Poems by Madison Julius Cawein Part 8

II

Where Sleep her bubble-jewels spilled Of dreams; and Silence twilight-filled Her emerald buckets, star-instilled, With liquid whispers of lost springs, And mossy tread of woodland things, And drip of dew that greenly clings.

III

Here by those servitors of Sound, Warders of that enchanted ground, My soul and sense were seized and bound, And, in a dungeon deep of trees Entranced, were laid at lazy ease, The charge of woodland mysteries.

IV

The minions of Prince Drowsihead, The wood-perfumes, with sleepy tread, Tiptoed around my ferny bed: And far away I heard report Of one who dimly rode to Court, The Faery Princess, Eve-Amort.

V

Her herald winds sang as they pa.s.sed; And there her beauty stood at last, With wild gold locks, a band held fast, Above blue eyes, as clear as spar; While from a curved and azure jar She poured the white moon and a star.

SUNSET AND STORM

Deep with divine tautology, The sunset's mighty mystery Again has traced the scroll-like west With hieroglyphs of burning gold: Forever new, forever old, Its miracle is manifest.

Time lays the scroll away. And now Above the hills a giant brow Of cloud Night lifts; and from his arm, Barbaric black, upon the world, With thunder, wind and fire, is hurled His awful argument of storm.

What part, O man, is yours in such?

Whose awe and wonder are in touch With Nature,--speaking rapture to Your soul,--yet leaving in your reach No human word of thought or speech Commensurate with the thing you view.

QUIET LANES

From the lyrical eclogue "One Day and Another"

Now rests the season in forgetfulness, Careless in beauty of maturity; The ripened roses round brown temples, she Fulfills completion in a dreamy guess.

Now Time grants night the more and day the less: The gray decides; and brown Dim golds and drabs in dulling green express Themselves and redden as the year goes down.

Sadder the fields where, thrusting h.o.a.ry high Their ta.s.seled heads, the Lear-like corn-stocks die, And, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie.-- Deepening with tenderness, Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along The lonesome west; sadder the song Of the wild redbird in the leaf.a.ge yellow.-- Deeper and dreamier, aye!

Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky Above lone orchards where the cider press Drips and the russets mellow.

Nature grows liberal: from the beechen leaves The beech-nuts' burrs their little purses thrust, Plump with the copper of the nuts that rust; Above the gra.s.s the spendthrift spider weaves A web of silver for which dawn designs Thrice twenty rows of pearls: beneath the oak, That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines,-- The polished acorns, from their saucers broke, Strew oval agates.--On sonorous pines The far wind organs; but the forest near Is silent; and the blue-white smoke Of burning brush, beyond that field of hay, Hangs like a pillar in the atmosphere: But now it shakes--it breaks, and all the vines And tree tops tremble; see! the wind is here!

Billowing and boisterous; and the smiling day Rejoices in its clamor. Earth and sky Resound with glory of its majesty, Impetuous splendor of its rus.h.i.+ng by.-- But on those heights the woodland dark is still, Expectant of its coming.... Far away Each anxious tree upon each waiting hill Tingles antic.i.p.ation, as in gray Surmise of rapture. Now the first gusts play, Like laughter low, about their rippling spines; And now the wildwood, one exultant sway, Shouts--and the light at each tumultuous pause, The light that glooms and s.h.i.+nes, Seems hands in wild applause.

How glows that garden!--Though the white mists keep The vagabonding flowers reminded of Decay that comes to slay in open love, When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep; Unheeding still their cardinal colors leap Gay in the crescent of the blade of death,-- s.p.a.ced innocents whom he prepares to reap,-- Staying his scythe a breath To mark their beauty ere, with one last sweep, He lays them dead and turns away to weep.-- Let me admire,-- Before the sickle of the coming cold Shall mow them down,--their beauties manifold: How like to spurts of fire That scarlet salvia lifts its blooms, which heap With flame the sunlight. And, as sparkles creep Through charring vellum, up that window's screen The cypress dots with crimson all its green, The haunt of many bees.

Cascading dark old porch-built lattices, The nightshade bleeds with berries; drops of blood Hanging in cl.u.s.ters 'mid the blue monk's-hood.

There is a garden old, Where bright-hued clumps of zinnias unfold Their formal flowers; where the marigold Lifts a pinched shred of orange sunset caught And elfed in petals; the nasturtium, Deep, pungent-leaved and acrid of perfume, Hangs up a goblin bonnet, pixy-brought From Gnomeland. There, predominant red, And arrogant, the dahlia lifts its head, Beside the balsam's rose-stained horns of honey, Lost in the murmuring, sunny Dry wildness of the weedy flower bed; Where crickets and the weed-bugs, noon and night, Shrill dirges for the flowers that soon shall die, And flowers already dead.-- I seem to hear the pa.s.sing Summer sigh: A voice, that seems to weep,-- "Too soon, too soon the Beautiful pa.s.ses by!

And soon, among these bowers Will dripping Autumn mourn with all her flowers"--

If I, perchance, might peep Beneath those leaves of podded hollyhocks, That the bland wind with odorous murmurs rocks, I might behold her,--white And weary,--Summer, 'mid her flowers asleep, Her drowsy flowers asleep, The withered poppies knotted in her locks.

ONE WHO LOVED NATURE

I

He was not learned in any art; But Nature led him by the hand; And spoke her language to his heart So he could hear and understand: He loved her simply as a child; And in his love forgot the heat Of conflict, and sat reconciled In patience of defeat.

II

Before me now I see him rise-- A face, that seventy years had snowed With winter, where the kind blue eyes Like hospitable fires glowed: A small gray man whose heart was large, And big with knowledge learned of need; A heart, the hard world made its targe, That never ceased to bleed.

III

He knew all Nature. Yea, he knew What virtue lay within each flower, What tonic in the dawn and dew, And in each root what magic power: What in the wild witch-hazel tree Reversed its time of blossoming, And clothed its branches goldenly In fall instead of spring.

IV

He knew what made the firefly glow And pulse with crystal gold and flame; And whence the bloodroot got its snow, And how the bramble's perfume came: He understood the water's word And gra.s.shopper's and cricket's chirr; And of the music of each bird He was interpreter.

V

He kept no calendar of days, But knew the seasons by the flowers; And he could tell you by the rays Of sun or stars the very hours.

He probed the inner mysteries Of light, and knew the chemic change That colors flowers, and what is Their fragrance wild and strange.

VI

If some old oak had power of speech, It could not speak more wildwood lore, Nor in experience further reach, Than he who was a tree at core.

Nature was all his heritage, And seemed to fill his every need; Her features were his book, whose page He never tired to read.

VII

He read her secrets that no man Has ever read and never will, And put to scorn the charlatan Who botanizes of her still.

He kept his knowledge sweet and clean, And questioned not of why and what; And never drew a line between What's known and what is not.

VIII

He was most gentle, good, and wise; A simpler heart earth never saw: His soul looked softly from his eyes, And in his speech were love and awe.

Yet Nature in the end denied The thing he had not asked for--fame!

Unknown, in poverty he died, And men forget his name.

GARDEN GOSSIP

Thin, chisel-fine a cricket chipped The crystal silence into sound; And where the branches dreamed and dripped A gra.s.shopper its dagger stripped And on the humming darkness ground.

A bat, against the gibbous moon, Danced, implike, with its lone delight; The glowworm scrawled a golden rune Upon the dark; and, emerald-strewn, The firefly hung with lamps the night.

The flowers said their beads in prayer, Dew-syllables of sighed perfume; Or talked of two, soft-standing there, One like a gladiole, straight and fair, And one like some rich poppy-bloom.