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Read Ebook: Poems by Cawein Madison Julius Howells William Dean Author Of Introduction Etc
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Ebook has 983 lines and 50959 words, and 20 pages
Of Elfland and a princess Who, born of a perfume, His music rocks,--where winces That rosebud's cradled bloom.
No bird sings half so airy, No bird of dusk or dawn, Thou masking King of Faery! Thou red-crowned Oberon!
A NI?LLO
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 windflower apes The beauty that was once her brow, That the white memory of it shapes The April now?
Because the wild-rose wears the blush That once made sweet her maidenhood, Its thought makes June of barren bush 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.
When orchards are in bloom again My heart will bound, my blood will beat, To hear the redbird so repeat, On boughs of rosy stain, His blithe, loud song,--like some far strain From out the past,--among the bloom,-- -- Fresh, redolent of 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 bluebirds sit And sing; and through whose blossoms flit The catbirds 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 young-girl grace: And we shall tarry till a trace Of sunset dyes the heav'ns; and then-- We'll part; and, parting, I again Shall bend and kiss her face.
And homeward, singing, I shall go Along the cricket-chirring ways, While sunset, one long crimson blaze Of orchards, lingers low: And my dead youth again I'll know, And all her love, when spring is here-- Whose memory holds me many a year, Whose love still haunts me so!
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; In egotism of loveliness Her pomp goes by, and never heeds One life the more or less.
But I would die when Autumn goes, The dark 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 To fall asleep when skies are gray, In the old autumn of my years, Like a dead leaf borne far away.
IN MAY
When you and I in the hills went Maying, You and I in the bright May weather, The birds, that sang on the boughs together, There in the green of the woods, kept saying All that my heart was saying low, "I love you! love you!" soft and low,-- And did you know? When you and I in the hills went Maying.
There where the brook on its rocks went winking, There by its banks where the May had led us, Flowers, that bloomed in the woods and meadows, Azure and gold at our feet, kept thinking All that my soul was thinking there, "I love you! love you!" softly there-- And did you care? There where the brook on its rocks went winking.
Whatever befalls through fate's compelling, Should our paths unite or our pathways sever, In the Mays to come I shall feel forever The wildflowers thinking, the wild birds telling, In words as soft as the falling dew, The love that I keep here still for you, Both deep and true, Whatever befalls through fate's compelling.
AUBADE
Awake! the dawn is on the hills! Behold, at her cool throat a rose, Blue-eyed and beautiful she goes, Leaving her steps in daffodils.-- Awake! arise! and let me see Thine eyes, whose deeps epitomize All dawns that were or are to be, O love, all Heaven in thine eyes!-- Awake! arise! come down to me!
Behold! the dawn is up: behold! How all the birds around her float, Wild rills of music, note on note, Spilling the air with mellow gold.-- Arise! awake! and, drawing near, Let me but hear thee and rejoice! Thou, who keep'st captive, sweet and clear, All song, O love, within thy voice! Arise! awake! and let me hear!
See, where she comes, with limbs of day, The dawn! with wild-rose hands and feet, Within whose veins the sunbeams beat, And laughters meet of wind and ray. Arise! come down! and, heart to heart, Love, let me clasp in thee all these-- The sunbeam, of which thou art part, And all the rapture of the breeze!-- Arise! come down! loved that thou art!
APOCALYPSE
Before I found her I had found Within my heart, as in a brook, Reflections of her: now a sound Of imaged beauty; now a look.
So when I found her, gazing in Those Bibles of her eyes, above All earth, I read no word of sin; Their holy chapters all were love.
I read them through. I read and saw The soul impatient of the sod-- Her soul, that through her eyes did draw Mine--to the higher love of God.
PENETRALIA
I am a part of all you see In Nature; part of all you feel: I am the impact of the bee Upon the blossom; in the tree I am the sap,--that shall reveal The leaf, the bloom,--that flows and flutes Up from the darkness through its roots.
I am the vermeil of the rose, The perfume breathing in its veins; The gold within the mist that glows Along the west and overflows With light the heaven; the dew that rains Its freshness down and strings with spheres Of wet the webs and oaten ears.
I am the egg that folds the bird; The song that beaks and breaks its shell; The laughter and the wandering word The water says; and, dimly heard, The music of the blossom's bell When soft winds swing it; and the sound Of grass slow-creeping o'er the ground.
I am the warmth, the honey-scent That throats with spice each lily-bud That opens, white with wonderment, Beneath the moon; or, downward bent, Sleeps with a moth beneath its hood: I am the dream that haunts it too, That crystallizes into dew.
I am the seed within the pod; The worm within its closed cocoon: The wings within the circling clod, The germ, that gropes through soil and sod To beauty, radiant in the noon: I am all these, behold! and more-- I am the love at the world-heart's core.
ELUSION
My soul goes out to her who says, "Come, follow me and cast off care!" Then tosses back her sun-bright hair, And like a flower before me sways Between the green leaves and my gaze: This creature like a girl, who smiles Into my eyes and softly lays Her hand in mine and leads me miles, Long miles of haunted forest ways.
Sometimes she seems a faint perfume, A fragrance that a flower exhaled And God gave form to; now, unveiled, A sunbeam making gold the gloom Of vines that roof some woodland room Of boughs; and now the silvery sound Of streams her presence doth assume-- Music, from which, in dreaming drowned, A crystal shape she seems to bloom.
Sometimes she seems the light that lies On foam of waters where the fern Shimmers and drips; now, at some turn Of woodland, bright against the skies, She seems the rainbowed mist that flies; And now the mossy fire that breaks Beneath the feet in azure eyes Of flowers; now the wind that shakes Pale petals from the bough that sighs.
Sometimes she lures me with a song; Sometimes she guides me with a laugh; Her white hand is a magic staff, Her look a spell to lead me long: Though she be weak and I be strong, She needs but shake her happy hair, But glance her eyes, and, right or wrong, My soul must follow--anywhere She wills--far from the world's loud throng.
Sometimes I think that she must be No part of earth, but merely this-- The fair, elusive thing we miss In Nature, that we dream we see Yet never see: that goldenly Beckons; that, limbed with rose and pearl, The Greek made a divinity:-- A nymph, a god, a glimmering girl, That haunts the forest's mystery.
WOMANHOOD
The summer takes its hue From something opulent as fair in her, And the bright heaven is brighter than it was; Brighter and lovelier, Arching its beautiful blue, Serene and soft, as her sweet gaze, o'er us.
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