Kitabı oku: «The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5)», sayfa 9

VI

THE MESSAGE

 
Long shadows toward the east: and in the west
A blaze of garnet sunset, wherein rolled
One cloud like some great gnarly log of gold;
Each gabled casement of the farm seemed dressed
In ghosts of roses blossoming manifest.
 
 
And she had brought his letter there to read,
There on the porch, that faced the locust glade;
To watch the summer sunset burn and fade,
And breathe the twilight scent of wood and weed,
Forget all care and her soul’s hunger feed.
 
 
And on his face her fancy mused a while:
“Dark hair, dark eyes.—And now he has a beard
Dark as his hair.”—She smiled; yet almost feared
It changed him so she could not reconcile
Her heart to that which hid his lips and smile.
 
 
Then tried to feature, but could only see
The beardless man who bent to her and kissed
Her and their child and left them to enlist:
She heard his horse grind in the gravel: he
Waved them adieu and rode to fight with Lee.
 
 
Now all around her drowsed the hushful hum
Of evening insects. And his letter spoke
Of love and longings to her: nor awoke
One echo of the bugle and the drum,
But all their future in one kiss did sum.
 
 
The stars were thick now; and the western blush
Drained into darkness. With a dreamy sigh
She rocked her chair.—It must have been the cry
Of infancy that made her rise and rush
To where their child slept, and to hug and
hush.
 
 
Then she returned. But now her ease was gone.
She knew not what, she felt an unknown fear
Press, tightening, at her heart-strings; then a tear
Scalded her eyelids, and her cheeks grew wan
As helpless sorrow’s, and her white lips drawn.
 
 
With stony eyes she grieved against the skies,
A slow, dull, aching agony that knew
Few tears, and saw no answer shining to
Her silent questions in the stars’ still eyes
“Where Peace delays and where her soldier lies.”
 
 
They could have told her. Peace was far away,
Beyond the field that belched black batteries
All the red day. ’Mid picket silences,
On woodland mosses, in a suit of gray,
Shot through the heart, he by his rifle lay.
 

VII

THE WOMAN ON THE HILL

 
The storm-red sun, through wrecks of wind and rain,
And dead leaves driven from the frantic boughs,
Where, on the hill-top, stood a gaunt, gray house,
Flashed wildest ruby on each rainy pane.
 
 
Then woods grew darker than unburdened grief;
And, crimson through the woodland’s ruin, streamed
The sunset’s glare—a furious eye, which seemed
Watching the moon rise like a yellow leaf.
 
 
The rising moon, against which, like despair,
High on the hill, a woman, darkly drawn,
The wild leaves round her, stood; with features wan,
And tattered dress and wind-distracted hair.
 
 
As still as death, and looking, not through tears,
For the young face of one she knows is lost,
While in her heart the melancholy frost
Gathers of all the unforgotten years.
 
 
What if she heard to-night a hurrying hoof,
Wild as the whirling of the withered leaf,
Bring her a more immedicable grief,
A shattered shape to live beneath her roof!
 
 
The shadow of him who claimed her once as wife;
Her lover!—no!—the wreck of all their past
Brought back from battle!—Better to the last
A broken heart than heartbreak all her life!
 

MOSBY AT HAMILTON

 
Down Loudon lanes, with swinging reins,
And clash of spur and sabre,
And bugling of the battle-horn,
Six score and eight we rode that morn,
Six score and eight of Southern born,
All tried in war’s hot labor.
 
 
Full in the sun, at Hamilton,
We met the South’s invaders;
Who, over fifteen hundred strong,
’Mid blazing homes had marched along
All night, with Northern shout and song,
To crush the rebel raiders.
 
 
Down Loudon lanes, with streaming manes,
We spurred in wild March weather;
And all along our war-scarred way
The graves of Southern heroes lay—
Our guide-posts to revenge that day,
As we rode grim together.
 
 
Old tales still tell some miracle
Of Saints in holy writing—
But who shall say why hundreds fled
Before the few that Mosby led,
Unless it was that even the dead
Fought with us then when fighting.
 
 
While Yankee cheers still stunned our ears,
Of troops at Harper’s Ferry;
While Sheridan led on his Huns,
And Richmond rocked to roaring guns,
We felt the South still had some sons
She would not scorn to bury.
 

THE FEUD

 
Rocks, trees and rocks; and down a mossy stone
The murmuring ooze and trickle of a stream
Through brambles, where the mountain spring lies lone,—
A gleaming cairngorm where the shadows dream,—
And one wild road winds like a saffron seam.
 
 
Here sang the thrush, whose pure, mellifluous note
Dropped golden sweetness on the fragrant June;
Here cat-and blue-bird and wood-sparrow wrote
Their presence on the silence with a tune;
And here the fox drank ’neath the mountain moon.
 
 
Frail ferns and dewy mosses and dark brush,—
Impenetrable briers, deep and dense,
And wiry bushes;—brush, that seemed to crush
The struggling saplings with its tangle, whence
Sprawled out the ramble of an old rail-fence.
 
 
A wasp buzzed by; and then a butterfly
In orange and amber, like a floating flame;
And then a man, hard-eyed and very sly,
Gaunt-cheeked and haggard and a little lame,
With an old rifle, down the mountain came.
 
 
He listened, drinking from a flask he took
Out of the ragged pocket of his coat;
Then all around him cast a stealthy look;
Lay down; and watched an eagle soar and float,
His fingers twitching at his hairy throat.
 
 
The shades grew longer; and each Cumberland height
Loomed, framed in splendors of the dolphin dusk.
Around the road a horseman rode in sight;
Young, tall, blond-bearded. Silent, grim, and brusque,
He in the thicket aimed—Quick, harsh, then husk,
 
 
The echoes barked among the hills and made
Repeated instants of the shot’s distress.—
Then silence—and the trampled bushes swayed:—
Then silence, packed with murder and the press
Of distant hoofs that galloped riderless.
 

LYNCHERS

 
At the moon’s down-going, let it be
On the quarry hill with its one gnarled tree.
 
 
The red-rock road of the underbrush,
Where the woman came through the summer hush.
 
 
The sumac high and the elder thick,
Where we found the stone and the ragged stick.
 
 
The trampled road of the thicket, full
Of footprints down to the quarry pool.
 
 
The rocks that ooze with the hue of lead,
Where we found her lying stark and dead.
 
 
The scraggy wood; the negro hut,
With its doors and windows locked and shut.
 
 
A secret signal; a foot’s rough tramp;
A knock at the door; a lifted lamp.
 
 
An oath; a scuffle; a ring of masks;
A voice that answers a voice that asks.
 
 
A group of shadows; the moon’s red fleck;
A running noose and a man’s bared neck.
 
 
A word, a curse, and a shape that swings;
The lonely night and a bat’s black wings.
 
 
At the moon’s down-going, let it be
On the quarry hill with its one gnarled tree.
 

DEAD MAN’S RUN

 
He rode adown the autumn wood,
A man dark-eyed and brown;
A mountain girl before him stood
Clad in a homespun gown.
 
 
“To ride this road is death for you!
My father waits you there;
My father and my brother, too—
You know the oath they swear.”
 
 
He holds her by one berry-brown wrist,
And by one berry-brown hand;
And he hath laughed at her and kissed
Her cheek the sun hath tanned.
 
 
“The feud is to the death, sweetheart:
But forward must I ride.”—
“And if you ride to death, sweetheart,
My place is by your side.”
 
 
Low hath he laughed again and kissed
And helped her with his hand;
And they have galloped into the mist
That belts the autumn land.
 
 
And they had passed by Devil’s Den,
And come to Dead Man’s Run,
When in the brush rose up two men,
Each with a levelled gun.
 
 
“Down! down! my sister!” cries the one;—
She gives the reins a twirl.—
The other shouts, “He shot my son!
And now he steals my girl!”
 
 
The rifles crack: she will not wail:
He will not cease to ride:
But, oh! her face is pale, is pale,
And the red blood stains her side.
 
 
“Sit fast, sit fast by me, sweetheart!
The road is rough to ride!”—
The road is rough by gulch and bluff,
And her hair blows wild and wide.
 
 
“Sit fast, sit fast by me, sweetheart!
The bank is steep to ride!”—
The bank is steep for a strong man’s leap,
And her eyes are staring wide.
 
 
“Sit fast, sit fast by me, sweetheart!
The Run is swift to ride!”—
The Run is swift with mountain drift,
And she sways from side to side.
 
 
Is it a wash of the yellow moss,
Or drift of the autumn’s gold,
The mountain torrent foams across
For the dead pine’s roots to hold?
 
 
Is it the bark of the sycamore,
Or peel of the white birch-tree,
The mountaineer on the other shore
Hath followed and still can see?
 
 
No mountain moss or leaves, wild rolled,
No bark of birchen-gray!—
Young hair of gold and a face death-cold
The wild stream sweeps away.
 

THE RAID

I

 
Far in the forest, where the rude road winds
Through twisted briers and weeds, stamped down and caked
With mountain mire, the clashing boughs are raked
Again with rain whose sobbing frenzy blinds.
 
 
There is a noise of winds; a gasp and gulp
Of swollen torrents; and the sodden smell
Of woodland soil, dead trees—that long since fell
Among the moss—red-rotted into pulp.
 
 
Fogged by the rain, far up the mountain glen,
Deep in a cave, an elfish wisp of light;
And stealthy shadows stealing through the night
With strong, set faces of determined men.
 

II

 
’Twixt fog and fire, in pomps of chrysoprase,
Above vague peaks, the morning hesitates
Ere, o’er the threshold of her golden gates,
Speeds the wild splendor of her chariot’s rays.
 
 
A gleaming glimmer in the sun-speared mist,
A cataract, reverberating, falls:
Upon a pine a gray hawk sits and calls,
Then soars away no bigger than a fist.
 
 
Along the wild path, through the oaks and firs,—
Rocks, where the rattler coils himself and suns,—
Big-booted, belted, and with twinkling guns,
The posse marches with its moonshiners.
 

THE BROTHERS

 
Not far from here, it lies beyond
That low-hilled belt of woods. We ’ll take
This unused lane where brambles make
A wall of twilight, and the blond
Brier-roses pelt the path and flake
The margin waters of a pond.
 
 
This is its fence—or that which was
Its fence once—now, rock rolled from rock,
One tangle of the vine and dock,
Where bloom the wild petunias;
And this its gate, the ragweeds block,
Hot with the insects’ dusty buzz.
 
 
Two wooden posts, wherefrom has peeled
The weather-blistered paint, still rise;
Gaunt things—that groan when some one tries
The gate whose hinges, rust-congealed,
Snarl open:—on each post still lies
Its carven panther with a shield.
 
 
We enter; and between great rows
Of locusts winds a grass-grown road;
And at its glimmering end,—o’erflowed
With quiet light,—the white front shows
Of an old mansion, grand and broad,
With grave, Colonial porticoes.
 
 
Grown thick around it, dark and deep,
The locust trees make one vast hush;
Their brawny branches crowd and crush
Its very casements, and o’ersweep
Its rotting roofs: their tranquil rush
Haunts all its spacious rooms with sleep.
 
 
Still is it called The Locusts; though
None lives here now. A tale ’s to tell
Of some dark thing that here befell;
A crime that happened years ago,
When past its walls, with shot and shell,
The war swept on and left it so.
 
 
For one black night, within it, shame
Made revel, while, all here about,
With prayer or curse or battle-shout,
Men died and homesteads leapt in flame:
Then passed the conquering Northern rout,
And left it silent and the same.
 
 
Why should I speak of what has been?
Or what dark part I played in all?
Why ruin sits in porch and hall
Where pride and gladness once were seen;
And why beneath this lichened wall
The grave of Margaret is green.
 
 
Heart-broken Margaret! whose fate
Was sadder far than his who won
Her hand—my brother Hamilton—
Or mine, who learned to know too late;
Who learned to know, when all was done,
And naught I did could expiate.
 
 
To expiate is still my lot!—
And, like the Ancient Mariner,
To show to others how things were,
And what I am, still helps me blot
A little from that crime’s red blur,
That on my life is branded hot.
 
 
He was my only brother. She
A sister of my brother’s friend.
They met, and married in the end.
And I remember well when he
Brought her rejoicing home, the trend
Of war moved towards us sullenly.
 
 
And scarce a year of wedlock when
Its red arms tore him from his bride.
With lips by hers thrice sanctified
He left to ride with Morgan’s men.
And I—I never could decide—
Remained behind. It happened then.
 
 
Long days went by. And, oft delayed,
A letter came of loving word
Scrawled by some camp-fire, sabre-stirred,
Or by a pine-knot’s fitful aid,
When in the saddle, armed and spurred
And booted for some hurried raid.
 
 
Then weeks went by. I do not know
How long it was before there came,
Blown from the North, the clarion fame
Of Morgan, who, with blow on blow,
Had drawn a line of blood and flame
From Tennessee to Ohio.
 
 
Then letters ceased; and days went on.
No word from him. The war rolled back,
And in its turgid crimson track
A rumor grew, like some wild dawn,
All ominous and red and black,
With news of our lost Hamilton.
 
 
News hinting death or capture. Yet
No word was sure; till one day,—fed
By us,—some men rode up who said
They’d been with Morgan and had met
Disaster, and that he was dead,
My brother.—I and Margaret
 
 
Believed them. Grief was ours too:
But mine was more for her than him:
Grief, that her eyes with tears were dim:
Grief, that became the avenue
For love, who crowned the sombre brim
Of death’s dark cup with rose-red hue.
 
 
In sympathy,—unconsciously
Though it be given,—I hold, doth dwell
The germ of love that time shall swell
To blossom. Sooner then in me—
When close relations so befell—
That love should spring from sympathy.
 
 
Our similar tastes and mutual bents
Combined to make us intimates
From our first meeting. Different states
Of interest then our temperaments
Begot. Then friendship, that abates
No love, whose soul it represents.
 
 
These led to talks and dreams: how oft
We sat at some wide window while
The sun sank o’er the hills’ far file,
Serene; and of the cloud aloft
Made one vast rose; and mile on mile
Of firmament grew sad and soft.
 
 
And all in harmony with these
Dim clemencies of dusk, afar
Our talks and dreams went; while the star
Of evening brightened through the trees:
We spoke of home; the end of war;
We dreamed of life and love and peace.
 
 
How on our walks, in listening lanes
Or confidences of the wood,
We paused to hear the dove that cooed;
Or gathered wildflowers, taking pains
To find the fairest; or her hood
Filled with wild fruit that left deep stains.
 
 
No echo of the drum or fife,
No hint of conflict entered in
Our thoughts then. Will you call it sin—
Indifference to a nation’s strife?
What side might lose, what side might win,
Both immaterial to our life.
 
 
Into the past we did not look:
Beyond what was we did not dream;
While onward rolled the thunderous stream
Of war, that, in its torrent, took
One of our own. No crimson gleam
Of its wild course around us shook.
 
 
At last we knew. And when we learned
How he had fallen, Margaret
Wept; and, albeit my eyes were wet,
Within my soul I half discerned
A joy that mingled with regret,
A grief that to relief was turned.
 
 
As time went on and confidence
Drew us more strongly each to each,
Why did no intimation reach
Its warning hand into the dense
Soul-silence, and confuse the speech
Of love’s unbroken eloquence!
 
 
But, no! no hint to turn the poise,
Or check the impulse of our youth;
To chill it with the living truth
As with the awe of God’s own voice;
No hint, to make our hope uncouth;
No word, to warn us from our choice.
 
 
To me a wall seemed overthrown
That social law had raised between;
And o’er its ruin, broad and green
A path went, I possessed alone;
The sky above seemed all serene;
The land around seemed all my own.
 
 
What shall I say of Margaret
To justify her part in this?
That her young heart was never his?
But had been mine since first we met?
So would you say!—Enough it is
That when he left she loved him yet.
 
 
So passed the spring, and summer sped;
And early autumn brought the day
When she her hand in mine should lay,
And I should take her hand and wed:
And still no hint that might gainsay,
No warning word of quick or dead.
 
 
The day arrived; and with it born,
A battle, sullying the East
With boom of cannon, that increased,
And throb of musket and of horn:
Until at last, towards dusk, it ceased;
And men with faces wild and worn,
In fierce retreat, swept past; now groups;
Now one by one: now sternly white,
Or blood-stained; now with looks whose fright
Said all was lost: then sullen troops
That, beaten, still kept up the fight.—
Then came the victors: shadowy loops
 
 
Of men and horse, that left a crowd
Of officers in hall and porch....
While through the land, around, the torch
Circled, and many a fiery cloud
Marked out the army’s iron march
In furrows red that pillage plowed,
 
 
Here were we wedded.... Ask the years
How such could be, while over us
A sword of wrath swung ominous,
And on our cheeks its breath struck fierce!—
All I remember is—’t was thus;
And Margaret’s eyes were wet with tears.
 
 
No other cause my memory sees
Save this, that night was set; and when
I found my home filled with armed men
With whom were all my sympathies
Of Union—why postpone it then?
So argued conscience into peace.
 
 
And then it was, when night had passed,
There came to me an orderly
With word of a Confederate spy
Just taken; who, with head downcast,
Had asked one favor, this: “That I
Would see him ere he breathed his last.”
 
 
I stand alone here. Heavily
My thoughts go back. Had I not gone,
The dead had still been dead! (for none
Had yet believed his story) he,
My dead-deemed brother, Hamilton,
Who in the spy confronted me.
 
 
O you who never have been tried,
How can you judge me!—In my place
I saw him standing,—who can trace
My heart-thoughts then!—I turned aside,
A son of some unnatural race,
And did not speak: and so he died....
 
 
In hospital or prison, when
It was he lay; what had forbid
His home return so long: amid
What hardships he had suffered, then
I dared not ask; and when I did,
Long afterwards, inquire of men,
No thing I learned. But this I feel—
He who had so returned to life
Was not a spy. Through stress and strife,—
This makes my conscience hard to heal!—
He had escaped: he sought his wife;
He sought his home that should conceal.
 
 
And Margaret! Oh, pity her!
A criminal I sought her side,
Still thinking love was justified
In all for her—whatever were
The price: a brother thrice denied,
Or thrice a brothers murderer.
 
 
Since then long years have passed away.
And through those years, perhaps, you ’ll ask
How to the world I wore my mask
Of honesty?—I can but say
Beyond my powers it was a task;
Before my time it turned me gray.
 
 
And when at last the ceaseless hiss
Of conscience drove, and I betrayed
All to her, she knelt down and prayed:
Then rose: and ’twixt us an abyss
Was opened; and she seemed to fade
Out of my life: I came to miss
The sweet attentions of a bride:
For each appealing heart’s caress
In me her heart assumed a dress
Of dull indifference; till denied
To me was all responsiveness;
And then I knew her love had died.
 
 
Ah, had she loaded me, perchance,
With wild reproach or even hate,
Such would have helped me hope and wait
Forgiveness and returned romance:
But ’twixt our souls, instead, a gate
She closed of silent tolerance.
 
 
Yet, ’t was for love of her I lent
My soul to crime.... I question me
Often, if less entirely
I’d loved her, then, in that event
She had been justified to see
The deed alone stand prominent.
 
 
The deed alone! But love records
In his own heart, I will aver,
No depth I did not feel for her
Beyond the plummet-reach of words:
And though there may be worthier,
No truer love this world affords
Than mine was, though it could not rise
Above itself. And so ’t was best,
Perhaps, that she saw manifest
The crime, so I,—as saw her eyes,—
Might see; and so, in soul confessed,
Some life atonement might devise.
 
 
Sadly my heart one comfort keeps,
That, towards her end, she took my hands
And said,—as one who understands,—
“Had I but seen!—But love that weeps
Sees only as its loss commands.”
And sighed.—Beneath this stone she sleeps.
 
 
Yes; I have suffered for that sin:
Yet in no instance would I shun
What I should suffer. Many a one,
Who heard my tale, has tried to win
Me to believe that Hamilton
It was not; and, though proven kin,
 
 
This had not saved him. Still the stain
Of the intention—had I erred
And ’t was not he—had writ the word
Red on my soul that branded Cain:
For still my error had incurred
The fact of guilt that would remain.
 

* * *

 
Ah, love at best is insecure,
And lives with doubt and vain regret;
And hope and faith, with faces set
Upon the past, are never sure;
And through their fever, grief, and fret
The heart may fail that should endure.
 
 
For in ourselves, however blend
The passions that make heaven and hell,
Is evil not accountable
For most the good we comprehend?
And through these two,—or ill, or well,—
Man must evolve his spiritual end.
 
 
It is with deeds that we must ask
Forgiveness: for, upon this earth,
Life walks alone from very birth
With death, hope tells us is a mask
For life beyond of vaster worth,
Where sin no more sets love a task.