,

By the river's banks in the rushes' ranks,

The Necks their sorrowful songs repeat:

A music of winds over dipping wheat,

Of moss-dulled cascades seemed to meet

On St. John's Eve.

V

Drowsily swam

The fire-flies fleet in eddies of heat;

Through the willows a glimmer of gold harps came,

And I saw their hair like a misty flame

Bunched over white brows, too white to name,

On St. John's Eve.

VI

Beggarly torn,

A wizen chap in a red-peaked cap,

All gray with the chaff and dust of the corn,

And strong with the pungent scent of the barn,

The Nis scowled under the flowering thorn

On St. John's Eve.

VII

Merrily call

The singing crickets in the twinkling thickets,

And the Troll hill rose on pillars tall,

Crimson pillars that ranked a hall

Where the beak-nosed Trolls were holding a ball

On St. John's Eve.

VIII

Reveling flew

From beakers of gold the wassail old;

And she reached me a goblet brimmed bright with dew—

But her wily witcheries well I knew,

And the philtre over my shoulder threw

On St. John's Eve.

LALAGE.

What were sweet life without her

Who maketh all things sweet

With smiles that dream about her,

With dreams that come and fleet!

Soft moods that end in languor;

Soft words that end in sighs;

Curved frownings as of anger;

Cold silence of her eyes.

Sweet eyes born but for slaying,

Deep violet-dark and lost

In dreams of whilom Maying

In climes unstung of frost.

Wild eyes shot through with fire

God's light in godless years,

Brimmed wine-dark with desire,

A birth for dreams and tears.

Dear tears as sweet as laughter,

Low laughter sweet as love

Unwound in ripples after

Sad tears we knew not of.

What if the day be lawless,

What if the heart be dead,

Such tears would make it flawless,

Such laughter make it red.

Lips that were curled for kisses,

For loves and hates and scorns,

Brows under gold of tresses,

Brows beauteous as the Morn's.

Imperial locks and tangled

Down to the graceful hips;

Hair where one might be strangled

Carousing on thy lips.

Rose-lovely lips that hover

About the honeyed words,

That slip wild bees from clover

Whose sweets their sweet affords.

Though days be robbed of sunlight,

White teeth make light thereof;

Though nights unknown of onelight,

Thine eyes were stars enough.

Ah, lily-lovely features,

Round temples, throat, and chin,

Sweet gods of godless natures,

Sweet love of loveless men!

Still moods and slumberous fanned on

To dreams that rock to sleep,

Unmerciful abandon,

That haunts or makes one weep.

She walks as if with sorrows

And all unknown of joy;

Eyes fixed on dim to-morrows

That all sad feet decoy.

Yet she, a peer of pleasures,

Tears from Time's taloned hand

The hour-glass he treasures,

And wastes its sullen sand.

Makes of all hours a beaker

Brimmed full of lordly wine,

Cold gold of Life's mad liquor,

And quaffs to me and mine.

The love on lips grows fairer,

Keen lights in eyes make wars,

And throat and breast grow rarer

Than the white-throated stars.

Fleet smiles come fleet and faster

And web the willing soul;

Warm breasts of alabaster

Have snared it as a whole.

What then were hell or heaven,

The fear of heaven or hell!

Lost in the life thus given

We well might bid farewell.

To leap against thy bosoms!

Live at thy ardent throat!

Kiss clinging to its blossoms,

Die kissing and not know't!

Wound in tumultuous tresses

Pulse like a naked hair,

Held in long hands for kisses,

And killed and never care.

Clasped limb and marble member,

Long raven hair with gold,

To dream, forget, remember,

Grow slowly still and cold.

Feel earth and hell forever

Remote from thee and me,

Nor strong enough to sever

Through all eternity.

Feel godlike power for evil

High throned within the heart,

Should God and hell's arch devil

Cast dice our souls to part:

Part eyes hot as a jewel,

Part covering deeps of curl,

Sweet lips as sweet as cruel,

And limbs of living pearl.

What if in the hereafter

Our love must weep farewell

'Mid the hoarse, strident laughter

Of devils deep in hell;

We'll know that all infernal,

All cactus-growth of time,

Slays not that hour eternal

That sinned with love to crime.

Love, we could live all tearless,

Remember and have breath,

Of hell and heaven fearless

In love more strong than death.

When hope shall be forgotten

And death be one with both,

Flesh, soul, and spirit rotten

And wrapped with clay in sloth.

Take comfort, love, remember

Love chastened with his rod,

And member torn from member

Would leave him still a god.

Though soul from soul be riven,

God knows we shall regret!

In hell or highest heaven

We never can forget!

MIRIAM.

White clouds and buds and birds and bees,

Low wind-notes piped from southern seas,

Brought thee a rose-white offering,

A flower-like baby with the Spring.

She, as her April, gave to thee

A soul of winsome vagary;

Large, heavenly eyes, and tender, whence

Shone the sweet mind's soft influence;

Where all the winning woman, that

Welled up in tears, high sparkling sat.

She, with the dower of her May,

Gave thee a nature that could sway

Wild men with kindness, and a pride

Which all their littleness denied.

Limbs wrought of lilies and a face

Bright as a rose flower's, and a grace,

God-taught, that clings like happiness

In each chaste billow of thy dress.

She, as her heavy June, brought down

Night deeps of hair thy brow to crown;

A voice so mild and musical

It is as water-notes that fall

O'er bars of pearl, and in thy heart

Stamped like a jewel, that should start

From thy pure face in smiles, and break

Like radiance when it laughed or spake,

Affection that is born of truth

And goodness which make very youth.

THE WIND.

The ways of the wind are eerie

And I love them all,

The blithe, the mad, and the dreary,

Spring, Winter, and Fall.

When it tells to the waiting crocus

Its beak to show,

And hangs on the wayside locust

Bloom-bunches of snow.

When it comes like a balmy blessing

From the musky wood,

The half-grown roses caressing

Till their cheeks show blood.

When it roars in the Autumn season,

And whines with rain

Or sleet like a mind without reason,

Or a soul in pain.

When the wood-ways once so spicy

With bud and bloom

Are desolate, sear, and icy

As the icy tomb.

When the wild owl crouched and frowsy

In the rotten tree

Wails dolorous, cold, and drowsy,

His shuddering melody.

Then I love to sit in December

Where the big hearth sings,

And dreaming forget and remember

A host of things.

And the wind—I hear how it strangles

And gasps and sighs

On the roof's sharp, shivering angles

That front the skies.

How it groans and romps and tumbles

In attics o'erhead,

In the great-throated chimney rumbles,

Then all at once falls dead;

Till it comes like footsteps slipping

Of a child on the stair,

Or a quaint old gentleman tripping

With heavily powdered hair.

And my soul grows anxious hearted

For those once dear—

The long-lost loves departed

In the wind draw near.

And I seem to see their faces,

Not one estranged,

In their old accustomed places

'Round the wide hearth ranged.

And the wind that waits and poises

Where the shadows sway

Makes their visionary voices

Seem calling me far away.

And I wake in tears to listen

Again to the sobbing wind,

Far out on the lands that glisten,

Like the voice of one who sinned.

MUSIC.

[A NOCTURNE.]

The soul of love is harmony; as such

All melodies, that with wide pinions beat

Elastic bars, which mew it in the flesh,

Till 'twould away to kiss their throats and cling,

Are kindred to the soul, and while they sway,

Lords of its action molding all at will.

Ah! neither was I I, nor knew the clay,

For all my soul lay on full waves of song

Reverberating 'twixt the earth and moon.

O soft complaints, that haunted all the heart

With dreams of love long cherished, love dreams found

On sunset mountains gorgeous toward the West:

Kisses—soft kisses bartered 'mid pale buds

Of bursting Springs; and vows of fondest faith

Kept evermore; and eyes whose witchery

Might lure old saints down to the lowest hell

For one swift glance,—sweet, melancholy eyes

Yet full of hope and dimming o'er with tears,

Stooping and gloating in a silver mist

At Care's thin brow, and growing at his eyes.

Voices of expectation rolling on

To diapason of a mighty choir,

'Mid ever-swooning throbbings beating low,

Wove in hoarse fabric thunders—and O soul!

Wafted to caverns lost by hideous seas,

One with the tumult 'neath o'ercircling tiers

White with strange diamond spars and feathery gems.

O holy music, wailing down long aisles

To lose thyself 'neath arched welkins dashed

With moons of crystal;—dying, dying down

To passionate sobs, and then a silence vast,

Vast as thy caves, or as the human soul,

Oppressing all this being bulked in flesh

Until it strained to burst its bounds and soar.

Harp-tones! that shaped before the poisèd mind

The home of Sleep far on a moonlit isle.

White Sleep, who from heaped myriad poppies weighed

With baby slumbers, and from violet beds,

Culled whiter dreams to fold against her heart

In dewy clusters sparkling wet with tears;

And on her shadowy pinions soaring high

Winged 'neath the vault into oblivion,

With all the echoes panting at pale feet

To kiss the dreams, and o'er deep, wine-dark waves,

Far, far away, lost—and a sound of stars

Streaming from burning sockets into night

About my soul, about my soul like fire.

Oh, then what agony and bitter woe,

Regret and noise of desolation vast

As when all that one loves is torn away

Forever with "farewell forevermore!"

Oh, strife and panic and the rush of winds,

Moist ashen brows with raven tresses torn

That plunged against the bursting bolts of God,

That ploughed the tempest curst with deepest night;

Ruin and heartache, moans and demon eyes,

Fierce, bestial eyes that cursed at very God;

Then blinding tears that wept for such and prayed,

Tears blistering all the soul in haunting eyes,

Eyes such as Death would fear to ponder on!

Then dolorous bell-beats, battle as for light,

Folds of oblivion, gaspings, silence, death.

TO ——.

"Lydia, dic, per omnes

Te deos oro!"

I

What are the subtleties

Which woo me in her eyes

To oaths she deems but lies,

I can not tell, I can not tell,

Nor will she.

They are beyond my thought.

For when I gaze I'm nought,

My senses all unwrought,

It is not well, it is not well,

Now Lily!

II

What is the magic sweet

Which makes hot pulses beat,

A wayward tongue repeat

A name for weeks, a name for weeks

Will, nill he?

Ai me! the pleasant pain

Falls sweetly on the brain

Like some slow sunny rain,

Whene'er she speaks, whene'er she speaks

This Lily.

III

What is the witchery rare

Which snares me in her hair

So deeply that I dare,

I dare not move, I dare not move,—

Lie stilly?

In looks and winning ways

The bloom of love she lays

Like fire on all my days,

And makes me love, and makes me love

This Lily.

YULE.

Behold! it was night; and the wind and the rushing of snow on the wind,

And the boom of the sea and the moaning of desolate pines that were thinned.

And the halls of fierce Erick of Sogn with the clamor of wassail were filled,

With the clash of great beakers of gold and the reek of the ale that was spilled.

For the Yule was upon them, the Yule, and they quaffed as from skulls of the slain,

And sware out round oaths in hoarse wit, and long quaffing sware laughing again.

Unharnessed from each shaggy throat that was hot with mad lust and with drink,

The burly wild skins and barbaric tossed rent from their broad golden link.

For the Yule was upon them, the Yule, and the "waes-heils" were shouted and roared

By the Berserks, the eaters of fire, and the Jarls round the ponderous board.

And huge on the hearth, that writhed hissing and bellied a bullion of gold,

The yule-log, the half of an oak from the mountains, was royally rolled.

And its warmth was a glory that glared and smote red through the width of the hall,

To burnish wild-boar skins and swords and great war-axes hung on the wall.

Till the maidens, who hurried big goblets that bubbled excessive with barm,

Blushed rose to the gold of thick curls when the shining steel mirrored each charm.

And Erick's one hundred gray skalds, at the nod and the beck of the king,

With the stormy rolled music of an hundred wild harps made the castle re-echoing ring.

For the Yule, for the Yule was upon them, and battle and rapine were o'er,

And Harold, the viking, the red, and his brother lay dead on the shore.

For the harrier, Harold the red, and his merciless brother, black Ulf,

With their men on the shore of the wintery sea were carrion cold for the wolf.

Behold! for the battle was finished, the battle that boomed in the day

With the rumble of shields that were shocked and the shatter of spears that did slay;

With the hewing of swords that fierce lightened hot smoking with riotous blood,

And the crush of the mace that was crashed through the helm and the brain that withstood;

And the cursing and shrieking of men at their gods—at their gods whom they cursed,

Till the caves of the ocean re-bellowed and storm on their struggling burst.

And they fought in the flying and drifting and silence of covering snow,

Till the wounded that lay with the dead, with the dead were stiff frozen in woe.

And they fought; and the mystical flakes that were clutched of the maniac wind

Drave sharp on the eyes of the kings, made the sight of their warriors blind.

And they fought; and with leonine wrath were they met till the battle god, Thor,

From his thunder-wheeled chariot rolled, making end of destruction and war.

And they fell—like twin rocks of the mountain the ruinous whirlwinds have hurled

From their world-rooted crags to the ocean below with the strength of the world.

And, lo! not in vain their loud vows! on the stern iron altars of War

Their flesh, their own flesh, yea, the victim, their blood the libation to Thor....

But a glitter and splendor of arms out of snow and the foam of the seas,

And the terrible ghosts of the vikings and the gauntleted Valkyries....

Yea, the halls of fierce Erick of Sogn with the turmoil of wassail are filled,

With the steam of the flesh of the boar and the reek of the ale that is spilled.

For the Yule and the vict'ry are theirs, and the "waes-heils" are shouted and roared

By the Berserks, the eaters of fire, and the Jarls 'round the ponderous board.

THE TROUBADOUR.

He stood where all the rare voluptuous West,

Like some mad Maenad wine-stained to the breast,

Shot from delirious lips of ruby must

Long, fierce, triumphant smiles wherein hot lust

Swam like a feverish wine exultant tost

High from a golden goblet and so lost.

And all the West, and all the rosy West,

Bathed his frail beauty, hair and throat and breast;

And there he bloomed, a thing of rose and snows,

A passion flower of men of snows and rose

Beneath the casement of her old red tower

Whereat the lady sat, as white a flower

As ever blew in Provence, and the lace,

Mist-like about her hair, half hid her face

And all its moods which his sweet singing raised,

Sad moods that censured it, sweet moods that praised.

And where the white rose climbing over and over

Up to her wide-flung lattice like a lover,

And gladiolas and deep fleurs-de-lis

Held honey-cups up for the violent bee,

Within her garden by the ivied wall,

Where many a fountain falling musical

Flamed fire-fierce in the eve against it flung,

Like some mad nightingale the minstrel sung:—

"The passion, O! of plunging through and through

Lascivious curls star-litten as light dew,

And jeweled thick, as is the bosomed dusk

Dense scintillant with stars! Oh frenzy rare

Of twisting curling fingers in thy hair!

No touch of balm-beat winds from torrid seas

Were half so satin-soft in sorceries!

No god-like life so sweet as lost to lie

Wrapped strand on strand deep in such hair and die,

Ah love, sweet love!

"The mounting madness and the rapturous pain

With fingers wound in thick, cool curls to strain

All the wild sight deep in thy perilous eyes

So agate polished, where the thoughts that rise

Warm in the heart, like on a witch's glass

Must forth in pictures beautiful and pass;

No Siren sweetness wailed to lyres of gold,

No naked beauty that the Greeks of old

God-bosomed thro' the bursting foam did see

Were potent, love, to tear mine eyes from thee,

Ah love, sweet love!

"Far o'er the sea of old time once a witch,

The fair Ææan, Circe, dwelt, so rich

In marvelous magic, cruel as a god,

She made or unmade lovers at a nod;

Ah, bitter love that made all loves but brute!—

Ah, bitterer thou who mak'st my heart a lute

To lie and languish for thee sad and mute,

Strung high for utterance of the sweetest lay,

Such magic music as Acrasia

And all her lovers swooned to utter bliss,—

And then not wake it with a single kiss,

Ah! cruel, cruel love!"

Knee-deep within the dew-damp grasses there,

Against the stars, that now were everywhere

Flung thro' the perfumed heav'ns of angel hands,

And, linked in tangled labyrinths of bands

Of soft rose-hearted flame and glimmer, rolled

One vast immensity of mazy gold,

He sang, like some hurt creature desolate,

Heart-aching for the loss of some wild mate

Hounded and speared to death of heartless men

In old romantic Arden waste; and then

Turned to the one white star,—which like a stone

Of precious worth low on the heaven shone,—

A white, sweet, lovely face and passed away

From the warm flowers and the fountains' spray.

And that fair lady in pale drapery,

High in the quaint, red tower, did she sigh

To see him, dimming down the purple night,

Lone with his instrument die out of sight

Far in the rose-pleached, musk-drunk avenues,

Far in, far in amid the gleaming dews,

And, left alone but with the sighing rush

Of the wan fountains and the deep night hush,

Weep to the melancholy stars above

Half the lorn night for the desired love?

Or down the rush-strewn halls, where arras old

Billowed with passage of her fold on fold,

Even to the ponderous iron-studded gate,

That shrieked with rust, steal from her lord and wait

Deep in the dingled hyacinth and rose

For him who sang so sweetly erst?—who knows?

WHY?

Why smile high stars the happier after rain?

Why is strong love the stronger after pain?

Ai me! ai me! thou wotest not nor I!

Why sings the wild swan heavenliest when it dies?

Why spake the dumb lips sweetest that we prize

For maddening memories? O why! O why!

Why are dead kisses dearer when they're dead?

Why are dead faces lovelier vanished?

And why this heart-ache? None can answer why!

FROM UNBELIEF TO BELIEF.

Why come ye here to sigh that I,

Who with crossed wrists so peaceless lie

Before ye, am at rest, at rest!

For that the pistons of my blood

No more in this machinery thud?

And on these eyes, that once were blest

With magnetism of fire, are prest

Thin, damp, pale eyelids for a sheath,

Whereon the bony claw of Death

Hath set his coins of unseen lead,

Stamped with the image of his head?

Why come ye here to weep for one,

Who is forgotten when he's gone

From ye and burthened with this rest

Your God hath given him! unsought

Of any prayers, whiles yet he wrought,—

And with what sacrifices bought!

Low, sweet communion mouth to mouth

Of thoughts that dewed eternal drought

Of Life's bald barrenness,—a jest,

An irony hath grown confessed

When he's at rest! when he's at rest!

Why come ye, fools!—ye lie! ye lie!

Rashly! the grave, for such as I,

Hath naught that lies as near this rest

As your high Heaven lies near your Hell!

I see why now that it is well

That men but know the husk-like shell,

Which like a fruit the being kept,

That swinked and sported, woke and slept;

From which that stern essential stept,

That ichor-veined inhabitant

Who makes me all myself, in all

My moods the "I" original,

That holds one orbit like a star,

Distinct, to which a similar

There never was, and be there can't.

And as it is, it is the best

That Death hath my poor body dressed

In such fair semblance of a rest,

Which soothes the hearts of those distressed;

But, God! unto the dead the jest

Of this his rest, of this his rest!

THE KING.

A blown white bubble buoyed zenith-ward,

Up from the tremulous East the round moon swung

Mist-murky, and the unsocial stars that thronged,

Hot with the drought, thick down the empty West,

Winked thirstily; no wind to rouse the leaves,

That o'er the glaring road lolled palpitant,

Withered and whitened of the weary dust

From iron hoofs of that gay fellowship

Of knights which gat at morn the king disguised;

Whose mind was, "in the lists to joust and be

An equal mid unequals, man with man:"

Who from the towers of Edric passed, wherein

Some nights he'd sojourned, till one morn a horn

Sang at dim portals, musical with dew,

Wild echoes of wild woodlands and the hunt,

Clear herald of the staunchest of his knights;

And they to the great jousts at Camelot

Rode pounding off, a noise of steel and steeds.

Thick in the stagnant moat the lilies lay

Ghastly and rotting; hoarse with rusty chains

The drawbridge hung before the barbed grate;

And far above along lone battlements,

His armor moon-drenched, one great sentinel

Clanked drowsily, and it was late in June,

She at her lattice, lawny night-robed, leaned

Dreaming of somewhat dear, and happy smiled

From glorious eyes; a face like gracious nights,

One silent brilliancy of steadfast stars

Innumerable and delicate through the dusk:

Long, loosened loops and coils of sensuous hair

Rolled turbulence down naked neck and throat,

That shamed the moonshine with a rival sheen.

One stooped above her till his nostrils drank

Rich, faint perfumes that blossomed in her hair,

And 'round her waist hooped one strong arm and drew

Her mightily to him; soft burying deep

In crushed fresh linen warm with flesh his arm,

Searched all her eyes until his own were drugged

Mad with their fire, quick one hungry kiss,

Like anger bruised fierce on her breathless lips,

Whispered, "And lov'st but one? and he?"

"Sweet, sweet my lord, thou wotest well!" and then

From love's stern beauty writhen into hate's

Gnarled hideousness, he haled her sweet, white face

Back, back by its large braids of plenteous hair

Till her full bosom's clamorous speechlessness

Stiff on the moon burst white, low mocked and laughed,

"The King, I wot, adulteress!" and a blade

Glanced thin as ice plunged hard, hard in her heart.

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Table of Contents

E-text prepared by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org)

The Triumph of Music

AND

Other Lyrics. BY MADISON J. CAWEIN.

CONTENTS.

THE TRIUMPH OF MUSIC.

WHAT YOU WILL.

IN THE SOUTH.

[Serenade.]

PAN.

PAX VOBISCUM.

MIRABILE DICTU.

QUESTIONINGS.

WAITING.

IN LATE FALL.

MIDWINTER.

LONGING.

IN MIDDLE SPRING.

TYRANNY.

VISIONS.

THE OLD BYWAY

DIURNAL.

THE WOOD-PATH.

DEFICIENCY.

HE WHO LOVES.

THE MONASTERY CROFT.

THE DRYAD.

"THE SWEET O' THE YEAR."

WITH THE SEASONS.

UNATTAINABLE.

BEYOND.

SHADOWS.

CHECK AND COUNTER-CHECK.

SEMPER IDEM.

TWO LIVES.

FOREVERMORE.

A BLOWN ROSE.

TO-MORROW.

MNEMOSYNE.

THE SIRENS.

THE VINTAGER.

A STORMY SUNSET.

ON A DIAL.

UNUTTERABLE.

MIDSUMMER.

A FAIRY CAVALIER.

THE FARMSTEAD.

FIVE FANCIES.

I THE GLADIOLAS.

II

THE MORNING-GLORIES.

III THE TIGER-LILY.

IV VENGEANCE.

V A DEAD LILY.

MY SUIT.

THE FAMILY BURYING-GROUND.

THE WATER-MAID.

THE SEA-KING.

WHERE AND WHAT?

THE SPRING.

"O Fons Bandusiæ!"

LILLITA.

ARTEMIS.

IN NOVEMBER.

A CHARACTER.

A MOOD.

A THOUGHT.

SONG.

FACE TO FACE.

THE CHANGELING.

ST. JOHN'S EVE.

LALAGE.

MIRIAM.

THE WIND.

MUSIC.

[A Nocturne.]

TO ——.

YULE.

THE TROUBADOUR.

WHY?

FROM UNBELIEF TO BELIEF.

THE KING.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE