Poems. Cawein Madison Julius

        He lived beyond men, and so stood

        Admitted to the brotherhood

        Of beauty:—dreams, with which he trod

        Companioned like some sylvan god.

        And oft men wondered, when his thought

        Made all their knowledge seem as naught,

        If he, like Uther's mystic son,

        Had not been born for Avalon.

        When wandering mid the whispering trees,

        His soul communed with every breeze;

        Heard voices calling from the glades,

        Bloom-words of the Leimoniäds;

        Or Dryads of the ash and oak,

        Who syllabled his name and spoke

        With him of presences and powers

        That glimpsed in sunbeams, gloomed in showers.

        By every violet-hallowed brook,

        Where every bramble-matted nook

        Rippled and laughed with water sounds,

        He walked like one on sainted grounds,

        Fearing intrusion on the spell

        That kept some fountain-spirit's well,

        Or woodland genius, sitting where

        Red, racy berries kissed his hair.

        Once when the wind, far o'er the hill,

        Had fall'n and left the wildwood still

        For Dawn's dim feet to trail across,—

        Beneath the gnarled boughs, on the moss,

        The air around him golden-ripe

        With daybreak,—there, with oaten pipe,

        His eyes beheld the wood-god, Pan,

        Goat-bearded, horned; half brute, half man;

        Who, shaggy-haunched, a savage rhyme

        Blew in his reed to rudest time;

        And swollen-jowled, with rolling eye—

        Beneath the slowly silvering sky,

        Whose rose streaked through the forest's roof—

        Danced, while beneath his boisterous hoof

        The branch was snapped, and, interfused

        Between gnarled roots, the moss was bruised.

        And often when he wandered through

        Old forests at the fall of dew—

        A new Endymion, who sought

        A beauty higher than all thought—

        Some night, men said, most surely he

        Would favored be of deity:

        That in the holy solitude

        Her sudden presence, long-pursued,

        Unto his gaze would stand confessed:

        The awful moonlight of her breast

        Come, high with majesty, and hold

        His heart's blood till his heart grew cold,

        Unpulsed, unsinewed, all undone,

        And snatch his soul to Avalon.

        Ah, shall I follow, on the hills,

          The Spring, as wild wings follow?

        Where wild-plum trees make wan the hills,

          Crabapple trees the hollow,

          Haunts of the bee and swallow?

        In redbud brakes and flowery

          Acclivities of berry;

        In dogwood dingles, showery

          With white, where wrens make merry?

          Or drifts of swarming cherry?

        In valleys of wild strawberries,

          And of the clumped May-apple;

        Or cloudlike trees of haw-berries,

          With which the south winds grapple,

          That brook and byway dapple?

        With eyes of far forgetfulness,—

          Like some wild wood-thing's daughter,

        Whose feet are beelike fretfulness,—

          To see her run like water

          Through boughs that slipped or caught her.

        O Spring, to seek, yet find you not!

          To search, yet never win you!

        To glimpse, to touch, but bind you not!

          To lose, and still continue,

          All sweet evasion in you!

        In pearly, peach-blush distances

          You gleam; the woods are braided

        Of myths; of dream-existences….

          There, where the brook is shaded,

          A sudden splendor faded.

        O presence, like the primrose's,

          Again I feel your power!

        With rainy scents of dim roses,

          Like some elusive flower,

          Who led me for an hour!

        Where rise the brakes of bramble there,

          Wrapped with the trailing rose;

        Through cane where waters ramble, there

          Where deep the sword-grass grows,

              Who knows?

        Perhaps, unseen of eyes of man,

              Hides Pan.

        Perhaps the creek, whose pebbles make

          A foothold for the mint,

        May bear,—where soft its trebles make

          Confession,—some vague hint,

             (The print,

        Goat-hoofed, of one who lightly ran,)

             Of Pan.

        Where, in the hollow of the hills

          Ferns deepen to the knees,

        What sounds are those above the hills,

          And now among the trees?—

             No breeze!—

        The syrinx, haply, none may scan,

             Of Pan.

        In woods where waters break upon

          The hush like some soft word;

        Where