Myth and Romance: Being a Book of Verses

Madison Cawein

Madison Julius Cawein

Myth and Romance: Being a Book of Verses

PROEM

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 a metre that none before

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

And the world would be richer one poet the more.

VISIONS AND VOICES

Myth and Romance

I

When I go forth to greet the glad-faced Spring,

Just at the time of opening apple-buds,

When brooks are laughing, winds are whispering,

On babbling hillsides or in warbling woods,

There is an unseen presence that eludes:—

Perhaps a Dryad, in whose tresses cling

The loamy odors of old solitudes,

Who, from her beechen doorway, calls; and leads

My soul to follow; now with dimpling words

Of leaves; and now with syllables of birds;

While here and there—is it her limbs that swing?

Or restless sunlight on the moss and weeds?

II

Or, haply, 't is a Naiad now who slips,

Like some white lily, from her fountain's glass,

While from her dripping hair and breasts and hips,

The moisture rains cool music on the grass.

Her have I heard and followed, yet, alas!

Have seen no more than the wet ray that dips

The shivered waters, wrinkling where I pass;

But, in the liquid light, where she doth hide,

I have beheld the azure of her gaze

Smiling; and, where the orbing ripple plays,

Among her minnows I have heard her lips,

Bubbling, make merry by the waterside.

III

Or now it is an Oread—whose eyes

Are constellated dusk—who stands confessed,

As naked as a flow'r; her heart's surprise,

Like morning's rose, mantling her brow and breast:

She, shrinking from my presence, all distressed

Stands for a startled moment ere she flies,

Her deep hair blowing, up the mountain crest,

Wild as a mist that trails along the dawn.

And is't her footfalls lure me? or the sound

Of airs that stir the crisp leaf on the ground?

And is't her body glimmers on yon rise?

Or dog-wood blossoms snowing on the lawn?

IV

Now't is a Satyr piping serenades

On a slim reed. Now Pan and Faun advance

Beneath green-hollowed roofs of forest glades,

Their feet gone mad with music: now, perchance,

Sylvanus sleeping, on whose leafy trance

The Nymphs stand gazing in dim ambuscades

Of sun-embodied perfume.—Myth, Romance,

Where'er I turn, reach out bewildering arms,

Compelling me to follow. Day and night

I hear their voices and behold the light

Of their divinity that still evades,

And still allures me in a thousand forms.

Genius Loci

I

What wood-god, on this water's mossy curb,

Lost in reflections of earth's loveliness,

Did I, just now, unconsciously disturb?

I, who haphazard, wandering at a guess,

Came on this spot, wherein, with gold and flame

Of buds and blooms, the season writes its name.—

Ah, me! could I have seen him ere alarm

Of my approach aroused him from his calm!

As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap,

Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warm

As wildwood rose, and filled the air with balm

Of his sweet breath as with ethereal sap.

II

Does not the moss retain some vague impress,

Green dented in, of where he lay or trod?

Do not the flow'rs, so reticent, confess

With conscious looks the contact of a god?

Does not the very water garrulously

Boast the indulgence of a deity?

And, hark! in burly beech and sycamore

How all the birds proclaim it! and the leaves

Rejoice with clappings of their myriad hands!

And shall not I believe, too, and adore,

With such wide proof?—Yea, though my soul perceives

No evident prese