Poems. Cawein Madison Julius

        The night is sad with silver and the day is glad with gold,

        And the woodland silence listens to a legend never old,

        Of the Lady of the Fountain, whom the faery people know,

        With her limbs of samite whiteness and her hair of golden glow,

        Whom the boyish South Wind seeks for and the girlish-stepping Rain;

        Whom the sleepy leaves still whisper men shall never see again:

        She whose Vivien charms were mistress of the magic Merlin knew,

        That could change the dew to glowworms and the glowworms into dew.

        There's a thorn tree in the forest, and the faeries know the tree,

        With its branches gnarled and wrinkled as a face with sorcery;

        But the Maytime brings it clusters of a rainy fragrant white,

        Like the bloom-bright brows of beauty or a hand of lifted light.

        And all day the silence whispers to the sun-ray of the morn

        How the bloom is lovely Vivien and how Merlin is the thorn:

        How she won the doting wizard with her naked loveliness

        Till he told her dæmon secrets that must make his magic less.

        How she charmed him and enchanted in the thorn-tree's thorns to lie

        Forever with his passion that should never dim or die:

        And with wicked laughter looking on this thing which she had done,

        Like a visible aroma lingered sparkling in the sun:

        How she stooped to kiss the pathos of an elf-lock of his beard,

        In a mockery of parting and mock pity of his weird:

        But her magic had forgotten that "who bends to give a kiss

        Will but bring the curse upon them of the person whose it is":

        So the silence tells the secret.—And at night the faeries see

        How the tossing bloom is Vivien, who is struggling to be free,

        In the thorny arms of Merlin, who forever is the tree.

        She stood among the longest ferns

          The valley held; and in her hand

        One blossom, like the light that burns

          Vermilion o'er a sunset land;

          And round her hair a twisted band

        Of pink-pierced mountain-laurel blooms:

          And darker than dark pools, that stand

        Below the star-communing glooms,

        Her eyes beneath her hair's perfumes.

        I saw the moonbeam sandals on

          Her flowerlike feet, that seemed too chaste

        To tread true gold: and, like the dawn

          On splendid peaks that lord a waste

          Of solitude lost gods have graced,

        Her face: she stood there, faultless-hipped,

          Bound as with cestused silver,—chased

        With acorn-cup and crown, and tipped

        With oak leaves,—whence her chiton slipped.

        Limbs that the gods call loveliness!—

          The grace and glory of all Greece

        Wrought in one marble shape were less

          Than her perfection!—'Mid the trees

          I saw her—and time seemed to cease

        For me.—And, lo! I lived my old

          Greek life again of classic ease,

        Barbarian as the myths that rolled

        Me back into the Age of Gold.

        There is no rhyme that is half so sweet

        As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;

        There is no metre that's half so fine

        As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;

        And the loveliest lyric I ever heard

        Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.—

        If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach

        My heart their beautiful parts of speech,

        And the natural art that they say these with,

        My soul would sing of beauty and myth

        In a rhyme and metre that none before

        Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore,

        And the world would be richer one poet the more.

        A thought to lift me up to those

        Sweet wildflowers of the pensive woods;

        The lofty, lowly attitudes

        Of bluet and of bramble-rose:

        To lift me where my mind may reach

        The lessons which their beauties teach.

        A dream, to lead my spirit on

        With sounds of faery shawms and flutes,

        And all mysterious attributes

        Of skies of dusk and skies of dawn:

        To lead me, like the wandering brooks,

        Past all the knowledge of the books.

        A song, to make my heart a guest

        Of happiness whose soul is love;

        One with the life that knoweth of

        But song that turneth toil to rest:

        To make me cousin to the birds,

        Whose music needs not wisdom's words.

        The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed,

          That