Myth and Romance: Being a Book of Verses

Madison Julius Cawein

Myth and Romance: Being a Book of Verses

PROEM

There is no rhyme that is half so sweetAs the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;There is no metre that's half so fineAs the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;And the loveliest lyric I ever heardWas the wildwood strain of a forest bird.—If the wind and the brook and the bird would teachMy heart their beautiful parts of speech.And the natural art that they say these with,My soul would sing of beauty and mythIn a rhyme and a metre that none beforeHave sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore,And the world would be richer one poet the more.

VISIONS AND VOICES

Myth and Romance

IWhen I go forth to greet the glad-faced Spring,Just at the time of opening apple-buds,When brooks are laughing, winds are whispering,On babbling hillsides or in warbling woods,There is an unseen presence that eludes:—Perhaps a Dryad, in whose tresses clingThe loamy odors of old solitudes,Who, from her beechen doorway, calls; and leadsMy soul to follow; now with dimpling wordsOf leaves; and now with syllables of birds;While here and there—is it her limbs that swing?Or restless sunlight on the moss and weeds?IIOr, haply, 't is a Naiad now who slips,Like some white lily, from her fountain's glass,While from her dripping hair and breasts and hips,The moisture rains cool music on the grass.Her have I heard and followed, yet, alas!Have seen no more than the wet ray that dipsThe shivered waters, wrinkling where I pass;But, in the liquid light, where she doth hide,I have beheld the azure of her gazeSmiling; and, where the orbing ripple plays,Among her minnows I have heard her lips,Bubbling, make merry by the waterside.IIIOr now it is an Oread—whose eyesAre constellated dusk—who stands confessed,As naked as a flow'r; her heart's surprise,Like morning's rose, mantling her brow and breast:She, shrinking from my presence, all distressedStands for a startled moment ere she flies,Her deep hair blowing, up the mountain crest,Wild as a mist that trails along the dawn.And is't her footfalls lure me? or the soundOf airs that stir the crisp leaf on the ground?And is't her body glimmers on yon rise?Or dog-wood blossoms snowing on the lawn?IVNow't is a Satyr piping serenadesOn a slim reed. Now Pan and Faun advanceBeneath green-hollowed roofs of forest glades,Their feet gone mad with music: now, perchance,Sylvanus sleeping, on whose leafy tranceThe Nymphs stand gazing in dim ambuscadesOf sun-embodied perfume.—Myth, Romance,Where'er I turn, reach out bewildering arms,Compelling me to follow. Day and nightI hear their voices and behold the lightOf their divinity that still evades,And still allures me in a thousand forms.

Genius Loci

IWhat wood-god, on this water's mossy curb,Lost in reflections of earth's loveliness,Did I, just now, unconsciously disturb?I, who haphazard, wandering at a guess,Came on this spot, wherein, with gold and flameOf buds and blooms, the season writes its name.—Ah, me! could I have seen him ere alarmOf my approach aroused him from his calm!As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap,Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warmAs wildwood rose, and filled the air with balmOf his sweet breath as with ethereal sap.IIDoes not the moss retain some vague impress,Green dented in, of where he lay or trod?Do not the flow'rs, so reticent, confessWith conscious looks the contact of a god?Does not the very water garrulouslyBoast the indulgence of a deity?And, hark! in burly beech and sycamoreHow all the birds proclaim it! and the leavesRejoice with clappings of their myriad hands!And shall not I believe, too, and adore,With such wide proof?—Yea, though my soul perceivesNo evident presence, still it understands.IIIAnd for a while it moves me to lie downHere on the spot his god-head sanctified:Mayhap some dream he dreamed may lingert brownAnd young as joy, around the forestside;Some dream within whose heart lives no disdainFor such as I whose love is sweet and sane;That may repeat, so none but I may hear—As one might tell a pearl-strung rosary—Some epic that the trees have learned to croon,Some lyric whispered in the wild-flower's ear,Whose murmurous lines are sung by bird and bee,And all the insects of the night and noon.IVFor, all around me, upon field and hill,Enchantment lies as of mysterious flutes;As if the music of a god's good-willHad taken on material attributesIn blooms, like chords; and in the water-gleam,That runs its silvery scales from stream to stream;In sunbeam bars, up which the butterfly,A golden note, vibrates then flutters on—Inaudible tunes, blown on the pipes of Pan,That have assumed a visible entity,And drugged the air with beauty so, a Faun,Behold, I seem, and am no more a man.

The Rain-Crow

ICan freckled August,—drowsing warm and blondeBeside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead,In her hot hair the oxeyed daisies wound,—O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heedTo thee? when no plumed weed, no feather'd seedBlows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond,That gleams like flint between its rim of grasses,Through which the dragonfly forever passesLike splintered diamond.IIDrouth weights the trees, and from the farmhouse eavesThe locust, pulse-beat of the summer day,Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leavesLimp with the heat—a league of rutty way—Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hayBreathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves—Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain,In thirsty heaven or on burning plain,That thy keen eye perceives?IIIBut thou art right. Thou prophesiest true.For hardly hast thou ceased thy forecasting,When, up the western fierceness of scorched blue,Great water-carrier winds their buckets bringBrimming with freshness. How their dippers ringAnd flash and rumble! lavishing dark dewOn corn and forestland, that, streaming wet,Their hilly backs against the downpour set,Like giants vague in view.IVThe butterfly, safe under leaf and flower,Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art;The bumble-bee, within the last half-hour,Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart;While in the barnyard, under shed and cart,Brood-hens have housed.—But I, who scorned thy power,Barometer of the birds,—like August there,—Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair,Like some drenched truant, cower.

The Harvest Moon

IGlobed in Heav'n's tree of azure, golden mellowAs some round apple hungHigh in hesperian boughs, thou hangest yellowThe branch-like mists among:Within thy light a sunburnt youth, named Health,Rests 'mid the tasseled shocks, the tawny stubble;And by his side, clad on with rustic wealthOf field and farm, beneath thy amber bubble,A nut-brown maid, Content, sits smiling still:While through the quiet trees,The mossy rocks, the grassy hill,Thy silvery spirit glides to yonder mill,Around whose wheel the breezeAnd shimmering ripples of the water play,As, by their mother, little children may.IISweet spirit of the moon, who walkest,—liftingExhaustless on thy arm,A pearly vase of fire,—through the shiftingCloud-halls of calm and storm,Pour down thy blossoms! let me hear them come,Pelting with noiseless light the twinkling thickets,Making the darkness audible with the humOf many insect creatures, grigs and crickets:Until it seems the elves hold revelriesBy haunted stream and grove;Or, in the night's deep peace,The young-old presence of Earth's full increaseSeems telling thee her love,Ere, lying down, she turns to rest, and smiles,Hearing thy heart beat through the myriad miles.

The Old Water-Mill

Wild ridge on ridge the wooded hills arise,Between whose breezy vistas gulfs of skiesPilot great clouds like towering argosies,And hawk and buzzard breast the azure breeze.With many a foaming fall and glimmering reachOf placid murmur, under elm and beech,The creek goes twinkling through long glows and gloomsOf woodland quiet, poppied with perfumes:The creek, in whose clear shallows minnow-schoolsGlitter or dart; and by whose deeper poolsThe blue kingfishers and the herons haunt;That, often startled from the freckled flauntOf blackberry-lilies—where they feed and hide—Trail a lank flight along the forestsideWith eery clangor. Here a sycamore,Smooth, wave-uprooted, builds from shore to shoreA headlong bridge; and there, a storm-hurled oakLays a long dam, where sand and gravel chokeThe water's lazy way. Here mistflower blursIts bit of heaven; there the oxeye stirsIts gloaming hues of bronze and gold; and here,A gray cool stain, like dawn's own atmosphere,The dim wild-carrot lifts its crumpled crest:And over all, at slender flight or rest,The dragon-flies, like coruscating raysOf lapis-lazuli and chrysoprase,Drowsily sparkle through the summer days;And, dewlap-deep, here from the noontide heatThe bell-hung cattle find a cool retreat:And through the willows girdling the hill,Now far, now near, borne as the soft winds will,Comes the low rushing of the water-mill.Ah, lovely to me from a little child,How changed the place! wherein once, undefiled,The glad communion of the sky and streamWent with me like a presence and a dream.Where once the brambled meads and orchardlandsPoured ripe abundance down with mellow handsOf summer; and the birds of field and woodCalled to me in a tongue I understood;And in the tangles of the old rail-fenceEven the insect tumult had some sense,And every sound a happy eloquence;And more to me than wisest books can teach,The wind and water said; whose words did reachMy soul, addressing their magnificent speech,Raucous and rushing, from the old mill-wheel,That made the rolling mill-cogs snore and reel,Like some old ogre in a fairy-taleNodding above his meat and mug of ale.How memory takes me back the ways that lead—As when a boy—through woodland and through mead!To orchards fruited; or to fields in bloom;Or briary fallows, like a mighty room,Through which the winds swing censers of perfume,And where deep blackberries spread miles of fruit;—A splendid feast, that stayed the ploughboy's footWhen to the tasseling acres of the cornHe drove his team, fresh in the primrose morn;And from the liberal banquet, nature lent,Took dewy handfuls as he whistling went.—A boy once more I stand with sunburnt feetAnd watch the harvester sweep down the wheat;Or laze with warm limbs in the unstacked strawNearby the thresher, whose insatiate mawDevours the sheaves, hot drawling out its hum—Like some great sleepy bee, above a bloom,Made drunk with honey—while, grown big with grain,The bulging sacks receive the golden rain.Again I tread the valley, sweet with hay,And hear the bob-white calling far away,Or wood-dove cooing in the elder-brake;Or see the sassafras bushes madly shakeAs swift, a rufous instant, in the glenThe red-fox leaps and gallops to his den;Or, standing in the violet-colored gloam,Hear roadways sound with holiday riding homeFrom church, or fair, or bounteous barbecue,Which the whole country to some village drew.How spilled with berries were its summer hills,And strewn with walnuts were its autumn rills—And chestnut burs! fruit of the spring's long flowers,When from their tops the trees seemed streaming showersOf slender silver, cool, crepuscular,And like a nebulous radiance shone afar.And maples! how their sappy hearts would gushBroad troughs of syrup, when the winter bushSteamed with the sugar-kettle, day and night,And all the snow was streaked with firelight.Then it was glorious! the mill-dam's edge,One slant of frosty crystal, laid a ledgeOf pearl across; above which, sleeted treesTossed arms of ice, that, clashing in the breeze,Tinkled the ringing creek with icicles,Thin as the peal of Elfland's Sabbath bells:A sound that in my city dreams I hear,That brings before me, under skies that clear,The old mill in its winter garb of snow,Its frozen wheel, a great hoar beard below,And its West windows, two deep eyes aglow.Ah, ancient mill, still do I picture o'erThy cobwebbed stairs and loft and grain-strewn floor;Thy door,—like some brown, honest hand of toil,And honorable with labor of the soil,—Forever open; through which, on his backThe prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack.And while the miller measures out his toll,Again I hear, above the cogs' loud roll,—That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,—The harmless gossip of the passing day:Good country talk, that tells how so-and-soHas died or married; how curculioAnd codling-moth have ruined half the fruit,And blight plays mischief with the grapes to boot;Or what the news from town; next county fair;How well the crops are looking everywhere:Now this, now that, on which their interests fix,Prospects for rain or frost, and politics.While, all around, the sweet smell of the mealFilters, warm-pouring from the grinding wheelInto the bin; beside which, mealy white,The miller looms, dim in the dusty light.Again I see the miller's home, betweenThe crinkling creek and hills of beechen green:Again the miller greets me, gaunt and brown,Who oft o'erawed me with his gray-browed frownAnd rugged mien: again he tries to reachMy youthful mind with fervid scriptural speech.—For he, of all the country-side confessed,The most religious was and happiest;A Methodist, and one whom faith still led,No books except the Bible had he read—At least so seemed it to my younger head.—All things in earth and heav'n he'd prove by this,Be it a fact or mere hypothesis;For to his simple wisdom, reverent,"The Bible says" was all of argument.—God keep his soul! his bones were long since laidAmong the sunken gravestones in the shadeOf those black-lichened rocks, that wall aroundThe family burying-ground with cedars crowned;Where bristling teasel and the brier combineWith clambering wood-rose and the wild-grape vineTo hide the stone whereon his name and datesNeglect, with mossy hand, obliterates.

Anthem of Dawn

IThen up the orient heights to the zenith, that balanced the crescent,—Up and far up and over,—the heaven grew erubescent,Vibrant with rose and with ruby from the hands of the harpist Dawn,Smiting symphonic fire on the firmament's barbiton:And the East was a priest who adored with offerings of gold and of gems,And a wonderful carpet unrolled for the inaccessible hemsOf the glistening robes of her limbs; that, lily and amethyst,Swept glorying on and on through temples of cloud and mist.IIThen out of the splendor and richness, that burned like a magic stone,The torrent suffusion that deepened and dazzled and broadened and shone,The pomp and the pageant of color, triumphal procession of glare,The sun, like a king in armor, breathing splendor from feet to hair,Stood forth with majesty girdled, as a hero who towers afarWhere the bannered gates are bristling hells and the walls are roaring war:And broad on the back of the world, like a Cherubin's fiery blade,The effulgent gaze of his aspect fell in glittering accolade.IIIThen billowing blue, like an ocean, rolled from the shores of morn to even:And the stars, like rafts, went down: and the moon, like a ghost-ship, driven,A feather of foam, from port to port of the cloud-built isles that dotted,With pearl and cameo, bays of the day, her canvas webbed and rotted,Lay lost in the gulf of heaven: while over her mixed and meltedThe beautiful children of Morn, whose bodies are opal-belted;The beautiful daughters of Dawn, who, over and under, and afterThe rivered radiance, wrestled; and rainbowed heaven with laughterOf halcyon sapphire.—O Dawn! thou visible mirth,And hallelujah of Heaven! hosanna of Earth!

Dithyrambics

ITEMPESTWrapped round of the night, as a monster is wrapped of the ocean,Down, down through vast storeys of darkness, behold, in the towerOf the heaven, the thunder! on stairways of cloudy commotion,Colossal of tread, like a giant, from echoing hour to hourGoes striding in rattling armor …The Nymph, at her billow-roofed dormerOf foam; and the Sylvan—green-housed—at her window of leaves appears;—As a listening woman, who hearsThe approach of her lover, who comes to her arms in the night;And, loosening the loops of her locks,With eyes full of love and delight,From the couch of her rest in ardor and haste arises.—The Nymph, as if breathed of the tempest, like fire surprisesThe riotous bands of the rocks,That face with a roar the shouting charge of the seas.The Sylvan,—through troops of the trees,Whose clamorous clans with gnarly bosoms keep hurlingThemselves on the guns of the wind,—goes wheeling and whirling.The Nymph, of the waves' exultation upheld, her green tressesKnotted with flowers of the hollow white foam, dives screaming;Then bounds to the arms of the storm, who boisterously pressesHer hair and wild form to his breast that is panting and streaming.The Sylvan,—hard-pressed by the wind, the Pan-footed air,—On the violent backs of the hills,—Like a flame that tosses and thrillsFrom peak to peak when the world of spirits is out,—Is borne, as her rapture wills,With glittering gesture and shout:Now here in the darkness, now there,From the rain-like sweep of her hair,—Bewilderingly volleyed o'er eyes and o'er lips,—To the lambent swell of her limbs, her breasts and her hips,She flashes her beautiful nakedness out in the glareOf the tempest that bears her away,—That bears me away!Away, over forest and foam, over tree and spray,Far swifter than thought, far swifter than sound or than flame.Over ocean and pine,In arms of tumultuous shadow and shine …Though Sylvan and Nymph do notExist, and only whatOf terror and beauty I feel and I nameAs parts of the storm, the awe and the rapture divineThat here in the tempest are mine,—The two are the same, the two are forever the same.IICALMBeautiful-bosomed, O night, in thy noonMove with majesty onward! bearing, as lightlyAs a singer may bear the notes of an exquisite tune,The stars and the moonThrough the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls;Under whose sapphirine walls,June, hesperian June,Robed in divinity wanders. Daily and nightlyThe 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 gloomImmaterial hostsOf spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep,That I hear, that I hear?Invisible ghosts,—Who whisper in leaves and glimmer in blossoms and hoverIn color and fragrance and loveliness, breathed from the deepWorld-soul of the mother,Nature;—who, over and over,Both sweetheart and lover,Goes singing her songs from one sweet month to the other,—That appear, that appear?In forest and field, on hill-land and lea,As crystallized harmony,Materialized melody,An uttered essence peopling far and nearThe hyaline atmosphere?…Behold how it sprouts from the grass and blooms 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,Like symphonies born of the thought of a musical master.——O music of Earth! O God who the music inspired!Let me breathe of the life of thy breath!And so be fulfilled and attiredIn resurrection, triumphant o'er time and o'er death!

Hymn to Desire

IMother of visions, with lineaments dulcet as numbersBreathed on the eyelids of love by music that slumbers,Secretly, sweetly, O 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 accurstWith longings for visions that far in the night are forsaken;And mine ears, in listening lost,Yearn, yearn for the note of a chord that will never awaken.IILike palpable music thou comest, like moonlight; and far,—Resonant bar upon bar,—The vibrating lyreOf the spirit responds with melodious fire,As thy fluttering fingers now grasp it and ardently shake,With flame and with flake,The chords of existence, the instrument star-sprung.Whose frame is of clay, so wonderfully molded from mire.IIIVested with vanquishment, come, O 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 wireWith 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 Faëry, the spar-sprung,Hast thou wandered away, O Heart!Come, oh, come and partakeOf necromance banquets of beauty; and slakeThy thirst in the waters of art,That are drawn from the streamsOf love and of dreams.IV"Come, oh, come!No longer shall language be dumb!Thy vision shall grasp—As one doth the glittering haspOf a dagger made splendid with gems and with gold—The wonder and richness of life, not anguish and hate of it merely.And out of the starkEternity, awful and dark,Immensity silent and cold,—Universe-shaking as trumpets, or thunderous metalsThat cymbal; yet pensive and pearlyAnd soft as the rosy unfolding of petals,Or crumbling aroma of blossoms that wither too early,—The majestic music of Death, where he playsOn the organ of eons and days."

Music

Thou, oh, thou!Thou of the chorded shell and golden plectrum! thouOf the dark eyes and pale pacific brow!Music, who by the plangent waves,Or in the echoing night of labyrinthine caves,Or on God's mountains, lonely as the stars,Touchest reverberant barsOf immemorial sorrow and amaze;—Keeping regret and memory awake,And all the immortal acheOf love that leans upon the past's sweet daysIn retrospection!—now, oh, now,Interpreter and heart-physician, thou,Who gazest on the heaven and the hellOf life, and singest each as well,

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.