The Cup of Comus: Fact and Fancy. Cawein Madison Julius

      The wind makes moan, the water runneth chill;

      I hear the nymphs go crying through the brake;

      And roaming mournfully from hill to hill

      The maenads all are silent for his sake!

      He loved thy pipe, O wreathed and piping Pan!

      So play'st thou sadly, lone within thine hollow;

      He was thy blood, if ever mortal man,

      Therefore thou weepest – even thou, Apollo!

      But O, the grieving of the Little Things,

      Above the pipe and lyre, throughout the woods!

      The beating of a thousand airy wings,

      The cry of all the fragile multitudes!

      The moth flits desolate, the tree-toad calls,

      Telling the sorrow of the elf and fay;

      The cricket, little harper of the walls,

      Puts up his harp – hath quite forgot to play!

      And risen on these winter paths anew,

      The wilding blossoms make a tender sound;

      The purple weed, the morning-glory blue,

      And all the timid darlings of the ground!

      Here, here the pain is sharpest! For he walked

      As one of these – and they knew naught of fear,

      But told him daily happenings and talked

      Their lovely secrets in his list'ning ear!

      Yet we do bid them grieve, and tell their grief;

      Else were they thankless, else were all untrue;

      O wind and stream, O bee and bird and leaf,

      Mourn for your poet, with a long adieu!

      The Nights of song and story,

      With breath of frost and rain,

      Whose locks are wild and hoary,

      Whose fingers tap the pane

      With leaves, are come again.

      The Nights of old October,

      That hug the hearth and tell,

      To child and grandsire sober,

      Tales of what long befell

      Of witch and warlock spell.

      Nights, that, like gnome and faery,

      Go, lost in mist and moon.

      And speak in legendary

      Thoughts or a mystic rune,

      Much like the owlet's croon.

      Or whirling on like witches,

      Amid the brush and broom,

      Call from the Earth its riches,

      Of leaves and wild perfume,

      And strew them through the gloom.

      Till death, in all his starkness,

      Assumes a form of fear,

      And somewhere in the darkness

      Seems slowly drawing near

      In raiment torn and sere.

      And with him comes November,

      Who drips outside the door,

      And wails what men remember

      Of things believed no more,

      Of superstitious lore.

      Old tales of elf and dæmon,

      Of Kobold and of Troll,

      And of the goblin woman

      Who robs man of his soul

      To make her own soul whole.

      And all such tales, that glamoured

      The child-heart once with fright,

      That aged lips have stammered

      For many a child's delight,

      Shall speak again to-night.

      To-night, of moonlight minted,

      That is a cup divine,

      Whence Death, all opal-tinted, —

      Wreathed red with leaf and vine, —

      Shall drink a magic wine.

      A wonder-cup of Comus,

      That with enchantment streams,

      In which the heart of Momus, —

      That, moon-like, glooms and gleams,

      Is drowned with all its dreams.

      There is a smell of roses in the room

      Tea-roses, dead of bloom;

      An invalid, she sits there in the gloom,

      And contemplates her doom.

      The pattern of the paper, and the grain.

      Of carpet, with its stain,

      Have stamped themselves, like fever, on her brain,

      And grown a part of pain.

      It has been long, so long, since that one died,

      Or sat there by her side;

      She felt so lonely, lost, she would have cried, —

      But all her tears were dried.

      A knock came on the door: she hardly heard;

      And then – a whispered word,

      And someone entered; at which, like a bird,

      Her caged heart cried and stirred.

      And then – she heard a voice; she was not wrong:

      His voice, alive and strong:

      She listened, while the silence filled with song —

      Oh, she had waited long!

      She