Kentucky Poems. Cawein Madison Julius

anguish-fevered eyeballs seek the moon

      To cool their pulses wild.

      Thou who dost bend to kiss Joy's sister cheek,

      Turning its rose to alabaster; yea,

      Thou who art terrible and mad and meek,

      Why in my heart art thou enshrined to-day?

      O Sorrow say, O say!

II

      Now Spring is here and all the world is white,

      I will go forth, and where the forest robes

      Itself in green, and every hill and height

      Crowns its fair head with blossoms, – spirit globes

      Of hyacinth and crocus dashed with dew, —

      I will forget my grief,

      And thee, O Sorrow, gazing on the blue,

      Beneath a last year's leaf,

      Of some brief violet the south wind woos,

      Or bluet, whence the west wind raked the snow;

      The baby eyes of love, the darling hues

      Of happiness, that thou canst never know,

      O child of pain and woe.

III

      On some hoar upland, sweet with clustered thorns,

      Hard by a river's windy white of waves,

      I shall sit down with Spring, – whose eyes are morns

      Of light; whose cheeks the rose of health enslaves, —

      And so forget thee braiding in her hair

      The snowdrop, tipped with green,

      The cool-eyed primrose and the trillium fair,

      And moony celandine.

      Contented so to lie within her arms,

      Forgetting all the sear and sad and wan,

      Remembering love alone, who o'er earth's storms,

      High on the mountains of perpetual dawn,

      Leads the glad hours on.

IV

      Or in the peace that follows storm, when Even,

      Within the west, stands dreaming lone and far,

      Clad on with green and silver, and the Heaven

      Is brightly brooched with one gold-glittering star.

      I will lie down beside some mountain lake,

      'Round which the tall pines sigh,

      And breathing musk of rain from boughs that shake

      Storm balsam from on high,

      Make friends of Dream and Contemplation high

      And Music, listening to the mocking-bird, —

      Who through the hush sends its melodious cry, —

      And so forget a while that other word,

      That all loved things must die.

      NIGHT

      Out of the East, as from an unknown shore,

      Thou comest with thy children in thine arms, —

      Slumber and Dream, – whom mortals all adore,

      Their flowing raiment sculptured to their charms:

      Soft on thy breast thy lovely children rest,

      Laid like twin roses in one balmy nest.

      Silent thou comest, swiftly too and slow.

      There is no other presence like to thine,

      When thou approachest with thy babes divine,

      Thy shadowy face above them bending low,

      Blowing the ringlets from their brows of snow.

      Oft have I taken Sleep from thy dark arms,

      And fondled her fair head, with poppies wreathed,

      Within my bosom's depths, until its storms

      With her were hushed and I but faintly breathed.

      And then her sister, Dream, with frolic art

      Arose from rest, and on my sleeping heart

      Blew bubbles of dreams where elfin worlds were lost;

      Worlds where my stranger soul sang songs to me,

      And talked with spirits by a rainbowed sea,

      Or smiled, an unfamiliar shape of frost,

      Floating on gales of breathless melody.

      Day comes to us in garish glory garbed;

      But thou, thou bringest to the tired heart

      Rest and deep silence, in which are absorbed

      All the vain tumults of the mind and mart.

      Whether thou comest with hands full of stars,

      Or clothed in storm and clouds, the lightning bars,

      Rolling the thunder like some mighty dress,

      God moves with thee; we seem to hear His feet,

      Wind-like, along the floors of Heaven beat;

      To see His face, revealed in awfulness,

      Through thee, O Night, to ban us or to bless.

      A FALLEN BEECH

      Nevermore at doorways that are barken

      Shall the madcap wind knock and the moonlight;

      Nor the circle which thou once didst darken,

      Shine with footsteps of the neighbouring moonlight,

      Visitors for whom thou oft didst hearken.

      Nevermore, gallooned with cloudy laces,

      Shall the morning, like a fair freebooter,

      Make thy leaves his richest treasure-places;

      Nor the sunset, like a royal suitor,

      Clothe thy limbs with his imperial graces.

      And no more, between the savage wonder

      Of the sunset and the moon's up-coming,

      Shall the storm, with boisterous hoof-beats, under

      Thy dark roof dance, Faun-like, to the humming

      Of the Pan-pipes of the rain and thunder.

      Oft the Satyr-spirit, beauty-drunken,

      Of the Spring called; and the music measure

      Of thy sap made answer; and thy sunken

      Veins grew vehement with youth, whose pressure

      Swelled thy gnarly muscles, winter-shrunken.

      And the germs, deep down in darkness rooted,

      Bubbled green from all thy million oilets,

      Where the spirits, rain-and-sunbeam-suited,

      Of the April made their whispering toilets,

      Or within thy stately shadow footed.

      Oft the hours of blonde Summer tinkled

      At the windows of thy twigs, and found thee

      Bird-blithe; or, with shapely bodies, twinkled

      Lissom feet of naked flowers around thee,

      Where thy mats of moss lay sunbeam-sprinkled.

      And the Autumn with his gypsy-coated

      Troop of days beneath thy branches rested,

      Swarthy-faced and dark of eye; and throated

      Songs