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

hint we once were flowers:

      Memory alone has perished

      In this garnished world that’s ours.

      Music,—that all things expresses,

      All for which we’ve sought and sinned,—

      Haply in our treey tresses

      Once was guesses of the wind.

      But I dream!—The dusk, dark braiding

      Locks that lack both moon and star,

      Deepens; and, the darkness aiding,

      Earth seems fading, faint and far.

      And within me doubt keeps saying—

      “What is wrong, and what is right?

      Hear the cursing! hear the praying!

      All are straying on in night.”

      VII

He turns from the window, takes up a book, and reads:

      The soul, like Earth, hath silences

      Which speak not, yet are heard:

      The voices mute of memories

      Are louder than a word.

      Theirs is a speech which is not speech;

      A language that is bound

      To soul-vibrations, vague, that reach

      Deeper than any sound.

      No words are theirs. They speak through things,

      A visible utterance

      Of thoughts—like those some sunset brings,

      Or withered rose, perchance.

      The heavens that once, in purple and flame,

      Spake to two hearts as one,

      In after years may speak the same

      To one sad heart alone.

      Through it the vanished face and eyes

      Of her, the sweet and fair,

      Of her the lost, again shall rise

      To comfort his despair.

      And so the love that led him long

      From golden scene to scene,

      Within the sunset is a tongue

      That speaks of what has been.—

      How loud it speaks of that dead day,

      The rose whose bloom is fled!

      Of her who died; who, clasped in clay,

      Lies numbered with the dead.

      The dead are dead; with them ’tis well

      Within their narrow room;—

      No memories haunt their hearts who dwell

      Within the grave and tomb.

      But what of those—the dead who live!

      The living dead, whose lot

      Is still to love—ah, God forgive!—

      To live and love, forgot!

      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 beat

      The 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 charm

      Holds all things—even the gnawing mouse

      Has ceased its faint alarm.

      And in the silence, stolen o’er

      Familiar 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 throat

      One wail of winds: ancestral dusts,—

      Which yonder Indian war-gear coat

      With gray, whose quiver rusts,—

      Are shaken down.—Or, can it be,

      That he who wore it in the dance,

      Or battle, now fills shadowy

      Its wampumed skins? and shakes his lance

      And spectral plume at me?—

      Mere fancy!—Yet those curtains toss

      Mysteriously as if some dark

      Hand moved them.—And I would not cross

      The shadow there, that hearthstone’s spark,

      A glow-worm sunk in moss.

      Outside ’t were better!—Yes, I yearn

      To walk the waste where sway and dip

      Deep, dark December boughs—where burn

      Some late last leaves, that drip and drip

      No matter where you turn.

      Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod,

      Fills oozy footprints—but the blind

      Night 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 seems

      Since summer! summer, when with her,

      When on her porch, in rainy gleams

      We watched the flickering lightning stir

      In 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, again

      Storm lit the instant earth—and how

      The forest rang with roaring rain!—

      We could not read—where is it now?—

      That tale of Charlemagne:

      That old romance! that tale, which we

      Were reading; till we heard the plunge

      Of 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-trance

      With lilied light and air.

      Where every flower was a thought;

      And every bird, a melody;

      And every fragrance, zephyr brought,

      Was but