The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5). Cawein Madison Julius

      Here where the day is dimmest,

      And silence company,

      Some might find sympathy

      For loss, or grief the grimmest,

      In each great-hearted tree—

      Here where the day is dimmest—

      But, ah, there ’s none for me!

      In leaves might find communion,

      Returning sigh for sigh,

      For love the heavens deny;

      The love that yearns for union,

      Yet parts and knows not why.—

      In leaves might find communion—

      But, ah, not I, not I!

      My eyes with tears are aching.—

      Why has she written me?

      And will no longer see?—

      My heart with grief is breaking,

      With grief that this should be.—

      My eyes with tears are aching—

      Why has she written me?

      Better is death than sleep,

      Better for tired eyes.—

      Why do we weep and weep

      When near us the solace lies?

      There, in that stream, that, deep,—

      Reflecting woods and skies,—

      Could comfort all our sighs.

      The mystery of things,

      Of dreams, philosophies,

      To which the mortal clings,

      That can unriddle these.—

      What is ’t the water sings?

      What is ’t it promises?—

      End to my miseries!

      And here alone I sit and it is so!—

      O vales and hills! O valley-lands and knobs!

      What cure have you for woe?

      What balm that robs

      The brain of thought, the knowledge of its woe?

      None! none! ah me! that my sick heart may know!—

      The wearying sameness!—yet this thing is so!

      This thing is so, and still the waters flow,

      The leaves drop slowly down; the daylight throbs

      With sun and wind, and yet this thing is so!

      There is no sympathy in heaven or earth

      For human sorrow! all we see is mirth,

      Or madness; cruelty or lust;

      Nature is heedless of her children’s grief;

      Man is to her no more than is a leaf,

      That buds and has its summer, that is brief,

      Then falls, and mixes with the common dust.

      Here, at this culvert’s mouth,

      The shadowy water, flowing toward the south,

      Seems deepest, stagnant-stayed.—

      What is it yonder that makes me afraid?

      Of my own self afraid?—I do not know!—

      What power draws me to the striate stream?

      What evil? or what dream?

      Me! dropping pebbles in the quiet wave,

      That echoes, strange as music in a cave,

      Hollow and thin; vibrating in the shade,

      As if ’t were tears that fell, and, falling, made

      A crystal sound, a shadow wail of woe,

      Wrung from the rocks and waters there below;

      An ailing phantom that will not be laid;

      Complaining ghosts of sobs that fill my breast,—

      That will not forth,—and give my heart no rest.

      There, in the water, how the lank sword-grass

      Mats its long blades, each blade a crooked kris,

      Making a marsh; ’mid which the currents miss

      Their rock-born melodies.

      But there and there, one sees

      The wide-belled mallow, as within a glass,

      Long-pistiled, leaning o’er

      The root-contorted shore,

      As if its own pink image it would kiss.

      And there the tangled wild-potato vine

      Lifts beakered blossoms, each a cup of wine,

      As pale as moonlight is:—

      No mandrake, curling convolutions up,

      Loops heavier blossoms, each a conical cup

      That swoons moon-nectar and a serpent’s hiss.—

      And there tall gipsy lilies, all a-sway,

      Of coppery hue

      Streaked as with crimson dew,

      Mirror fierce faces in the deeps,

      O’er which they lean, bent in inverted view.—

      And where the stream around those rushes creeps,

      The dragon-fly, in endless error, keeps

      Sewing the pale-gold gown of day

      With tangled stitches of a burning blue:

      Its brilliant body is a needle fine,

      A thread of azure ray,

      Black-pinioned, shuttling the shade and shine.

      But here before me where my pensive shade

      Looks up at me, the stale stream, stagnant, lies,

      Deep, dark, but clear and silent; streaked with hues

      Of ragweed pollen, and of spawny ooze,

      Through which the seeping bubbles, bursting, rise.—

      All flowers here refuse

      To grow or