Penury. A Quatrain.

Above his misered embers, gnarled and gray,
With toil-twitched limbs he bends; around his hut,
Want, like a hobbling hag, goes night and day,
Scolding at windows and at doors tight-shut.

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

A Road Song

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

Unforgotten

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

Fall

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

A Character.

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

English

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The Miser

Withered and gray as winter; gnarled and old,
With bony hands he crouches by the coals;
His beggar's coat is patched and worn in holes;
Rags are his shoes: clutched in his claw-like hold
A chest he hugs wherein he hoards his gold.
Far-heard a bell of midnight slowly tolls:
The bleak blasts shake his hut like wailing souls,
And door and window chatter with the cold.
Nor sleet nor snow he heeds, nor storm nor night.
Let the wind howl! and let the palsy twitch
His rheum-racked limbs! here 's that will make them glow
And warm his heart! here 's comfort joy and light!
How the gold glistens! Rich he is; how rich
Only the death that knocks outside shall know.

Madison Julius Cawein

The Old Herb-Man

On the barren hillside lone he sat;
On his head he wore a tattered hat;
In his hand he bore a crooked staff;
Never heard I laughter like his laugh,
On the barren hillside, thistle-hoar.

Cracked his laughter sounded, harsh as woe,
As the croaking, thinned, of a crow:
At his back hung, pinned, a wallet old,
Bulged with roots and simples caked with mould:
On the barren hillside in the wind.

Roots of twisted twin-leaf; sassafras;
Bloodroot, tightly whipped 'round with grass;
Adder's-tongue; and, tipped brown and black,
Yellowroot and snakeroot filled his pack,
On the barren hillside, winter-stripped.

There is nothing sadder than old age;
Nothing saddens more than that stage
When, forlornly poor, bent with toil,
One must starve or wring ...

Madison Julius Cawein

Melancholy. A Quatrain.

With shadowy immortelles of memory
About her brow, she sits with eyes that look
Upon the stream of Lethe wearily,
In hesitant hands Death's partly-opened book.

Madison Julius Cawein

The Charcoal-Burner's Hut

Deep in a valley, green with ancient beech,
And wandered through of one small, silent stream,
Whose bear-grassed banks bristled with brush and burr,
Tick-trefoil and the thorny marigold,
Bush-clover and the wahoo, hung with pods,
And mass on mass of bugled jewelweed,
Horsemint and doddered ragweed, dense, unkempt,
I came upon a charcoal-burner's hut,
Abandoned and forgotten long ago;
His hut and weedy pit, where once the wood
Smouldered both day and night like some wild forge,
A wildwood forge, glaring as wild-cat eyes.

A mossy roof, black, fallen in decay,
And rotting logs, exuding sickly mold
And livid fungi, and the tottering wreck,
Rude remnants, of a chimney, clay and sticks,
Were all that now remained to say that once,
In time not so remote, o...

Madison Julius Cawein

Cold

A mist that froze beneath the moon and shook
Minutest frosty fire in the air.
All night the wind was still as lonely Care
Who sighs before her shivering ingle-nook.
The face of Winter wore a crueler look
Than when he shakes the icicles from his hair,
And, in the boisterous pauses, lets his stare
Freeze through the forest, fettering bough and brook.
He is the despot now who sits and dreams
Of Desolation and Despair, and smiles
At Poverty, who hath no place to rest,
Who wanders o'er Life's snow-made pathless miles,
And sees the Home-of-Comfort's window gleams,
And hugs her rag-wrapped baby to her breast.

Madison Julius Cawein

Sorrow. A Quatrain.

Death takes her hand and leads her through the waste
Of her own soul, wherein she hears the voice
Of lost Love's tears, and, famishing, can but taste
The dead-sea fruit of Life's remembered joys.

Madison Julius Cawein