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

Madison Cawein

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Madison Julius Cawein

The Poems of Madison Cawein, vol. 2

Ah, girlhood, through the rosy haze

Come like a moonbeam slipping.

В В В В One Day and Another

O lyrist of the lowly and the true,

The song I sought for you

Still bides unsung. What hope for me to find,

Lost in the dædal mind,

The living utterance with lovely tongue,

To sing,—as once he sung,

Rare Ariosto, of Knight-Errantry,—

How you in Poesy,

Song’s Paladin, Knight of the Dream and Day,

The shield of magic sway!

Of that Atlantes’ power, sweet and terse,

The skyey-builded verse!

The shield that dazzles, brilliant with surprise,

Our unanointed eyes.—

Oh, could I write as it were worthy you,

Each word, a spark of dew,—

As once Ferdusi wrote in Persia,—

Would string each rosy spray

Of each unfolding flower of my song;

And Iran’s bulbul tongue

Would sob its heart out o’er the fountain’s slab

In gardens of Afrasiab.

ONE DAY AND ANOTHER

A Lyrical Eclogue

PART I

LATE SPRING

The mottled moth at eventide

Beats glimmering wings against the pane;

The slow, sweet lily opens wide,

White in the dusk like some dim stain;

The garden dreams on every side

And breathes faint scents of rain:

Among the flowering stocks they stand;

A crimson rose is in her hand.

I

Outside her garden. He waits musing:

Herein the dearness of her is;

The thirty perfect days of June

Made one, in maiden loveliness

Were not more sweet to clasp and kiss,

With love not more in tune.

Ah me! I think she is too true,

Too spiritual for life’s rough way:

So say her eyes,—her soul looks through,—

Two bluet blossoms, watchet-blue,

Are not more pure than they.

So kind, so beautiful is she,

So soft and white, so fond and fair,

Sometimes my heart fears she may be

Not long for Earth, and secretly

Sweet sister to the air.

II

Dusk deepens. A whippoorwill calls

The whippoorwills are calling where

The golden west is graying;

“’Tis time,” they say, “to meet him there—

Why are you still delaying?

“He waits you where the old beech throws

Its gnarly shadow over

Wood violet and the bramble rose,

Frail lady-fern and clover.

“Where elder and the sumac peep

Above your garden’s paling,

Whereon, at noon, the lizards sleep,

Like lichen on the railing.

“Come! ere the early rising moon’s

Gold floods the violet valleys;

Where mists, like phantom picaroons

Anchor their stealthy galleys.

“Come! while the deepening amethyst

Of dusk above is falling—

’Tis time to tryst! ’tis time to tryst!”

The whippoorwills are calling.

They call you to these twilight ways

With dewy odor dripping—

Ah, girlhood, through the rosy haze

Come like a moonbeam slipping.

III

He enters the garden, speaking dreamily:

There is a fading inward of the day,

And all the pansy sunset clasps one star;

The twilight acres, eastward, glimmer gray,

While all the world to westward smoulders far.

Now to your glass will you pass for the last time?

Pass! humming some ballad, I know.

Here where I wait it is late and is past time—

Late! and the moments are slow, are slow.

There is a drawing downward of the night;

The bridegroom Heaven bends down to kiss the moon:

Above, the heights hang silver in her light;

Below, the vales stretch purple, deep with June.

There in the dew is it you hiding lawny?

You? or a moth in the vines?—

You!—by your hand! where the band twinkles tawny!

You!—by your ring, like a glow-worm that shines!

IV

She approaches, laughing. She speaks:

You’d given up hope?

He

Believe me!

She

Why! is your love so poor?

He

No. Yet you might deceive me!

She

As many a