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

      I know not what!—But where the kildees wade,

      Slim in the foamy scum,

      From that direction hither doth it come,

      Whate’er it is, that makes my soul afraid.

      Nearer it draws to where those low rocks ail,

      Warm rocks, on which some water-snake hath clomb,

      Basking its spotted body, coiling numb,

      Brown in the brindled shade.—

      At first it seemed a prism on the grail,

      A bubble’s prism, like the shadow made

      Of water-striders; then a trail,

      An angled sparkle in a webby veil

      Of duckweed, green as verdigris, it swayed

      Frog-like through deeps, to crouch, a flaccid, pale,

      Squat bulk below....

      I gaze, and though I would, I can not go.

      Reflected trees and skies,

      And breeze-blown clouds that lounge at sunny loss,

      Seem in its stolid eyes,

      Its fishy gaze, that holds me in strange wise.

      Ghoul-like it seems to rise,

      And now to sink; its eldritch features fail,

      Then come again in rhythmic waviness,

      With arms like tentacles that seem to press

      Thro’ weed and water: limbs that writhe and fade,

      And clench, and twist, and toss,

      Root-like and gnarled, and cross and inter-cross

      Through flabby hair of smoky moss.

      How horrible to see this thing at night!

      Or when the sunset slants its brimstone light

      Above the pool! when, blue, in phantom flight,

      The will-o’-the-wisps, perhaps, above it reel.

      Then, haply, would it rise, a rotting green,

      Up, up, and gather me with arms of steel,

      Soft steel, and drag me where the wave is white,

      Beneath that boulder brown, that plants a keel

      Against the ripple there, a shoulder lean.—

      No, no! I must away before ’tis night!

      Before the fireflies dot

      The dark with sulphur blurrings bright!

      Before, upon that height,

      The white wild-carrots vanish from the sight;

      And boneset blossoms, tossing there in clusters,

      Fade to a ridge, a streak of ghostly lustres:

      And, in that sunlit spot,

      Yon cedar tree is not!

      But a huge cap instead, that, half-asleep,

      Some giant dropped while driving home his sheep:

      And ’mid those fallow browns

      And russet grays, the fragrant peak

      Of yonder timothy stack,

      Is not a stack, but something hideous, black,

      That threatens and, grotesquely demon, frowns.

      I must away from here.—

      Already dusk draws near.

      The owlet’s dolorous hoot

      Sounds quavering as a gnome’s wild flute;

      The toad, within the wet,

      Begins to tune its goblin flageolet:

      The slow sun sinks behind

      Those hills; and, like a withered cheek

      Of Quaker quiet, sorrow-burdened, there

      The spectral moon ’s defined

      Above those trees,—as in a wild-beast’s lair

      A golden woman, dead, with golden hair,—

      Above that mass of fox-grape vines

      That, like a wrecked appentice, roofs those pines.—

      Oh, I am faint and weak.—

      I must away, away!

      Before the close of day!—

      Already at my back

      I feel the woods grow black;

      And sense the evening wind,

      Guttural and gaunt and blind,

      Whining behind me like an unseen wolf.

      Deeper now seems the gulf

      Into whose deeps I gaze;

      From which, with madness and amaze,

      That seems to rise, the horror there,

      With webby hands and mossy eyes and hair.—

      Oh, will it pierce,

      With all its feelers fierce,

      Beyond the pool’s unhallowed water-streak?—

      Yes; I must go, must go!

      Must leave this ghastly creek,

      This place of hideous fear!

      For everywhere I hear

      A dripping footstep near,

      A voice, like water, gurgling at my ear,

      Saying, “Come to me! come and rest below!

      Sleep and forget her and with her thy woe!”—

      I try to fly.—I can not.—Yes, and no!—

      What madness holds me!—God! that obscene, slow,

      Sure mastering chimera there,

      Perhaps, has fastened round my neck,

      Or in my matted hair,

      Some horrible feeler, dire, invisible!—

      Off, off! thou hoop of Hell!

      Thou devil’s coil!…

      Back, back into thy cesspool! Off of me!—

      See, how the waters thrash and boil!

      At last! at last! thank God! my soul is free!

      My mind is freed of that vile mesmerism

      That drew me to—what end? my God! what end?

      Haply ’twas merely fancy, that strange fiend:

      My fancy, and a prism

      Of sunset in the stream, a firefly fleck,

      That now, a lamp of golden fairy oil,

      Lights me my homeward way, the way I flee.

      No more I stare, magnetic-fixed; nor reck,

      Nor little care to foil

      The madness there! the murder there! that slips

      Back to its lair of slime, that seeps and drips,

      That sought in vain to fasten on my lips.