The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5). Cawein Madison Julius
hint we once were flowers:
Memory alone has perished
In this garnished world that’s ours.
Music,—that all things expresses,
All for which we’ve sought and sinned,—
Haply in our treey tresses
Once was guesses of the wind.
But I dream!—The dusk, dark braiding
Locks that lack both moon and star,
Deepens; and, the darkness aiding,
Earth seems fading, faint and far.
And within me doubt keeps saying—
“What is wrong, and what is right?
Hear the cursing! hear the praying!
All are straying on in night.”
VII
The soul, like Earth, hath silences
Which speak not, yet are heard:
The voices mute of memories
Are louder than a word.
Theirs is a speech which is not speech;
A language that is bound
To soul-vibrations, vague, that reach
Deeper than any sound.
No words are theirs. They speak through things,
A visible utterance
Of thoughts—like those some sunset brings,
Or withered rose, perchance.
The heavens that once, in purple and flame,
Spake to two hearts as one,
In after years may speak the same
To one sad heart alone.
Through it the vanished face and eyes
Of her, the sweet and fair,
Of her the lost, again shall rise
To comfort his despair.
And so the love that led him long
From golden scene to scene,
Within the sunset is a tongue
That speaks of what has been.—
How loud it speaks of that dead day,
The rose whose bloom is fled!
Of her who died; who, clasped in clay,
Lies numbered with the dead.
The dead are dead; with them ’tis well
Within their narrow room;—
No memories haunt their hearts who dwell
Within the grave and tomb.
But what of those—the dead who live!
The living dead, whose lot
Is still to love—ah, God forgive!—
To live and love, forgot!
VIII
The night is wild with rain and sleet;
Each loose-warped casement claps or groans:
I hear the plangent woodland beat
The tempest with long blatant moans,
Like one who fears defeat.
And sitting here beyond the storm,
Alone within the lonely house,
It seems that some mesmeric charm
Holds all things—even the gnawing mouse
Has ceased its faint alarm.
And in the silence, stolen o’er
Familiar objects, lo, I fear—
I fear—that, opening yon door,
I ’ll find my dead self standing near,
With face that once I wore.
The stairway creaks with ghostly gusts:
The flue moans; all its gorgon throat
One wail of winds: ancestral dusts,—
Which yonder Indian war-gear coat
With gray, whose quiver rusts,—
Are shaken down.—Or, can it be,
That he who wore it in the dance,
Or battle, now fills shadowy
Its wampumed skins? and shakes his lance
And spectral plume at me?—
Mere fancy!—Yet those curtains toss
Mysteriously as if some dark
Hand moved them.—And I would not cross
The shadow there, that hearthstone’s spark,
A glow-worm sunk in moss.
Outside ’t were better!—Yes, I yearn
To walk the waste where sway and dip
Deep, dark December boughs—where burn
Some late last leaves, that drip and drip
No matter where you turn.
Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod,
Fills oozy footprints—but the blind
Night there, though like the frown of God,
Presents no fancies to the mind,
Like those that have o’erawed.—
The months I count: how long it seems
Since summer! summer, when with her,
When on her porch, in rainy gleams
We watched the flickering lightning stir
In heavens gray as dreams.
When all the west, a sheet of gold,
Flared,—like some Titan’s opened forge,—
With storm; revealing, manifold,
Vast peaks of clouds with crag and gorge,
Where thunder-torrents rolled.
Then came the wind: again, again
Storm lit the instant earth—and how
The forest rang with roaring rain!—
We could not read—where is it now?—
That tale of Charlemagne:
That old romance! that tale, which we
Were reading; till we heard the plunge
Of distant thunder sullenly,
And left to watch the lightning lunge,
And storm-winds toss each tree.
That summer!—How it built us there,
Of sorcery and necromance,
A mental-world, where all was fair;
A land like one great pearl, a-trance
With lilied light and air.
Where every flower was a thought;
And every bird, a melody;
And every fragrance, zephyr brought,
Was but