Kitabı oku: «The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5)», sayfa 15

THE SPIRITS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS

Voices of Darkness

 
Ere the birth of Death and of Time,
And of Hell, with its tears and its torments:
Ere the waves of heat and of rime,
And the winds to the heavens were as garments:
Cloud-like in the womb of Space,
Mist-like from her monster womb,
We sprang, a myriad race
Of thunder and tempest and gloom.
 

Voices of Light

 
As from the evil good
Springs, and desire:
As the white lily’s hood
Buds from the mire:
So from this midnight brood
Sprang we with fire.
 

Voices of Darkness

 
We had lain for long ages asleep
In her bosom, a bulk of torpor,
When down through the vasts of the deep
Clove a sound, like the notes of a harper:
Clove a sound, and the horrors grew
Tumultuous with turbulent night,
With whirlwinds of blackness that blew,
And storm that was godly in might.
And the walls of our dungeon were shattered
Like the crust of a fire-wrecked world:
As torrents of clouds that are scattered,
From the womb of the deep we were hurled.
 

Voices of Light

 
Us in unholy thought
Patiently lying,
Eöns of violence wrought,
Violence defying;
When, on a mighty wind,
Voiced of a godly mind,
Big with a motive kind,
Girdled with wonder,
Flame and a strength of song,
Rolling vast light along,
Thundered the Word, and Wrong
Vanished,—and we were strong,
Strong as the thunder.
 

Voices of Darkness

 
We people the lower spaces,
Where our cities of silence make scorn
Of the sun, and our shadowy faces
Are safe from the splendors of morn.
Our homes are wrecked worlds and each planet
Whose sun is a light that is sped;
Bleak moons, whose cold bodies of granite
Are hollow and flameless and dead.
 

Voices of Light

 
We in the living sun
Live like a passion:
Ere the sad Earth begun
We and the sun were one,
As God did fashion.
Lo! from our burning hands,
Flung like inspired brands,
Sowed we the worlds, like sands,
Countless as ocean:
And ’tis our breath gives life,
Life to those stars, all rife
With iridescent strife,
Music and motion.
 

Voices of Darkness

 
We joy in the hate of all mortals;
Inspire their crimes and the thought
That falters and halts at the portals
Of actions, intentions unwrought.
We cover the face of to-morrow:
We frown in the hours that be:
We breathe in the presence of sorrow:
And death and destruction are we.
 

Voices of Light

 
We are man’s hope and ease,
Joy and his pleasure;
Authors of love and peace,
Love that shall never cease,
Free as the azure.
Lo! we but look, and light
Heartens the world with might,
Vanquishes death and night
Hate and its burnings:
And from our bosoms stream
Beauty and yearnings
For a diviner dream,
Higher discernings.
 

Voices of the Break of Day

 
Morning and birth are ours;
Light that is blown
From our fair lips; and flowers,
Dropped from our hands in showers,
Seeds that are sown:
Song and the bursting buds,
Life of the fields and floods;
Strength that’s full-grown:
And, from our beryl jars,
Filled with the clouds and stars,
Pour we the winds and dew;
While by our eyes of blue
Darkness is rent in two,
Conquered and strown.
 

Voices of the Dawn

 
Ye in your darkness are
Dark and infernal;
Subject to death and mar!
But in the spaces far,
Like our effulgent star,
We are eternal.
 

THE WATER WITCH

 
See! the milk-white doe is wounded.
He will follow as it bounds
Through the woods. His horn has sounded,
Echoing, for his men and hounds.
But no answering bugle blew.
He has lost his retinue
For the shapely deer that bounded
Past him when his bow he drew.
 
 
Not one hound or huntsman follows.
Through the underbrush and moss
Goes the slot; and in the hollows
Of the hills, that he must cross,
He has lost it. He must fare
Over rocks where she-wolves lair;
Wood-pools where the wild-boar wallows:
So he leaves his hunter there.
 
 
Through his mind then flashed an olden
Legend told him by the monks:—
Of a girl, whose hair is golden,
Haunting fountains and the trunks
Of the woodlands; who, they say,
Is a white doe all the day,
But when woods are night-enfolden
Turns into an evil fay.
 
 
Then the story once his teacher
Told him: of a mountain lake
Demons dwell in; vague of feature,
Human-like; but each a snake,
She is queen of.—Did he hear
Laughter at his startled ear?
Or a bird?—And now, what creature
Is it,—or the wind,—stirs near?
 
 
Fever of the hunt! This water,
Falling here, will cool his head.
Through the forest, dyed in slaughter,
Slants the sunset; ruby-red
Are the drops that slip between
Hollowed hands, while on the green,—
Like the couch of some wild daughter
Of the forest,—he doth lean.
 
 
But the runnel, bubbling, dripping,
Seems to bid him to be gone;
As with crystal words and tripping
Steps of sparkle luring on.
Now a spirit in the rocks
Calls him; now a face that mocks,
From behind some boulder slipping,
Laughs at him through lilied locks.
 
 
And he follows through the flowers,
Blue and gold, that blossom there;
Thridding twilight-haunted bowers
Where each ripple seems the bare
Beauty of white limbs that gleam
Rosy through the running stream;
Or bright-shaken hair, that showers
Starlight in the sunset’s beam.
 
 
Till, far in the forest, sleeping
Like a luminous darkness, lay
A deep water, wherein, leaping,
Fell the Fountain of the Fay,
With a singing, sighing sound,
As of spirit things around,
Musically laughing, weeping
In the air and underground.
 
 
Not a ripple o’er it merried:
Like the round moon in a cloud,
In its rocks the lake lay buried:
And strange creatures seemed to crowd
Its dark depths: dim limbs and eyes
To the surface seemed to rise
Spawn-like; or, all formless, ferried
Through the water shadow-wise.
 
 
Foliage things with woman faces,
Demon-dreadful, pale and wild
As the forms the lightning traces
On the clouds the storm has piled
In the darkness.—On the strand—
What is that which now doth stand?—
’Tis a woman: and she places
On his arm a spray-white hand.
 
 
Ah! two mystic worlds of sorrow
Were her eyes; her hair, a place
Whence the moon its gold might borrow;
And a dream of ice her face:
Round her hair and throat in rims
Pearls of foam hung; and through whims
Of her robe, as breaks the morrow,
Gleamed the rose-light of her limbs.
 
 
Who could help but gaze with gladness
On such beauty? though within,
Deep within the beryl sadness
Of those eyes, the serpent sin
Seemed to coil.—She placed her cheek
Chilly upon his, and weak
With love-longing and its madness
Grew he. Then he heard her speak:—
 
 
“Dost thou love me?”—“If surrender
Of the soul means love, I love.”
“Dost not fear me?”—“Fear?—more slender
Art thou than a wildwood dove.
Yet I fear—I fear to lose
Thee, thy love.”—“And thou dost choose
Aye to be my heart’s defender?”—
“Take me. I am thine to use.”
 
 
“Follow then.—Ah, love, no lowly
Home I give thee.”—With fixed eyes
To the water’s edge she slowly
Drew him.... Nor did he surmise
Who this creature was, until
O’er his face the foam closed chill,
Whispering, and the lake unholy
Rippled, rippled and was still.
 

THE SUCCUBA

 
I have dreams where I believe
That a queen of some dim palace,
One, whose name is Genevieve,
Weighs me with her love or malice:
She is dead and yet my bride:
And she glimmers at my side
Offering a crystal chalice
Filled with fire, diamond-dyed.
 
 
I have dreams. Ah, would that I
Might forget them!—I remember
How her gaze, all icily
Draws me, like a glowing ember,
Up her castle-stair’s pale-paved
Alabaster, from the waved
Ocean, grayer than November,
Where I linger, soul-enslaved.
 
 
Walls of shadow and of night
Lit with casements full of fire,
Somber red or piercing white:
As the wind breathes lower, higher,
Round the towers spirit-things
Whisper, and the haunted strings
Moan of each huge, plangent lyre
Set upon its four chief wings.
 
 
In its corridors at tryst
Flame-eyed phantoms meet. Its sparry
Halls are misty amethyst:
Battlemented ’neath the starry
Skies it looms; the strange unknown
Skies where, green as glow-worms, sown,
Gloom the stars; the moon hangs barry
Beryl, low and large and lone....
 
 
Can it be a witch is she?
Or a vampire? she, far whiter
Than the spirits of the sea!—
She whose eyes are cold, yet brighter
Than her throat’s pale jewels. Lo!
Flame she is though seeming snow:
And her love lies tighter, tighter
On my heart than utter woe.
 
 
Though I dream, it seems I live;
And my heart is sick with sorrow
Of the love that it must give
To her; passion, it must borrow
Of herself, unhallowed, vain;
Then return it her again:
Thus she holds me; and to-morrow
Still will hold with sweetest pain.
 
 
In her garden’s moon-white space
Strangest flowers bloom: huge lilies,
Each one with a human face;
Knots of spirit-amaryllis;
Cactus-bulks with pulpy blooms
Gnome-like in the silver glooms;
And dim deeps of daffadillies,
Fay-like, brimming faint perfumes.
 
 
But to me their fragrance seems
Poison; and their lambent lustre,
Spun of twilight and of dreams,
Poison; and each pearly cluster
Hides a serpent’s fang. And I,
Looking from an oriel, sigh;
For my soul is fain to muster
Heart to breathe of them and die.
 
 
Then I feel big eyes, as bright
As the sea-stars. Gray with glitter,
She behind me, moony white,
Smiles, ’mid hangings wherein flitter
Loves and deeds of Amadis
Darkly worked. And then her kiss
On my mouth falls; sweet and bitter
With a bliss that is not bliss.
 
 
And I kiss her eyes and hair;
Smooth her tresses till their golden
Glimmer sparkles. Everywhere
Shapes of strange aromas, holden
Of the walls, around us troop;
And in golden loop on loop,—
Of the lull’d eyes vague beholden,—
Forms of music o’er us stoop.
 
 
Yet I see beneath it all,
All this sorcery, a devil,
Beautiful, and white, and tall,
Broods with shadowy eyes of evil:
She, who must resume with morn
Her true shape: a cactus-thorn,
Monstrous, on some lonely level
Of that demon-world forlorn.
 
 
I have dreams where I believe
That a queen of some dim palace,
One, whose name is Genevieve,
Weighs me with her love or malice:
And all night I am her slave
There beside the demon wave,
Where I drain the loathsome chalice
Of her love, that is my grave.
 

MASKS

Cucullus non facit monachum

 
Live it down! as you have spoken
You could live it ere you knew
What love was—“a bauble broken,
Foolish, of a thing untrue.”—
You, Viola, with your beauty,
Cloistered, die a nun? No! you—
You must wed: it is your duty.
 
 
There’s your poniard; for the second
In this tazza dropped: the blood
On it scarcely hard.... I reckoned
Happily that hour we stood
There upon your palace-stairway,
How, with the Franciscan hood
Cowled, I said, there was a bare way.
 
 
In the minster there I found it—
Our revenge. I saw him, wild,
Stalking towards the church: around it
Dogged him, marking how he smiled
In the moonlight where I waited.
When the great clock, beating, dialed
Ten, I knew he would be mated.
 
 
Heaven or my better devil!—
Hardly had his sword and plume
Vanished in the dark, when, level
On the long lagoon, did loom,
Under moonlight-woven arches,
Her slim gondola: all gloom:
One tall gondolier: no torches.
 
 
Dusky gondolas kept bringing
Revellers: and far the night
Rang with instruments and singing.—
From the imbricated light
Of the oar-vibrating water,
Gliding up the stairway, white,
Velvet-masked,—the count’s own daughter!
 
 
Quick I met her: whispered, “Flora,
Gaston.—Mia, till they go,
One brief moment here, Siora.—
She’ll perceive us—she, below,
See! the duchess’ diamonds sparkling
Round the inviolable glow
Of her throat—there, dimly darkling:
 
 
“That’s Viola!” … Thus I drew her
In the church’s ancient pile—
Under her black mask I knew her,
By her chin, her lips, her smile.
Through one marble-foliated
Window fell the moon-rays. While
All the maskers passed we waited.
 
 
I had drawn the dagger. Turning
Called her by her name. Some lie
Of a passion sighed, her burning
Hand in mine; when, stalking by,
In the square, his form bejeweled
Gleamed. My very blood burned dry
With the hate his presence fueled.
 
 
Our revenge! up-pushing slightly
Cowl, the mask fell, and revealed
Balka, as the poniard whitely
Flashed. The hollow nave re-pealed
One long shriek the loft repeated.
Swift, I stabbed her thrice. She reeled
Dead. I thought of you, the heated
 
 
Horror on my hands; and tarried
Still as silence. Drawn aside
On her face the mask hung, married
To its camphor-pallor: wide
Eyes with terror—stone. One second
I regretted; then defied
All remorse. Your promise beckoned;
 
 
And I left her. Love had pointed
Me this way. I walked the way
Clear-eyed and … it has anointed
Us fast lovers?—Do not say,
Now, that you will go and nun it!
For this man who scorned you?—Nay!—
Live to hate him! You ’ve begun it.
 

CARMEN

 
La Gitanilla, tall dragoons
In Andalusian afternoons,
With ogling eye and compliment,
Smiled on you as along you went
Some sleepy street of old Seville;
Twirled with a military skill
Moustaches; buttoned uniforms
Of Spanish yellow bowed your charms.
 
 
Proud, wicked head, and hair blue-black,
Whence the mantilla, half thrown back,
Discovered shoulders and bold breast
Bohemian brown. And you were dressed
In some short skirt of gypsy red
Of smuggled stuff; and stockings,—dead
White silk,—that, worn with many a hole,
Let the plump leg peep through; while stole,
Now in, now out, your dainty toes,
Sheathed in morocco shoes, with bows
Of scarlet ribbon.—Flirtingly
You walked by me; and I did see
Your oblique eyes, your sensuous lip
That gnawed the rose I saw you flip
At bashful José’s nose while loud
The gaunt guards laughed among the crowd.
And in your brazen chemise thrust,
Heaved with the swelling of your bust,
A bunch of white acacia blooms
Whiffed past my nostrils hot perfumes.
 
 
As in a cool neveria
I ate an ice with Mérimée,
Dark Carmencita, very gay
You passed, with light and lissome tread,
All holiday bedizenéd;
A new mantilla on your head:
Your crimson dress gleamed, spangled fierce;
And crescent gold, hung in your ears,
Shone, wrought Morisco; and each shoe,
Of Cordovan leather, buckled blue,
Glanced merriment; and from large arms
To well-turned ankles all your charms
Blew flutterings and glitterings
Of satin bands and beaded strings:
Around each tight arm, twisted gold
Coiled serpents, and, a single fold,
Wreathed wrists; each serpent’s jeweled head,
With rubies set, convulsive red.
In flowers and trimmings, to the jar
Of mandolin and gay guitar,
You in the grated patio
Danced: the curled coxcombs’ staring row
Rang pleased applause. I saw you dance,
With wily motion and glad glance,
Voluptuous, the wild romalis,
Where every movement was a kiss,
A song, a poem, interwound
With your Basque tambourine’s dull sound.
I,—as the ebon castanets
Clucked out dry time in unctuous jets,—
Saw angry José through the grate
Glare on us, a pale face of hate,
When some indecent officer
Presumed too lewdly to you there.
 
 
Some still night in Seville: the street
Candilejo: two shadows meet:
Swift sabres flash within the moon—
Clash rapidly.—A dead dragoon.
 

AT NINEVEH

 
There was a princess once, who loved the slave
Of an Assyrian king, her father; known
At Nineveh as Hadria; o’er whose grave
The sands of centuries have long been blown;
Yet sooner shall the night forget its stars
Than love her story:—How, unto his throne,
One day she came, where, with his warriors,
The King sat in his hall of audience,
’Mid pillared trophies of barbaric wars,
And, kneeling to him, asked, “O father, whence
Comes love and why?”—He, smiling on her said,—
“O Hadria, love is of the gods, and hence
Divine, is only soul-interpreted.
But why love is, ah, child, we do not know,
Unless ’t is love that gives us life when dead.”—
And then his daughter, with a face aglow
With all the love that clamored in her blood
Its sweet avowal, lifted arms of snow,
And, like Aurora’s rose, before him stood,
Saying,—“Since love is of the powers above,
I love a slave, O Asshur!—Let the good
The gods have giv’n be sanctioned.—Speak not of
Dishonor and our line’s ancestral dead!
They are imperial dust. I live and love.”—
Black as black storm then rose the King and said,—
A lightning gesture sweeping at her there,—
“Enough! ho, Rhana, strike me off her head!”
And at the mandate, with his limbs half bare
A slave strode forth. Majestic was his form
As some young god’s. He, gathering up her hair,
Wound it three times around his sinewy arm;
Then drew his sword. It for one moment shone
A semicircling light, and, dripping warm,
Lifting the head he stood before the throne.
Then said the despot, “By the horn of Bel!
This was no child of mine!”—Like chiseled stone
Stern stood the slave, a son of Israel.
Then striding towards the monarch, in his eye
The wrath of heaven and the hate of hell,
Shrieked, “Beast! I loved her! look on us and die!”
Swifter than fire clove him to the brain.
Then kissed her face, and, holding it on high,
Cried out, “Judge thou, O God, between us twain!”
And, fifty daggers in his heart, fell slain.
 

SENORITA

 
An agate black, her roguish eyes
Claim no proud lineage of the skies,
No starry blue; but of good earth
The reckless witchery and mirth.
 
 
Looped in her raven hair’s repose,
A hot aroma, one red rose
Droops; envious of that loveliness,
Through being near which, its is less.
 
 
Twin sea-shells hung with pearls, her ears;
Whose delicate rosiness appears
Part of the pearls; whose pallid fire
Binds the attention these inspire.
 
 
One slim hand crumples up the lace
About her bosom’s swelling grace;
A ruby at her samite throat
Lends the required color-note.
 
 
The moon brings up the violet night
An urn of pearly-chaliced light;
And from the dark-railed balcony
She stoops and waves her fan at me.
 
 
O’er orange blossoms and the rose
Vague, odorous lips the South Wind blows,
Peopling the night with whispers of
Romance and palely passionate love.
 
 
And now she speaks; and seems to reach
My soul like song that learned its speech
From some dim instrument—who knows?—
Or flow’r, a dulcimer or rose.
 

SINCE THEN

 
I found myself among the trees
What time the reapers ceased to reap;
And in the sunflower-blooms the bees
Huddled brown heads and went to sleep,
Rocked by the balsam-breathing breeze.
 
 
I saw the red fox leave his lair,
A shaggy shadow, on the knoll;
And, tunnelling his thoroughfare
Beneath the soil, I watched the mole—
Stealth’s own self could not take more care.
 
 
I heard the death-moth tick and stir,
Slow-honeycombing through the bark;
I heard the cricket’s drowsy chirr,
And one lone beetle burr the dark—
The sleeping woodland seemed to purr.
 
 
And then the moon rose: and a white
Low bough of blossoms—grown almost
Where, ere you died, ’t was our delight
To tryst,—dear heart!—I thought your ghost:
—The wood is haunted since that night.
 

AFTER DEATH

 
At moonset, when ghost speaks with ghost
And spirits meet where once they sinned,
Between the whispering wood and coast,
My soul met her soul on the wind,
My late-lost Evalind.
 
 
I kissed her mouth. Her face was wild.
Two burning shadows were her eyes,
Wherein the love,—that once had smiled
A heartbreak smile,—in some strange wise,
I did not recognize.
 
 
Then suddenly I seemed to see
How sin had damned my soul and doomed
To wander thus eternally
With love and loathing, that assumed
The form of her entombed.
 

THE OLD MAN DREAMS

 
The blackened walnut in its spicy hull
Rots where it fell;
And, in the orchard, where the trees stand full,
The pear’s brown bell
Drops; and the log-house in the bramble lane,
From whose low door
Stretch yellowing acres of the corn and cane,
He sees once more.
 
 
The cat-bird sings upon its porch of pine;
And o’er its gate,
All slender-podded, twists the trumpet-vine
Its leafy weight:
And in the woodland, by the spring, mayhap,
With eyes of joy
Again he bends to set a rabbit-trap,
A brown-faced boy.
 
 
Then, whistling, through the underwoods he goes,
Out of the wood,
Where, with young cheeks, red as an autumn rose,
In gingham hood,
His sweetheart waits, her school-books on her arm:
And now it seems
Beside his chair bends down his wife’s fair form—
The old man dreams.
 

MEMORIES

 
Here where Love lies perishéd,
Look not in upon the dead,
Lest the shadowy curtains, shaken
In my Heart’s dark chamber, waken
Ghosts, beneath whose garb of sorrow
Whilom gladness bows his head:
When you come at morn, to-morrow,
Look not in upon the dead,
Here where Love lies perishéd.
 
 
Here where Love lies cold interred,
Let no syllable be heard,
Lest the hollow echoes, housing
In my Soul’s deep tomb, arousing
Wake a voice of woe, once laughter
Claimed and clothed in joy’s own word:
When you come at dusk, or after,
Let no syllable be heard,
Here where Love lies cold interred.
 

MARCH AND MAY

 
Windy the sky and mad;
Surly the gray March day;
Bleak the forests and sad,—
Oh, that it only were May!
 
 
On maples, tasseled with red,
No blithe bird, fluting, swung;
The brook, in its swollen bed,
Raved on in an unknown tongue.
 
 
We walked in the wind-tossed wood:
Her face as the May’s was fair;
Her blood was the May’s own blood;
And May’s her radiant hair.
 
 
And we found in the woodland wild
One cowering violet,
Like a frail and timorous child,
In the caked leaves bowed and wet.
 
 
And I said, “We have walked in vain!
To find but this shivering bud,
Weighed down with its weight of rain,
Crouched here in the wild March wood.”
 
 
But she said, “Though the day be sad,
And the skies be dark with fate,
There is always something glad
That will help our hearts to wait.
 
 
“Look, now, at this beautiful thing,
In this wood’s wild hollow curled!
’Tis a promise of joy and spring,
And of love, to the waiting world.
 
 
“Ah, the sinless Earth is fair,
And man’s are the sin and the gloom—
Come, bury the days that were,
And look to’ard the days to come!”
 

* * *

 
And the May came on with her charms,
With twinkle and rustle of feet;
Blooms stormed from her luminous arms
And songs that were wildly sweet.
 
 
Now I think of her words that day,
This day that I longed so to see,
That finds her dead with the May,
And my life but a withered tree.