Part 1

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THE POEMS OF [Illustration] MADISON CAWEIN

VOLUME I

LYRICS AND OLD WORLD IDYLLS

"It shall go hard with him through thee, unconquerable blade" Page 270

_Accolon of Gaul_

THE POEMS OF MADISON CAWEIN

_Volume I_

LYRICS AND OLD WORLD IDYLLS

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY EDMUND GOSSE

_Illustrated_

WITH PHOTOGRAVURES AFTER PAINTINGS BY ERIC PAPE

INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1898 AND 1907, BY MADISON CAWEIN

PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y.

TO WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS WHO WAS THE FIRST TO RECOGNIZE AND ENCOURAGE MY ENDEAVORS, THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED WITH AFFECTION, ADMIRATION AND ESTEEM

PREFACE

This first collected edition of my poems contains all the verses I care to retain except the translations from the German, published in 1895 under the title of _The White Snake_, and some of the poems in _Nature-Notes and Impressions_, published in 1906.

Several of the poems which I probably would have omitted I have retained at the solicitation of friends, who have based their argument for their retention upon the generally admitted fact that a poet seldom knows his best work.

The new arrangement under new titles I found was necessary for the sake of convenience; and the poems in a manner grouped themselves in certain classes. In eliminating the old titles--some eighteen in number--I have disregarded entirely, except in the case of the first volume, the date of the appearance of each poem, placing every one, according to its subject matter, in its proper group under its corresponding title.

Most of the poems, especially the earlier ones, have been revised; many of them almost entirely rewritten and, I think, improved.

MADISON CAWEIN.

_Louisville, Kentucky._

INTRODUCTION

Since the disappearance of the latest survivors of that graceful and somewhat academic school of poets who ruled American literature so long from the shores of Massachusetts, serious poetry in the United States seems to have been passing through a crisis of languor. Perhaps there is no country on the civilized globe where, in theory, verse is treated with more respect and, in practice, with greater lack of grave consideration than in America. No conjecture as to the reason of this must be attempted here, further than to suggest that the extreme value set upon sharpness, ingenuity and rapid mobility is obviously calculated to depreciate and to condemn the quiet practice of the most meditative of the arts. Hence we find that it is what is called "humorous" verse which is mainly in fashion on the western side of the Atlantic. Those rhymes are most warmly welcomed which play the most preposterous tricks with language, which dazzle by the most mountebank swiftness of turn, and which depend most for their effect upon paradox and the negation of sober thought. It is probable that the diseased craving for what is "smart," "snappy," and wide-awake, and the impulse to see everything foreshortened and topsy-turvy, must wear themselves out before cooler and more graceful tastes again prevail in imaginative literature.

Whatever be the cause, it is certain that this is not a moment when serious poetry, of any species, is flourishing in the United States. The absence of anything like a common impulse among young writers, of any definite and intelligible, if excessive, _parti pris_, is immediately observable if we contrast the American, for instance, with the French poets of the last fifteen years. Where there is no school and no clear trend of executive ambition, the solitary artist, whose talent forces itself up into the light and air, suffers unusual difficulties, and runs a constant danger of being choked in the aimless mediocrity that surrounds him. We occasionally meet with a poet in the history of literature, of whom we are inclined to say: "Charming as he is, he would have developed his talent more evenly and conspicuously, if he had been accompanied from the first by other young men like-minded, who would have formed for him an atmosphere and cleared for him a space." This is the one regret I feel in contemplating, as I have done for years past, the ardent and beautiful talent of Mr. Madison Cawein. I deplore the fact that he seems to stand alone in his generation; I think his poetry would have been even better than it is, and its qualities would certainly have been more clearly perceived, and more intelligently appreciated, if he were less isolated. In his own country, at this particular moment, in this matter of serious nature-painting in lyric verse, Mr. Cawein possesses what Cowley would have called "a monopoly of wit." In one of his lyrics Mr. Cawein asks--

"The song-birds, are they flown away, The song-birds of the summer-time, That sang their souls into the day, And set the laughing hours to rhyme? No cat-bird scatters through the hush The sparkling crystals of her song; Within the woods no hermit-thrush Trails an enchanted flute along."

To this inquiry, the answer is: the only hermit-thrush now audible seems to sing from Louisville, Kentucky. America will, we may be perfectly sure, calm herself into harmony again, and possess once more her school of singers. In those coming days, history may perceive in Mr. Cawein the golden link that bound the music of the past to the music of the future through an interval of comparative tunelessness.

The career of Mr. Madison Cawein is represented to me as being most uneventful. He seems to have enjoyed unusual advantages for the cultivation and protection of the poetical temperament. He was born on the 23rd of March, 1865, in the metropolis of Kentucky, the vigorous city of Louisville, on the southern side of the Ohio, in the midst of a country celebrated for tobacco and whisky and Indian corn. These are commodities which may be consumed in excess, but in moderation they make glad the heart of man. They represent a certain glow of the earth, they indicate the action of a serene and gentle climate upon a rich soil. It was in this delicate and voluptuous state of Kentucky that Mr. Cawein was born, that he was educated, that he became a poet, and that he has lived ever since. His blood is full of the color and odor of his native landscape. The solemn books of history tell us that Kentucky was discovered in 1769, by Daniel Boone, a hunter. But he first discovers a country who sees it first, and teaches the world to see it; no doubt some day the city of Louisville will erect, in one of its principal squares, a statue to "Madison Cawein, who discovered the Beauty of Kentucky." The genius of this poet is like one of those deep rivers of his native state, which cut paths through the forests of chestnut and hemlock as they hurry towards the south and west, brushing with the impulsive fringe of their currents the rhododendrons and calmias and azaleas that bend from the banks to be mirrored in their flashing waters.

Mr. Cawein's vocation to poetry was irresistible. I do not know that he even tried to resist it. I have even the idea that a little more resistance would have been salutary for a talent which nothing could have discouraged, and which opposition might have taught the arts of compression and selection. Mr. Cawein suffered at first, I think, from lack of criticism more than from lack of eulogy. From his early writings I seem to gather an impression of a Louisville more ready to praise what was second-rate than what was first-rate, and practically, indeed, without any scale of appreciation whatever. This may be a mistake of mine; at all events, Mr. Cawein has had more to gain from the passage of years in self-criticism than in inspiring enthusiasm. The fount was in him from the first; but it bubbled forth before he had digged a definite channel for it. Sometimes, to this very day, he sports with the principles of syntax, as Nature played games so long ago with the fantastic caverns of the valley of the Green River or with the coral-reefs of his own Ohio. He has bad rhymes, amazing in so delicate an ear; he has awkwardness of phrase not expected in one so plunged in contemplation of the eternal harmony of Nature. But these grow fewer and less obtrusive as the years pass by.

The virgin timber-forests of Kentucky, the woods of honey-locust and buckeye, of white oak and yellow poplar, with their clearings full of flowers unknown to us by sight or name, from which in the distance are visible the domes of the far-away Cumberland Mountains,--this seems to be the hunting-field of Mr. Cawein's imagination. Here all, it must be confessed, has hitherto been unfamiliar to the Muses. If Persephone "of our Cumnor cowslips never heard," how much less can her attention have been arrested by clusters of orchids from the Ocklawaha, or by the song of the whippoorwill, rung out when "the west was hot geranium-red" under the boughs of a black-jack on the slopes of Mount Kinnex. "Not here," one is inclined to exclaim, "not here, O Apollo, are haunts meet for thee," but the art of the poet is displayed by his skill in breaking down these prejudices of time and place. Mr. Cawein reconciles us to his strange landscape--the strangeness of which one has to admit is mainly one of nomenclature,--by the exercise of a delightful instinctive pantheism. He brings the ancient gods to Kentucky, and it is marvelous how quickly they learn to be at home there. Here is Bacchus, with a spicy fragment of calamus-root in his hand, trampling the blue-eyed grass, and skipping, with the air of a hunter born, into the hickory thicket, to escape Artemis, whose robes, as she passes swiftly with her dogs through the woods, startle the humming-birds, silence the green tree-frogs, and fill the hot still air with the perfumes of peppermint and pennyroyal. It is a queer landscape, but one of new natural beauties frankly and sympathetically discovered, and it forms a _mise en scene_ which, I make bold to say, would have scandalized neither Keats nor Spenser.

It was Mr. Howells,--ever as generous in discovering new talent as he is unflinching in reproof of the effeteness of European taste,--who first drew attention to the originality and beauty of Mr. Cawein's poetry. The Kentucky poet had, at that time, published but one tentative volume, the _Blooms of the Berry_, of 1887. This was followed, in 1888, by _The Triumph of Music_, and since then hardly a year has passed without a slender sheaf of verse from Mr. Cawein's garden. Among these (if a single volume is to be indicated), the quality which distinguishes him from all other poets,--the Kentucky flavor, if we may call it so,--is perhaps to be most agreeably detected in _Intimations of the Beautiful_.

But it is time that I should leave the American lyrist to make his own appeal, with but one additional word of explanation, namely, that in this introduction Mr. Cawein's narrative poems on medieval themes, and in general his cosmopolitan writings, have been neglected of mention in favor of such nature lyrics as would present him most vividly in his own native landscape, no visitor in spirit to Europe, but at home in that bright and exuberant West--

"Where, in the hazy morning, runs The stony branch that pools and drips, Where red haws and the wild-rose hips Are strewn like pebbles; where the sun's Own gold seems captured by the weeds; To see, through scintillating seeds, The hunters steal with glimmering guns. To stand within the dewy ring Where pale death smites the boneset's blooms, And everlasting's flowers, and plumes Of mint, with aromatic wing! And hear the creek,--whose sobbing seems A wild man murmuring in his dreams,-- And insect violins that sing!"

So sweet a voice, so consonant with the music of the singers of past times, heard in a place so fresh and strange, will surely not pass without its welcome from lovers of genuine poetry.

EDMUND GOSSE.

_London, England._

CONTENTS

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY PAGE

AT REST 45 AVATARS 61 CLOUDS 59 DEAD LILY, A 40 DEAD OREAD, THE 41 DEFICIENCY 50 DISTANCE 48 DIURNAL 55 DREAMER OF DREAMS, A 24 DRYAD, THE 38 FAMILY BURYING GROUND, THE 57 HEPATICAS 17 HERON, THE 60 IN LATE FALL 72 IN MIDDLE SPRING 12 IN NOVEMBER 71 LILLITA 63 LONGINGS 9 LOVELINESS 4 MIDSUMMER 52 MIDWINTER 79 MIRABILE DICTU 22 MIRIAM 65 MOONRISE AT SEA 69 OLD BYWAY, THE 32 PAN 27 PAX VOBISCUM 43 SOUND OF THE SAP, THE 36 SPIRITS OF SPRING 19 SPRING SHOWER, A 14 STORMY SUNSET, A 29 SWEET O' THE YEAR, THE 10 TWO DAYS 67 TYRANNY 76 WAITING 7 WHAT YOU WILL 77 WITH THE SEASONS 73 WOOD GOD, THE 1 WOODLAND GRAVE, A 30 WOODPATH, THE 34

IN THE GARDENS OF FALERINA ALCALDE'S DAUGHTER, THE 187 AMADIS AT MIRAFLORES 108 AN ANTIQUE 129 BLODEUWEDD 101 EPIC, THE 183 ERMENGARDE 125 EVE OF ALL-SAINTS, THE 164 FACE TO FACE 160 GARDENS OF FALERINA, THE 85 GUINEVERE, A 153 HACKELNBERG 127 HAWKING 117 IN MYTHIC SEAS 193 ISHMAEL 189 JAAFER THE BARMECIDE 131 KING, THE 138 LOKÉ AND SIGYN 197 LOVE AS IT WAS IN THE TIME OF LOUIS XIV 171 MATER DOLOROSA 169 MELANCHOLIA 141 MINSTREL AND THE PRINCESS, THE 185 MY ROMANCE 181 ORLANDO 119 PERLE DES JARDINS 156 PRE-EXISTENCE, A 134 ROMANCE 87 TO GERTRUDE 83 TROUBADOUR, THE 176 URGANDA 112 VALLEY OF MUSIC, THE 90 WAR-SONG OF HARALD THE RED 207 WOMAN OF THE WORLD, A 150 YOLANDA OF THE TOWERS 121 YULE 209

OLD WORLD IDYLLS

ACCOLON OF GAUL 219 AFTER THE TOURNAMENT 340 AN EPISODE 440 ARABAH 458 AT THE CORREGIDOR'S 437 BEHRAM AND EDDETMA 476 BLIND HARPER, THE 345 CHILDE RONALD 347 DARK TOWER, THE 342 DAUGHTER OF MERLIN, THE 363 DEMON LOVER, THE 358 DREAM OF SIR GALAHAD, THE 335 FORESTER, THE 371 GERALDINE 431 ISOLT 329 KHALIF AND THE ARAB, THE 450 KNIGHT-ERRANT, THE 368 LADY OF THE HILLS, THE 356 MAMELUKE, THE 466 MOATED MANSE, THE 391 MORGAN LE FAY 353 MY LADY OF VERNE 422 NORMAN KNIGHT, THE 448 OLD TALE RETOLD, AN 409 PEREDUR, THE SON OF EVRAWC 307 PORTRAIT, THE 471 PRINCESS OF THULE, A 360 ROMAUNT OF THE ROSES 468 ROSICRUCIAN, THE 445 SEVEN DEVILS, THE 460 SLAVE, THE 443 THAMUS 462 TO R. E. LEE GIBSON 217 TORQUEMADA 485 TRISTRAM TO ISOLT 365

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"IT SHALL GO HARD WITH HIM THROUGH THEE, UNCONQUERABLE BLADE" _Frontispiece_ PAGE

SHE RAISED HER OBLONG LUTE AND SMOTE SOME CHORDS (See page 230) 124

IN HER ECSTASY A LOVELY DEVIL (See page 303) 250

AND GRASPED OF BOTH WILD HANDS, SWUNG TRENCHANT (See page 285) 374

LYRICS

_Wine-warm winds that sigh and sing Led me, wrapped in many moods, Through the green, sonorous woods Of belated spring._

_Till I came where, glad with heat, Waste and wild the fields were strewn, Olden as the olden moon, At my weary feet._

_Wild and white with starry bloom, One far milky-way that dashed, When some mad wind down it flashed, Into billowy foam._

_I, bewildered, gazed around, As one on whose heavy dreams Comes a sudden burst of beams, Like a mighty sound...._

_If the grander flowers I sought, But these berry-blooms to you, Evanescent as the dew, Only these I brought._

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

THE WOOD GOD

I

What deity for dozing Laziness Devised the lounging leafiness of this Secluded nook?--And how!--did I distress His musing ease that fled but now? or his Communion with some forest-sister, fair And shy as is the whippoorwill-flower there, Did I disturb?--Still is the wild moss warm And fragrant with late pressure,--as the palm Of some hot Hamadryad, who, a-nap, Props her hale cheek upon it, while her arm Is wildflower-buried; in her hair the balm Of a whole spring of blossoms and of sap.--

II

See, how the dented moss, that pads the hump Of these distorted roots, elastic springs From that god's late reclining! Lump by lump Its points, impressed, rise in resilient rings, As stars crowd, qualming through gray evening skies.-- Invisible presence, still I feel thy eyes Regarding me, bringing dim dreams before My half-closed gaze, here where great, green-veined leaves Reach, waving at me, their innumerable hands, Stretched towards this water where the sycamore Stands burly guard; where every ripple weaves A ceaseless, wavy quivering as of bands.

III

Of elfin chivalry, that, helmed with gold, Invisible march, making a twinkling sound.-- What brought thee here?--this wind, that steals the old Gray legends from the forests and around Whispers them now? Or, in those purple weeds The hermit brook so busy with his beads?-- Lulling the silence with his prayers all day, Droning soft _Aves_ on his rosary Of bubbles.--Or, that butterfly didst mark On yon hag-taper, towering by the way, A witch's yellow torch?--Or didst, like me, Watch, drifting by, these curled, brown bits of bark?

IV

Or con the slender gold of this dim, still Unmoving minnow 'neath these twisted roots, Thrust o'er the smoky topaz of this rill?-- Or, in this sunlight, did those insect flutes, Sleepy with summer, drowsily forlorn, Remind thee of Tithonos and the Morn? Until thine eyes dropped dew, the dimpled stream Crinkling with crystal o'er the winking grail?-- Or didst perplex thee with some poet plan To drug this air with beauty to make dream,-- Presence unseen, still watching in yon vale!-- Me, wildwood-wandered from the haunts of man!

LOVELINESS

I

Now let us forth to find the young witch Spring, Seated amid her bow'rs and birds and buds, Busy with loveliness.--And, wandering Among old forests that the sunlight floods, Or vales of hermit-holy solitudes, Dryads shall beckon us from where they cling, Their limbs an oak-bark brown; their hair--wild woods Have perfumed--wreathed with earliest leaves: and they, Regarding us with a dew-sparkling eye, Shall whispering greet us, as the rain the rye, Or from wild lips melodious welcome fling, Like hidden waterfalls with winds at play.

II

Let us surprise the Naiad ere she slips-- Nude at her toilette--in her fountain's glass; With damp locks dewy and evasive hips, Cool-dripping, but an instant seen, alas! When from indented moss and plushy grass-- Fear in her great eyes' rainbow-blue--she dips, Irised, the cloven water; as we pass Making a rippled circle that shall hide, From our exploring eyes, what watery path She gleaming took; what crystal haunt she hath In minnowy freshness, where her murmurous lips, Bubbling, make merry 'neath the rocky tide.

III