Kitabı oku: «The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5)», sayfa 7

II

 
And now he wipes his hand along
The beaded fire of his brow
Hard toil has heated; and the strong
Face flushes fuller health as now
He fills his hay-fork to the prong,
And, tossing it, again doth bow.
 
 
And now he rests, and looks away
Across the sun-fierce hills and meads
No rolling cloud has cooled to-day;
And from his face the brawny beads
Drip; and he marks the heaps of hay,
The fields of corn, the fields of weeds.
 
 
At last he sees the tempest build
Black battlements along the west,
Black breastworks that are thunder filled;
And bares his brow; and on his chest
The sweat of toil is cooled; and stilled
The pulse of toil within his breast.
 
 
A strong wind brings the odorous death
Of far hay-meadows, and the scent
Is good within his nostrils’ breath:
The mighty trees are bowed, that leant
For no man, as when Power saith
“Bow down!” and stalwart men are bent.
 
 
He laughs, long-gazing as he goes
Along the elder-sweetened lane:
He feels the storm wind as it blows
Across the sheaves of golden grain,
And stops to pull one bramble-rose,
And watch the swiftly coming rain.
 
 
And there, ’mid locust trees, the farm
Dreams in a martin-haunted place:
He marks the far-off streaks of storm
That, driven of the thunder, race:
He sees his child upon her arm,
And in the door his wife’s fair face.
 

III

 
Below the sunset’s range of rose,
Below the heaven’s bending blue,
Down woodways where the balsam blows,
And milkweed tufts hang, gray of hue,
A Jersey heifer stops and lows—
The cows come home by one, by two.
 
 
There is no star yet: but the smell
Of hay and pennyroyal mix
With herb-aromas of the dell;
And the root-hidden cricket clicks:
Among the ironweeds a bell
Clangs near the rail-fenced clover-ricks.
 
 
She waits upon the slope beside
The windlassed well the plum-trees shade,
The well-curb that the goose-plums hide;
Her light hand on the bucket laid,
Unbonneted she waits, glad-eyed,
Her dress as simple as her braid.
 
 
She sees fawn-colored backs among
The sumacs now; a tossing horn;
A clashing bell of brass that rung:
Long shadows lean upon the corn,
And all the day dies scarlet-stung,
The cloud in it a rosy thorn.
 
 
Below the pleasant moon, that tips
The tree-tops of the hillside, fly
The evening bats; the twilight slips
Some fireflies like spangles by;
She meets him, and their happy lips
Touch; and one star leaps in the sky.
 
 
He takes her bucket, and they speak
Of married hopes while in the grass
The plum lies glowing as her cheek;
The patient cows look back or pass;
And in the west one golden streak
Burns like a great cathedral glass.
 

IV

 
The skies are amber, blue, and green
Before the coming of the sun;
And all the deep hills sleep, serene
As if enchanted; every one
Is ribbed with morning mists that lean
On woods through which vague whispers run.
 
 
Birds wake: and on the vine-hung knobs,
Above the brook, a twittering
Confuses songs; one warbler robs
Another of its note; a wing
Beats by; and now a wild throat throbs
Triumphant; all the woodlands sing.
 
 
The sun is up: the hills are heaped
With instant splendor; and the vales
Surprised with shimmers that are steeped
In purple where the thin mist trails;
The water-fall, the rock it leaped,
Are burning gold that foams and fails.
 
 
He drives his horses to the plow
Along the vineyard slopes, where bask
Dew-heavy grapes, half-ripened now,
In sun-shot shafts of shade: no mask
Of joy he wears; his face and brow
Glow as he enters on his task.
 
 
Before him, soaring through the mist,
The gray hawk wildly wings and screams;
Its dewy back gleams, sunbeam-kissed,
Above the wood that drips and dreams;
He guides the plow with one strong fist;
The soil rolls back in level seams.
 
 
Packed to the right the sassafras
Lifts leafy walls of spice that shade
The blackberries, whose tendrils mass
Big berries in the coolness made;
And drop their ripeness on the grass
Where trumpet-flowers fall and fade.
 
 
White on the left the fence and trees
That mark the garden; and the smoke,
Uncurling in the early breeze,
Tells of the roof beneath the oak;
He turns his team, and, turning, sees
The damp, dark soil his coulter broke.
 
 
Bees hum; and o’er the berries poise
Lean-bodied wasps; loud blackbirds turn
Following the plow: there is a noise
Of insect wings that buzz and burn;—
And now he hears his wife’s low voice,
The song she sings to help her churn.
 

V

 
There are no clouds that drift around
The moon’s pearl-kindled crystal, (white
As some sky-summoned spirit wound
In raiment lit with limbs of light),
That have not softened like the sound
Of harps when Heaven forgets to smite.
 
 
The vales are deeper than the dark,
And darker than the vales the woods
That shadowy hill and meadow mark
With broad, blurred lines, whereover broods
Deep calm; and now a fox-hound’s bark
Upon the quietude intrudes.
 
 
And though the night is never still,
Yet what we name its noises makes
Its silence:—now a whippoorwill;
A frog, whose hoarser tremor breaks
The hush; then insect sounds that fill
The night; an owl that hoots and wakes.
 
 
They lean against the gate that leads
Into the lane that lies between
The yard and orchard; flowers and weeds
Smell sweeter than the odors keen
That day distils from hotness; beads
Of dew make cool the gray and green.
 
 
Their infant sleeps. They feel the peace
Of something done that God has blessed,
Still as the pulse that will not cease
There in the cloud that lights the west:
The peace of love that shall increase
While soul to soul still gives its best.
 

AN EPIC OF SOUTH-FORK

I

 
The wild brook gleams on the sand and ripples
Over the rocks of the riffle; brimming
Under the elms like a nymph who dripples,
Dips and glimmers and shines in swimming:
Under the linns and the ash-trees lodging,
Loops of the limpid waters lie,
Shaken of schools of the minnows, dodging
The glancing wings of the dragon-fly.
 
 
Lower, the loops are lines of laughter
Over the stones and the crystal gravel;
Afar they gloom, like a face seen after
Mirth, where the waters slowly travel;
Shadowy slow where the Fork is shaken
Of the dropping bark of the sycamore,
Where the water-snake, that the footsteps waken,
Slides like a crooked root from shore.
 
 
Peace of the forest; and silence, dimmer
Than dreams. And now a wing that winnows
The willow leaves, with their shadows slimmer
In the shallow there than a school of minnows:
Calm of the creek; and a huge tree twisted,
Ringed, and turned to a tree of pearl;
A gray-eyed man, who is farmer-fisted,
And a dark-eyed, sinewy country girl.
 
 
The brow of the man is gnarled and wrinkled
With the weight of the words that have just been spoken;
And the girl has smiled and her eyes have twinkled,
Though the bonds and the bands of their love lie broken:
She smiles, nor knows how the days have knotted
Her to the heart of the man who says:
“Let us follow the paths that we think allotted.
I will go my ways and you your ways.
 
 
“And the man between us is your decision.
Worse or better he is your lover.—
Shall I say he ’s worse since the sweet Elysian
Prize he wins where I discover
Only the hell of the luckless chooser?—
Shall I say he ’s better than I, or more,
Since he is winner and I am loser,
His life ’s made rich and mine made poor?”
 
 
“I tell you now as I oft and ever
Have told,” she answered, the laughter dying
Down in her eyes, “that his arms have never
Held me!—no!—but you think me lying,
And you are wrong. And I think it better
To part forever than still to dwell
With the sad distrust, like an evil tetter,
On our lives forever, and so farewell.”
 
 
And she turned away; and he watched her going,
The girlish pride in her eyes a-smoulder:
He saw her go, and his lips were glowing
Fever that parched. And he stood, one shoulder
Slouched to the tree; and he saw her stooping,
There by the bank, with a reckless foot;
Straighten; and tear from her breast his drooping
Lilies and fasten the pleurisy-root.
 
 
With its orange fire he saw her passing
On and on; and the blood beat, burning
His brain to madness; and seemingly massing
The weight of the world on his heart in yearning …
Butterflies swarmed in the moist sand-alleys;
A fairy fleet of Ionian sails
They seemed with their wings, or of pirate galleys,
Maroon and yellow, for Elfland gales.
 
 
He watched her going; and harder, thicker
The pulse of his breath and his heart’s hard throbbing.—
How should he know that her heart was sicker?
How should he know that her soul was sobbing?—
She never looked back: and he saw her vanish
In swirls of the startled butterflies,
Like a storm of flowers; and he could not banish
The thought he had lost his all through lies.
 

II

 
He heard the cocks crow out the lonely hours.
How long the night! how far away the dawn!
It seemed long months since he had seen the flowers,
The leaves, the sunlight, and the bee-hived lawn;
Had heard the thrush flute in the tangled showers.
 
 
His burning eyes ached, staring at the black
Stolidity of midnight. Would God send
No cool relief unto his mind,—a rack
Of inquisition,—tortures to unbend,
That stretched him forward and now strained him back?
 
 
Incomprehensible and undivulged,
The thought that took him back, retraced their walks,
Through woods, on which the sudden perfumes bulged,
The bird-songs and the brilliant-blossomed stalks;
And all the freedom which their talk indulged.
 
 
Oh, strong appeal! And he would almost yield;
When, firmly forward, he could feel her fault
Oppose the error of a rock-like shield,
And to resisting phalanxes cry halt—
And, lo! bright cohorts broken on the field.
 
 
O mulct of morning! to the despot night
Count down unminted gold, and let the day
Walk free from dungeons of the dark; delight
Herself on mountains of the violet ray,
Clad in white maidenhood and morning white!
 
 
A melancholy coast, plunged deep in dream
And death and silence, stretched the drowsy dark,
Wherein he heard a round-eyed screech-owl scream,
In lamentation, and a watch-dog bark,
Vague as oblivion, lost in night’s deep stream.
 
 
And then hope moved him to divide the blinds
To see if those bright sparkles were a star’s,
Or but his feverish eyelids, which the mind’s
Commotion weighed.—No hint of morning bars
With glimmer heaven’s swart tapestry he finds.
 
 
So he remained, impatient, till the first
Exploring crevices of Aztec morn,
Dim cracks of treasure, Eldorados burst:
Then could he face his cowardice and scorn
His jealousy that thus his life had cursed.
 
 
Love knew no barriers now. And where he went
Each woodland path was musical with birds;
Each flow’r was richer, more divine of scent;
For love sought love with such expressive words
That dawn’s delivery was less eloquent.
 

III

 
Who is it hunts with his dog
There where the heron is flying
Gray through the feathering fog
Over the Fork, where is lying,
Bridge-like, a butternut log,
There where the horsemint is drying?
 
 
Who is it hunts in the brush,
Under the linns and the beeches,
Here where the water-falls rush,
Dark, where the noon never reaches?
Here where the Fork is one crush
Of flags with a bloom like the peach’s?
 
 
He is handsome and supple and tall,
Blond-haired and vigorous-chested,
Blue-eyed as the bud by the fall
Where he listens,—his rifle half rested,
Half leaned on the crumbling stone wall,—
Whose briers he lately has breasted.
 
 
He waits; and the sun on the dew
Of the cedars and leaves of the bushes
Strikes glittering frostiness through …
If a covey of partridges flushes
What good will a Winchester do,
Or the dog to his feet that he crushes?
 
 
Then a man breaks strong through the weeds
Where the buck-bushes toss and the spires
Of the white-blossomed cohosh; ’mid reeds
Wild-carrots, and trammelling briers:
It is he! to his loved one who speeds—
And the man in the bushes—he fires....
 
 
From leaves of the wind-shaken wood
The dew of the dawn is still falling:
He is gone from the place where he stood,
Just there where the black crow is calling:
There is blood on the weeds: is it blood
On the face of the man who is crawling?
 
 
Red blood or a smudge of the dawn?—
Now he lies with his gray eyes wide, staring,
Stiff, still at the sun: he has drawn
His limbs in a heap: and the faring
Bee-martins light near or pass on,
Not one of them knowing or caring.
 
 
It is noon: and the wood-dove is deep
In the calm of its cooing: and over
The tops of the forest trees sweep
The shadows of buzzards that hover:
Wide-winged they sail on as asleep:
And the bob-white is whistling from cover.
 
 
It is dusk: and the heat, that made wilt
The leaves and the wildflowers’ faces,
Gives place to the dew-drops that tilt
With coolness the weeds where are traces
Of horror and darkness and guilt,
That nothing can wash from those places.
 
 
It is night: and the hoot-owlet mocks
The dove of the day with wild weeping,
The Fork is scarce heard on its rocks
Where the man is so quietly sleeping:
Through the woods snaps the bark of a fox;
The lightning is fitfully leaping.
 

IV

 
All day, ’twixt hope and fear,
She waited at the gate,
Looking for him, more dear
Now that he made her wait:
Day went and night draws near:
Stormy it grows and late.
 
 
Still, still she waits: great limbs
The winds rend from the ridge;
Each swollen shallow swims
Head-deep below the bridge;
The drift, that breaks and brims
Swirls lighter than the midge.
 
 
The night grows wildly gray
With lightning-litten rain;
The forests sound and sway,
An oak is rent in twain;
The thunder rolls away
Like some vast bolt and chain.
 
 
The Fork is whirling wreck
Of field and farm and wood;
And many a foaming fleck
Drives where the rock-fence stood;—
A torrent sweeps break-neck
Above the washed-out blood.
 
 
Night deepens: still she waits
Expectant in despair:
The Fork has reached the gates,
The wood’s wreck everywhere.
But when the storm abates,
She thinks, he will be there.
 
 
She sees the lightning rush
Its blazing hells above;
She hears the thunder crush
Heaven as if earthquake-clove—
Loud in the tempest’s hush
She calls with all her love.
 
 
He comes, she feels; and stands
The rushing waters o’er
Her feet, and on her hands
And hair the wild down-pour,
The lightnings are wild brands
To light him to her door.
 
 
Night deepens: but she knows
God will not fail to send
Her love to soothe her woes,
And one day’s errors mend.—
The wild stream foams and flows
Booming in fall and bend.
 
 
Again the lightnings light
The night like some wild torch;
The waters foam and fight;
And one uprooted larch
Sweeps down, with something white
Wedged in it, by her porch.
 
 
She stoops: the lurid rain
Beats on her back and head—
Ay! he hath come again!
With livid lips once red!
A bullet in his brain
The night hath brought him—dead!
 

A NIELLO

I

 
It is not early spring and yet
Of bloodroot blooms along the stream,
And blotted banks of violet,
My heart will dream.
 
 
Is it because the wind-flower apes
The beauty that was once her brow,
That the white thought of it still shapes
The April now?
 
 
Because the wild-rose learned its blush
From her fresh cheeks of maidenhood,
Their thought makes June of barren brush
And empty wood?
 
 
And then I think how young she died—
Straight, barren death stalks down the trees,
The hard-eyed hours by his side
That kill and freeze.
 

II

 
When orchards are in bloom again
My heart will bound, my blood will beat,
To hear the red-bird so repeat,
On boughs of rosy stain,
His blithe, loud song,—like some far strain
From out the past,—among the bloom,—
(Where bee, and wasp, and hornet boom)—
Fresh, redolent with rain.
 
 
When orchards are in bloom once more,
Invasions of lost dreams will draw
My feet, like some insistent law,
Through blossoms to her door:
In dreams I’ll ask her, as before,
To let me help her at the well;
And fill her pail; and long to tell
My love as once of yore.
 
 
I shall not speak until we quit
The farm-gate, leading to the lane
And orchard, all in bloom again,
’Mid which the wood-doves sit
And coo; and through whose blossoms flit
The cat-birds crying while they fly:
Then tenderly I’ll speak, and try
To tell her all of it.
 
 
And in my dream again she’ll place
Her hand in mine, as oft before,—
When orchards are in bloom once more,—
With all her old-time grace:
And we will tarry till a trace
Of sunset dyes the heav’ns; and then—
We’ll part, and, parting, I again
Will bend and kiss her face.
 
 
And homeward, dreaming, I will go
Along the cricket-chirring ways,
While sunset, like one crimson blaze
Of blossoms, lingers low:
And my lost youth again I’ll know,
And all her love, when spring is here—
Hers! hers! now dead this many a year
Whose love still haunts me so.
 

III

 
I would not die when Springtime lifts
The white world to her maiden mouth,
And heaps its cradle with gay gifts,
Breeze-blown from out the singing South:
Too full of life and loves that cling,
Too heedless of all mortal woe,
The young, unsympathetic Spring,
That death should never know.
 
 
I would not die when Summer shakes
Her daisied locks below her hips,
And, naked as a star that takes
A cloud, into the silence slips.
Too rich is Summer; poor in needs;
Wrapped in her own warm loveliness
Her pomp goes by, and never heeds
If one be more or less.
 
 
But I would die when Autumn goes,
The sad rain dripping from her hair,
Through forests where the wild wind blows
Death and the red wreck everywhere:
Sweet as love’s last farewells and tears
’T would be to die, when heavens are gray,
In the old autumn of my years,
Like a dead leaf borne far away.
 

DEEP IN THE FOREST

I

SPRING ON THE HILLS

 
Ah, shall I follow, on the hills,
The Spring, as wild wings follow?
Where wild-plum trees make wan the hills,
Crab-apple trees the hollow,
Haunts of the bee and swallow?
 
 
In red-bud brakes and flowery
Acclivities of berry;
In dogwood dingles, showery
With dew, where wrens make merry?
Or drifts of swarming cherry?
 
 
In valleys of wild-strawberries,
And of the clumped May-apple;
Or cloud-like trees of hawberries,
With which the south-winds grapple,
That brook and pathway dapple?
 
 
With eyes of far forgetfulness,—
Like some white wood-thing’s daughter,
Whose feet are bee-like fretfulness,—
To see her run like water
Through boughs that slipped or caught her.
 
 
O Spring, to seek, yet find you not,
To search and still continue;
To glimpse, to touch, but bind you not,
To lose and then to win you,
All sweet evasion in you.
 
 
In pearly, peach-blush distances
You gleam; the woods are braided
Of myths, of dream-existences;—
There, where the brook is shaded,
Some splendor surely faded.
 
 
O presence, like the primrose’s,
Once more I feel your power!
In rainy scents of dim roses
I breathe you for an hour,
Elusive as a flower.
 

II

THE WOOD SPIRIT

 
Ah me! I still remember
How flushed, before the shower,
The dusk was; like a scarlet rose,
Or blood-red poppy-flower.
 
 
Now heaven is starred; the moonlight
Lays blurs upon the grain—
You may not know it from white frost,
The moonlight on the rain.
 
 
And all the forest utters
A restless moan in rest,
For all the deep, dark shadow lies
Like iron on its breast.
 
 
I mark the moveless shadow,
I mark the unreaped corn,
Then something whispers overhead,
“Come to me, mortal-born.”
 
 
I sit alone and listen;
The low leaves sound and sigh;
The dew drips from the bearded grain,
A mist slips from the sky.—
 
 
I hear her whisper, whisper,
And breathe in some dim place;
Her feet are easier than the dew,
And than the mist her face.
 
 
I may not clasp her ever,
This spirit made for song,
Who dwelleth in the young, young oak
The old, old oaks among.
 
 
Her limbs are molded moonlight;
Her breasts are silver moons:
She glimmers and she glitters where
The purple shadow swoons.
 
 
And since she knows I love her,
She says my soul has died,
And laughs and mocks me in the mist
That haunts the forest-side.
 
 
When winds run mad in woodlands
And all the great boughs swing,
I see her wild hair blow and blow
Black as a raven’s wing.
 
 
When winds are tamed and tethered
And stars are keen as frost,
I search and seek within the wood,
There where my soul was lost.
 
 
I seek her, and she flies me;
I follow; and the whole
Dim woodland echoes with her voice,
Soft calling to my soul.
 

III

OWL ROOST

 
The slope is a mass of vines:
If you walk in the daylight there,
A gleam as of twilight shines
Through the vines massed everywhere:
Each trunk, that a creeper twines,
Is a column, strong to bear
The dome of its leaves that wave,
Cathedral-dim and grave.
 
 
Black moss makes silent the feet:
And, above, the fox-grapes lace
So thick that the noonday heat
Is chill as a murdered face:
And the winds for miles repeat
The fugue of a rolling bass:
The deep leaves twinkle and turn
But over no flower or fern.
 
 
An angular spider weaves
Great webs between the trees,
Webs that are witches’ sieves:
And honey-and bumblebees
Go droning among the leaves,
Like the fairies’ oboës:
At dark the owlets croon
To the stars and the sickle-moon.
 
 
At dark I will not go
There where the branches sigh;
Where naught but the glow-worms glow,
Each one like a demon’s eye:
O’er which, like a battle-bow,
With an arrow that it lets fly,
The new-moon and one star
Hang and glimmer afar.
 
 
At dawn, if my mood be dim,
And the day be a cloudless one,
There where the sad winds hymn
I ’ll walk, but its shade will shun;
Its shade, where I feel the grim
Horror of something done
Here in the years long past,
That the place conceals to the last.