Undertones

Madison J. Cawein

Undertones

INSCRIBED TO THE PATHETICMEMORY OF THE POETHENRY TIMRODLong are the days, and three times long the nights.The weary hours are a heavy chainUpon the feet of all Earth's dear delights,Holding them ever prisoners to pain.What shall beguile me to believe againIn hope, that faith within her parable writesOf life, care reads with eyes whose tear-drops stain?Shall such assist me to subdue the heights?Long is the night, and over long the day. —The burden of all being! – is it worseOr better, lo! that they who toil and prayMay win not more than they who toil and curse?A little sleep, a little love, ah me!And the slow weigh up the soul's Calvary!

THE DREAMER

Even as a child he loved to thrid the bowers,And mark the loafing sunlight's lazy laugh;Or, on each season, spell the epitaphOf its dead months repeated in their flowers;Or list the music of the strolling showers,Whose vagabond notes strummed through a twinkling staff;Or read the day's delivered monographThrough all the chapters of its dædal hours.Still with the same child-faith and child-regardHe looks on Nature, hearing, at her heart,The beautiful beat out the time and place,Whereby no lesson of this life is hard,No struggle vain of science or of art,That dies with failure written on its face.

QUIET

A log-hut in the solitude,A clapboard roof to rest beneath!This side, the shadow-haunted wood;That side, the sunlight-haunted heath.At daybreak Morn shall come to meIn raiment of the white winds spun;Slim in her rosy hand the keyThat opes the gateway of the sun.Her smile shall help my heart enoughWith love to labor all the day,And cheer the road, whose rocks are rough,With her smooth footprints, each a ray.At dusk a voice shall call afar,A lone voice like the whippoorwill's;And, on her shimmering brow one star,Night shall descend the western hills.She at my door till dawn shall stand,With Gothic eyes, that, dark and deep,Are mirrors of a mystic land,Fantastic with the towns of sleep.

UNQUALIFIED

Not his the part to win the goal,The flaming goal that flies before,Into whose course the apples rollOf self that stay his feet the more.Beyond himself he shall not winWhose flesh is as a driven dust,That his own soul must wander in,Seeing no farther than his lust.

UNENCOURAGED ASPIRATION

Is mine the part of no companion handOf help, except my shadow's silent self?A moonlight traveller in Fancy's landOf leering gnome and hollow-laughing elf;Whose forests deepen and whose moon goes down,When Night's blind shadow shall usurp my own;And, mid the dust and wreck of some old town,The City of Dreams, I grope and fall alone.

THE WOOD

Witch-hazel, dogwood, and the maple here;And there the oak and hickory;Linn, poplar, and the beech-tree, far and nearAs the eased eye can see.Wild-ginger; wahoo, with its wan balloons;And brakes of briers of a twilight green;And fox-grapes plumed with summer; and strung moonsOf mandrake flowers between.Deep gold-green ferns, and mosses red and gray, —Mats for what naked myth's white feet? —And, cool and calm, a cascade far awayWith even-falling beat.Old logs, made sweet with death; rough bits of bark;And tangled twig and knotted root;And sunshine splashes and great pools of dark;And many a wild-bird's flute.Here let me sit until the Indian, Dusk,With copper-colored feet, comes down;Sowing the wildwood with star-fire and musk,And shadows blue and brown.Then side by side with some magician dream,To take the owlet-haunted lane,Half-roofed with vines; led by a firefly gleam,That brings me home again.

WOOD NOTES

IThere is a flute that follows meFrom tree to tree:A water flute a spirit setsTo silver lips in waterfalls,And through the breath of violetsA sparkling music calls:"Hither! halloo! Oh, follow!Down leafy hill and hollow,Where, through clear swirls,With feet like pearls,Wade up the blue-eyed country girls.Hither! halloo! Oh, follow!"IIThere is a pipe that plays to meFrom tree to tree:A bramble pipe an elfin holdsTo golden lips in berry brakes,And, swinging o'er the elder wolds,A flickering music makes:"Come over! Come overThe new-mown clover!Come over the new-mown hay!Where, there by the berries,With cheeks like cherries,And locks with which the warm wind merries,Brown girls are hilling the hay,All day!Come over the fields and away!Come over! Come over!"

SUCCESS

How some succeed who have least need,In that they make no effort for!And pluck, where others pluck a weed,The burning blossom of a star,Grown from no earthly seed.For some shall reap that never sow;And some shall toil and not attain, —What boots it in ourselves to knowSuch labor here is not in vain,When we still see it so!

SONG

Unto the portal of the House of Song,Symbols of wrong and emblems of unrest,And mottoes of despair and envious jest,And stony masks of scorn and hate belong.Who enters here shall feel his soul deniedAll welcome: lo! the chiselled form of Love,That stares in marble on the shrine aboveThe tomb of Beauty, where he dreamed and died!Who enters here shall know no poppyflowersOf Rest, or harp-tones of serene Content;Only sad ghosts of music and of scentShall mock the mind with their remembered powers.Here must he wait till striving patience carvesHis name upon the century-storied floor;His heart's blood staining one dim pane the moreIn Fame's high casement while he sings and starves.

THE OLD SPRING

IUnder rocks whereon the rose,Like a strip of morning, glows;Where the azure-throated newtDrowses on the twisted root;And the brown bees, humming homeward,Stop to suck the honey-dew;Fern and leaf-hid, gleaming gloamward,Drips the wildwood spring I knew,Drips the spring my boyhood knew.IIMyrrh and music everywhereHaunt its cascades; – like the hairThat a naiad tosses cool,Swimming strangely beautiful,With white fragrance for her bosom,For her mouth a breath of song; —Under leaf and branch and blossomFlows the woodland spring along,Sparkling, singing, flows along.IIIStill the wet wan morns may touchIts gray rocks, perhaps; and suchSlender stars as dusk may havePierce the rose that roofs its wave;Still the thrush may call at noontide,And the whippoorwill at night;Nevermore, by sun or moontide,Shall I see it gliding white,Falling, flowing, wild and white.

HILLS OF THE WEST

Hills of the west, that girdForest and farm,Home of the nestling bird,Housing from harm,When on your tops is heardStorm:Hills of the west, that barBelts of the gloam,Under the twilight star,Where the mists roam,Take ye the wandererHome.Hills of the west, that dreamUnder the moon,Making of wind and stream,Late-heard and soon,Parts of your lives that seemTune.Hills of the west, that takeSlumber to ye,Be it for sorrow's sakeOr memory,Part of such slumber makeMe.

FLOWERS

Oh, why for us the blighted bloom!The blossom that lies withering!The Master of Life's changeless loomHath wrought for us no changeless thing.Where grows the rose of fadeless Grace?Wherethrough the Spirit manifestsThe fact of an immortal race,The dream on which religion rests.Where buds the lily of our Faith?That grows for us in unknown wise,Out of the barren dust of death,The pregnant bloom of Paradise.In Heaven! so near that flowers know!That flowers see how near! – and thusReflect the knowledge here belowOf love and life unknown to us.

SECOND SIGHT

They lean their faces to me throughGreen windows of the woods;Their white throats sweet with honey-dewBeneath low leafy hoods —No dream they dream but hath been trueHere in the solitudes.Star trillium, in the underbrush,In whom Spring bares her face;Sun eglantine, that breathes the blushOf Summer's quiet grace;Moon mallow, in whom lives the hushOf Autumn's tragic pace.For one hath heard the dryad's sighsBehind the covering bark;And one hath felt the satyr's eyesGleam in the bosky dark;And one hath seen the naiad riseIn waters all a-spark.I bend my soul unto them, stilledIn worship man hath lost;The old-world myths that science killedAre living things almostTo me through these whose forms are filledWith Beauty's pagan ghost.And through new eyes I seem to seeThe world these live within, —A shuttered world of mystery,Where unreal forms beginThe real of idealityThat has no unreal kin.

DEAD SEA FRUIT

All things have power to hold us back.Our very hopes build up a wallOf doubt, whose shadow stretches blackO'er all.The dreams, that helped us once, becomeDread disappointments, that opposeDead eyes to ours, and lips made dumbWith woes.The thoughts that opened doors beforeWithin the mind's house, hide away;Discouragement hath locked each doorFor aye.Come, loss, more frequently than gain!And failure than success! untilThe spirit's struggle to attainIs still!

THE WOOD WITCH

There is a woodland witch who liesWith bloom-bright limbs and beam-bright eyes,Among the water-flags, that rankThe slow brook's heron-haunted bank:The dragon-flies, in brass and blue,Are signs she works her sorcery through;Weird, wizard characters she weavesHer spells by under forest leaves, —These wait her word, like imps, uponThe gray flag-pods; their wings, of lawnAnd gauze; their bodies gleamy green.While o'er the wet sand, – left betweenThe running water and the still, —In pansy hues and daffodil,The fancies that she meditatesTake on most sumptuous shapes, with traitsLike butterflies. 'Tis she you hear,Whose sleepy rune, hummed in the earOf silence, bees and beetles purr,And the dry-droning locusts whirr;Till, where the wood is very lone,Vague monotone meets monotone,And slumber is begot and born,A faery child, beneath the thorn.There is no mortal who may scornThe witchery she spreads aroundHer dim demesne, wherein is boundThe beauty of abandoned time,As some sweet thought 'twixt rhyme and rhyme.And by her spell you shall beholdThe blue turn gray, the gray turn goldOf hollow heaven; and the brownOf twilight vistas twinkled downWith fire-flies; and, in the gloom,Feel the cool vowels of perfumeSlow-syllabled of weed and bloom.But, in the night, at languid rest, —When like a spirit's naked breastThe moon slips from a silver mist, —With star-bound brow, and star-wreathed wrist,If you should see her rise and waveYou welcome, – ah! what thing shall saveYou then? forevermore her slave!

AT SUNSET

Into the sunset's turquoise margeThe moon dips, like a pearly bargeEnchantment sails through magic seas,To fairyland Hesperides,Over the hills and away.Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown,The young-eyed Dusk comes slowly down;Her apron filled with stars she stands,And one or two slip from her handsOver the hills and away.Above the wood's black caldron bendsThe witch-faced Night and, muttering, blendsThe dew and heat, whose bubbles make

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