Kitabı oku: «The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5)», sayfa 10

EPILOGUE

 
Would I could sing of joy I only
Remember as without alloy:
Of life full-filled, that once was lonely:
Of love a treasure, not a toy:
Of grief, regret but makes the keener,
Of aspiration, failure mars—
These would I sing, and sit serener.
Than song among the stars.
 
 
Would I could sing of faith unbroken;
Of heart-kept vows, and not of tears:
Of promised faith and vows love-spoken,
That have been kept through many years:
Of truth, the false but leaves the truer;
Of trust, the doubt makes doubly sure—
These would I sing, the noble doer
Whose dauntless heart is pure.
 
 
I would not sing of time made hateful;
Of hope that only clings to hate:
Of charity, that grows ungrateful;
And pride that will not stand and wait.—
Of humbleness, care hath imparted;
Of resignation, born of ills,
These would I sing, and stand high-hearted
As hope upon the hills.
 
 
Once on a throne of gold and scarlet
I touched a harp and felt it break;
I dreamed I was a king—a varlet,
A slave, who only slept to wake!—
Still on that harp my memory lingers,
While on a tomb I lean and read,
“Dust are our songs, and dust we singers,
And dust are all who heed.”
 

POEMS OF LOVE

 
What though I dreamed of mountain heights,
Of peaks, the barriers of the world,
Around whose tops the Northern Lights
And tempests are unfurled!
 
 
Mine are the footpaths leading through
Life’s lowly fields and woods,—with rifts,
Above, of heaven’s Eden blue,—
By which the violet lifts
 
 
Its shy appeal; and, holding up
Its chaliced gold, like some wild wine,
Along the hillside, cup on cup,
Blooms bright the celandine.
 
 
Where soft upon each flowering stock
The butterfly spreads damask wings;
And under grassy loam and rock
The cottage cricket sings.
 
 
Where overhead eve blooms with fire,
In which the new moon bends her bow,
And, arrow-like, one white star by her
Burns through the afterglow.
 
 
I care not, so the sesame
I find; the magic flower there,
Whose touch unseals each mystery
In water, earth, and air.
 
 
That in the oak tree lets me hear
Its heart’s deep speech, its soul’s dim words;
And to my mind makes crystal clear
The messages of birds.
 
 
Why should I care, who live aloof
Beyond the din of life and dust,
While dreams still share my humble roof,
And love makes sweet my crust.
 

GERTRUDE

 
When first I gazed on Gertrude’s face,
Beheld her loveliness and grace;
Her brave gray eyes, her raven hair,
Her ways, more winsome than the spring’s;
Her smile, like some sweet flower, that flings
Its fragrance on the summer air;
And when, like some wild-bird that sings,
I heard her voice,—I did declare,—
And still declare!—there is no one,
No girl beneath the moon or sun,
So beautiful to look upon!
And to my heart, as I know well,
Nothing seems more desirable,—
Not Ophir gold, nor Orient pearls—
Than seems this jewel-girl of girls.
 

LOVE

 
For him, who loves, each mounting morn
Breathes melody more sweet than birds’;
And every wind-stirred flower and thorn
Whispers melodious words:—
Would you believe that everything
Through her loved voice is made to sing?
 
 
For her, the faultless skies of day
Grow nearer in eternal blue,
Where God is felt as wind and ray,
And seen as fire and dew:—
Would you believe that all the skies
Are Heaven only through his eyes?
 
 
For them, the dreams that haunt the night
With mystic beauty and romance,
Are presences of starry light,
And moony radiance:—
Would you believe this love of theirs
Could make for them a universe?
 

HEART OF MY HEART

I

 
Here where the season turns the land to gold,
Among the fields our feet have known of old,—
When we were children who would laugh and run,
Glad little playmates of the wind and sun,—
Before came toil and care and years went ill,
And one forgot and one remembered still;
Heart of my heart, among the old fields here,
Give me your hands and let me draw you near,
Heart of my heart.
 

II

 
Stars are not truer than your soul is true;
What need I more of heaven then than you?
Flowers are not sweeter than your face is sweet—
What need I more to make my world complete?
O woman nature, love that still endures,
What strength hath ours that is not born of yours?
Heart of my heart, to you, whatever come,
To you the lead, whose love hath led me home.
Heart of my heart.
 

STROLLERS

I

 
We have no castles,
We have no vassals,
We have no riches, no gems and no gold:
Nothing to ponder;
Nothing to squander—
Let us go wander
As minstrels of old.
 

II

 
You with your lute, love;
I with my flute, love,
Let us make music by mountain and sea:
You with your glances,
I with my dances,
Singing romances
Of old chivalry.
 

III

 
“Derry down derry!
Good folk, be merry!
Hither! and hearken where happiness is!
Never go borrow
Care of to-morrow,
Never go sorrow
While life hath a kiss!”
 

IV

 
Let the day gladden,
Or the night sadden,
We will be merry in sunshine or snow:
You with your rhyme, love,
I with my chime, love,
We will make Time, love,
Dance as we go.
 

V

 
Nothing is ours;
Only the flowers,
Meadows, and stars, and the heavens above:
Nothing to lie for,
Nothing to sigh for,
Nothing to die for
While still we have love.
 

VI

 
“Derry down derry!
Good folk, be merry!
Hither! and hearken a word that is sooth:—
Care ye not any,
If ye have many,
Or not a penny,
If still ye have youth!”
 

THE BURDEN OF DESIRE

I

 
In some dim way I know thereof:
A garden glows down in my heart,
Wherein I meet and often part
With many an ancient tale of love.
A Romeo garden, banked with bloom,
And trellised with the eglantine;
In which a rose climbs to a room,
A balcony one mass of vine,
Dim, haunted of perfume.
A balcony, whereon she gleams,
The soft Desire of all Dreams,
And smiles and bends like Juliet,
Year after year,
While to her side, all dewy wet,
A rose stuck in his ear,
Love climbs to draw her near.
 

II

 
And in another way I know,
Down in my soul a graveyard lies,
Wherein I meet, in ghostly wise,
With many an ancient tale of woe.
A graveyard of the Capulets,
Deep-vaulted with ancestral gloom,
Through whose dark yews the moonlight jets
On many a wildly carven tomb,
That mossy mildew frets.
A graveyard where the Soul’s Desire
Sleeps, pale-entombed; and, kneeling by her,
Love, like that hapless Montague,
Year after year,
Weary and worn and wild of hue,
Within her sepulchre,
Falls bleeding on her bier.
 

THE TRYST

 
At dusk there fell a shower:
The leaves were dripping yet:
Each fern and rain-weighed flower
Around was gleaming wet,
When, through the evening glower,
His feet towards her were set.
 
 
The dust’s damp odor sifted
Around him, cool with rain,
Mixed with the musk that drifted
From woodland and from plain,
Where white her garden lifted
Its pickets down the lane.
 
 
And there she stood! ’mid scattered
Clove-pink and pea and whorl
Of honeysuckle,—flattered
To sweetness wild,—a girl,
O’er whom the clouds hung shattered
In moonlit peaks of pearl.
 
 
She made the night completer
For him; and earth and air,
In that small spot, far sweeter
Than heaven or anywhere.—
Swift were his lips to greet her,
Her lips love lifted there.
 

GYPSYING

 
Your heart ’s a-tune with April and mine a-tune with June,
So let us go a-roving beneath the summer moon.
Oh, was it in the sunlight, or was it in the rain,
We met among the blossoms within the locust lane?
All that I can remember ’s the bird that sang aboon,
And with its music in our hearts we ’ll rove beneath the moon.
 
 
A love-word of the wind, dear, of which we ’ll read the rune,
While we two go a-roving beneath the summer moon.
A love-word of the water we ’ll often stop to hear—
The echoed words and whispers of our own hearts, my dear.
And all our paths shall blossom with wild-rose sweets that swoon,
And with their fragrance in our hearts we ’ll rove beneath the moon.
 
 
It will not be forever; yet merry goes the tune
While we two still are rovers beneath the summer moon.
A cabin, in the clearing, of flickering firelight,
When old-time lanes we strolled in the winter snows make white:
Where we can dream together above the logs and croon
The songs we sang when roving beneath the summer moon.
 

UNCERTAINTY
“‘He cometh not,’ she said.”—Mariana

 
It will not be to-day and yet
I think and dream it will; and let
The slow uncertainty devise
So many sweet excuses, met
With the old doubt in hope’s disguise.
 
 
The panes were sweated with the dawn;
Yet through their dimness, shriveled drawn,
The aigret of one princess-feather,
One monk’s-hood tuft with oilets wan,
I glimpsed, dead in the slaying weather.
 
 
This morning when my window’s chintz
I drew, how gray the day was!—Since
I saw him, yea, all days are gray!—
I gazed out on my dripping quince,
Defruited, torn; then turned away
To weep, but did not weep: but felt
A colder anguish than did melt
About the tearful-visaged Year!—
Then flung the lattice wide and smelt
The autumn sorrow. Rotting near
 
 
The rain-drenched sunflowers bent and bleached,
Up which the frost-nipped gourd-vines reached
And morning-glories, seeded o’er
With ashen aiglets; whence beseeched
One last bloom, frozen to the core.
 
 
The podded hollyhocks—that Fall
Had stripped of finery—by the wall
Rustled their tatters; dripped and dripped,
The fog thick on them: near them, all
The tarnished, hag-like zinnias tipped.
 
 
I felt the death and loved it: yea,
To have it nearer, sought the gray,
Chill, fading garth. Yet could not weep,
But wandered in an aimless way,
And yearned with weariness to sleep.
 
 
Mine were the fog, the frosty stalks,
The weak lights on the leafy walks,
The shadows shivering with the cold;
The breaking heart; the lonely talks;
The last, dim, ruined marigold.
 
 
But when, to-night, the moon swings low—
A great marsh-marigold of glow—
And all my garden with the sea
Moans, then, through moon and mist, I know
His ghost will come to comfort me.
 

LOST LOVE

 
I loved her madly. For—so wrought
Young Love, divining Isles of Truth
Large in the central seas of Youth—
“Love will win love,” I thought.
 
 
Once when I brought a rare wild pink
To place among her plants, the wise,
Soft lifting of her speaking eyes
Said more than thanks, I think....
 
 
She loved another.—Yes, I know
All you would say of woman. You,
Like other men, would comfort too....
But then I loved her so.
 
 
She loved another.—Ah! too well
I know the story of her soul!—
A weary tale the weary whole
Of how she loved and fell.
 
 
I loved her so!… Remembering now
My mad grief then, I wonder why
Grief never kills.... I could not die.—
She died—I know not how.
 
 
Strange, is it not? For she was dear
To me as life once.—A regret
She is now; just to make eyes wet
And bring a fullness here.
 
 
Yet, had she lived as dead in shame
As now in death, Love would have used
Pride’s pitying pencil and abused
The memory of her name.
 
 
This helps me thank my God, who led
My broken life in sunlight of
This pure affection, that my love
Lives through her being dead.
 

OVERSEAS

Non numero horas nisi serenas

 
When fall drowns morns in mist, it seems
In soul I am a part of it;
A portion of its humid beams,
A form of fog, I seem to flit
From dreams to dreams.
 
 
An old chateau sleeps ’mid the hills
Of France: an avenue of sorbs
Conceals it: drifts of daffodils
Bloom by a ’scutcheoned gate with barbs
Like iron bills.
 
 
I pass the gate unquestioned, yet,
I feel, announced. Broad holm-oaks make
Dark pools of restless violet.
Between high bramble banks a lake,—
As in a net.
 
 
The tangled scales twist silver,—shines …
Gray, mossy turrets swell above
A sea of leaves. And where the pines
Shade ivied walls, there lies my love,
My heart divines.
 
 
I know her window, dimly seen
From distant lanes with hawthorn hedged:
Her garden, with the nectarine
Espaliered, and the peach-tree, wedged
’Twixt walls of green.
 
 
Cool-babbling a fountain falls
From gryphons’ mouths in porphyry;
Carp haunt its waters; and white balls
Of lilies dip it that the bee
Sucks in and drawls.
 
 
And butterflies, each with a face
Of faëry on its wings, that seem
Beheaded pansies, softly chase
Each other down the gloom and gleam
Trees interspace.
 
 
And roses! roses, soft as vair,
Round sylvan statues and the old
Stone dial—Pompadours that wear
Their royalty of purple and gold
With queenly air....
 
 
Her scarf, her lute, whose ribbons breathe
The perfume of her touch; her gloves,
Modeling the daintiness they sheathe;
Her fan, a Watteau, gay with loves,
Lie there beneath
 
 
A bank of eglantines that heaps
A rose-strewn shadow.—Naïve-eyed,
With lips as suave as they, she sleeps;
The romance by her, open wide,
O’er which she weeps.
 

AT THE STILE

 
Young Harry leapt over the stile and kissed her,
Over the stile when the sun was sinking;
’T was only Carrie; just Mary’s sister!—
And love hath a way of thinking.
 
 
“Thy pail, sweetheart, I will take and carry.”
Over the stile one star hung yellow.—
“Just to the spring, my dearest Harry.”—
And Love is a heartless fellow.
 
 
“Thou saidst me ‘yea’ in an April shower
Under this tree with leaves a-quiver.”—
“I say thee nay now the cherry ’s in flower,
And love is taker and giver.”
 
 
“O false! thou art false to me, sweetheart!”—
The light in her eyes grew trist and trister:
“To thee, the stars, and myself, sweetheart,
I never was aught but Mary’s sister.
 
 
“Sweet Mary’s sister! just little Carrie!—
But what avail my words or weeping?—
Next month, perhaps, you two will marry—
And I in my grave be sleeping.”
 
 
Alone she stands ’mid the meadow millet,
Wan as the petals the wind is strewing:
Some tears in her pail as she stoops to fill it—
And love hath a way of doing.
 

FERN-SEED
“We have the receipt of fern-seed; we walk invisible.”—Henry IV

 
And you and I have met but thrice!—
Three times enough to make me love!—
I praised your hair once; then your glove;
Your eyes; your gown—you were like ice.
And yet this might suffice, my love,
And yet this might suffice.
 
 
I know now what it is I’ll do:
I’ll search and find the ferns that grow,
The fern-seed that the fairies know,
And sprinkle fern-seed in my shoe,
And haunt the steps of you, my dear,
And haunt the steps of you.
 
 
You ’ll see the poppy-pods dip here,
The blow-ball of the thistle slip,
And no wind breathing—but my lip
Next to your anxious cheek and ear,
To tell you I am near, my love,
To tell you I am near.
 
 
On wood-ways I will tread your gown—
You ’ll know it is no brier!—then
I’ll whisper words of love again,
And smile to see your quick face frown;
And then I ’ll kiss it down, my dear,
And then I ’ll kiss it down.
 
 
You ’ll sit at home and read or knit,
When suddenly the page is blotted—
My hands!—or all your needles knotted:
And in your rage you ’ll cry a bit:
But I—I ’ll laugh at it, my love,
But I—I ’ll laugh at it.
 
 
The secrets which you say at prayer
I too will hear; or, when you sing,
I too will sing, and whispering
Bend down and kiss your eyes and hair,
And you will know me there, my dear,
And you will know me there.
 
 
Would it were true what people say!—
Would I could find that faëry seed!
Then would I win your love, indeed,
By being near you night and day:—
There is no other way, my love,
There is no other way.
 

PORPHYROGENITA

I

 
Was it when Kriemhild was queen
That we rode by ways forgotten
Through the Rhineland, dimly seen
’Neath a low moon white as cotton?
I, a knight? or troubadour?
Thou, a princess?—or a poor
Damsel of the Royal Closes?—
For, I met thee—somewhere sure!…
Was it ’mid Kriemhilda’s roses?
 

II

 
Or in Venice, by the sea?—
What romance grew up between us?
Thou, a doge’s daughter?—She,
Titian painted once as Venus?—
I, a gondolier whose barque
Glided past thy palace dark?—
Near St. Mark’s? or Casa d’Oro?—
From thy casement didst thou hark
To my barcarolle’s “Te oro”?
 

III

 
Klaia wast, of Egypt: yea,
Languid as its sacred lily.
Didst with me a year and day
Love upon the Isle of Philæ?
I, a priest of Isis?—Sweet,
’Neath the date-palms did we meet
By a temple’s pillared marble?
While, from its star-still retreat,
Sank the nightingale’s wild warble?
 

IV

 
Have I dreamed that I, thy slave,
From thy lattice, my sultana,
Beckoning, thy white hand did wave,
Dropped me once a rose? sweet manna
Of thy kiss warm in its heart?
That, through my Chaldæan art,
With thy Khalif’s bags of treasure,
From Damascus we did start,
Fled to some far land of pleasure?
 

V

 
Was I one? another thou?—
Let it be. What of it, dearest?—
Haply ’tis the memory now
Of these passions dead thou fearest?—
Nay! those loves are portions of,
Evolutions of this love,
Present love, where thou appearest
To combine them all and prove.
 

THE CASTLE OF LOVE

He speaks

I

 
Now listen! ’tis time that you knew it.—
Like the prince in the Asian tale,
I wandered on deserts that panted
With noon to a castle enchanted,
That Afrits had built in a vale;
A vale where the sunlight lay pale
As moonlight. And round it and through it
I searched and I searched. Like the tale,
 

II

 
No eunuch, black-browed as a Marid,
Prevented me. Shadows it seemed
Were the slaves there, with kohl and with henné
In eyes and on fingers; and many
The phantoms of beauty, that dreamed
Where censers of ambergris steamed.
And I came on a colonnade, quarried
From silvery marble it seemed.
 

III

 
And here, in a court, wide, estraded,
Rich tulips, like carbuncles, bloomed,
And jonquils and roses:—and lories,
And cockatoos, brilliant in glories
Of plumes, like great blossoms illumed,
Winged, splashed in a fountain perfumed:
Kept captive by network of braided,
Spun gold where stone galleries gloomed.
 

IV

 
From nipples of back-bending Peris
Of gold, glowing auburn, in rays
The odorous fountain sprang calling:
I heard through the white water’s falling,—
As soft as the zephyr that plays
With moonlight on bloom-haunted ways,—
A music; a sound, as if fairies
Touched wind-harps whose chords were of rays.
 

V

 
I followed: through corridors paneled
With sandal; through doorways deep-draped
With stuffs of Chosroës, rich-garded
With Indian gold; up the corded
Stone stairway, bronze-dragoned, wing-shaped:
Through moon-spangled hangings escaped—
’Twixt pillars of juniper channeled—
To a room constellated and draped.
 

VI

 
As in legends of witchcraft: a vassal
Of visions beholds naught yet hears
Sweet voices that call and he follows,—
So me, like the fragrance of aloes,
That chamber with song, it appears,
Surrounded; the song of the spheres …
My soul found your soul such a castle—
Your love is the music it hears.
 

CONSECRATION

She speaks

 
Last night you told me, where we, parting, waited,
Of love somehow I’d known before you told.—
Long, long ago, perhaps, this love was fated,
For why was it made suddenly so old?
 
 
Is it because the love we have and cherish
Born with us seems, and as ourselves shall last?
Part of our lives, we can not let it perish
Out of our present’s future or its past?
 
 
Yet, all was changed; and, still, I did not wonder
That, robed in vaster splendor, broke the dawn:
Nor marvel that, beside my feet and under,
Each flower seemed fairer than the flower gone.
 
 
The wild bird’s silvery warble seemed completer;
A whiter magic filled the morn and noon,
And night—each night!—seemed holier grown and sweeter
With Babylonian witchcraft of the moon.—
 
 
Is love an emanation? whose ideal
Communicates its beauty?—Is it moved
Through some strange means to consecrate the real?
Making the world the worthier to be loved?
 

ROMANTIC LOVE

I

 
Is it not sweet to know?—
The moon hath told me so—
That in some lost romance, love,
Long lost to us below,
A knight with casque and lance, love,
A thousand years ago,
I kissed you from a trance, love?—
The moon hath told me so.
 

II

 
Or were it strange to wis?—
The stars have told me this—
That once a nightingale, love,
Sang on an Isle of Greece;
From whose melodious wail, love,
Its song’s wild harmonies,
Was born a spirit-woman—
Yourself! whom I, a human,
Made mine!… So goes the tale, love!—
The stars have told me this.
 

III

 
Is it not quaint to tell?—
The flowers remember well—
How once a wild-rose blew, love,
Dim in a haunted dell;
To which a bee was true, love.
The bee, so it befell,
Was I: the rose was you, love!…
The flowers remember well.
 

IV

 
To moon and flower and star
We are not what we are.—
Sometimes, from o’er that sea, love,
Whose golden sands are far,—
From shores of Destiny, love,—
The dreams that know no bar,
Will waft a truth that glistens
To Memory who listens,
Reminding you and me, love,
We are not what we are.
 

PASTORAL LOVE

 
The pied pinks tilt in the wind that worries—
Sing, Oh, the wind and the red o’ her cheek!—
And the slow sun creeps on the rye nor hurries—
And what shall a lover speak?
 
 
The toad-flax brightens the flaxen hollows—
Sing, Ay, the bloom and her yellow hair!—
And the greenwood brook a wood-way follows—
And what shall a lover dare?
 
 
The deep woods gleam that the sunlight sprinkles—
Sing, Hey, the day and her laughing eye!—
And a brown bird pipes and a wild fall tinkles—
And what may a maid reply?
 
 
Hey, the hills when the evening settles!
Oh, the heavens within her eyes!
What will he ask ’mid the dropping petals?
And what will she say with sighs?—
 
 
“Look, where the west is a blur of roses!”—
“There’s naught like the rose o’ the cheeks I see!”—
“Look, where the first star’s eye uncloses!”—
“But what of your eyes, my destiny?”