Loe raamatut: «The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5)», lehekülg 8

IV

MOSS AND FERN

 
Where rise the brakes of bramble there,
Wrapped with the trailing rose,
Through cane where waters ramble, there
Where deep the green cress grows,
Who knows?
Perhaps, unseen of eyes of man,
Hides Pan.
 
 
Perhaps the creek, whose pebbles make
A foothold for the mint,
May bear,—where soft its trebles make
Confession,—some vague hint—
(The print,
Goat-hoofed, of one who lightly ran)—
Of Pan.
 
 
Where, in the hollow of the hills
Ferns deepen to the knees,
What sounds are those above the hills,
And now among the trees?—
No breeze!—
The syrinx, haply, none may scan,
Of Pan.
 
 
In woods where waters break upon
The hush like some soft word;
Where sun-shot shadows shake upon
The moss, who has not heard—
No bird!—
The flute, as breezy as a fan,
Of Pan?
 
 
Far in, where mosses lay for us
Still carpets, cool and plush;
Where bloom and branch and ray for us
Swoon in the noonday flush,
The hush
May sound the satyr hoof a span
Of Pan.
 
 
In woods where thrushes sing to us,
And brooks dance sparkling heels;
Where wild aromas cling to us,
And all our worship kneels,—
Who steals
Upon us, haunch and face of tan,
But Pan?
 

V

WOODLAND WATERS

 
Through leaves of the nodding trees,
Where blossoms sway in the breeze,
Pink bag-pipes made for the bees,
Whose slogan is droning and drawling:
Where the columbine scatters its bells,
And the wild bleeding-heart its shells,
O’er mosses and rocks of the dells
The brook of the forest is falling.
 
 
You can hear it under the hill
When the wind in the wood is still,
And, strokes of a fairy drill,
Sounds the bill of the yellow-hammer:
By the solomon’s-seal it slips,
Cohosh and the grass that drips—
Like the words of an Undine’s lips,
Is the sound of its falls that stammer.
 
 
I lie in the woods: and the scent
Of the honeysuckle is blent
With the sound: and a Sultan’s tent
Is my dream, with the East enmeshéd:—
A slave-girl sings; and I hear
The languor of lute-strings near,
And a dancing-girl of Cashmere
In the harem of good Er Reshid.
 
 
From ripples of Irak lace
She flashes the amorous grace
Of her naked limbs and her face,
While her golden anklets tinkle:
Then over mosaic floors
Open seraglio doors
Of cedar: by twos, by fours,—
Like stars that tremble and twinkle,—
 
 
While the dulcimers sing, unseen,
The handmaids come of the Queen
’Neath silvern lamps, one sheen
Of jewels of Afrite treasure:
And I see the Arabia rise
Of the Nights that were rich and wise,
Beautiful, dark, in the eyes
Of Zubeideh, the Queen of Pleasure.
 

VI

THE THORN-TREE

 
The night is sad with silver and the day is glad with gold,
And the woodland silence listens to a legend never old,
Of the Lady of the Fountain, whom the fairy people know,
With her limbs of samite whiteness and her hair of golden glow,
Whom the boyish South-wind seeks for and the girlish-stepping rain,
Whom the sleepy leaves still whisper men shall never see again;
She whose Vivien charms were mistress of the magic Merlin knew,
That could change the dew to glow-worms and the glow-worms into dew.
 
 
There’s a thorn-tree in the forest, and the fairies know the tree,
With its branches gnarled and wrinkled as a face with sorcery;
But the May-time brings it clusters of a rainy fragrant white,
Like the bloom-bright brows of beauty or a hand of lifted light.
And all day the silence whispers to the sun-ray of the morn
How the bloom is lovely Vivien and how Merlin is the thorn:
How she won the doting wizard with her naked loveliness
Till he told her demon secrets that but made his magic less.
 
 
How she charmed him and enchanted in the thorn-tree’s thorns to lie
Forever with his passion that should never dim or die:
And with wicked laughter looking on this thing that she had done,
Like a visible aroma lingered sparkling in the sun;
How she stooped to kiss the pathos of an elf-lock of his beard,
All in mockery, at parting, and mock pity of his weird:
But her magic had forgotten that “who bends to give a kiss
Will bring down the curse upon them of the person whose it is”:
So the silence tells the secret.—And at night the fairies see
How the tossing bloom is Vivien, who is struggling to be free,
In the thorny arms of Merlin, who, forever, is the tree.
 

VII

THE HAMADRYAD

 
She stood among the longest ferns
The valley held; and in her hand
One blossom like the light that burns,
Vermilion, o’er a sunset land;
And round her hair a twisted band
Of pink-pierced mountain-laurel blooms:
And darker than dark pools, that stand
Below the star-communing glooms,
Her eyes beneath her hair’s perfumes.
 
 
I saw the moon-pearl sandals on
Her flower-white feet, that seemed too chaste
To tread pure gold: and, like the dawn
On splendid peaks that lord a waste
Of solitude lost gods have graced,
Her face: she stood there, faultless-hipped,
Bound with the cestused silver,—chased
With acorn-cup and crown, and tipped
With oak-leaves,—whence her chiton slipped.
 
 
Limbs that the gods call loveliness!—
The grace and glory of all Greece
Wrought in one marble form were less
Than her perfection!—’Mid the trees
I saw her; and time seemed to cease
For me—And, lo! I lived my old
Greek life again of classic ease,
Barbarian as the myths that rolled
Me back into the Age of Gold.
 

WRECKAGE

I

 
Love and the drift of many dreams,
Under the moon of a Florida night,
Over the beach with its silvery seams
White as a sail is white.
 
 
Love that entered into two lives
Out of the dreams that the nights have borne,
Over the waves where the vapor drives,
Mists that the stars have torn.
 
 
Love that welded two hearts and hands
There by the sea, ’neath the shell-white moon,
Like to the stars and the mists and the sands
Setting two lives in tune.
 
 
Nights of love that one still keeps
Sacred;—nights, that the faith of one
Heartened there in the treacherous deeps,
Under a tropic sun.
 

II

 
Parting he said to her: “Let us be true to them,—
All of our dreams, of the night, of the morning:
What is our present, its hope, but a clew to them?
What is our past but a dream and a warning?
Have you considered the life that regretfully
Foldeth weak arms to the fate it might master?—
Had I been true to my dreams, never fretfully
Halted, my future and joy had been faster.”
 
 
They had come down to the ocean that, bellowing,
Boiled on the sand and the shells that were broken;
All of the summer was fading and yellowing;
Now they must part and their vows had been spoken.
It had befallen that heaven was lowering;
Over the sea, like the wraith of a wrecker,
Clamored the gull; and the mist in the showering
East seemed the ghost of a lofty three-decker.
 
 
Infinite foam; and the boom of the hollowing
Breakers that buried the rocks to their shoulders;
Battle and boast of the deep in the wallowing
World of the waves where the red sunset smoulders.
Long was the leap of the foam on the thunderous
Beach; and each end of the beach was a flying
Fog of the spray: and she said, “Let it sunder us!
Still we will love, for love is undying!”
 
 
Yet, if it comes to the thing he has said to her?—
Wreckage and death?—the love she has given
Turned into sorrow?—Oh, that was a dread to her!
He, like a weed, by the waters far driven!
Weeping, her bosom with shudders was shaken as
She for a moment hard clung to her sailor,
Kissed him and—parted. His boat had been taken; as
Paler it grew the woman grew paler.
 

III

 
All day the rain drove, falling
Upon the sombre sea;
All day, his wet sail hauling,
The sailor tacked a-lea;
And through the wild rain calling,
What was it?—was it he?
 
 
At dusk the gull clanged, drifting
Above the boiling brine;
And, through the wan west sifting,
Streamed one red sunset line;
And in its wild light shifting,
His far sail seemed to shine.
 
 
All night the wind wailed, sighing
Along the wreck-strewn coast;
All night the surf, defying,
Rolled thunder in and boast;
All night she heard a crying—
The sea? or some lost ghost?
 

IV

 
The balm of the night and the glory,
The music and scent of the sea,
Are as song to her heart or a story
Of the never-to-be.
The stars and the night and the whiteness
Of foam on the stretch of the sand;
Faint foam that is tossed, like the brightness
Of a mermaiden’s hand.
 
 
No sail on the ocean; no sailor
On shore, and the winds all asleep;
And her face in the starlight far paler
Than women who weep.
A mist on the deep; and the ghostly
White moon in the deep of the night;
And a light that is neither; that mostly
Is shadow not light.
 
 
No sea-gull, that vanished with gleaming
Of wings, in the swing of the spray;
Perhaps it was only her dreaming,
Or merely a ray
Of moonlight; the glimmering essence
Of all that is grayest and dim—
But never his face, or his presence
That dripped in each limb.
 
 
And she cried through the night, “Let perish!
O God, let me die of despair!
If he whom I love, whom I cherish,
Is weltering there!”
She seemed but a sea-mist made woman,
And he but a sound of the sea
Made man where nothing was human,
And never would be.
 

V

 
Long he sailed the deep that glasses
The face of God and His majesty;
Passed the Horn and the Seas of Grasses,
Drifting aimlessly.
Time went by with its days that ever
Burden the hearts of those who be
Far away from their love; whom sever
Leagues of the shapeless sea.
 
 
Land at last, whose reefs rolled broken
Foam of the balked waves everywhere;
Land; one tangle of weeds and oaken
Wreck and of rocks laid bare.
Here and there the sand stretched livid
Leagues of famine, one blinding glare;
Crags, o’er which gaunt birds winged vivid,
Harsh in the earthquake air.
 
 
A little cloud in the sunset’s splendor;
A little cloud that the sunset stains:
Night, and a wisp of a moon that, slender,
Dreams of the hurricanes.
Winds that stride as with sounding sandals;
Winds that the tempest has loosed from chains:
Light that leaps like a spear he handles,
Shaking his thunder-manes.
 
 
Wrenching the world in wreck asunder,
Black rebellion of hell and night;
Wrath and roar of the rocks and thunder,
Flame and the winds that fight …
Beating the drift and the hush together,
Waves and winds that the morn makes white;
Calm and peace of the tropic weather
After the typhoon’s might.
 
 
Clouds blow by and the storm’s forgotten.
Savage coasts where the sea-cow feeds.
Wash of weeds and the sea-weeds rotten.
And a dead face in the weeds.
None to know him or name him brother;
Only the savage in feathers and beads;
The South-Sea Islander, fitting another
Barb in the shaft he speeds.
 
 
Far away where the sea-gulls gather;
Far away where the evening falls,
Lone she stands where the wild waves lather,
Rolling the sea in walls.—
Who shall tell her, the lonely tryster?
Tell her of him on whom she calls?—
Suns that beat on his face and blister?
Stars? or the sea that crawls?
 

VI

 
She dreamed that there, beside the ocean sitting,
Alone she watched, when, at her feet, behold!
Between the foam-ridge and the sea-gull’s flitting,
His body rolled.
 
 
All was not as it was before they parted;
She dreamed he had remembered, she forgot;
He ’d said he would forget her, angry-hearted,
And yet could not.
 
 
And then it seemed that, had she known, she surely
Had given pity when she could not give
Her love to him, who loved her madly, purely,
And bade him live.
 
 
And then she dreamed she looked upon the slanted
Hulk of a wreck: and high above the wave,
Worn of the wind and of the cactus planted,
His nameless grave.
 

SIREN SANDS

I

 
The rhododendrons bloom and shake
Their petals wide and gleam and sway
Among palmettoes, by the lake,
Beyond the bay.
 
 
Shores where we watched the eve reveal
Her cloudy sanctuaries, while
The bay lay lavaed into steel
For mile on mile.
 
 
We watched the purple coast confuse
Soft outlines with the graying light;
And towards the gulf a vessel lose
Itself in night.
 
 
We saw the sea-gulls dip and soar;
The wild-fowl gather past the pier;
And from rich skies, as from God’s door,
Gold far and near.
 
 
Two foreign seamen passed and we
Heard mellow Spanish; like twin stars,
Where they lounged smoking, we could see
Their faint cigars.
 
 
Night; and the heavens stained and strewn
With stars the waters idealized,
Until their light the rising moon
Epitomized.
 
 
Morn; and the pine-wood balms awake;
Winds roll the dew-drop from the rose;
The wide lake burns; and, on the lake,
The ripple glows.
 
 
Far coasts detach deep purple from
The blue horizon, and the day
Beholds the sunburnt sailor come
And sail away.
 
 
The bird that slept at dusk, at dawn
Awakes again within the thorn.—
Sweet was the night to it, now gone;
And sweet is morn.
 

II

 
Through halls of columned scarlet,
Like some dark queen, the Dusk
Trails skirts of myrrh and musk,
Hung in each ear, a starlet
Gleams,—gems the clouds’ gaunt Jinn
Guard; and, beneath her chin,
The moon, an opal tusk.
 
 
There lies a ghostly glory
Upon the sea and sand;
A gleam, as of a hand,
Stretched from the realms of story,
Of rosy golden ray;
Pointing the world the way
To some far Fairyland.
 
 
As fades the west’s vermilion
Above the distant coasts,
The stars come out in hosts;
Within the night’s pavilion,
As flower speaks to flower,
Dim hour calls to hour,
Pale with the past’s sweet ghosts.
 

III

 
Music that melts through moonlight,
Faint on the summer breeze;
Fireflies, moonlight, and foaming
Susurrus of the seas.
 
 
Music that drifts like perfume,
And touches like a hand;
Dreams and stars and the ocean,
And we alone on the sand.
 
 
Glimmers and vague reflections,
And the white swirl of the foam;
Pale on the purple a vessel,
And a light that beckons home.
 
 
And I seem to see the music,
On a moonbeam bar that floats,
For the music is moonlight magic,
And the flies are its golden notes.
 
 
And I seem to hear one singing
Of a brown old coast and sea,
Of lives that were filled with passion,
And old-world tragedy.
 
 
And I hear the harsh reef’s calling
For a noble ship at sea,
And the winds of the ocean singing
A dirge for the dead to be.
 
 
Till it seems that I am the pilot,
And you are the mermaidén,
Who lures him on to the wrecking
And into her arms again.
 

Song

 
Over the hills where the winds are waking
All is lone as the soul of me;
Over the hills where the stars are shaking,
Breton hills by the sea.
 
 
These were with me to tell me often
How she pined in her Croisic home,
Winds that sing and the stars that soften
Over the miles of foam.
 
 
Fishers’ nets and the sailor faces;
Sad salt marshes and granite piers;
Brown, loud coast where the long foam races—
And a parting full of tears.
 
 
A gray sail’s ghost where the autumn lies on
Wraiths of the mist and the squall-blown rain;
Her dark girl eyes that search the horizon,
Grave with a haunting pain.
 
 
Stars may burn and the wild winds whistle
Over the rocks where the sea-gulls rave—
My heart is bleak as the wind-worn thistle
on her seaside grave.
 

IV

 
Sad as sad eyes that ache with tears
The stars of night shine through the leaves;
And shadowy as the Fates’ dim shears
The weft that twilight weaves.
 
 
The summer sunset marched long hosts
Of gold adown one golden peak,
That flamed and fell; and now gray ghosts
Of mist the far west streak.
 
 
They seem the shades of things that weep,
Wan things the heavens would conceal;
Blood-stained; that bear within them, deep,
Red wounds that will not heal.
 
 
Night comes, and with it storm, that slips
Wild angles of the jagged light:—
I feel the wild rain on my lips,—
A wild girl is the Night.
 
 
A moaning tremor sweeps the trees;
And all the stars are packed with death:—
She holds me by the neck and knees,
I feel her wild, wet breath.
 
 
Hell and its hags drive on the rain:—
Night holds me by the hair and pleads;
Her kisses fall like blows again;
My brow is dewed with beads.
 
 
The thunder plants wild beacons on
Each volleying height.—My soul seems blown
Far out to sea. The world is gone,
And night and I alone.
Tampa, Florida, February, 1893.
 

WAR-TIME SILHOUETTES

I

THE BATTLE

 
The night had passed. The day had come,
Bright-born, into a cloudless sky:
We heard the rolling of the drum,
And saw the war-flags fly.
 
 
And noon had crowded upon morn
Ere Conflict shook her red locks far,
And blew her brazen battle-horn
Upon the hills of War.
 
 
Noon darkened into dusk—one blot
Of nightmare lit with hell-born suns;—
We heard the scream of shell and shot
And booming of the guns.
 
 
On batteries of belching grape
We saw the thundering cavalry
Hurl headlong,—iron shape on shape,—
With shout and bugle-cry.
 
 
When dusk had moaned and died, and night
Came on, wind-swept and wild with rain,
We slept, ’mid many a bivouac light,
And vast fields heaped with slain.
 

II

IN HOSPITAL

 
Wounded to death he lay and dreamed
The drums of battle beat afar,
And round the roaring trenches screamed
The hell of war.
 
 
Then woke; and, weeping, spoke one word
To the kind nurse who bent above;
Then in the whitewashed ward was heard
A song of love.
 
 
The song she sang him when she gave
The portrait that he kissed; then sighed,
“Lay it beside me in the grave!”
And smiled and died.
 

III

THE SOLDIER’S RETURN

 
A brown wing beat the apple leaves and shook
Some blossoms on her hair. Then, note on note,
The bird’s wild music bubbled. In her book,
Her old romance, she seemed to read. No look
Betrayed the tumult in her trembling throat.
 
 
The thrush sang on. A dreamy wind came down
From one white cloud of afternoon and fanned
The dropping petals on her book and gown,
And touched her hair, whose braids of quiet brown
Gently she smoothed with one white jeweled hand.
 
 
Then, with her soul, it seemed, from feet to brow
She felt him coming: ’t was his heart, his breath
That stirred the blossom on the apple bough;
His step the wood-thrush warbled to. And now
Her cheek went crimson, now as white as death.
 
 
Then on the dappled page his shadow—yes,
Not unexpected, yet her haste assumed
Fright’s startle; and low laughter did confess
His presence there, soft with his soul’s caress
And happy manhood, where the rambo bloomed.
 
 
Quickly she rose and all her gladness sent
Wild welcome to him. Her his unhurt arm
Drew unresisted; and the soldier leant
Fond lips to hers. She wept. And so they went
Deep in the orchard towards the old brick farm.
 

IV

THE APPARITION

 
A day of drought, foreboding rain and wind,
As if stern heaven, feeling earth had sinned,
Frowned all its hatred. When the evening came,
Along the west, from bank on bank unthinned
Of clouds, the storm unfurled its oriflamme.
 
 
Then lightning signaled, and the thunder woke
Its monster drums, and all God’s torrents broke.—
She saw the wild night when the dark pane flashed;
Heard, where she stood, the disemboweled oak
Roar into fragments when the welkin crashed.
 
 
Long had she waited for a word. And, lo!
Anticipation still would not say “No:”
He has not written; he will come to her;
At dawn!—to-night!—Her heart hath told her so;
And so expectancy and love aver.
 
 
She seems to hear his fingers on the pane—
The glass is blurred, she can not see for rain:
Is that his horse?—the wind is never still:
And that his cloak?—ah, surely that is plain!—
A torn vine tossing at the window-sill.
 
 
She hurries forth to meet him; pale and wet,
She sees his face; the war-soiled epaulet;
A sabre-scar that bleeds from brow to cheek;
And now he smiles, and now their lips have met,
And now … Dear heart, he fell at Cedar Creek!
 

V
WOUNDED

 
It was in August that they brought her news
Of his bad wounds; the leg that he must lose.
And August passed, and when October raised
Red rebel standards on the hills that blazed,
They brought a haggard wreck; she scarce knew whose,
Until they told her, standing stunned and dazed.
 
 
A shattered shadow of the stalwart lad,
The five-months husband, whom his country had
Enlisted, strong for war; returning this,
Whose broken countenance she feared to kiss,
While health’s remembrance stood beside him sad,
And grieved for that which was no longer his.
 
 
They brought him on a litter; and the day
Was bright and beautiful. It seemed that May
In woodland rambles had forgot her path
Of season, and, disrobing for a bath,
By the autumnal waters of some bay,
With her white nakedness had conquered Wrath.
 
 
Far otherwise she wished it: wind and rain;
The sky, one gray commiserative pain;
Sleet, and the stormy drift of frantic leaves;
To match the misery that each perceives
Aches in her hand-clutched bosom, and is plain
In eyes and mouth and all her form that grieves.
 
 
Theirs, a mute meeting of the lips; she stooped
And kissed him once: one long, dark side-lock drooped
And brushed against the bandage of his breast;
With feeble hands he held it and caressed;
Then all his happiness in one look grouped,
Saying, “Now I am home, I crave but rest.”
 
 
Once it was love! but then the battle killed
All that sweet nonsense of his youth, and filled
His heart with sterner passion.—Ah, well! peace
Must balm its pain with patience; whose surcease
Means reconcilement; e’en as God hath willed,
With war or peace who shapes His ends at ease.—
 
 
What else for these but, where their mortal lot
Of weak existence drags rent ends, to knot
The frail unravel up!—while love (afraid
Time will increase the burthen on it laid),
Seeks consolation, that consoleth not,
In toil and prayer, waiting what none evade.