Undertones
Madison Cawein




Madison J. Cawein

Undertones




INSCRIBED TO THE PATHETIC


MEMORY OF THE POET


HENRY TIMROD

		Long are the days, and three times long the nights.
		The weary hours are a heavy chain
		Upon the feet of all Earth's dear delights,
		Holding them ever prisoners to pain.
		What shall beguile me to believe again
		In hope, that faith within her parable writes
		Of life, care reads with eyes whose tear-drops stain?
		Shall such assist me to subdue the heights?
		Long is the night, and over long the day. —
		The burden of all being! – is it worse
		Or better, lo! that they who toil and pray
		May win not more than they who toil and curse?
		A little sleep, a little love, ah me!
		And the slow weigh up the soul's Calvary!




THE DREAMER


		Even as a child he loved to thrid the bowers,
		And mark the loafing sunlight's lazy laugh;
		Or, on each season, spell the epitaph
		Of its dead months repeated in their flowers;
		Or list the music of the strolling showers,
		Whose vagabond notes strummed through a twinkling staff;
		Or read the day's delivered monograph
		Through all the chapters of its dædal hours.
		Still with the same child-faith and child-regard
		He looks on Nature, hearing, at her heart,
		The beautiful beat out the time and place,
		Whereby no lesson of this life is hard,
		No struggle vain of science or of art,
		That dies with failure written on its face.




QUIET


		A log-hut in the solitude,
		A clapboard roof to rest beneath!
		This side, the shadow-haunted wood;
		That side, the sunlight-haunted heath.

		At daybreak Morn shall come to me
		In raiment of the white winds spun;
		Slim in her rosy hand the key
		That opes the gateway of the sun.

		Her smile shall help my heart enough
		With love to labor all the day,
		And cheer the road, whose rocks are rough,
		With her smooth footprints, each a ray.

		At dusk a voice shall call afar,
		A lone voice like the whippoorwill's;
		And, on her shimmering brow one star,
		Night shall descend the western hills.

		She at my door till dawn shall stand,
		With Gothic eyes, that, dark and deep,
		Are mirrors of a mystic land,
		Fantastic with the towns of sleep.




UNQUALIFIED


		Not his the part to win the goal,
		The flaming goal that flies before,
		Into whose course the apples roll
		Of self that stay his feet the more.

		Beyond himself he shall not win
		Whose flesh is as a driven dust,
		That his own soul must wander in,
		Seeing no farther than his lust.




UNENCOURAGED ASPIRATION


		Is mine the part of no companion hand
		Of help, except my shadow's silent self?
		A moonlight traveller in Fancy's land
		Of leering gnome and hollow-laughing elf;

		Whose forests deepen and whose moon goes down,
		When Night's blind shadow shall usurp my own;
		And, mid the dust and wreck of some old town,
		The City of Dreams, I grope and fall alone.




THE WOOD


		Witch-hazel, dogwood, and the maple here;
		And there the oak and hickory;
		Linn, poplar, and the beech-tree, far and near
		As the eased eye can see.

		Wild-ginger; wahoo, with its wan balloons;
		And brakes of briers of a twilight green;
		And fox-grapes plumed with summer; and strung moons
		Of mandrake flowers between.

		Deep gold-green ferns, and mosses red and gray, —
		Mats for what naked myth's white feet? —
		And, cool and calm, a cascade far away
		With even-falling beat.

		Old logs, made sweet with death; rough bits of bark;
		And tangled twig and knotted root;
		And sunshine splashes and great pools of dark;
		And many a wild-bird's flute.

		Here let me sit until the Indian, Dusk,
		With copper-colored feet, comes down;
		Sowing the wildwood with star-fire and musk,
		And shadows blue and brown.

		Then side by side with some magician dream,
		To take the owlet-haunted lane,
		Half-roofed with vines; led by a firefly gleam,
		That brings me home again.




WOOD NOTES



I

		There is a flute that follows me
		From tree to tree:
		A water flute a spirit sets
		To silver lips in waterfalls,
		And through the breath of violets
		A sparkling music calls:
		"Hither! halloo! Oh, follow!
		Down leafy hill and hollow,
		Where, through clear swirls,
		With feet like pearls,
		Wade up the blue-eyed country girls.
		Hither! halloo! Oh, follow!"


II

		There is a pipe that plays to me
		From tree to tree:
		A bramble pipe an elfin holds
		To golden lips in berry brakes,
		And, swinging o'er the elder wolds,
		A flickering music makes:
		"Come over! Come over
		The new-mown clover!
		Come over the new-mown hay!
		Where, there by the berries,
		With cheeks like cherries,
		And locks with which the warm wind merries,
		Brown girls are hilling the hay,
		All day!
		Come over the fields and away!
		Come over! Come over!"




SUCCESS


		How some succeed who have least need,
		In that they make no effort for!
		And pluck, where others pluck a weed,
		The burning blossom of a star,
		Grown from no earthly seed.

		For some shall reap that never sow;
		And some shall toil and not attain, —
		What boots it in ourselves to know
		Such labor here is not in vain,
		When we still see it so!




SONG


		Unto the portal of the House of Song,
		Symbols of wrong and emblems of unrest,
		And mottoes of despair and envious jest,
		And stony masks of scorn and hate belong.

		Who enters here shall feel his soul denied
		All welcome: lo! the chiselled form of Love,
		That stares in marble on the shrine above
		The tomb of Beauty, where he dreamed and died!

		Who enters here shall know no poppyflowers
		Of Rest, or harp-tones of serene Content;
		Only sad ghosts of music and of scent
		Shall mock the mind with their remembered powers.

		Here must he wait till striving patience carves
		His name upon the century-storied floor;
		His heart's blood staining one dim pane the more
		In Fame's high casement while he sings and starves.




THE OLD SPRING



I

		Under rocks whereon the rose,
		Like a strip of morning, glows;
		Where the azure-throated newt
		Drowses on the twisted root;
		And the brown bees, humming homeward,
		Stop to suck the honey-dew;
		Fern and leaf-hid, gleaming gloamward,
		Drips the wildwood spring I knew,
		Drips the spring my boyhood knew.


II

		Myrrh and music everywhere
		Haunt its cascades; – like the hair
		That a naiad tosses cool,
		Swimming strangely beautiful,
		With white fragrance for her bosom,
		For her mouth a breath of song; —
		Under leaf and branch and blossom
		Flows the woodland spring along,
		Sparkling, singing, flows along.


III

		Still the wet wan morns may touch
		Its gray rocks, perhaps; and such
		Slender stars as dusk may have
		Pierce the rose that roofs its wave;
		Still the thrush may call at noontide,
		And the whippoorwill at night;
		Nevermore, by sun or moontide,
		Shall I see it gliding white,
		Falling, flowing, wild and white.




HILLS OF THE WEST


		Hills of the west, that gird
		Forest and farm,
		Home of the nestling bird,
		Housing from harm,
		When on your tops is heard
		Storm:

		Hills of the west, that bar
		Belts of the gloam,
		Under the twilight star,
		Where the mists roam,
		Take ye the wanderer
		Home.

		Hills of the west, that dream
		Under the moon,
		Making of wind and stream,
		Late-heard and soon,
		Parts of your lives that seem
		Tune.

		Hills of the west, that take
		Slumber to ye,
		Be it for sorrow's sake
		Or memory,
		Part of such slumber make
		Me.




FLOWERS


		Oh, why for us the blighted bloom!
		The blossom that lies withering!
		The Master of Life's changeless loom
		Hath wrought for us no changeless thing.

		Where grows the rose of fadeless Grace?
		Wherethrough the Spirit manifests
		The fact of an immortal race,
		The dream on which religion rests.

		Where buds the lily of our Faith?
		That grows for us in unknown wise,
		Out of the barren dust of death,
		The pregnant bloom of Paradise.

		In Heaven! so near that flowers know!
		That flowers see how near! – and thus
		Reflect the knowledge here below
		Of love and life unknown to us.




SECOND SIGHT


		They lean their faces to me through
		Green windows of the woods;
		Their white throats sweet with honey-dew
		Beneath low leafy hoods —
		No dream they dream but hath been true
		Here in the solitudes.

		Star trillium, in the underbrush,
		In whom Spring bares her face;
		Sun eglantine, that breathes the blush
		Of Summer's quiet grace;
		Moon mallow, in whom lives the hush
		Of Autumn's tragic pace.

		For one hath heard the dryad's sighs
		Behind the covering bark;
		And one hath felt the satyr's eyes
		Gleam in the bosky dark;
		And one hath seen the naiad rise
		In waters all a-spark.

		I bend my soul unto them, stilled
		In worship man hath lost;
		The old-world myths that science killed
		Are living things almost
		To me through these whose forms are filled
		With Beauty's pagan ghost.

		And through new eyes I seem to see
		The world these live within, —
		A shuttered world of mystery,
		Where unreal forms begin
		The real of ideality
		That has no unreal kin.




DEAD SEA FRUIT


		All things have power to hold us back.
		Our very hopes build up a wall
		Of doubt, whose shadow stretches black
		O'er all.

		The dreams, that helped us once, become
		Dread disappointments, that oppose
		Dead eyes to ours, and lips made dumb
		With woes.

		The thoughts that opened doors before
		Within the mind's house, hide away;
		Discouragement hath locked each door
		For aye.

		Come, loss, more frequently than gain!
		And failure than success! until
		The spirit's struggle to attain
		Is still!




THE WOOD WITCH


		There is a woodland witch who lies
		With bloom-bright limbs and beam-bright eyes,
		Among the water-flags, that rank
		The slow brook's heron-haunted bank:
		The dragon-flies, in brass and blue,
		Are signs she works her sorcery through;
		Weird, wizard characters she weaves
		Her spells by under forest leaves, —
		These wait her word, like imps, upon
		The gray flag-pods; their wings, of lawn
		And gauze; their bodies gleamy green.
		While o'er the wet sand, – left between
		The running water and the still, —
		In pansy hues and daffodil,
		The fancies that she meditates
		Take on most sumptuous shapes, with traits
		Like butterflies. 'Tis she you hear,
		Whose sleepy rune, hummed in the ear
		Of silence, bees and beetles purr,
		And the dry-droning locusts whirr;
		Till, where the wood is very lone,
		Vague monotone meets monotone,
		And slumber is begot and born,
		A faery child, beneath the thorn.
		There is no mortal who may scorn
		The witchery she spreads around
		Her dim demesne, wherein is bound
		The beauty of abandoned time,
		As some sweet thought 'twixt rhyme and rhyme.
		And by her spell you shall behold
		The blue turn gray, the gray turn gold
		Of hollow heaven; and the brown
		Of twilight vistas twinkled down
		With fire-flies; and, in the gloom,
		Feel the cool vowels of perfume
		Slow-syllabled of weed and bloom.
		But, in the night, at languid rest, —
		When like a spirit's naked breast
		The moon slips from a silver mist, —
		With star-bound brow, and star-wreathed wrist,
		If you should see her rise and wave
		You welcome, – ah! what thing shall save
		You then? forevermore her slave!




AT SUNSET


		Into the sunset's turquoise marge
		The moon dips, like a pearly barge
		Enchantment sails through magic seas,
		To fairyland Hesperides,
		Over the hills and away.

		Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown,
		The young-eyed Dusk comes slowly down;
		Her apron filled with stars she stands,
		And one or two slip from her hands
		Over the hills and away.

		Above the wood's black caldron bends
		The witch-faced Night and, muttering, blends
		The dew and heat, whose bubbles make




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