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

forget. No one may say

      That such things can not be true:—

      Here a flower dies to-day,

      There, to-morrow, blooms anew....

      Death is silent.—Tell me, pray,

      Why men doubt what God can do?

      XII

He, with conviction:

      As to that, nothing to tell!

      You being all my belief,

      Doubt can not enter or dwell

      Here where your image is chief;

      Here where your name is a spell,

      Potent in joy and in grief.

      Is it the glamour of spring

      Working in us so we seem

      Aye to have loved? that we cling

      Even to some fancy or dream,

      Rainbowing everything,

      Here in our souls, with its gleam?

      See! how the synod is met

      There of the planets to preach us:—

      Freed from the earth’s oubliette,

      See how the blossoms beseech us!—

      Were it not well to forget

      Winter and death as they teach us?

      Dew and a bud and a star,

      All,—like a beautiful thought,

      Over man’s wisdom how far!—

      God for some purpose hath wrought.—

      Could we but know why they are,

      And that they end not in naught!

      Stars and the moon; and they roll

      Over our way that is white.—

      Here shall we end the long stroll?

      Here shall I kiss you good night?

      Or, for a while, soul to soul,

      Linger and dream of delight?

      XIII

They reënter the garden. She speaks somewhat pensively:

      Myths tell of walls and cities, lyred of love,

      That rose to music.—Were that power my own,

      Had I that harp, that magic barbiton,

      What had I builded for our lives thereof?—

      In docile shadows under bluebell skies,

      A home upon the poppied edge of eve,

      Beneath pale peaks the splendors never leave,

      ’Mid lemon orchards whence the egret flies.

      Where, pitiless, the ruined hand of death

      Should never reach. No bud, no flower fade:

      Where all were perfect, pure and unafraid:

      And life serener than an angel’s breath.

      The days should move to music: song should tame

      The nights, attentive with their listening stars:

      And morn outrival eve in opal bars,

      Each preaching beauty with rose-tongues of flame.

      O home! O life! desired and to be!

      How shall we reach you?—Far the way and dim.—

      Give me your hand, sweet! let us follow him,

      Love with the madness and the melody.

      XIV

He, observing the various dowers around them:

      Violets and anemones

      The surrendered Hours

      Pour, as handsels, round the knees

      Of the Spring, who to the breeze

      Flings her myriad flowers.

      Like to coins, the sumptuous day

      Strews with blossoms golden

      Every furlong of his way,—

      Like a Sultan gone to pray

      At a Kaaba olden.

      Warlock Night, with spark on spark,

      Clad in dim attire,

      Dots with stars the haloed dark,—

      As a priest around the Ark

      Lights his lamps of fire.

      These are but the cosmic strings

      Of the harp of Beauty,

      Of that instrument which sings,

      In our souls, of love, that brings

      Peace and faith and duty.

      XV

She, seriously:

      Duty?—Comfort of the sinner

      And the saint!—When grief and trial

      Weigh us, and within our inner

      Selves,—responsive to love’s viol,—

      Hope’s soft voice grows thin and thinner.

      It is kin to self-denial.

      Self-denial! Through whose feeling

      We are gainer though we ’re loser;

      All the finer force revealing

      Of our natures. No accuser

      Is the conscience then, but healing

      Of the wound of which we ’re chooser.

      Who the loser, who the winner,

      If the ardor fail as preacher?—

      None who loved was yet beginner,

      Though another’s love-beseecher:

      Love’s revealment ’s of the inner

      Life and God Himself is teacher.

      Heine said “no flower knoweth

      Of the fragrance it revealeth;

      Song, its heart that overfloweth,

      Never nightingale’s heart feeleth”—

      Such is love the spirit groweth,

      Love unconscious if it healeth.

      XVI

He, looking smilingly into her eyes, after a pause, lightly:

      An elf there is who stables the hot

      Red wasp that sucks on the apricot;

      An elf, who rowels his spiteful bay,

      Like a mote on a ray, away, away;

      An elf, who saddles the hornet lean

      And dins i’ the ear o’ the swinging bean;

      Who straddles, with cap cocked, all awry,

      The bottle-green back o’ the dragon-fly.

      And this is the elf who sips and sips

      From clover-horns whence the perfume drips;

      And, drunk with dew, in the glimmering gloam

      Awaits the wild-bee’s coming home;

      In ambush lies where none may see,

      And robs the caravan bumblebee:

      Gold bags of honey the bees must pay

      To the bandit elf of the fairy-way.

      Another