The Complete Works of Madison Julius Cawein

The Complete Works, Novels, Plays, Stories, Ideas, and Writings of Madison Julius Cawein

This Complete Collection includes the following titles:

--------

1 - The Garden of Dreams

2 - A Voice on the Wind

3 - The Triumph of Music

4 - Poems

THE GARDEN OF

DREAMS

MADISON CAWEIN

Author of Intimations of the Beautiful, Undertones,

and several other books of verse

LOUISVILLE

JOHN P MORTON & COMPANY

MDCCCXCVI

Copyright, 1896,

John P. Morton & Company.

TO

My Brothers.

Not while I live may I forget

That garden which my spirit trod!

Where dreams were flowers, wild and wet,

And beautiful as God.

Not while I breathe, awake adream,

Shall live again for me those hours,

When, in its mystery and gleam,

I met her 'mid the flowers.

Eyes, talismanic heliotrope,

Beneath mesmeric lashes, where

The sorceries of love and hope

Had made a shining lair.

And daydawn brows, whereover hung

The twilight of dark locks; and lips,

Whose beauty spoke the rose's tongue

Of fragrance-voweled drips.

I will not tell of cheeks and chin,

That held me as sweet language holds;

Nor of the eloquence within

Her bosom's moony molds.

Nor of her large limbs' languorous

Wind-grace, that glanced like starlight through

Her ardent robe's diaphanous

Web of the mist and dew.

There is no star so pure and high

As was her look; no fragrance such

At her soft presence; and no sigh

Of music like her touch.

Not while I live may I forget

That garden of dim dreams! where I

And Song within the spirit met,

Sweet Song, who passed me by.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

A Fallen Beech

1

The Haunted Woodland

3

Discovery

4

Comradery

5

Occult

6

Wood-Words

7

The Wind at Night

10

Airy Tongues

11

The Hills

13

Imperfection

14

Arcanna

15

Spring

15

Response

16

Fulfillment

16

Transformation

17

Omens

17

Abandoned

18

The Creek Road

19

The Covered Bridge

19

The Hillside Grave

20

Simulacra

20

Before the End

21

Winter

21

Hoar Frost

22

The Winter Moon

22

In Summer

23

Rain and Wind

24

Under Arcturus

25

October

27

Bare Boughs

28

A Threnody

30

Snow

31

Vagabonds

31

An Old Song

32

A Rose o' the Hills

33

Dirge

34

Rest

35

Clairvoyance

36

Indifference

37

Pictured

37

Serenade

38

Kinship

39

She is So Much

40

Her Eyes

41

Messengers

42

At Twenty-One

43

Baby Mary

44

A Motive in Gold and Gray

45

A Reed Shaken with the Wind

50

A Flower of the Fields

71

The White Vigil

73

Too Late

74

Intimations

74

Two

80

Tones

81

Unfulfilled

83

Home

86

Ashly Mere

87

Before the Tomb

88

Revisited

89

At Vespers

91

The Creek

92

Answered

93

Woman's Portion

95

Finale

97

The Cross

98

The Forest of Dreams

99

Lynchers

101

Ku Klux

102

Rembrandts

103

The Lady of The Hills

104

Revealment

106

Heart's Encouragement

107

Nightfall

108

Pause

108

Above the Vales

109

A Sunset Fancy

110

The Fen-Fire

110

To One Reading the Morte D'Arthure

111

Strollers

112

Haunted

114

Præterita

115

The Swashbuckler

115

The Witch

116

The Somnambulist

116

Opium

117

Music and Sleep

118

Ambition

118

Despondency

119

Despair

119

Sin

120

Insomnia

120

Encouragement

121

Quatrains

122

A Last Word

123

[Pg 1]

THE GARDEN OF DREAMS

A FALLEN BEECH

Nevermore at doorways that are barken

Shall the madcap wind knock and the noonlight;

Nor the circle, which thou once didst darken,

Shine with footsteps of the neighboring moonlight,

Visitors for whom thou oft didst hearken.

Nevermore, gallooned with cloudy laces,

Shall the morning, like a fair freebooter,

Make thy leaves his richest treasure-places;

Nor the sunset, like a royal suitor,

Clothe thy limbs with his imperial graces.

And no more, between the savage wonder

Of the sunset and the moon's up-coming,

Shall the storm, with boisterous hoof-beats, under

Thy dark roof dance, Faun-like, to the humming

Of the Pan-pipes of the rain and thunder.

Oft the satyr spirit, beauty-drunken,

Of the Spring called; and the music-measure

Of thy sap made answer; and thy sunken

Veins grew vehement with youth, whose pressure

Swelled thy gnarly muscles, winter-shrunken.

[Pg 2]

And the germs, deep down in darkness rooted,

Bubbled green from all thy million oilets,

Where the spirits, rain-and-sunbeam-suited,

Of the April made their whispering toilets,

Or within thy stately shadow footed.

Oft the hours of blonde Summer tinkled

At the windows of thy twigs, and found thee

Bird-blithe; or, with shapely bodies, twinkled

Lissom feet of naked flowers around thee,

Where thy mats of moss lay sunbeam-sprinkled.

And the Autumn with his gipsy-coated

Troop of days beneath thy branches rested,

Swarthy-faced and dark of eye; and throated

Songs of hunting; or with red hand tested

Every nut-bur that above him floated.

Then the Winter, barren-browed, but rich in

Shaggy followers of frost and freezing,

Made the floor of thy broad boughs his kitchen,

Trapper-like, to camp in; grimly easing

Limbs snow-furred and moccasoned with lichen.

Now, alas! no more do these invest thee

With the dignity of whilom gladness!

They—unto whose hearts thou once confessed thee

Of thy dreams—now know thee not! and sadness

Sits beside thee where forgot dost rest thee.

[Pg 3]

THE HAUNTED WOODLAND

Here in the golden darkness

And green night of the woods,

A flitting form I follow,

A shadow that eludes—

Or is it but the phantom

Of former forest moods?

The phantom of some fancy

I knew when I was young,

And in my dreaming boyhood,

The wildwood flow'rs among,

Young face to face with Faery

Spoke in no unknown tongue.

Blue were her eyes, and golden

The nimbus of her hair;

And crimson as a flower

Her mouth that kissed me there;

That kissed and bade me follow,

And smiled away my care.

A magic and a marvel

Lived in her word and look,

As down among the blossoms

She sate me by the brook,

And read me wonder-legends

In Nature's Story Book.

[Pg 4]

Loved fairy-tales forgotten,

She never reads again,

Of beautiful enchantments

That haunt the sun and rain,

And, in the wind and water,

Chant a mysterious strain.

And so I search the forest,

Wherein my spirit feels,

In tree or stream or flower

Herself she still conceals—

But now she flies who followed,

Whom Earth no more reveals.

DISCOVERY

What is it now that I shall seek,

Where woods dip downward, in the hills?—

A mossy nook, a ferny creek,

And May among the daffodils.

Or in the valley's vistaed glow,

Past rocks of terraced trumpet-vines,

Shall I behold her coming slow,

Sweet May, among the columbines?

With redbud cheeks and bluet eyes,

Big eyes, the homes of happiness,

To meet me with the old surprise,

Her hoiden hair all bonnetless.

[Pg 5]

Who waits for me, where, note for note,

The birds make glad the forest-trees?

A dogwood blossom at her throat,

My May among the anemones.

As sweetheart breezes kiss the blooms,

And dewdrops drink the moonlight's gleams,

My soul shall kiss her lips' perfumes,

And drink the magic of her dreams.

COMRADERY

With eyes hand-arched he looks into

The morning's face, then turns away

With schoolboy feet, all wet with dew,

Out for a holiday.

The hill brook sings, incessant stars,

Foam-fashioned, on its restless breast;

And where he wades its water-bars

Its song is happiest.

A comrade of the chinquapin,

He looks into its knotted eyes

And sees its heart; and, deep within,

Its soul that makes him wise.

The wood-thrush knows and follows him,

Who whistles up the birds and bees;

And 'round him all the perfumes swim

Of woodland loam and trees.

[Pg 6]

Where'er he pass the supple springs'

Foam-people sing the flowers awake;

And sappy lips of bark-clad things

Laugh ripe each fruited brake.

His touch is a companionship;

His word, an old authority:

He comes, a lyric at his lip,

Unstudied Poesy.

OCCULT

Unto the soul's companionship

Of things that only seem to be,

Earth points with magic fingertip

And bids thee see

How Fancy keeps thee company.

For oft at dawn hast not beheld

A spirit of prismatic hue

Blow wide the buds, which night has swelled?

And stain them through

With heav'n's ethereal gold and blue?

While at her side another went

With gleams of enigmatic white?

A spirit who distributes scent,

To vale and height,

In footsteps of the rosy light?

[Pg 7]

And oft at dusk hast thou not seen

The star-fays bring their caravans

Of dew, and glitter all the green,

Night's shadow tans,

From many starbeam sprinkling-cans?

Nor watched with these the elfins go

Who tune faint instruments? whose sound

Is that moon-music insects blow

When all the ground

Sleeps, and the night is hushed around?

WOOD-WORDS

I.

The spirits of the forest,

That to the winds give voice—

I lie the livelong April day

And wonder what it is they say

That makes the leaves rejoice.

The spirits of the forest,

That breathe in bud and bloom—

I walk within the black-haw brake

And wonder how it is they make

The bubbles of perfume.

The spirits of the forest,

That live in every spring—

I lean above the brook's bright blue

And wonder what it is they do

That makes the water sing.

[Pg 8]

The spirits of the forest.

That haunt the sun's green glow—

Down fungus ways of fern I steal

And wonder what they can conceal,

In dews, that twinkles so.

The spirits of the forest,

They hold me, heart and hand—

And, oh! the bird they send by light,

The jack-o'-lantern gleam by night,

To guide to Fairyland!

II.

The time when dog-tooth violets

Hold up inverted horns of gold,—

The elvish cups that Spring upsets

With dripping feet, when April wets

The sun-and-shadow-marbled wold,—

Is come. And by each leafing way

The sorrel drops pale blots of pink;

And, like an angled star a fay

Sets on her forehead's pallid day,

The blossoms of the trillium wink.

Within the vale, by rock and stream,—

A fragile, fairy porcelain,—

Blue as a baby's eyes a-dream,

The bluets blow; and gleam in gleam

The sun-shot dog-woods flash with rain.

[Pg 9]

It is the time to cast off care;

To make glad intimates of these:—

The frank-faced sunbeam laughing there;

The great-heart wind, that bids us share

The optimism of the trees.

III.

The white ghosts of the flowers,

The green ghosts of the trees:

They haunt the blooming bowers,

They haunt the wildwood hours,

And whisper in the breeze.

For in the wildrose places,

And on the beechen knoll,

My soul hath seen their faces,

My soul hath met their races,

And felt their dim control.

IV.

Crab-apple buds, whose bells

The mouth of April kissed;

That hang,—like rosy shells

Around a naiad's wrist,—

Pink as dawn-tinted mist.

And paw-paw buds, whose dark

Deep auburn blossoms shake

On boughs,—as 'neath the bark

A dryad's eyes awake,—

Brown as a midnight lake.

[Pg 10]

These, with symbolic blooms

Of wind-flower and wild-phlox,

I found among the glooms

Of hill-lost woods and rocks,

Lairs of the mink and fox.

The beetle in the brush,

The bird about the creek,

The bee within the hush,

And I, whose heart was meek,

Stood still to hear these speak.

The language, that records,

In flower-syllables,

The hieroglyphic words

Of beauty, who enspells

The world and aye compels.

THE WIND AT NIGHT

I.

Not till the wildman wind is shrill,

Howling upon the hill

In every wolfish tree, whose boisterous boughs,

Like desperate arms, gesture and beat the night,

And down huge clouds, in chasms of stormy white

The frightened moon hurries above the house,

Shall I lie down; and, deep,—

Letting the mad wind keep

Its shouting revel round me,—fall asleep.

[Pg 11]

II.

Not till its dark halloo is hushed,

And where wild waters rushed,—

Like some hoofed terror underneath its whip

And spur of foam,—remains

A ghostly glass, hill-framed; whereover stains

Of moony mists and rains,

And stealthy starbeams, like vague specters, slip;

Shall I—with thoughts that take

Unto themselves the ache

Of silence as a sound—from sleep awake.

AIRY TONGUES

I.

I hear a song the wet leaves lisp

When Morn comes down the woodland way;

And misty as a thistle-wisp

Her gown gleams windy gray;

A song, that seems to say,

Awake! 'tis day!

I hear a sigh, when Day sits down

Beside the sunlight-lulled lagoon;

While on her glistening hair and gown

The rose of rest is strewn;

A sigh, that seems to croon,

Come sleep! 'tis noon!

[Pg 12]

I hear a whisper, when the stars,

Upon some evening-purpled height,

Crown the dead Day with nenuphars

Of dreamy gold and white;

A voice, that seems t' invite,

Come love! 'tis night!

II.

Before the rathe song-sparrow sings

Among the hawtrees in the lane,

And to the wind the locust flings

Its early clusters fresh with rain;

Beyond the morning-star, that swings

Its rose of fire above the spire,

Between the morning's watchet wings,

A voice that rings o'er brooks and boughs—

Arouse! arouse!

Before the first brown owlet cries

Among the grape-vines on the hill,

And in the dam with half-shut eyes

The lilies rock above the mill;

Beyond the oblong moon, that flies

Its pearly flower above the tower,

Between the twilight's primrose skies,

A voice that sighs from east to west—

To rest! to rest!

[Pg 13]

THE HILLS

There is no joy of earth that thrills

My bosom like the far-off hills!

Th' unchanging hills, that, shadowy,

Beckon our mutability

To follow and to gaze upon

Foundations of the dusk and dawn.

Meseems the very heavens are massed

Upon their shoulders, vague and vast

With all the skyey burden of

The winds and clouds and stars above.

Lo, how they sit before us, seeing

The laws that give all Beauty being!

Behold! to them, when dawn is near,

The nomads of the air appear,

Unfolding crimson camps of day

In brilliant bands; then march away;

And under burning battlements

Of twilight plant their tinted tents.

The faith of olden myths, that brood

By haunted stream and haunted wood,

They see; and feel the happiness

Of old at which we only guess:

The dreams, the ancients loved and knew,

Still as their rocks and trees are true:

Not otherwise than presences

The tempest and the calm to these:

One shouting on them, all the night,

Black-limbed and veined with lambent light:

The other with the ministry

Of all soft things that company

[Pg 14]With music—an embodied form,

Giving to solitude the charm

Of leaves and waters and the peace

Of bird-begotten melodies—

And who at night doth still confer

With the mild moon, who telleth her

Pale tale of lonely love, until

Wan images of passion fill

The heights with shapes that glimmer by

Clad on with sleep and memory.

IMPERFECTION

Not as the eye hath seen, shall we behold

Romance and beauty, when we've passed away;

That robed the dull facts of the intimate day

In life's wild raiment of unusual gold:

Not as the ear hath heard, shall we be told,

Hereafter, myth and legend once that lay

Warm at the heart of Nature, clothing clay

In attribute of no material mold.

These were imperfect of necessity,

That wrought thro' imperfection for far ends

Of perfectness—As calm philosophy,

Teaching a child, from his high heav'n descends

To Earth's familiar things; informingly

Vesting his thoughts with that it comprehends.

[Pg 15]

ARCANNA

Earth hath her images of utterance,

Her hieroglyphic meanings which elude;

A symbol language of similitude,

Into whose secrets science may not glance;

In which the Mind-in-Nature doth romance

In miracles that baffle if pursued—

No guess shall search them and no thought intrude

Beyond the limits of her sufferance.

So doth the great Intelligence above

Hide His own thought's creations; and attire

Forms in the dream's ideal, which He dowers

With immaterial loveliness and love—

As essences of fragrance and of fire—

Preaching th' evangels of the stars and flowers.

SPRING

First came the rain, loud, with sonorous lips;

A pursuivant who heralded a prince:

And dawn put on a livery of tints,

And dusk bound gold about her hair and hips:

And, all in silver mail, then sunlight came,

A knight, who bade the winter let him pass,

And freed imprisoned beauty, naked as

The Court of Love, in all her wildflower shame.

And so she came, in breeze-borne loveliness,

Across the hills; and heav'n bent down to bless:

Before her face the birds were as a lyre;

And at her feet, like some strong worshiper,

The shouting water pæan'd praise of her,

Who, with blue eyes, set the wild world on fire.

[Pg 16]

RESPONSE

There is a music of immaculate love,

That breathes within the virginal veins of Spring:—

And trillium blossoms, like the stars that cling

To fairies' wands; and, strung on sprays above,

White-hearts and mandrake blooms, that look enough

Like the elves' washing, white with laundering

Of May-moon dews; and all pale-opening

Wild-flowers of the woods, are born thereof.

There is no sod Spring's white foot brushes but

Must feel the music that vibrates within,

And thrill to the communicated touch

Responsive harmonies, that must unshut

The heart of beauty for song's concrete kin,

Emotions—that be flowers—born of such.

FULFILLMENT

Yes, there are some who may look on these

Essential peoples of the earth and air—

That have the stars and flowers in their care—

And all their soul-suggestive secrecies:

Heart-intimates and comrades of the trees,

Who from them learn, what no known schools declare,

God's knowledge; and from winds, that discourse there,

[Pg 17]God's gospel of diviner mysteries:

To whom the waters shall divulge a word

Of fuller faith; the sunset and the dawn

Preach sermons more inspired even than

The tongues of Penticost; as, distant heard

In forms of change, through Nature upward drawn,

God doth address th' immortal soul of Man.

TRANSFORMATION

It is the time when, by the forest falls,

The touchmenots hang fairy folly-caps;

When ferns and flowers fill the lichened laps

Of rocks with color, rich as orient shawls:

And in my heart I hear a voice that calls

Me woodward, where the Hamadryad wraps

Her limbs in bark, or, bubbling in the saps,

Laughs the sweet Greek of Pan's old madrigals.

There is a gleam that lures me up the stream—

A Naiad swimming with wet limbs of light?

Perfume, that leads me on from dream to dream—

An Oread's footprints fragrant with her flight?

And, lo! meseems I am a Faun again,

Part of the myths that I pursue in vain.

OMENS

Sad o'er the hills the poppy sunset died.

Slow as a fungus breaking through the crusts

Of forest leaves, the waning half-moon thrusts,

[Pg 18]Through gray-brown clouds, one milky silver side;

In her vague light the dogwoods, vale-descried,

Seem nervous torches flourished by the gusts;

The apple-orchards seem the restless dusts

Of wind-thinned mists upon the hills they hide.

It is a night of omens whom late May

Meets, like a wraith, among her train of hours;

An apparition, with appealing eye

And hesitant foot, that walks a willowed way,

And, speaking through the fading moon and

flowers,

Bids her prepare her gentle soul to die.

ABANDONED

The hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms,

And on its mossy porch the lizard lies;

Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies,

And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms.

Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes

Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries

Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs

With ghostly lips among the attic glooms.

And now a heron, now a kingfisher,

Flits in the willows where the riffle seems

At each faint fall to hesitate to leap,

Fluttering the silence with a little stir.

Here Summer seems a placid face asleep,

And the near world a figment of her dreams.

[Pg 19]

THE CREEK-ROAD

Calling, the heron flies athwart the blue

That sleeps above it; reach on rocky reach

Of water sings by sycamore and beech,

In whose warm shade bloom lilies not a few.

It is a page whereon the sun and dew

Scrawl sparkling words in dawn's delicious speech;

A laboratory where the wood-winds teach,

Dissect each scent and analyze each hue.

Not otherwise than beautiful, doth it

Record the happ'nings of each summer day;

Where we may read, as in a catalogue,

When passed a thresher; when a load of hay;

Or when a rabbit; or a bird that lit;

And now a bare-foot truant and his dog.

THE COVERED BRIDGE

There, from its entrance, lost in matted vines,—

Where in the valley foams a water-fall,—-

Is glimpsed a ruined mill's remaining wall;

Here, by the road, the oxeye daisy mines

Hot brass and bronze; the trumpet-trailer shines

Red as the plumage of the cardinal.

Faint from the forest comes the rain-crow's call

Where dusty Summer dreams among the pines.

This is the spot where Spring writes wildflower verses

In primrose pink, while, drowsing o'er his reins,

[Pg 20]The ploughman, all unnoticing, plods along:

And where the Autumn opens weedy purses

Of sleepy silver, while the corn-heaped wains

Rumble the bridge like some deep throat of song.

THE HILLSIDE GRAVE

Ten-hundred deep the drifted daisies break

Here at the hill's foot; on its top, the wheat

Hangs meagre-bearded; and, in vague retreat,

The wisp-like blooms of the moth-mulleins shake.

And where the wild-pink drops a crimson flake,

And morning-glories, like young lips, make sweet

The shaded hush, low in the honeyed heat,

The wild-bees hum; as if afraid to wake

One sleeping there; with no white stone to tell

The story of existence; but the stem

Of one wild-rose, towering o'er brier and weed,

Where all the day the wild-birds requiem;

Within whose shade the timid violets spell

An epitaph, only the stars can read.

SIMULACRA

Dark in the west the sunset's somber wrack

Unrolled vast walls the rams of war had split,

Along whose battlements the battle lit

Tempestuous beacons; and, with gates hurled back,

A mighty city, red with ruin and sack,

Through burning breaches, crumbling bit by bit,

[Pg 21]Showed where the God of Slaughter seemed to sit

With conflagration glaring at each crack.

Who knows? perhaps as sleep unto us makes

Our dreams as real as our waking seems

With recollections time can not destroy,

So in the mind of Nature now awakes

Haply some wilder memory, and she dreams

The stormy story of the fall of Troy.

BEFORE THE END

How does the Autumn in her mind conclude

The tragic masque her frosty pencil writes,

Broad on the pages of the days and nights,

In burning lines of orchard, wold, and wood?

What lonelier forms—that at the year's door stood

At spectral wait—with wildly wasted lights

Shall enter? and with melancholy rites

Inaugurate their sadder sisterhood?—

Sorrow, who lifts a signal hand, and slow

The green leaf fevers, falling ere it dies;

Regret, whose pale lips summon, and gaunt Woe

Wakes the wild-wind harps with sonorous sighs;

And Sleep, who sits with poppied eyes and sees

The earth and sky grow dream-accessories.

WINTER

The flute, whence Autumn's misty finger-tips

Drew music—ripening the pinched kernels in

The burly chestnut and the chinquapin,

Red-rounding-out the oval haws and hips,—

[Pg 22]Now Winter crushes to his stormy lips

And surly songs whistle around his chin:

Now the wild days and wilder nights begin

When, at the eaves, the crooked icicle drips.

Thy songs, O Autumn, are not lost so soon!

Still dwells a memory in thy hollow flute,

Which, unto Winter's masculine airs, doth give

Thy own creative qualities of tune,

By which we see each bough bend white with fruit,

Each bush with bloom, in snow commemorative.

HOAR-FROST

The frail eidolons of all blossoms Spring,

Year after year, about the forest tossed,

The magic touch of the enchanter, Frost,

Back from the Heaven of the Flow'rs doth bring;

Each branch and bush in silence visiting

With phantom beauty of its blooms long lost:

Each dead weed bends, white-haunted of its ghost,

Each dead flower stands ghostly with blossoming.

This is the wonder-legend Nature tells

To the gray moon and mist a winter's night;

The fairy-tale, which her weird fancy 'spells

With all the glamour of her soul's delight:

Before the summoning sorcery of her eyes

Making her spirit's dream materialize.

THE WINTER MOON

Deep in the dell I watched her as she rose,

A face of icy fire, o'er the hills;