Afterword.

What vague traditions do the golden eves,
What legends do the dawns
Inscribe in fire on Heaven's azure leaves,
The red sun colophons?

What ancient stories do the waters verse?
What tales of war and love
Do winds within the Earth's vast house rehearse,
God's stars stand guard above?

Would I could know them as they are expressed
In hue and melody!
And say, in words, the beauties they suggest,
Language their mystery!

And in one song magnificently rise,
The music of the spheres,
That more than marble should immortalize
My name in after years.

Madison Julius Cawein

Madison Julius Cawein was born on March 23, 1865, in Louisville, Kentucky and died on December 8, 1914. Known as the “Keats of Kentucky,” his poetry often focused on nature, mythology, and the lush landscapes of his home state. Throughout his lifetime, Cawein published more than 30 books of poetry. He is remembered for his vivid and descriptive style and his ability to capture the beauty of the natural world. His works provide a window into the pastoral and often mystical world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Madison Julius Cawein

The Old Gate Made Of Pickets

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

The Ass

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

One Day And Another A Lyrical Eclogue Part IV Late Autumn

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

Old Ghosts

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

English

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Prologue

There is a poetry that speaks
Through common things: the grasshopper,
That in the hot weeds creaks and creaks,
Says all of summer to my ear:
And in the cricket's cry I hear
The fireside speak, and feel the frost
Work mysteries of silver near
On country casements, while, deep lost
In snow, the gatepost seems a sheeted ghost.

And other things give rare delight:
Those guttural harps the green-frogs tune,
Those minstrels of the falling night,
That hail the sickle of the moon
From grassy pools that glass her lune:
Or, all of August in its loud
Dry cry, the locust's call at noon,
That tells of heat and never a cloud
To veil the pitiless sun as with a shroud.

The rain, whose cloud dark-lids the moon,
The great white eyeball of the night,

Madison Julius Cawein

Intimations

I.

Is it uneasy moonlight
On the restless field, that stirs?
Or wild white meadow-blossoms
The night-wind bends and blurs?
Is it the dolorous water,
That sobs in the woods and sighs?
Or heart of an ancient oak-tree,
That breaks and, sighing, dies?
The wind is vague with the shadows
That wander in No-Man's Land;
The water is dark with the voices
That weep on the Unknown strand.

O ghosts of the winds that call me!
O ghosts of the whispering waves!
As sad as forgotten flowers
That die upon nameless graves!
What is this thing you tell me
In tongues of a twilight race,
Of death, with the vanished features,
Mantled, of my own face?

II.

The old enigmas of the deathless dawns
And riddles of the all immortal ev...

Madison Julius Cawein

Youth

I


Morn's mystic rose is reddening on the hills,
Dawn's irised nautilus makes glad the sea;
There is a lyre of flame that throbs and fills
Far heaven and earth with hope's wild ecstasy.--
With lilied field and grove,
Haunts of the turtle-dove,
Here is the land of Love.


II


The chariot of the noon makes blind the blue
As towards the goal his burning axle glares;
There is a fiery trumpet thrilling through
Wide heaven and earth with deeds of one who dares.--
With peaks of splendid name,
Wrapped round with astral flame,
Here is the land of Fame.


III


The purple priesthood of the evening waits
With golden pomp within the templed skies;
There is a harp of worship at the gates
Of heaven and ...

Madison Julius Cawein

Music Of Summer

I

Thou sit'st among the sunny silences
Of terraced hills and woodland galleries,
Thou utterance of all calm melodies,
Thou lutanist of Earth's most affluent lute, -
Where no false note intrudes
To mar the silent music, - branch and root, -
Charming the fields ripe, orchards and deep woods,
To song similitudes
Of flower and seed and fruit.

II

Oft have I seen thee, in some sensuous air,
Bewitch the broad wheat-acres everywhere
To imitated gold of thy deep hair:
The peach, by thy red lips' delicious trouble,
Blown into gradual dyes
Of crimson; and beheld thy magic double -
Dark-blue with fervid influence of thine eyes -
The grapes' rotundities,
Bubble by purple bubble.

III

Deliberate uttered into life intense...

Madison Julius Cawein

Song Of The Spirits Of Spring.

        I.

        Wafted o'er purple seas,
        From gold Hesperides,
        Mixed with the southern breeze,
        Hail to us spirits!
        Dripping with fragrant rains,
        Fire of our ardent veins,
        Life of the barren plains,
Woodlands and germs that the woodland inherits.


        II.

        Wan as the creamy mist,
        Tinged with pale amethyst,
        Warm with the sun that kissed
        Vine-tangled mountains
        Looming o'er tropic lakes,
        Where ev'ry air that shakes
        Tamarisk coverts makes
Music that haunts like the falling of fountains.


        III.

        Swift are our flashing feet,
        Fleet with the winds that meet,
        Winds tha...

Madison Julius Cawein

Beautiful-Bosomed, O Night

I.

Beautiful-bosomed, O Night, in thy noon
Move with majesty onward! soaring, as lightly
As a singer may soar the notes of an exquisite tune,
The stars and the moon
Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls:
Under whose sapphirine walls,
June, hesperian June,
Robed in divinity wanders. Daily and nightly
The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star,
The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are,
Fill the land with languorous light and perfume.
Is it the melody mute of burgeoning leaf and of bloom?
The music of Nature, that silently shapes in the gloom
Immaterial hosts
Of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep,
Whom I hear, whom I hear?
With their sighs of silver and pearl?
Invisible ghosts,

Madison Julius Cawein