Madison Cawein - Myth and Romance
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Madison Cawein >> Myth and Romance
Her head is bent; some red carnations glow
Deep in her heavy hair; her large eyes gleam;--
Bright sister stars of those twin worlds of snow,
Her breasts, through which the veined violets stream;--
I hold her hand; her smile comes sweetly slow
As thoughts of love that haunt a poet's dream;
And at her feet once more I sit and hear
Wild words of passion--dead this many a year.
_Snow
and Fire_
Deep-hearted roses of the purple dusk
And lilies of the morn;
And cactus, holding up a slender tusk
Of fragrance on a thorn;
All heavy flowers, sultry with their musk,
Her presence puts to scorn.
For she is like the pale, pale snowdrop there,
Scentless and chaste of heart;
The moonflower, making spiritual the air,
Like some pure work of art;
Divine and holy, exquisitely fair,
And virtue's counterpart.
Yet when her eyes gaze into mine, and when
Her lips to mine are pressed,--
Why are my veins all fire then? and then
Why should her soul suggest
Voluptuous perfumes, maddening unto men,
And prurient with unrest?
_Restraint_
Dear heart and love! what happiness to sit
And watch the firelight's varying shade and shine
On thy young face; and through those eyes of thine--
As through glad windows--mark fair fancies flit
In sumptuous chambers of thy soul's chaste wit
Like graceful women: then to take in mine
Thy hand, whose pressure brims my heart's divine
Hushed rapture as with music exquisite!
When I remember how thy look and touch
Sway, like the moon, my blood with ecstasy,
I dare not think to what fierce heaven might lead
Thy soft embrace; or in thy kiss how much
Sweet hell,--beyond all help of me,--might be,
Where I were lost, where I were lost indeed!
_Why Should
I Pine_?
Why should I pine? when there in Spain
Are eyes to woo, and not in vain;
Dark eyes, and dreamily divine:
And lips, as red as sunlit wine;
Sweet lips, that never know disdain:
And hearts, for passion over fain;
Fond, trusting hearts that know no stain
Of scorn for hearts that love like mine.--
Why should I pine?
Because all dreams I entertain
Of beauty wear thy form, Elain;
And e'en their lips and eyes are thine:
So though I gladly would resign
All love, I love, and still complain,
"Why should I pine?"
_When Lydia
Smiles_
When Lydia smiles, I seem to see
The walls around me fade and flee;
And, lo, in haunts of hart and hind
I seem with lovely Rosalind,
In Arden 'neath the greenwood tree:
The day is drowsy with the bee,
And one wild bird flutes dreamily,
And all the mellow air is kind,
When Lydia smiles.
Ah, me! what were this world to me
Without her smile!--What poetry,
What glad hesperian paths I find
Of love, that lead my soul and mind
To happy hills of Arcady,
When Lydia smiles!
_The
Rose_
You have forgot: it once was red
With life, this rose, to which you said,--
When, there in happy days gone by,
You plucked it, on my breast to lie,--
"Sleep there, O rose! how sweet a bed
Is thine!--And, heart, be comforted;
For, though we part and roses shed
Their leaves and fade, love cannot die.--"
You have forgot.
So by those words of yours I'm led
To send it you this day you wed.
Look well upon it. You, as I,
Should ask it now, without a sigh,
If love can lie as it lies dead.--
You have forgot.
_A Ballad
of Sweethearts_
Summer may come, in sun-blonde splendor,
To reap the harvest that Springtime sows;
And Fall lead in her old defender,
Winter, all huddled up in snows:
Ever a-south the love-wind blows
Into my heart, like a vane asway
From face to face of the girls it knows--
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.
If Carrie smile or Maud look tender,
Straight in my bosom the gladness glows;
But scarce at their side am I all surrender
When Gertrude sings where the garden grows:
And my heart is a bloom, like the red rose shows
For her hand to gather and toss away,
Or wear on her breast, as her fancy goes--
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.
Let Laura pass, as a sapling slender,
Her cheek a berry, her mouth a rose,--
Or Blanche or Helen,--to each I render
The worship due to the charms she shows:
But Mary's a poem when these are prose;
Here at her feet my life I lay;
All of devotion to her it owes--
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.
How _can_ my heart of my hand dispose?
When Ruth and Clara, and Kate and May,
In form and feature no flaw disclose--
But who is the fairest it's hard to say.
_Her
Portrait_
Were I an artist, Lydia, I
Would paint you as you merit,
Not as my eyes, but dreams, descry;
Not in the flesh, but spirit.
The canvas I would paint you on
Should be a bit of heaven;
My brush, a sunbeam; pigments, dawn
And night and starry even.
Your form and features to express,
Likewise your soul's chaste whiteness,
I'd take the primal essences
Of darkness and of brightness.
I'd take pure night to paint your hair;
Stars for your eyes; and morning
To paint your skin--the rosy air
That is your limbs' adorning.
To paint the love-bows of your lips,
I'd mix, for colors, kisses;
And for your breasts and finger-tips,
Sweet odors and soft blisses.
And to complete the picture well,
I'd temper all with woman,--
Some tears, some laughter; heaven and hell,
To show you still are human.
_A Song
for Yule_
I
Sing, Hey, when the time rolls round this way,
And the bells peal out, _'Tis Christmas Day_;
The world is better then by half,
For joy, for joy;
In a little while you will see it laugh--
For a song's to sing and a glass to quaff,
My boy, my boy.
So here's to the man who never says nay!--
Sing, Hey, a song of Christmas-Day!
II
Sing, Ho, when roofs are white with snow,
And homes are hung with mistletoe;
Old Earth is not half bad, I wis--
What cheer! what cheer!
How it ever seemed sad the wonder is--
With a gift to give and a girl to kiss,
My dear, my dear.
So here's to the girl who never says no!
Sing, Ho, a song of the mistletoe!
III
No thing in the world to the heart seems wrong
When the soul of a man walks out with song;
Wherever they go, glad hand in hand,
And glove in glove,
The round of the land is rainbow-spanned,
And the meaning of life they understand
Is love, is love.
Let the heart be open, the soul be strong,
And life will be glad as a Christmas song.
_The Puritans'
Christmas_
Their only thought religion,
What Christmas joys had they,
The stern, staunch Pilgrim Fathers who
Knew naught of holiday?--
A log-church in the clearing
'Mid solitudes of snow,
The wild-beast and the wilderness,
And lurking Indian foe.
No time had they for pleasure,
Whom God had put to school;
A sermon was their Christmas cheer,
A psalm their only Yule.
They deemed it joy sufficient,--
Nor would Christ take it ill,--
That service to Himself and God
Employed their spirits still.
And so through faith and prayer
Their powers were renewed,
And souls made strong to shape a World,
And tame a solitude.
A type of revolution,
Wrought from an iron plan,
In the largest mold of liberty
God cast the Puritan.
A better land they founded,
That Freedom had for bride,
The shackles of old despotism
Struck from her limbs and side.
With faith within to guide them,
And courage to perform,
A nation, from a wilderness,
They hewed with their strong arm.
For liberty to worship,
And right to do and dare,
They faced the savage and the storm
With voices raised in prayer.
For God it was who summoned,
And God it was who led,
And God would not forsake the love
That must be clothed and fed.
Great need had they of courage!
Great need of faith had they!
And lacking these--how otherwise
For us had been this day!
_Spring_
(After the German of Goethe, _Faust_, II)
When on the mountain tops ray-crowned Apollo
Turns his swift arrows, dart on glittering dart,
Let but a rock glint green, the wild goats follow
Glad-grazing shyly on each sparse-grown part.
Rolled into plunging torrents spring the fountains;
And slope and vale and meadowland grow green;
While on ridg'd levels of a hundred mountains,
Far fleece by fleece, the woolly flocks convene.
With measured stride, deliberate and steady,
The scattered cattle seek the beetling steep,
But shelter for th' assembled herd is ready
In many hollows that the walled rocks heap:
The lairs of Pan; and, lo, in murmuring places,
In bushy clefts, what woodland Nymphs arouse!
Where, full of yearning for the azure spaces,
Tree, crowding tree, lifts high its heavy boughs.
Old forests, where the gnarly oak stands regnant
Bristling with twigs that still repullulate,
And, swoln with spring, with sappy sweetness pregnant,
The maple blushes with its leafy weight.
And, mother-like, in cirques of quiet shadows,
Milk flows, warm milk, that keeps all things alive;
Fruit is not far, th' abundance of the meadows,
And honey oozes from the hollow hive.
_Lines_
Within the world of every man's desire
Three things have power to lift his soul above,
Through dreams, religion, and ecstatic fire,
The star-like shapes of Beauty, Truth, and Love.
I never hoped that, this side far-off Heaven,
These three,--whom all exalted souls pursue,--
I e'er should see; until to me 't was given,
Lady, to meet the three, made one, in you.
_When Ships put
out to Sea_
I
It's "Sweet, good-bye," when pennants fly
And ships put out to sea;
It's a loving kiss, and a tear or two
In an eye of brown or an eye of blue;--
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.
II
It's "Friend or foe?" when signals blow
And ships sight ships at sea;
It's clear for action, and man the guns,
As the battle nears or the battle runs;--
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.
III
It's deck to deck, and wrath and wreck
When ships meet ships at sea;
It's scream of shot and shriek of shell,
And hull and turret a roaring hell;--
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.
IV
It's doom and death, and pause a breath
When ships go down at sea;
It's hate is over and love begins,
And war is cruel whoever wins;--
And you'll remember me,
Sweetheart,
And you'll remember me.
_The
"Kentucky"_
(Battleship, launched March 24, 1898.)
I
Here's to her who bears the name
Of our State;
May the glory of her fame
Be as great!
In the battle's dread eclipse,
When she opens iron lips,
When our ships confront the ships
Of the foe,
May each word of steel she utters carry woe!
Here's to her!
II
Here's to her, who, like a knight
Mailed of old,
From far sea to sea the Right
Shall uphold.
May she always deal defeat,--
When contending navies meet,
And the battle's screaming sleet
Blinds and stuns,--
With the red, terrific thunder of her guns.
Here's to her!
III
Here's to her who bears the name
Of our State;
May the glory of her fame
Be as great!
Like a beacon, like a star,
May she lead our squadrons far,--
When the hurricane of war
Shakes the world,--
With her pennant in the vanward broad unfurled.
Here's to her!
_Quatrains_
I
MOTHS AND FIREFLIES
Since Fancy taught me in her school of spells
I know her tricks--These are not moths at all,
Nor fireflies; but masking Elfland belles
Whose link-boys torch them to Titania's ball.
II
AUTUMN WILD-FLOWERS
Like colored lanterns swung in Elfin towers,
Wild morning-glories light the tangled ways,
And, like the rosy rockets of the Fays,
Burns the sloped crimson of the cardinal-flowers.
III
THE WIND IN THE PINES
When winds go organing through the pines
On hill and headland, darkly gleaming,
Meseems I hear sonorous lines
Of Iliads that the woods are dreaming.
IV
OPPORTUNITY
Behold a hag whom Life denies a kiss
As he rides questward in knighterrant-wise;
Only when he hath passed her is it his
To know, too late, the Fairy in disguise.
V
DREAMS
They mock the present and they haunt the past,
And in the future there is naught agleam
With hope, the soul desires, that at last
The heart pursuing does not find a dream.
VI
THE STARS
These--the bright symbols of man's hope and fame,
In which he reads his blessing or his curse--
Are syllables with which God speaks His name
In the vast utterance of the universe.
VII
BEAUTY
High as a star, yet lowly as a flower,
Unknown she takes her unassuming place
At Earth's proud masquerade--the appointed hour
Strikes, and, behold, the marvel of her face.
_Processional_
Universes are the pages
Of that book whose words are ages;
Of that book which destiny
Opens in eternity.
There each syllable expresses
Silence; there each thought a guess is;
In whose rhetoric's cosmic runes
Roll the worlds and swarming moons.
There the systems, we call solar,
Equatorial and polar,
Write their lines of rushing light
On the awful leaves of night.
There the comets, vast and streaming,
Punctuate the heavens' gleaming
Scroll; and suns, gigantic, shine,
Periods to each starry line.
There, initials huge, the Lion
Looms and measureless Orion;
And, as 'neath a chapter done,
Burns the Great-Bear's colophon.
Constellated, hieroglyphic,
Numbering each page terrific,
Fiery on the nebular black,
Flames the hurling zodiac.
In that book, o'er which Chaldean
Wisdom pored and many an eon
Of philosophy long dead,
This is all that man has read:--
He has read how good and evil,--
In creation's wild upheaval,--
Warred; while God wrought terrible
At foundations red of Hell.
He has read of man and woman;
Laws and gods, both beast and human;
Thrones of hate and creeds of lust,
Vanished now and turned to dust.
Arts and manners that have crumbled;
Cities buried; empires tumbled:
Time but breathed on them its breath;
Earth is builded of their death.
These but lived their little hour,
Filled with pride and pomp and power;
What availed them all at last?
We shall pass as they have past.
Still the human heart will dream on
Love, part angel and part demon;
Yet, I question, what secures
Our belief that aught endures?
In that book, o'er which Chaldean
Wisdom pored and many an eon
Of philosophy long dead,
This is all that man has read.
OTHER BOOKS OF VERSE BY MADISON CAWEIN
Days and Dreams Cloth, gilt top, $1.00
Moods and Memories " " 1.00
Red Leaves and Roses " " 1.00
Poems of Nature and Love " " 1.00
Intimations of the Beautiful " " 1.00
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS,
27 & 29, West Twenty-third Street, New York, N. Y
* * * * *
_Sent by mail, postpaid, to any address on receipt of price._
SOME NOTICES OF MR. CAWEIN'S VERSES
"I should like to praise the poetry of Madison Cawein, of Kentucky,
which is as remote as Greece from the actual everyday life of his
region; as remote from it as the poetry of Keats was from the England
of his day, and which is yet so richly, so passionately true to the
presence and essence of nature as she can be known only in the
Southern West. I named Keats with no purpose of likening this young
poet to him, but since he is named it is impossible not to recognize
that they are of the same Hellenic race; full of like rapture in sky
and field and stream, and of a like sensitive reluctance from whatever
chills the joy of sense in youth, in love, in melancholy. I know Mr.
Cawein has faults, and very probably he knows it, too; his delight in
color sometimes plunges him into mere paint; his wish to follow a
subtle thought or emotion sometimes lures him into empty dusks; his
devotion to nature sometimes contents him with solitudes bereft of the
human interest by which alone the landscape lives. But he is, to my
thinking, a most genuine poet, and one of these few Americans, who,
even in their over-refinement, could never be mistaken for Europeans;
who perhaps by reason of it are only the more American."--WILLIAM
DEAN HOWELLS in _Literature_.
"From the poetry of our day I select that of Madison Cawein as an
example of conspicuous merit. Many American readers have enjoyed Mr.
Cawein's productions.... But the appreciation of his poetry has never
been as great as its merits would indicate. His poems are rather _too
good_ to be caught up on the babbling tongue and cast forth into mere
popularity. They are caviare to the general; and yet they have in them
the best elements of popular favor.
"Cawein is a classicist. He will have it that poems, however humble
the theme, however tender the sentiment, shall wear a tasteful Attic
dress. I do not intimate that Mr. Cawein's mind has been too much
saturated with the classical spirit or that his native instincts have
been supplanted with Greek exotics and flowers out of the renaissance,
but rather that his own mental constitution is of a classical as well
as a romantic mould.
"The themes of Cawein's poetry are generally taken from the world of
romance. If there be any modern bard who can recreate a mediaeval
castle and give to its inhabitants the sentiments which were theirs in
the twelfth century, Cawein is the poet who can. He takes delight in
the East. He is the Omar Khayyam of the Ohio Valley. He is as much of
a Mohammedan as a Christian. He knows the son of Abdallah better than
he knows Cromwell; and has more sympathy with a Khalif than with a
Colonel. He dwells in the romantic regions of life; but the romance is
real. The hope is a true hope. The dream is a true dream. The picture
is a painting, and not a chromo. The love is a passion, and not a
dilettante episode. Cawein's art is a genuine art. His verse is
exquisite. Out of the three hundred and thirteen poems in the five
volumes under consideration there may be found hardly a false or
broken harmony...."--JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL.D., in _The
Arena_.
"The rattlesnake-weed and the bluet-bloom were unknown to Herrick and
to Wordsworth, but such art as Mr. Cawein's makes them at home in
English poetry. There is passion, too, and thought in his
equipment...."--WILLIAM ARCHER in the _Pall Mall Magazine_.
"I find in the best pieces an intoxicating sense of beauty, a
richness, that is rarely achieved, although every young poet nowadays
strives after it. I find, too, a daring use of language which
sometimes, nay often, conducts to genuine and startling
felicities."--EDMUND GOSSE.