Madison Cawein - Myth and Romance
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Madison Cawein >> Myth and Romance
II
But who can sing the workmanship gigantic
That reared within its coruscating dome
The roaring fountain, hurling an Atlantic
Of streaming ice that flashed with flame and foam?
An opal spirit, various and many formed,--
In whose clear heart reverberant fire stormed,--
Seemed its inhabitant; and through pale halls,
And deep diaphanous walls,
And corridors of whiteness.
Auroral colors swarmed,
As rosy-flickering stains,
Or lambent green, or gold, or crimson, warmed
The pulsing crystal of the spirit's veins
With ever-changing brightness.
And through the Arctic night there went a voice,
As if the ancient Earth cried out, "Rejoice!
My heart is full of lightness!"
III
Here well might Thor, the god of war,
Harness the whirlwinds to his car,
While, mailed in storm, his iron arm
Heaves high his hammer's lava-form,
And red and black his beard streams back,
Like some fierce torrent scoriac,
Whose earthquake light glares through the night
Around some dark volcanic height;
And through the skies Valkyrian cries
Trumpet, as battleward he flies,
Death in his hair and havoc in his eyes.
IV
Still in my dreams I hear that fountain flowing;
Beyond all seeing and beyond all knowing;
Still in my dreams I see those wild walls glowing
With hues, Aurora-kissed;
And through huge halls fantastic phantoms going.
Vast shapes of snow and mist,--
Sonorous clarions of the tempest blowing,--
That trail dark banners by,
Cloudlike, underneath the sky
Of the caverned dome on high,
Carbuncle and amethyst.--
Still I hear the ululation
Of their stormy exultation,
Multitudinous, and blending
In hoarse echoes, far, unending;
And, through halls of fog and frost,
Howling back, like madness lost
In the moonless mansion of
Its own demon-haunted love.
V
Still in my dreams I hear the mermaid singing;
The mermaid music at its portal ringing;
The mermaid song, that hinged with gold its door,
And, whispering evermore,
Hushed the ponderous hurl and roar
And vast aeolian thunder
Of the chained tempests under
The frozen cataracts that were its floor.--
And, blinding beautiful, I still behold
The mermaid there, combing her locks of gold,
While, at her feet, green as the Northern Seas,
Gambol her flocks of seals and walruses;
While, like a drift, her dog--a Polar bear--
Lies by her, glowering through his shaggy hair.
VI
O wondrous house, built by supernal hands
In vague and ultimate lands!
Thy architects were behemoth wind and cloud,
That, laboring loud,
Mountained thy world foundations and uplifted
Thy skyey bastions drifted
Of piled eternities of ice and snow;
Where storms, like ploughmen, go,
Ploughing the deeps with awful hurricane;
Where, spouting icy rain,
The huge whale wallows; and through furious hail
Th' explorer's tattered sail
Drives like the wing of some terrific bird,
Where wreck and famine herd.--
Home of the red Auroras and the gods!
He who profanes thy perilous threshold,--where
The ancient centuries lair,
And, glacier-throned, thy monarch, Winter, nods,--
Let him beware!
Lest, coming on that hoary presence there,
Whose pitiless hand,
Above that hungry land,
An iceberg wields as sceptre, and whose crown
The North Star is, set in a band of frost,
He, too, shall feel the bitterness of that frown,
And, turned to stone, forevermore be lost.
_Dionysia_
The day is dead; and in the west
The slender crescent of the moon--
Diana's crystal-kindled crest--
Sinks hillward in a silvery swoon.
What is the murmur in the dell?
The stealthy whisper and the drip?--
A Dryad with her leaf-light trip?
Or Naiad o'er her fountain well?--
Who, with white fingers for her comb,
Sleeks her blue hair, and from its curls
Showers slim minnows and pale pearls,
And hollow music of the foam.
What is it in the vistaed ways
That leans and springs, and stoops and sways?--
The naked limbs of one who flees?
An Oread who hesitates
Before the Satyr form that waits,
Crouching to leap, that there she sees?
Or under boughs, reclining cool,
A Hamadryad, like a pool
Of moonlight, palely beautiful?
Or Limnad, with her lilied face,
More lovely than the misty lace
That haunts a star and gives it grace?
Or is it some Leimoniad,
In wildwood flowers dimly clad?
Oblong blossoms white as froth;
Or mottled like the tiger-moth;
Or brindled as the brows of death;
Wild of hue and wild of breath.
Here ethereal flame and milk
Blent with velvet and with silk;
Here an iridescent glow
Mixed with satin and with snow:
Pansy, poppy and the pale
Serpolet and galingale;
Mandrake and anemone,
Honey-reservoirs o' the bee;
Cistus and the cyclamen,--
Cheeked like blushing Hebe this,
And the other white as is
Bubbled milk of Venus when
Cupid's baby mouth is pressed,
Rosy, to her rosy breast.
And, besides, all flowers that mate
With aroma, and in hue
Stars and rainbows duplicate
Here on earth for me and you.
Yea! at last mine eyes can see!
'Tis no shadow of the tree
Swaying softly there, but she!--
Maenad, Bassarid, Bacchant,
What you will, who doth enchant
Night with sensuous nudity.
Lo! again I hear her pant
Breasting through the dewy glooms--
Through the glow-worm gleams and glowers
Of the starlight;--wood-perfumes
Swoon around her and frail showers
Of the leaflet-tilted rain.
Lo, like love, she comes again,
Through the pale, voluptuous dusk,
Sweet of limb with breasts of musk.
With her lips, like blossoms, breathing
Honeyed pungence of her kiss,
And her auburn tresses wreathing
Like umbrageous helichrys,
There she stands, like fire and snow,
In the moon's ambrosial glow,
Both her shapely loins low-looped
With the balmy blossoms, drooped,
Of the deep amaracus.
Spiritual yet sensual,
Lo, she ever greets me thus
In my vision; white and tall,
Her delicious body there,--
Raimented with amorous air,--
To my mind expresses all
The allurements of the world.
And once more I seem to feel
On my soul, like frenzy, hurled
All the passionate past.--I reel,
Greek again in ancient Greece,
In the Pyrrhic revelries;
In the mad and Maenad dance
Onward dragged with violence;
Pan and old Silenus and
Faunus and a Bacchant band
Round me. Wild my wine-stained hand
O'er tumultuous hair is lifted;
While the flushed and Phallic orgies
Whirl around me; and the marges
Of the wood are torn and rifted
With lascivious laugh and shout.
And barbarian there again,--
Shameless with the shameless rout,
Bacchus lusting in each vein,--
With her pagan lips on mine,
Like a god made drunk with wine,
On I reel; and, in the revels,
Her loose hair, the dance dishevels,
Blows, and 'thwart my vision swims
All the splendor of her limbs....
So it seems. Yet woods are lonely.
And when I again awake,
I shall find their faces only
Moonbeams in the boughs that shake;
And their revels, but the rush
Of night-winds through bough and brush.
Yet my dreaming--is it more
Than mere dreaming? Is some door
Opened in my soul? a curtain
Raised? to let me see for certain
I have lived that life before?
_The Last
Song_
She sleeps; he sings to her. The day was long,
And, tired out with too much happiness,
She fain would have him sing of old Provence;
Quaint songs, that spoke of love in such soft tones,
Her restless soul was straight besieged of dreams,
And her wild heart beleagured of deep peace,
And heart and soul surrendered unto sleep.--
Like perfect sculpture in the moon she lies,
Its pallor on her through heraldic panes
Of one tall casement's guled quarterings.--
Beside her couch, an antique table, weighed
With gold and crystal; here, a carven chair,
Whereon her raiment,--that suggests sweet curves
Of shapely beauty,--bearing her limbs' impress,
Is richly laid: and, near the chair, a glass,
An oval mirror framed in ebony:
And, dim and deep,--investing all the room
With ghostly life of woven women and men,
And strange fantastic gloom, where shadows live,--
Dark tapestry,--which in the gusts--that twinge
A grotesque cresset's slender star of light--
Seems moved of cautious hands, assassin-like,
That wait the hour.
She alone, deep-haired
As rosy dawn, and whiter than a rose,
Divinely breasted as the Queen of Love,
Lies robeless in the glimmer of the moon,
Like Danae within the golden shower.
Seated beside her aromatic rest,
In rapture musing on her loveliness,
Her knight and troubadour. A lute, aslope
The curious baldric of his tunic, glints
With pearl-reflections of the moon, that seem
The silent ghosts of long-dead melodies.
In purple and sable, slashed with solemn gold,
Like stately twilight o'er the snow-heaped hills,
He bends above her.--
Have his hands forgot
Their craft, that they pause, idle on the strings?
His lips, their art, that they cease, speechless there?--
His eyes are set.... What is it stills to stone
His hands, his lips? and mails him, head and heel,
In terrible marble, motionless and cold?--
Behind the arras, can it be he feels,
Black-browed and grim, with eyes of sombre fire,
Death towers above him with uplifted sword?
_Romaunt of
the Oak_
"I rode to death, for I fought for shame--
The Lady Maurine of noble name,
"The fair and faithless!--Though life be long
Is love the wiser?--Love made song
"Of all my life; and the soul that crept
Before, arose like a star and leapt:
"Still leaps with the love that it found untrue,
That it found unworthy.--Now run me through!
"Yea, run me through! for meet and well,
And a jest for laughter of fiends in hell,
"It is that I, who have done no wrong,
Should die by the hand of Hugh the Strong,
"Of Hugh her leman!--What else could be
When the devil was judge twixt thee and me?
"He splintered my lance, and my blade he broke--
Now finish me thou 'neath the trysting oak!" ...
The crest of his foeman,--a heart of white
In a bath of fire,--stooped i' the night;
Stooped and laughed as his sword he swung,
Then galloped away with a laugh on his tongue....
But who is she in the gray, wet dawn,
'Mid the autumn shades like a shadow wan?
Who kneels, one hand on her straining breast,
One hand on the dead man's bosom pressed?
Her face is dim as the dead's; as cold
As his tarnished harness of steel and gold.
O Lady Maurine! O Lady Maurine!
What boots it now that regret is keen?
That his hair you smooth, that you kiss his brow
What boots it now? what boots it now?...
She has haled him under the trysting oak,
The huge old oak that the creepers cloak.
She has stood him, gaunt in his battered arms,
In its haunted hollow.--"Be safe from storms,"
She laughed as his cloven casque she placed
On his brow, and his riven shield she braced.
Then sat and talked to the forest flowers
Through the lonely term of the day's pale hours.
And stared and whispered and smiled and wept,
While nearer and nearer the evening crept.
And, lo, when the moon, like a great gold bloom
Above the sorrowful trees did loom,
She rose up sobbing, "O moon, come see
My bridegroom here in the old oak-tree!
"I have talked to the flowers all day, all day,
For never a word had he to say.
"He would not listen, he would not hear,
Though I wailed my longing into his ear.
"O moon, steal in where he stands so grim,
And tell him I love him, and plead with him.
"Soften his face that is cold and stern
And brighten his eyes and make them burn,
"O moon, O moon, so my soul can see
That his heart still glows with love for me!" ...
When the moon was set, and the woods were dark,
The wild deer came and stood as stark
As phantoms with eyes of fire; or fled
Like a ghostly hunt of the herded dead.
And the hoot-owl called; and the were-wolf snarled;
And a voice, in the boughs of the oak-tree gnarled,--
Like the whining rush of the hags that ride
To the witches' sabboth,--crooned and cried.
And wrapped in his mantle of wind and cloud
The storm-fiend stalked through the forest loud.
When she heard the dead man rattle and groan
As the oak was bent and its leaves were blown,
And the lightning vanished and shimmered his mail,
Through the swirling sweep of the rain and hail,
She seemed to hear him, who seemed to call,--
"Come hither, Maurine, the wild leaves fall!
"The wild leaves rustle, the wild leaves flee;
Come hither, Maurine, to the hollow tree!
"To the trysting tree, to the tree once green;
Come hither, Maurine! come hither, Maurine!" ...
They found her closed in his armored arms--
Had he claimed his bride on that night of storms?
_Morgan le
Fay_
In dim samite was she bedight,
And on her hair a hoop of gold,
Like fox-fire in the tawn moonlight,
Was glimmering cold.
With soft gray eyes she gloomed and glowered;
With soft red lips she sang a song:
What knight might gaze upon her face,
Nor fare along?
For all her looks were full of spells,
And all her words of sorcery;
And in some way they seemed to say
"Oh, come with me!
"Oh, come with me! oh, come with me!
Oh, come with me, my love, Sir Kay!"--
How should he know the witch, I trow,
Morgan le Fay?
How should he know the wily witch,
With sweet white face and raven hair?
Who by her art bewitched his heart
And held him there.
For soul and sense had waxed amort
To wold and weald, to slade and stream;
And all he heard was her soft word
As one adream.
And all he saw was her bright eyes,
And her fair face that held him still;
And wild and wan she led him on
O'er vale and hill.
Until at last a castle lay
Beneath the moon, among the trees;
Its Gothic towers old and gray
With mysteries.
Tall in its hall an hundred knights
In armor stood with glaive in hand;
The following of some great King,
Lord of that land.
Sir Bors, Sir Balin, and Gawain,
All Arthur's knights, and many mo;
But these in battle had been slain
Long years ago.
But when Morgan with lifted hand
Moved down the hall, they louted low;
For she was Queen of Shadowland,
That woman of snow.
Then from Sir Kay she drew away,
And mocking at him by her side,--
"Behold, Sir Knights, the knave who slew
Your King," she cried.
Then like one man those shadows raised
Their swords, whereon the moon glanced gray;
And clashing all strode from the wall
Against Sir Kay.
And on his body, bent and bowed,
The hundred blades like one blade fell;
While over all rang long and loud
The mirth of Hell.
_The Dream
of Roderick_
Below, the tawny Tagus swept
Past royal gardens, breathing balm;
Upon his couch the monarch slept;
The world was still; the night was calm.
Gray, Gothic-gated, in the ray
Of moonrise, tower-and castle-crowned,
The city of Toledo lay
Beneath the terraced palace-ground.
Again, he dreamed, in kingly sport
He sought the tree-sequestered path,
And watched the ladies of his Court
Within the marble-basined bath.
Its porphyry stairs and fountained base
Shone, houried with voluptuous forms,
Where Andalusia vied in grace
With old Castile, in female charms.
And laughter, song, and water-splash
Rang round the place, with stone arcaded,
As here a breast or limb would flash
Where beauty swam or beauty waded.
And then, like Venus, from the wave
A maiden came, and stood below;
And by her side a woman slave
Bent down to dry her limbs of snow.
Then on the tesselated bank,
Robed on with fragrance and with fire,--
Like some exotic flower--she sank,
The type of all divine desire.
Then her dark curls, that sparkled wet,
She parted from her perfect brows,
And, lo, her eyes, like lamps of jet
Within an alabaster house.
And in his sleep the monarch sighed,
"Florinda!"--Dreaming still he moaned,
"Ah, would that I had died, had died!
I have atoned! I have atoned!" ...
And then the vision changed: O'erhead
Tempest and darkness were unrolled,
Full of wild voices of the dead,
And lamentations manifold.
And wandering shapes of gaunt despair
Swept by, with faces pale as pain,
Whose eyes wept blood and seemed to glare
Fierce curses on him through the rain.
And then, it seemed, 'gainst blazing skies
A necromantic tower sate,
Crag-like on crags, of giant size;
Of adamant its walls and gate.
And from the storm a hand of might
Red-rolled in thunder, reached among
The gate's huge bolts--that burst; and night
Clanged ruin as its hinges swung.
Then far away a murmur trailed,--
As of sad seas on cavern'd shores,--
That grew into a voice that wailed,
"They come! they come! the Moors! the Moors!"
And with deep boom of atabals
And crash of cymbals and wild peal
Of battle-bugles, from its walls
An army rushed in glimmering steel.
And where it trod he saw the torch
Of conflagration stalk the skies,
And in the vanward of its march
The monster form of Havoc rise.
And Paynim war-cries rent the storm,
Athwart whose firmament of flame,
Destruction reared an earthquake form
On wreck and death without a name ...
And then again the vision changed:
Where flows the Guadalete, see,
The warriors of the Cross are ranged
Against the Crescent's chivalry.
With roar of trumpets and of drums
They meet; and in the battle's van
He fights; and, towering towards him, comes
Florinda's father, Julian;
And one-eyed Taric, great in war:
And where these couch their burning spears,
The Christian phalanx, near and far,
Goes down like corn before the shears.
The Moslem wins: the Christian flies:
"Allah il Allah," hill and plain
Reverberate: the rocking skies,
"Allah il Allah," shout again.
And then he dreamed the swing of swords
And hurl of arrows were no more;
But, louder than the howling hordes,
Strange silence fell on field and shore.
And through the night, it seemed, he fled,
Upon a white steed like a star,
Across a field of endless dead,
Beneath a blood-red scimitar.
Of sunset: And he heard a moan,
Beneath, around, on every hand--
"Accursed! Yea, what hast thou done
To bring this curse upon thy land?"
And then an awful sense of wings:
And, lo! the answer--"'Twas his lust
That was his crime. Behold! E'en kings
Must reckon with Me. All are dust."
_Zyps of
Zirl_
The Alps of the Tyrol are dark with pines,
Where, foaming under the mountain spines,
The Inn's long water sounds and shines.
Beyond, are peaks where the morning weaves
An icy rose; and the evening leaves
The glittering gold of a thousand sheaves.
Deep vines and torrents and glimmering haze,
And sheep-bells tinkling on mountain ways,
And fluting shepherds make sweet the days.
The rolling mist, like a wandering fleece,
The great round moon in a mountain crease,
And a song of love make the nights all peace.
Beneath the blue Tyrolean skies
On the banks of the Inn, that foams and flies,
The storied city of Innsbruck lies.
With its mediaeval streets, that crook,
And its gabled houses, it has the look
Of a belfried town in a fairy-book.
So wild the Tyrol that oft, 'tis said,
When the storm is out and the town in bed,
The howling of wolves sweeps overhead.
And oft the burgher, sitting here
In his walled rose-garden, hears the clear
Shrill scream of the eagle circling near.
And this is the tale that the burghers tell:--
The Abbot of Wiltau stood at his cell
Where the Solstein lifts its pinnacle.
A mighty summit of bluffs and crags
That frowns on the Inn; where the forest stags
Have worn a path to the water-flags.
The Abbot of Wiltau stood below;
And he was aware of a plume and bow
On the precipice there in the morning's glow.
A chamois, he saw, from span to span
Had leapt; and after it leapt a man;
And he knew 't was the Kaiser Maxmilian.
But, see! though rash as the chamois he,
His foot less sure. And verily
If the King should miss ... "Jesu, Marie!
"The King hath missed!"--And, look, he falls!
Rolls headlong out to the headlong walls.
What saint shall save him on whom he calls?
What saint shall save him, who struggles there
On the narrow ledge by the eagle's lair,
With hooked hands clinging 'twixt earth and air?
The Abbot, he crosses himself in dread--
"Let prayers go up for the nearly dead,
And the passing-bell be tolled," he said.
"For the House of Hapsburg totters; see,
How raveled the thread of its destiny,
Sheer hung between cloud and rock!" quoth he.
But hark! where the steeps of the peak reply,
Is it an eagle's echoing cry?
And the flitting shadow, its plumes on high?
No voice of the eagle is that which rings!
And the shadow, a wiry man who swings
Down, down where the desperate Kaiser clings.
The _crampons_ bound to his feet, he leaps
Like a chamois now; and again he creeps
Or twists, like a snake, o'er the fearful deeps.
"By his cross-bow, baldrick, and cap's black curl,"
Quoth the Abbot below, "I know the churl!
'T is the hunted outlaw Zyps of Zirl.
"Upon whose head, or dead or alive,
The Kaiser hath posted a price.--Saints shrive
The King!" quoth Wiltau. "Who may contrive
"To save him now that his foe is there?"--
But, listen! again through the breathless air
What words are those that the echoes bear?
"Courage, my King!--To the rescue, ho!"
The wild voice rings like a twanging bow,
And the staring Abbot stands mute below.
And, lo! the hand of the outlaw grasps
The arm of the King--and death unclasps
Its fleshless fingers from him who gasps.
And how he guides! where the clean cliffs wedge
Them flat to their faces; by chasm and ledge
He helps the King from the merciless edge.
Then up and up, past bluffs that shun
The rashest chamois; where eagles sun
Fierce wings and brood; where the mists are spun.
And safe at last stand Kaiser and churl
On the mountain path where the mosses curl--
And this the revenge of Zyps of Zirl.
_The
Glowworm_
How long had I sat there and had not beheld
The gleam of the glow-worm till something compelled!...
The heaven was starless, the forest was deep,
And the vistas of darkness stretched silent in sleep.
And late 'mid the trees had I lingered until
No thing was awake but the lone whippoorwill.
And haunted of thoughts for an hour I sat
On a lichen-gray rock where the moss was a mat.
And thinking of one whom my heart had held dear,
Like terrible waters, a gathering fear.
Came stealing upon me with all the distress
Of loss and of yearning and powerlessness:
Till the hopes and the doubts and the sleepless unrest
That, swallow-like, built in the home of my breast,
Now hither, now thither, now heavenward flew,
Wild-winged as the winds are: now suddenly drew
My soul to abysses of nothingness where
All light was a shadow, all hope, a despair:
Where truth, that religion had set upon high,
The darkness distorted and changed to a lie:
And dreams of the beauty ambition had fed
Like leaves of the autumn fell blighted and dead.
And I rose with my burden of anguish and doom,
And cried, "O my God, had I died in the womb!
"Than born into night, with no hope of the morn,
An heir unto shadows, to live so forlorn!
"All effort is vain; and the planet called Faith
Sinks down; and no power is real but death.
"Oh, light me a torch in the deepening dark
So my sick soul may follow, my sad heart may mark!"--
And then in the darkness the answer!--It came
From Earth not from Heaven--a glimmering flame,
Behold, at my feet! In the shadow it shone
Mysteriously lovely and dimly alone:
An ember; a sparkle of dew and of glower;
Like the lamp that a spirit hangs under a flower:
As goldenly green as the phosphorus star
A fairy may wear in her diadem's bar:
An element essence of moonlight and dawn
That, trodden and trampled, burns on and burns on.
And hushed was my soul with the lesson of light
That God had revealed to me there in the night:
Though mortal its structure, material its form,
The spiritual message of worm unto worm.
_Ghosts_
Was it the strain of the waltz that, repeating
"Love," so bewitched me? or only the gleam
There of the lustres, that set my heart beating,
Feeling your presence as one feels a dream?
For, on a sudden, the woman of fashion,
Soft at my side in her diamonds and lace,
Vanished, and pale with reproach or with passion,
You, my dead sweetheart, smiled up in my face.
Music, the nebulous lights, and the sifting
Fragrance of women made amorous the air;
Born of these three and my thoughts you came drifting,
Clad in dim muslin, a rose in your hair.
There in the waltz, that followed the lancers,
Hard to my breast did I crush you and hold;
Far through the stir and the throng of the dancers
Onward I bore you as often of old.
Pale were your looks; and the rose in your tresses
Paler of hue than the dreams we have lost;--
"Who," then I said, "is it sees or who guesses,
Here in the hall, that I dance with a ghost?"
Gone! And the dance and the music are ended.
Gone! And the rapture dies out of the skies.
And, on my arm, in her elegance splendid,
The woman of fashion smiles up in my eyes.
Had I forgotten? and did you remember?--
You, who are dead, whom I cannot forget;
You, for whose sake all my heart is an ember
Covered with ashes of dreams and regret.
_The Purple
Valleys_
Far in the purple valleys of illusion
I see her waiting, like the soul of music,
With deep eyes, lovelier than cerulean pansies,
Shadow and fire, yet merciless as poison;
With red lips, sweeter than Arabian storax,
Yet bitterer than myrrh.--O tears and kisses!
O eyes and lips, that haunt my soul forever!
