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

strokes from where our boat was beached.

      Look up. You scarce can see the sky,

      Through trees that lean, dark, dense and high;

      That, coiled with grape and trailing vine,

      Build vast a roof of shade and shine;

      A house of leaves, where shadows walk,

      And whispering winds and waters talk.

      There is no path. The saplings choke

      The trunks they spring from. There an oak,

      Floods from the Alleghanies bore,

      Lies rotting; and that sycamore,

      Which lays its bulk from shore to shore,—

      Uprooted by the rain,—perchance

      May be the bridge to some romance:

      Its heart of punk, a spongy white,

      Glows, ghostly foxfire, in the night.

      Now opening through a willow fringe

      The waters creep, one tawny tinge

      Of sunset; and on either marge

      The cottonwoods make walls of shade,

      With breezy balsam pungent: large,

      The gradual hills loom; darkly fade

      The waters wherein herons wade,

      Or wing, like Faëry birds, from grass

      That mats the shore by which we pass.

She speaks:

      On we pass; we rippling pass,

      On sunset waters still as glass.

      A vesper-sparrow flies above,

      Soft twittering, to its woodland love.

      A tufted-titmouse calls afar;

      And from the west, like some swift star,

      A glittering jay flies screaming. Slim

      The sand-snipes and kingfishers skim

      Before us; and some twilight thrush—

      Who may discover where such sing?—

      The silence rinses with a gush

      Of limpid music bubbling.

He speaks:

      On we pass.—Now let us oar

      To yonder strip of ragged shore,

      Where, from a rock with lichens hoar,

      A ferny spring falls, babbling frore

      Through woodland mosses. Gliding by

      The sulphur-colored firefly

      Lights its pale lamp where mallows gloom,

      And wild-bean and wild-mustard bloom.—

      Some hunter there within the woods

      Last fall encamped, those ashes say

      And campfire boughs.—The solitudes

      Grow dreamy with the death of day.

      VI

She sings:

      Over the fields of millet

      A young bird tries its wings;

      And wild as a woodland rillet,

      Its first mad music rings rings—

      Soul of my soul, where the meadows roll

      What is the song it sings?

      “Love, and a glad good-morrow,

      Heart where the rapture is!

      Good-morrow, good-morrow!

      Adieu to sorrow!

      Here is the road to bliss:

      Where all day long you may hearken my song,

      And kiss, kiss, kiss;”

      Over the fields of clover,

      Where the wild bee drones and sways,

      The wind, like a shepherd lover,

      Flutes on the fragrant ways—

      Heart of my heart, where the blossoms part,

      What is the air he plays?

      “Love, and a song to follow,

      Soul with the face a-gleam!

      Come follow, come follow,

      O’er hill and through hollow,

      To the land o’ the bloom and beam:

      Where, under the flowers, you may listen for hours,

      And dream, dream, dream!”

      VII

He speaks, letting the boat drift:

      Here the shores are irised; grasses

      Clump the water gray, that glasses

      Broken wood and deepened distance.

      Far the musical persistence

      Of a field-lark lingers low

      In the west’s rich tulip-glow.

      White before us flames one pointed

      Star; and Day hath Night anointed

      King; from out her azure ewer

      Pouring starry fire, truer

      Than pure gold. Star-crowned he stands

      With the starlight in his hands.

      Will the moon bleach through the ragged

      Tree-tops ere we reach yon jagged

      Rock that rises gradually,

      Pharos of our homeward valley?—

      All the west is smouldering red;

      Embers are the stars o’erhead.

      At my soul some Protean elf is:

      You ’re Simætha; I am Delphis,

      You are Sappho and your Phaon,

      I.—We love.—There lies our way, on,—

      Let us say,—Æolian seas,

      To the violet Lesbian leas.

      On we drift. I love you. Nearer

      Looms our Island. Rosier, clearer,

      The Leucadian cliff we follow,

      Where the temple of Apollo

      Shines—a pale and pillared fire....

      Strike, oh, strike the Lydian lyre!—

      Out of Hellas blows the breeze

      Singing to the Sapphic seas.

      VIII

Landing, he sings:

      Night, night, ’t is night. The moon drifts low above us,

      And all its gold is tangled in the stream:

      Love, love, my love, and all the stars, that love us,

      The stars smile down and every star ’s a dream.

      In odorous purple, where the falling warble

      Of water cascades and the plunged foam glows,

      A columned ruin lifts its sculptured marble

      Friezed with the chiselled rebeck and the rose.

She sings:

      Sleep, sleep, sweet sleep sleeps at the drifting tiller,

      And in our sail the Spirit of the Rain—

      Love, love, my love, ah, bid thy heart