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

true!—Perhaps it would be best

      To be that lone star in the west;

      Above the earth, within the skies,

      Yet shining here in your blue eyes.

      Or, haply, better here to blow

      A flower beneath your window low;

      That, brief of life and frail and fair,

      Finds yet a heaven in your hair.

      Or well, perhaps, to be the breeze

      That sighs its soul out to the trees;

      A voice, a breath of rain or drouth,

      That has its wild will with your mouth.

      These things I long to be. I long

      To be the burthen of some song

      You love to sing; a melody,

      Sure of sweet immortality.

      XV

At the gate. She speaks:

      Sunday shall we ride together?

      Not the root-rough, rambling way

      Through the wood we went that day,

      In last summer’s sultry weather.

      Past the Methodist camp-meeting,

      Where religion helped the hymn

      Gather volume; and a slim

      Minister, with textful greeting,

      Welcomed us and still expounded.—

      From the service on the hill

      We had passed three hills and still

      Loud, though far, the singing sounded.

      Nor that road through weed and berry

      Drowsy days led me and you

      To the old-time barbecue,

      Where the country-side made merry.

      Dusty vehicles together;

      Darkies with the horses near

      Tied to trees; the atmosphere

      Redolent of bark and leather,

      And of burgoo and of beef; there

      Roasting whole within the trench;

      Near which spread the long pine bench

      Under shading limb and leaf there.

      As we went the homeward journey

      You exclaimed, “They intermix

      Pleasure there and politics,

      Love and war: our modern tourney.”

      And the fiddles!—through the thickets,

      How they thumped the old quadrille!

      Scraping, droning on the hill,

      It was like a swarm of crickets....

      Neither road! The shady quiet

      Of that path by beech and birch,

      Winding to the ruined church

      Near the stream that sparkles by it.

      Where the silent Sundays listen

      For the preacher—Love—we bring

      In our hearts to preach and sing

      Week-day shade to Sabbath glisten.

      XVI

He, at parting:

      Yes, to-morrow. Early morn.—

      When the House of Day uncloses

      Portals that the stars adorn,—

      Whence Light’s golden presence throws his

      Flaming lilies, burning roses,

      At the wide wood’s world of wall,

      Spears of sparkle at each fall:

      Then together we will ride

      To the wood’s cathedral places;

      Where, like prayers, the wildflowers hide,

      Sabbath in their fairy faces;

      Where, in truest, untaught phrases,

      Worship in each rhythmic word,

      God is praised by many a bird.

      Look above you.—Pearly white,

      Star on star now crystallizes

      Out of darkness: Afric night

      Hangs them round her like devices

      Of strange jewels. Vapor rises,

      Glimmering, from each wood and dell.—

      Till to-morrow, then, farewell.

      XVII

      She tarries at the gate a moment, watching him disappear down the lane. He sings, and the sound of his singing grows fainter and fainter and at last dies away in the distance:

      Say, my heart, O my heart,

      These be the eves for speaking!

      There is no wight will work us spite

      Beneath the sunset’s streaking.

      Yes, my sweet, O my sweet,

      Now is the time for telling!

      To walk together in starry weather

      Down lanes with elder smelling.

      O my heart, yes, my heart,

      Now is the time for saying!

      When lost in dreams each wildflower seems

      And every blossom praying.

      Lean, my sweet, listen, sweet,—

      No sweeter time than this is,—

      So says the rose, the moth that knows,—

      To take sweet toll in kisses.

      PART III

      LATE SUMMER

      Heat lightning flickers in one cloud,

      As in a flower a firefly;

      Some rain-drops, that the rose-bush bowed,

      Jar through the leaves and dimly lie:

      Among the trees, now low, now loud,

      The whispering breezes sigh.

      The place is lone; the night is hushed;

      Upon the path a rose lies crushed.

      I

Musing, he strolls among the quiet lanes by farm and field:

      Now rests the season in forgetfulness,

      Careless in beauty of maturity;

      The ripened roses round brown temples, she

      Fulfils 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 hoary high

      Their tasseled heads, the Lear-like corn-stocks die,

      And, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie.—

      Deeper to tenderness,

      Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along

      The lonesome