The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5)

VIII

The storm is heard sounding wildly outside with wind and hail:The night is wild with rain and sleet;Each loose-warped casement claps or groans:I hear the plangent woodland beatThe tempest with long blatant moans,Like one who fears defeat.And sitting here beyond the storm,Alone within the lonely house,It seems that some mesmeric charmHolds all things—even the gnawing mouseHas ceased its faint alarm.And in the silence, stolen o’erFamiliar objects, lo, I fear—I fear—that, opening yon door,I ’ll find my dead self standing near,With face that once I wore.The stairway creaks with ghostly gusts:The flue moans; all its gorgon throatOne wail of winds: ancestral dusts,—Which yonder Indian war-gear coatWith gray, whose quiver rusts,—Are shaken down.—Or, can it be,That he who wore it in the dance,Or battle, now fills shadowyIts wampumed skins? and shakes his lanceAnd spectral plume at me?—Mere fancy!—Yet those curtains tossMysteriously as if some darkHand moved them.—And I would not crossThe shadow there, that hearthstone’s spark,A glow-worm sunk in moss.Outside ’t were better!—Yes, I yearnTo walk the waste where sway and dipDeep, dark December boughs—where burnSome late last leaves, that drip and dripNo matter where you turn.Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod,Fills oozy footprints—but the blindNight there, though like the frown of God,Presents no fancies to the mind,Like those that have o’erawed.—The months I count: how long it seemsSince summer! summer, when with her,When on her porch, in rainy gleamsWe watched the flickering lightning stirIn heavens gray as dreams.When all the west, a sheet of gold,Flared,—like some Titan’s opened forge,—With storm; revealing, manifold,Vast peaks of clouds with crag and gorge,Where thunder-torrents rolled.Then came the wind: again, againStorm lit the instant earth—and howThe forest rang with roaring rain!—We could not read—where is it now?—That tale of Charlemagne:That old romance! that tale, which weWere reading; till we heard the plungeOf distant thunder sullenly,And left to watch the lightning lunge,And storm-winds toss each tree.That summer!—How it built us there,Of sorcery and necromance,A mental-world, where all was fair;A land like one great pearl, a-tranceWith lilied light and air.Where every flower was a thought;And every bird, a melody;And every fragrance, zephyr brought,Was but the rainbowed draperyOf some sweet dream long sought.’Mid which we reared our heart’s high home,Fair on the hills; with terraces,Vine-hung and wooded, o’er the foamOf undiscovered fairy seas,All violet in the gloam.O land of shadows! shadow-home,Within my world of memories!Around whose ruins sweeps the foamOf sorrow’s immemorial seas,To whose dark shores I come!How long in your wrecked halls, aloneWith ghosts of joys must I remain?Between the unknown and the known,Still hearing through the wind and rainMy lost love moan and moan.

IX

He sits by the slowly dying fire. The storm is heard with increased violence:Wild weather. The lash of the sleetOn the gusty casement, clapping—The sound of the storm like a sheetMy soul and senses wrapping.Wild weather. And how is she,Now the rush of the rain falls serriedThere on the turf and the treeOf the place where she is buried?Wild weather. How black and deepIs the night where the mad winds scurry!—Do I sleep? do I dream in my sleepThat I hear her footsteps hurry?Hither they come like flowers—And I see her raiment glisten,Like the robes of one of the hoursWhere the stars to the angels listen.Before me, behold, how she stands!With lips high thoughts have weighted,With testifying hands,And eyes with glory sated.I have spoken and I have kneeled:I have kissed her feet in wonder—But, lo! her lips—they are sealed,God-sealed, and will not sunder.Though I sob, “Your stay was long!You are come,—but your feet were laggard!—With mansuetude and songFor the heart your death has daggered.”Never a word replies,Never, to all my weeping—Only a sound of sighs,And of raiment past me sweeping....I wake; and a clock tolls three—And the night and the storm beat serriedThere on the turf and the treeOf the place where she is buried.

RED LEAVES AND ROSES

I

And he had lived such loveless yearsThat suffering had made him wise;And she had known no graver tearsThan those of girlhood’s eyes.And he, perhaps, had loved before—One, who had wedded, or had died;—So life to him had been but poorIn love for which he sighed.In years and heart she was so youngLove paused and beckoned at the gate,And bade her hear his songs, unsung;She laughed that “love must wait.”He understood. She only knewLove’s hair was faded, face was gray—Nor saw the rose his autumn blewThere in her heedless way.

II

If he had come to her when MayDanced down the wildwood,—every wayMarked with white flow’rs, as if her gownHad torn and fallen,—it might beShe had not met him with a frown,Nor used his love so bitterly.Or if he had but come when JuneSet stars and roses to one tune,And breathed in honeysuckle throatsClove-honey of her spicy mouth,His heart had found some loving notesIn hers to cheer his life’s long drouth.He came when Fall made mad the sky,And on the hills leapt like a cryOf battle; when his youth was dead;To her, the young, the wild, the white;Whose symbol was the rose, blood-red,And his the red leaf pinched with blight.He might have known, since youth was flown,And autumn claimed him for its own;And winter neared with snow, wild whirled,His love to her would seem absurd;To youth like hers; whose lip had curledYet heard him to his last sad word.Then laughed and—well, his heart deniedThe words he uttered then in pride;And he remembered how the grayWas his of autumn, ah! and hers,The rose-hued colors of the May,And May was all her universe.And then he left her: and, like blood,In her deep hair, the rose; whose budWas badge to her: while unto him,His middle-age, must still remainThe red-leaf, withering at the rim,As symbol of the all-in-vain.

III

“Such days as these,” she said, and bentAmong her marigolds, all dew,And dripping zinnia stems, “were meantFor spring not autumn; days we knewIn childhood; these endearing those;Much dearer since they have grown old:Days, once imperfect with the rose,Now perfect with the marigold.”“Such days as these,” he said, and gazedLong with unlifted eyes that heldSad autumn nights, “our hopes have raisedIn futures that are mist-enspelled.And so it is the fog blows inDays dearer for the death they paintWith hues of life and joy,—as sin,At death, puts off all earthly taint.”

IV

Like deeds of hearts that have not keptTheir riches, as a miser, whenSad souls have asked, with eyes that wept,Among the toiling tribes of men,The summer days gave Earth sweet almsIn silver of white lilies, whileEach night, with healing, outstretched palmsStood Christ-like with its starry smile.Will she remember him when dullMonths drag their duller hours by?With feet that crush the beautifulAnd leave the beautiful to die?Or never see? nor sit with lostDreams withered, ’mid hope’s empty husks,And wait, heart-counting-up the costOf love’s illusions ’mid life’s dusks?

V

He is as one who, treading salty scurfOf lonely sea-sands, hears the roaring rocksOf some lost isle of misty crags and lochs;Who sees no sea, but, through a world of surf,Gray ghosts of gulls and screaming petrel flocks:When, from the deep’s white ruin and wild wreck,Above the fog, beneath the ghostly gull,The iron ribs of some storm-shattered hullLoom, packed with pirate treasure to the deckA century rotten: feels his wealth replete,When long-baulked ocean claims it; and one dullWave flings, derisive at despondent feet,A skull, one doubloon rattling in the skull.

VI

And when full autumn sets the dahlia stemsOn fire with flowers, and the chill dew turnsThe maple trees, above geranium urns,To Emir tents, and strings with flawless gemsThe moon-flower and the wahoo-bush that burns;Calmly she sees the year grow sad and strange,And stands with one among the wilted walksOf the old garden of the gray, old grange,And feels no sorrow for the frost-maimed stalksSince—though the wailing autumn to her talks—Youth marks swift spring on life’s far mountain-range.Or she will lean to her old harpsichord;A youthful face beside her; and the glowOf hickory on the hearth will balk the blowOf blustering rain that beats the casement hard;And sing of summer and so thwart the snow.“Haply, some day, she yet may sit alone,”He thinks, “within the shadow-saddened house,When round the gables stormy echoes moan,And in the closet gnaws the lonesome mouse;And Memory come stealing down the stairFrom dusty attics where is piled the Past—Like so much rubbish that we hate to keep—And turn the knob; and, framed in frosty hair,A grave, forgotten face look in at last,And she will know, and bow her head and weep.”

WILD THORN AND LILY

I

That night, returning to the farm, we rodeBefore a storm. Uprolling from the west,Incessant with distending fire, loomedThe multitudes of tempest: towering hereA shadowy Shasta, there a cloudy Hood,Veined as with agonies, aurora-born,Of torrent gold; resplendent heaven to heaven,Far peak to peak, terrific spoke; the vastSierras of the storm, within which beatThe caverned thunder like a mighty stream:Vibrating on, with rushing wind and flame,Now th’ opening welkin shone, one livid sheetOf instantaneous gold, a giant’s forge,Wild-clanging; now, with streak on angled streakOf momentary light, a labyrinthWhere shouting Darkness stalked with Titan torch:Again the firmament hung hewn with fireWhence leapt the thunder; and it seemed that hostsOf Heaven rushed to war with blazing shieldsAnd swords of splendor. And before the stormWe galloped, while the frantic trees aboveWent wild with rain, through whose mad limbs and leavesSplashed black the first big drops. On, on we drove,And gained the gates, pillaring the avenueOf ancient beech, at whose far, flickering end,At last, beaconed the lights of home.And she?Was it the lightning that lent lividnessAnd terror to her countenance? or fearOf her own heart? revulsion? memory?Did deep regret, that, now the thing was done,That she was mine, a yearning to be free,Away from me, assail her? or, the thought,The knowledge, that she did not love the manWhom she had wedded? knowing better nowThat all her heart was Julien’s from the first,

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