The Triumph of Music, and Other Lyrics. Madison Julius Cawein

With fingers of lightness set sobbing

       The chords of my harp in a song,

       Till I found that my heart was a-throbbing

       And sobbing to sing like a tongue,

       Was sobbing to mix with the song.

      VIII

      Then he cried, and his dark eyes keen glistened,

       "Lost! lost! for that perilous music!

       Oh God! for that tyrannous strain!

       To which in my dreams I have listened,

       Ah, wretch! I have listened with pain!"

       And he tost on the garment of satin

       His deep raven darkness of hair,

       And the song at my lips was ungathered,

       And I sate there to marvel and stare.

      IX

      Then I wrenched from my soul a wild glory

       Of music delirious with words,

       Of music that wailed a soul's story,

       And trembled with god-uttered words,

       Or fell like the battling of swords.

       And in with it mixed all the beauty

       Of farewells and ravenous sighs,

       The heart that was broken for booty,

       Tears, rapture to know that one dies,

       Hell, heaven and laughter and cries.

      X

      In music the heart-ache of passion,

       The terror of souls that are lost,

       Cold, dizzying anguish of dying,

       All torments that beauty could fashion,

       Hot manacles of love and their cost.

       The bliss and the fury of dashing

       A soul into riotous love,

       While the smiting of harp-chords and crashing

       Of song like the winds were enwove

       With the stars that fall sounding above.

      XI

      Ah! why did the poppy-crowned slumber

       Seal up the rare light of his eyes

       With its silver of vapory pinions,

       The creature that sung in each number,

       To nest in his tired-out eyes,

       Like a bird that is sick of the skies.

       Yet he murmured so sad and so thrilling,

       "Oh God! for a lifetime of song!

       Oh life! for a world of such song!

       For a heaven or hell and the killing,

       Mad angel or devil of song!

       Oh, the rapture engendered in throwing

       On bubbles of music and song

       A soul to the anguish of loving,

       Until like a flower, full blowing,

       It is lost in a whirlwind most strong,

       It dies in a thunder of song!"

      XII

      I had flung in my song the emotion

       Triumphant of heart and of soul,

       And I recked not the passionate ocean

       That rolled to abysses of dole,

       To infinite torture and dole.

      XIII

      So I sang and I harped till all weary

       I sunk on the red of that robe,

       Crouched down at his feet on the satin,

       While he slumbered with eyelashes teary

       Fringed dark o'er each eye-ball's dark globe.

       Then I wondered and said, "It is dreary

       To see him so still on this robe."

       And I sobbed and I sobbed, "Is he living,

       Or have I but slain with my song!"

       And it seemed that a demon was striving

       To strangle my heart with a thong,

       With terror and sorrow of wrong.

      XIV

      And I rent the wild harp in my madness,

       From his ashen brows furrowed the hair;

       Soft wafted dark curls from pale temples—

       They rustled with death—and the sadness

       Of his face so hopelessly fair!

       How I wailed to the stars of the heaven

       How they scoffed at and answered my grief

       In letters of flame, "Unforgiven!

       Thou deathless, whose voice is a thief,

       Forever and ever grief!"

      XV

      So I wept on the instrument broken,

       The instrument sweet of his death,

       The dagger that stabbed not to kill him,

       The dagger of song which had spoken,

       And ravished away his life's breath.

       So I wept, and my curls thick and golden

       Stormed entangled and showered 'mid his;

       My arms around him were enfolden,

       My lips clave to his with a kiss,

       With the life and the love of a kiss.

WHAT YOU WILL.

       Table of Contents

      I

      When the season was dry and the sun was hot

       And the hornet sucked gaunt on the apricot,

       And the ripe peach dropped to its seed a-rot,

       With a lean red wasp that stung and clung;

       When the hollyhocks, ranked in the garden-plot,

       More seed-pods had than blossoms, I wot,

       A weariness weighed on the tongue,

       That the drought of the season begot.

      II

      When the black grape bulged with the juice that burst

       Through its thick blue skin that was cracked with thirst,

       And the round gold pippins, the summer had nursed,

       In the yellowing leaves o' the orchards hung;

       When the reapers, their lips with whistling pursed,

       To their sun-tanned brows in the corn were immersed,

       A lightness came over the tongue,

       And one sung as much as one durst.

      III

      When the skies of December gray dripped and dripped,

       And icicles eaves of the big barn tipped,

       And loud hens flew over the snow or slipped,

       And the north wind hooted and bit and stung,

       And the ears of the milkmaid, Miriam, nipped,

       And the chappy cheeks of the farm boy whipped,

       A goddess unloosened