xt702v2c8b9r https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt702v2c8b9r/data/mets.xml Cawein, Madison Julius, 1865-1914. 1911  books b92-188-30610098 English Macmillan, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920. Poems  / by Madison Cawein (selected by the author) ; with a foreword by William Dean Howells. text Poems  / by Madison Cawein (selected by the author) ; with a foreword by William Dean Howells. 1911 2002 true xt702v2c8b9r section xt702v2c8b9r 


















POEMS

 

































     THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
     NEW YORK . BOSTON CHICAGO
            SAN FRANCISCO

     MACMILLAN  CO., LIMITED
     LONDON . BOMBAY  CALCUTTA
             MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
              TORONTO

 






  P O E M S



          BY

MADISON CAWEIN



         (SELECTED BY THE AUTHOR)



                WITH

A FOREWORD BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS



          xtew par
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
            191 1
        All ranhts reserved

 





















              COPYRIGHT, 1911,
    By THE NIACMILLAN COMPANY.


Set up and electrotyped. Published September, tpes.


















               Norwoob 1jreos
    J. S. Cushing Co. - Berwick  Smith Co.
           Norwood, Mass., U.8.A.

 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE



  THE verses composing this volume have been selected
by the author almost entirely from the five-volume
edition of his poems published by the Bobbs-AMerrill
Company in 1907. A number have been included from
the three or four volumes which have been published
since the appearance of the Collected Poems; namely,
three poems from the volume entitled "Nature Notes
and Impressions," E. P. Dutton  Co., New York; one
poem from "The Giant and the Star," Small, Maynard
 Co., Boston; Section VII and part of Section VIII
of "An Ode" written in commemoration of the found-
ing of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and published
by John P. Morton  Co., Louisville, Ky.; some five
or six poems from "New Poems," published in London
by Mr. Grant Richards in i909; and three or four selec-
tions from the volume of selections entitled "Kentucky
Poems," compiled by Mr. Edmund Gosse and published
in London by Mr. Grant Richards in 1902. Acknowl-
edgment and thanks for permission to reprint the
various poems included in this volume are herewith
made to the different publishers.
                        V

 



vi         INTRODUCTORY NOTE

  The two poems, "In Arcady" and "The Black
Knight" are new and are published here for the first
time.
  In making the selections for the present book Mr.
Cawein has endeavored to cover the entire field of his
poetical labors, which extends over a quarter of a cen-
tury. With the exception of his dramatic work, as
witnessed by one volume only, "The Shadow Garden,"
a book of plays four in number, published in i9io, the
selection herewith presented by us is, in our opinion,
representative of the author's poetical work.


 







CONTENTS



The Poetry of Madison Cawein
hlymn to Spiritual Desire
Beautiful-Bosomed, 0 Night .
Discovery
0 Maytime Woods.
The Redbird.
A Niello
In May.
Aubade
Apocalypse
Penetralia
Elusion
Womanhood
The Idyll of the Standing-Stone
NoEra
The Old Spring
A Dreamer of Dreams.
Deep in the Forest
   I. Spring on the Hills
   II. Moss and Fern.
   III. The Thorn Tree
   IV. The 1Hamadryad
Preludes
May
What Little Things
                           vii



          PAGE
    .     Xiii

  .   .   4
            4
             7
             8
             10
             12
             i6
             18
             20
             21
          23
            26
            27
            29
            32
         34


         37
            38
           40
            42
 .  44
           46
    .    47

 





viii



CONTENTS



PAGE
48



In the Shadow of the Beeches



Unrequited .50
The Solitary .51
A Twilight Moth .52
The Old Farm .54
The Whippoorwill.                                      58
Revealment.                                            6o
Hepaticas.                             6
The Wind of Spring .63
The Catbird .64
A Woodland Grave .66
Sunset Dreams .68
The Old Byway .70
" Below the Sunset's Range of Rose ".72
Music of Summer .74
Midsummer .77
The Rain-Crow.                                         80
Field and Forest Call .82
Old Homes .84
The Forest Way .86
Sunset and Storm .88
Quiet Lanes .89
One who loved Nature .93
Garden Gossip .97
Assumption .99
Senorita.  .00
Overseas .102
Problems .105
To a Windflower .o6
Voyagers .io8
The Spell.                                            110
Uncertainty .113

 






CONTENTS



In the Wood
Since Then
Dusk in the Woods
Paths
The Quest
The Garden of Dreams
The Path to Faery.
There are Faeries .
The Spirit of the Forest Spring
In a Garden
In the Lane .
The Window on the Hill
The Picture
Moly
Poppy and Mandragora
A Road Song.
Phantoms
Intimations of the Beautiful
October.
Friends
Comradery
Bare Boughs .
Days and Days
Autumn Sorrow
The Tree-Toad
The Chipmunk     .
The Wild Iris
Drouth
Rain
At Sunset
The Lear-Cricket .
The Wind of Winter



                        PAGE
                        I uS
                        .116

                        119
   .   .    .   .    .  " 91
                        121
                        123
             .   .   .  I25
   . .    .   .      . 127
                       130
                  133
                       135
                       137
                      - 139
                        140
                        141
                        144
                        '47
                      . 148
                       I50
                      . 165
                      . 167
                        .169
                        171
                        '73
                        '74
                        175
                        177
                        '79

                        .83
                        i 84
                        . 85
                        . 88



ix

 






CONTENTS



                                                    PAGK
The Owlet                                             o90
Evening on the Farm.    193
The Locust.                                         197
The Dead Day.. 199
The Old Water-Mill  ......200
Argonauts          .. .             ..       .      206
"1 The Morn that breaks its Heart of Gold"  .  .  .  208
A Voice on the Wind  ... 212
Requiem             ..            ..                215
Lynchers                 .         ..               217
The Parting . ..219
Feud                  .           ..221
Ku Klux.                           ..               223
Eidolons                 .         ..               225
The Man Hunt                                      . 227
My Romance.                                         229
A Maid who died Old     231
Ballad of Low-Lie-Down . .  .  233
Romance        ..               ...                 235
Amadis and Oriana     . .. . . . 238
The Rosicrucian   . .. . . . . 240
The Age of Gold  . .... . 243
Beauty and Art     . . . . . .244
The Sea Spirit     . . ...                          246
Gargaphie  ......248
The Dead Oread ... ...251
The Faun   . . . . . .                              253
The Paphian Venus  ......255
Oriental Romance . .....259
The Mameluke  ......261
The Slave  ......263
The Portrait ... ...265



x

 






CONTENTS



The Black Knight
In Arcady
Prototypes
March
Dusk
The Winds
Light and Wind
Enchantment.
Abandoned   .
After Long Grief
Mendicants .
The End of Summer
November    .
The Death of Love
Unanswered .
The Swashbuckler .
Old Sir John .
Uncalled    .



                       PAGE
                     .269
                     .  278
                      282
                      283
                     .  284
                      285
                .. ,.286
                      287
                       288
                       289
                      290
                      291
                       292
                      294
                       295
                      296
                       297
.. .   .    .   . 298



xi

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THE POETRY OF MADISON CAWEIN



  WHEN a poet begins writing, and we begin liking his
work, we own willingly enough that we have not, and
cannot have, got the compass of his talent. We must
wait till he has written more, and we have learned to
like him more, and even then we should hesitate his
definition, from all that he has done, if we did not very
commonly qualify ourselves from the latest thing he has
done. Between the earliest thing and the latest thing
there may have been a hundred different things, and
in his swan-long life of a singer there would probably be
a hundred yet, and all different. But we take the latest
as if it summed him up in motive and range and tend-
ency. Many parts of his work offer themselves in
confirmation of our judgment, while those which might
impeach it shrink away and hide themselves, and leave
us to our precipitation, our catastrophe.
  It was surely nothing less than by a catastrophe that
I should have been so betrayed in the volumes of
Mr. Cawein's verse which reached me last before the
volume of his collected poems. . . . I had read his
poetry and loved it from the beginning, and in each
                        xill

 



xiv THE POETRY OF MADISON CAWEIN



successive expression of it, I had delighted in its expand-
ing and maturing beauty. I believe I had not failed
to own its compass, and when -

      " He touched the tender stops of various quills,"

I had responded to every note of the changing music. I
did not always respond audibly either in public or in
private, for it seemed to me that so old a friend might
fairly rest on the laurels he had helped bestow. But
when that last volume came, I said to myself, "This
applausive silence has gone on long enough. It is time
to break it with open appreciation. Still," I said, "I
must guard against too great appreciation; I must mix
in a little depreciation, to show that I have read atten-
tively, critically, authoritatively." So I applied myself
to the cheapest and easiest means of depreciation, and
asked, "Why do you always write Nature poems
Why not Human Nature poems  " or the like. But in
seizing upon an objection so obvious that I ought to
have known it was superficial, I had wronged a poet,
who had never done me harm, but only good, in the
very terms and conditions of his being a poet. I had
not stayed to see that his nature poetry was instinct
with human poetry, with his human poetry, with mine,
with yours. I had made his reproach what ought to
have been his finest praise, what is always the praise of

 



THE POETRY OF MADISON CAWEIN xv



poetry when it is not artificial and formal. I ought to
have said, as I had seen, that not one of his lovely land-
scapes in which I could discover no human figure, but
thrilled with a human presence penetrating to it from
his most sensitive and subtle spirit until it was all but
painfully alive with memories, with regrets, with long-
ings, with hopes, with all that from time to time mutably
constitutes us men and women, and yet keeps us chil-
dren. He has the gift, in a measure that I do not think
surpassed in any poet, of touching some smallest or
commonest thing in nature, and making it live from the
manifold associations in which we have our being, and
glow thereafter with an inextinguishable beauty. His
felicities do not seem sought; rather they seem to seek
him, and to surprise him with the delight they impart
through him. He has the inspiration of the right
word, and the courage of it, so that though in the first
instant you may be challenged, you may be revolted,
by something that you might have thought uncouth,
you are presently overcome by the happy bravery of it,
and gladly recognize that no other word of those verbal
saints or aristocrats, dedicated to the worship or service
of beauty, would at all so well have conveyed the sense
of it as this or that plebeian.
  If I began indulging myself in the pleasure of quota-
tion, or the delight of giving proofs of what I say, I
should soon and far transcend the modest bounds which

 



xvi THE POETRY OF MADISON CAWEIN



the editor has set my paper. But the reader may take
it from me that no other poet, not even of the great
Elizabethan range, can outword this poet when it comes
to choosing some epithet fresh from the earth or air,
and with the morning sun or light upon it, for an emotion
or experience in which the race renews its youth from
generation to generation. He is of the kind of Keats
and Shelley and Wordsworth and Coleridge, in that
truth to observance and experience of nature and the
joyous expression of it, which are the dominant charac-
teristics of his art. It is imaginable that the thinness of
the social life in the Middle West threw the poet upon
the communion with the fields and woods, the days and
nights, the changing seasons, in which another great
nature poet of ours declares they "speak in various
language." But nothing could be farther from the
didactic mood in which "communion with the various
forms" of nature casts the Puritanic soul of Bryant,
than the mood in which this German-blooded, Ken-
tucky-born poet, who keeps throughout his song the
sense of a perpetual and inalienable youth, with a spirit
as pagan as that which breathes from Greek sculpture -
but happily not more pagan. Most modem poets who
are antique are rather over-Hellenic, in their wish not
to be English or French, but there is nothing voluntary
in Mr. Cawein's naturalization in the older world of
myth and fable; he is too sincerely and solely a poet to

 



THE POETRY OF MADISON CAWEIN xvii



be a posseur; he has his eyes everywhere except on the
spectator, and his affair is to report the beauty that he
sees, as if there were no one by to hear.
  An interesting and charming trait of his poetry is its
constant theme of youth and its limit within the range
that the emotions and aspirations of youth take. He
might indeed be called the poet of youth if he resented
being called the poet of nature; but the poet of youth,
be it understood, of vague regrets, of " tears, idle tears,"
of "long, long thoughts," for that is the real youth, and
not the youth of the supposed hilarity, the attributive
recklessness, the daring hopes. Perhaps there is some
such youth as this, but it has not its home in the breast
of any young poet, and he rarely utters it; at best he
is of a light melancholy, a smiling wistfulness, and upon
the whole, October is more to his mind than May.
  In Mr. Cawein's work, therefore, what is not the
expression of the world we vainly and rashly call the
inanimate world, is the hardly more dramatized, and
not more enchantingly imagined story of lovers, rather
unhappy lovers. He finds his own in this sort far and
near; in classic Greece, in heroic England, in romantic
Germany, where the blue flower blows, but not less in
beautiful and familiar Kentucky, where the blue grass
shows itself equally the emblem of poetry, and the
moldering log in the cabin wall or the woodland path
is of the same poetic value as the marble of the ruined

 



xviii THE POETRY OF MADISON CAWEIN



temple or the stone of the crumbling castle. His
singularly creative fancy breathes a soul into every scene;
his touch leaves everything that was dull to the sense
before glowing in the light of joyful recognition. He
classifies his poems by different names, and they are of
different themes, but they are after all of that unity
which I have been trying, all too shirkingly, to suggest.
One, for instance, is the pathetic story which tells
itself in the lyrical eclogue "One Day and Another."
It is the conversation, prolonged from meeting to meet-
ing, between two lovers whom death parts; but who
recurrently find themselves and each other in the gar-
dens and the woods, and on the waters which they tell
each other of and together delight in. The effect is
that which is truest to youth and love, for these trans-
mutations of emotion form the disguise of self which
makes passion tolerable; but mechanically the result
is a series of nature poems. More genuinely dramatic
are such pieces as "The Feud," "Ku Klux," and "The
Lynchers," three out of many; but one which I value
more because it is worthy of Wordsworth, or of Tenny-
son in a Wordsworthian mood, is "The Old Mill,"
where, with all the wonted charm of his landscape
art, Mr. Cawein gives us a strongly local and novel piece
of character painting.
  I deny myself with increasing reluctance the pleasure
of quoting the stanzas, the verses, the phrases, the

 



THE POETRY OF MADISON CAWEIN xix



epithets, which lure me by scores and hundreds in his
poems. It must suffice me to say that I do not know
any poem of his which has not some such a felicity; I
do not know any poem of his which is not worth reading,
at least the first time, and often the second and the third
time, and so on as often as you have the chance of re-
curring to it. Some disappoint and others delight more
than others; but there is none but in greater or less
measure has the witchery native to the poet, and his
place and his period.
  It is only in order of his later time that I would put
Mr. Cawein first among those Midwestern poets, of
whom he is the youngest. Poetry in the Middle West
has had its development in which it was eclipsed by the
splendor, transitory if not vain, of the California school.
But it is deeply rooted in the life of the region, and is as
true to its origins as any faithful portraiture of the
Midwestern landscape could be; you could not mistake
the source of the poem or the picture. In a certain
tenderness of light and coloring, the poems would recall
the mellowed masterpieces of the older literatures rather
than those of the New England school, where conscience
dwells almost rebukingly with beauty. ...
                                 W. D. HOWELLS.



  From The North American Review. Copyright, igo8, by the
North American Review Publishing Company.

 This page in the original text is blank.

 



                   POEMS


       HYMN TO SPIRITUAL DESIRE

                        I
MOTHER of visions, with lineaments dulcet as numbers
Breathed on the eyelids of Love by music that
    slumbers,
Secretly, sweetly, 0 presence of fire and snow,
Thou comest mysterious,
In beauty imperious,
Clad on with dreams and the light of no world that we
    know:
Deep to my innermost soul am I shaken,
Helplessly shaken and tossed,
And of thy tyrannous yearnings so utterly taken,
My lips, unsatisfied, thirst;
Mine eyes are accurst
With longings for visions that far in the night are for-
    saken;
And mine ears, in listening lost,
Yearn, waiting the note of a chord that will never
    awaken.



B



I

 



2    HYMN TO SPIRITUAL DESIRE



                        II
Like palpable music thou comest, like moonlight; and
    far, -
Resonant bar upon bar,-
The vibrating lyre
Of the spirit responds with melodious fire,
As thy fluttering fingers now grasp it and ardently shake,
With laughter and ache,
The chords of existence, the instrument star-sprung,
Whose frame is of clay, so wonderfully molded of mire.

                       III
Vested with vanquishment, come, 0 Desire, Desire!
Breathe in this harp of my soul the audible angel of
    Love!
Make of my heart an Israfel burning above,
A lute for the music of God, that lips, which are mortal,
    but stammer!
Smite every rapturous wire
With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor,
Crying -" Awake! awake!
Too long hast thou slumbered! too far from the regions
    of glamour
With its mountains of magic, its fountains of faery, the
    spar-sprung,
Hast thou wandered away, 0 Heart!

 



HYTMN TO SPIRITUAL DESIRE



Come, oh, come and partake
Of necroffiance banquets of Beauty; and slake
Thy thirst in the waters of Art,
That are drawn from the streams
Of love and of dreams.

                       IV
"Come, oh, come!
No longer shall language be dumb !
Thy vision shall grasp -
As one doth the glittering hasp
Of a sword made splendid with gems and with gold -
The wonder and richness of life, not anguish and hate of
    it merely.
And out of the stark
Eternity, awful and dark,
Immensity silent and cold,-
Universe-shaking as trumpets, or cymbaling metals,
Imperious; yet pensive and pearly
And soft as the rosy unfolding of petals,
Or crumbling aroma of blossoms that wither too
    early, -
The majestic music of God, where He plays
On the organ, eternal and vast, of eons and days."



3

 



       BEAUTIFUL-BOSOMED, 0 NIGHT

                         I
BEAUTIFUL-BOSOMLD, 0 Night, in thy noon
Move with majesty onward! soaring, as lightly
As a singer may soar the notes of an exquisite tune,
The stars and the moon
Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firma-
    ment's halls:
Under whose sapphirine walls,
June, hesperian June,
Robed in divinity wanders. Daily and nightly
The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star,
The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are,
Fill the land with languorous light and perfume. -
Is it the melody mute of burgeoning leaf and of bloom 
The music of Nature, that silently shapes in the gloom
Immaterial hosts
Of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their
    keep,
Whom I hear, whom I hear
'With their sighs of silver and pearl 
Invisible ghosts, -
Each sigh a shadowy girl, -
                         4

 



BEAUTIFUL-BOSOMED, 0 NIGHT



Who whisper in leaves and glimmer in blossoms and
    hover
In color and fragrance and loveliness, breathed from the
    deep
World-soul of the mother,
Nature; who over and over, -
Both sweetheart and lover,-
Goes singing her songs from one sweet month to the
    other.

                        II
Lo! 'tis her songs that appear, appear,
In forest and field, on hill-land and lea,
As visible harmony,
Materialized melody,
Crystallized beauty, that out of the atmosphere
Utters itself, in wonder and mystery,
Peopling with glimmering essence the hyaline far and
    the near. ...
                        III
Behold how it sprouts from the grass and blossoms from
    flower and tree !
In waves of diaphanous moonlight and mist,
In fugue upon fugue of gold and of amethyst,
Around me, above me it spirals; now slower, now
    faster,



5

 



6     BEAUTIFUL-BOSOMED, 0 NIGHT

Like symphonies born of the thought of a musical
    master. -
0 music of Earth! 0 God, who the music inspired!
Let me breathe of the life of thy breath!
And so be fulfilled and attired
In resurrection, triumphant o'er time and o'er death!

 



DISCOVERY



WHAT is it now that I shall seek
Where woods dip downward, in the hills 
A mossy nook, a ferny creek,
And May among the daffodils.

Or in the valley's vistaed glow,
Past rocks of terraced trumpet vines,
Shall I behold her coming slow,
Sweet May, among the columbines

With redbud cheeks and bluet eyes,
Big eyes, the homes of happiness,
To meet me with the old surprise,
Her wild-rose hair all bonnetless.

Who waits for me, where, note for note,
The birds make glad the forest trees  -
A dogwood blossom at her throat,
My May among th' anemones.

As sweetheart breezes kiss the blooms,
And dews caress the moon's pale beams,
My soul shall drink her lips' perfumes,
And know the magic of her dreams.
                  7

 



0 MAYTIME WOODS!



        From the idyll " Wild Thorn and Lily "

O MAYTrmE woods! 0 Maytime lanes and hours!
And stars, that knew how often there at night
Beside the path, where woodbine odors blew
Between the drowsy eyelids of the dusk, -
When, like a great, white, pearly moth, the moon
Hung silvering long windows of your room, -
I stood among the shrubs! The dark house slept.
I watched and waited for - I know not what ! -
Some tremor of your gown: a velvet leaf's
Unfolding to caresses of the Spring:
The rustle of your footsteps: or the dew
Syllabling avowal on a tulip's lips
Of odorous scarlet: or the whispered word
Of something lovelier than new leaf or rose -
The word young lips half murmur in a dream:

Serene with sleep, light visions weigh her eyes:
  And underneath her window blooms a quince.
The night is a sultana who doth rise
  In slippered caution, to admit a prince,
Love, who her eunuchs and her lord defies.
                      8

 



            0 MAYTIME WOODS!                   9

Are these her dreams  or is it that the breeze
  Pelts me with petals of the quince, and lifts
The Balm-o'-Gilead buds and seems to squeeze
  Aroma on aroma through sweet rifts
Of Eden, dripping through the rainy trees.

Along the path the buckeye trees begin
  To heap their hills of blossoms. - Oh, that they
Were Romeo ladders, whereby I might win
  Her chamber's sanctity ! - where dreams must pray
About her soul !- That I might enter in ! -

A dream, - and see the balsam scent erase
  Its dim intrusion; and the starry night
Conclude majestic pomp; the virgin grace
  Of every bud abashed before the white,
Pure passion-flower of her sleeping face.

 




             THE REDBIRD
         From " Wild Thorn and Lily"
AMONG the white haw-blossoms, where the creek
Droned under drifts of dogwood and of haw,
The redbird, like a crimson blossom blown
Against the snow-white bosom of the Spring,
The chaste confusion of her lawny breast,
Sang on, prophetic of serener days,
As confident as June's completer hours.
And I stood listening like a hind, who hears
A wood nymph breathing in a forest flute
Among the beech-boles of myth-haunted ways:
And when it ceased, the memory of the air
Blew like a syrinx in my brain: I made
A lyric of the notes that men might know:

    He flies with flirt and fluting -
      As flies a crimson star
    From flaming star-beds shooting -
      From where the roses are.

    Wings past and sings; and seven
      Notes, wild as fragrance is, -
                    IO

 



        THE REDBIRD

That turn to flame in heaven, -
  Float round him full of bliss.

He sings; each burning feather
  Thrills, throbbing at his throat;
A song of firefly weather,
  And of a glowworm boat:

Of Elfland and a princess
  Who, born of a perfume,
His music rocks, - where winces
  That rosebud's cradled bloom.

No bird sings half so airy,
  No bird of dusk or dawn,
Thou masking King of Faery!
  Thou red-crowned Oberon!

 



A NIELLO



IT is not early spring and yet
Of bloodroot blooms along the stream,
And blotted banks of violet,
  My heart will dream.

Is it because the windflower apes
The beauty that was once her brow,
That the white memory of it shapes
  The April now

Because the wild-rose wears the blush
That once made sweet her maidenhood,
Its thought makes June of barren bush
  And empty wood

And then I think how young she died -
Straight, barren Death stalks down the trees,
The hard-eyed Hours by his side,
  That kill and freeze.
                  12

 



A NIELLO



                  II
When orchards are in bloom again
My heart will bound, my blood will beat,
To hear the redbird so repeat,
  On boughs of rosy stain,
His blithe, loud song, - like some far strain
From out the past, - among the bloom, -
(Where bee and wasp and hornet boom) -
  Fresh, redolent of rain.

When orchards are in bloom once more,
Invasions of lost dreams will draw
My feet, like some insistent law,
  Through blossoms to her door:
In dreams I'll ask her, as before,
To let me help her at the well;
And fill her pail; and long to tell
  My love as once of yore.

I shall not speak until we quit
The farm-gate, leading to the lane
And orchard, all in bloom again,
  Mid which the bluebirds sit
And sing; and through whose blossoms flit
The catbirds crying while they fly:
Then tenderly I'll speak, and try
  To tell her all of it.



13

 


A NIELLO



And in my dream again she'll place
Her hand in mine, as oft before, -
When orchards are in bloom once more,-
  With all her young-girl grace:
And we shall tarry till a trace
Of sunset dyes the heav'ns; and then -
We'll part; and, parting, I again
  Shall bend and kiss her face.

And homeward, singing, I shall go
Along the cricket-chirring ways,
While sunset, one long crimson blaze
  Of orchards, lingers low:
And my dead youth again I'll know,
And all her love, when spring is here -
Whose memory holds me many a year,
  Whose love still haunts me so!

                 III
I would not die when Springtime lifts
  The white world to her maiden mouth,
And heaps its cradle with gay gifts,
  Breeze-blown from out the singing South:
Too full of life and loves that cling;
  Too heedless of all mortal woe,
The young, unsympathetic Spring,
  That Death should never know.



I4

 


             A NIELLO                     I'5

I would not die when Summer shakes
  Her daisied locks below her hips,
And naked as a star that takes
  A cloud, into the silence slips:
Too rich is Summer; poor in needs;
  In egotism of loveliness
Her pomp goes by, and never heeds
  One life the more or less.

But I would die when Autumn goes,
  The dark rain dripping from her hair,
Through forests where the wild wind blows
  Death and the red wreck everywhere:
Sweet as love's last farewells and tears
  To fall asleep when skies are gray,
In the old autumn of my years,
  Like a dead leaf borne far away.

 



IN MAY



                      I
WHEN you and I in the hills went Maying,
You and I in the bright May weather,
The birds, that sang on the boughs together,
There in the green of the woods, kept saying
  All that my heart was saying low,
  "I love you ! love you !" soft and low,-
    And did you know
When you and I in the hills went Maying.


                      II
There where the brook on its rocks went winking,
  There by its banks where the May had led us,
  Flowers, that bloomed in the woods and meadows,
Azure and gold at our feet, kept thinking
  All that my soul was thinking there,
  "I love you ! love you !" softly there -
    And did you care
There where the brook on its rocks went winking.
                      i6

 



IN MAY



                      III

Whatever befalls through fate's compelling,
  Should our paths unite or our pathways sever,
  In the Mays to come I shall feel forever
The wildflowers thinking, the wild birds telling,
    In words as soft as the falling dew,
    The love that I keep here still for you,
      Both deep and true,
Whatever befalls through fate's compelling.



C



I17

 



AUDADE



AwAKE ! the dawn is on the hills !
  Behold, at her cool throat a rose,
  Blue-eyed and beautiful she goes,
Leaving her steps in daffodils. -
Awake! arise! and let me see
  Thine eyes, whose deeps epitomize
All dawns that were or are to be,
  o love, all Heaven in thine eyes ! -
Awake! arise! come down to me!

Behold! the dawn is up: behold!
  How all the birds around her float,
  Wild rills of music, note on note,
Spilling the air with mellow gold. -
Arise ! awake! and, drawing near,
  Let me but hear thee and rejoice!
Thou, who keep'st captive, sweet and clear,
  All song, 0 love, within thy voice!
Arise! awake! and let me hear!

See, where she comes, with limbs of day,
  The dawn! with wild-rose hands and feet,
  Within whose veins the sunbeams beat,
And laughters meet of wind and ray.
                    I18

 



              AUBADE                     '9

Arise! come down! and, heart to heart,
  Love, let me clasp in thee all these -
The sunbeam, of which thou art part,
  And all the rapture of the breeze ! -
Arise ! come down! loved that thou art!

 


APOCALYPSE



BEFORE I found her I had found
  Within my heart, as in a brook,
Reflections of her: now a sound
  Of imaged beauty; now a look.

So when I found her, gazing in
  Those Bibles of her eyes, above
All earth, I read no word of sin;
  Their holy chapters all were love.

I read them through. I read and saw
  The soul impatient of the sod -
Her soul, that through her eyes did draw
  Mine - to the higher love of God.



20

 



PENETRALIA



I AM a part of all you see
In Nature; part of all you feel:
I am the impact of the bee
Upon the blossom; in the tree
I am the sap, - that shall reveal
The leaf, the bloom, - that flows and flutes
Up from the darkness through its roots.

I am the vermeil of the rose,
The perfume breathing in its veins;
The gold within the mist that glows
Along the west and overflows
With light the heaven; the dew that rains
Its freshness down and strings with spheres
Of wet the webs and oaten ears.

I am the egg that folds the bird;
The song that beaks and breaks its shell;
The laughter and the wandering word
The water says; and, dimly heard,
The music of the blossom's bell
When soft winds swing it; and the sound