Pestilence.

High on a throne of noisome ooze and heat,
'Mid rotting trees of bayou and lagoon,
Ghastly she sits beneath the skeleton moon,
A tawny horror coiling at her feet
Fever, whose eyes keep watching, serpent-like,
Until her eyes shall bid him rise and strike.

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 Place

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

The Mountain-Still

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

Victory.

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

A Street Of Ghosts.

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Old House By The Mere.

Five rotten gables look upon
Wan rotting roses and rank weeds,
Old iron gates on posts of stone,
Dim dingles where the vermin breeds.
Five rotten gables black appear
Above bleak yews and cedars sad,
And thence they see the sleepy mere
In lazy lilies clad.

At morn the slender dragon-fly,
A burnished ray of light, darts past;
The knightly bee comes charging by
Winding a surly blast.
At noon amid the fervid leaves
The quarreling insects gossip hot,
And thro' the grass the spider weaves
A weft with silver shot.

At eve the hermit cricket rears
His vesper song in shrillful shrieks;
The bat a blund'ring voyage steers
Beneath the sunset's streaks.
The slimy worm gnaws at the bud,
The Katydid talks dreamily;
The sullen owl in m...

Madison Julius Cawein

The Dream Of Dread.

I have lain for an hour or twain
Awake, and the tempest is beating
On the roof, and the sleet on the pane,
And the winds are three enemies meeting;
And I listen and hear it again,
My name, in the silence, repeating.

Then dumbness of death that must slay,
Till the midnight is burst like a bubble;
And out of the darkness a ray
'T is she! the all beautiful double;
With a face like the breaking of day,
Eyes dark with the magic of trouble.

I move not; she lies with her lips
At mine; and I feel she is drawing
My life from my heart to their tips,
My heart where the horror is gnawing;
My life in a thousand slow sips,
My flesh with her sorcery awing.

She binds me with merciless eyes;
She drinks of my blood, and I hear it
Drain up w...

Madison Julius Cawein

Where And What?

    Her ivied towers tall
    Old forests belt and bar,
And oh! the West's dim mountain crests
    That line the blue afar.

    Her gardens face dark cliffs,
    That seeth against a sea
As blue and deep as the eyes of Sleep
    With saddening mystery.

    Red sands roll leagues on leagues
    Ribbed of the wind and wave;
The near warm sky bends from on high
    The pale brow of a slave.

    And when the morning's beams
    Lie crushed on crag and bay,
A wail of flutes and soft-strung lutes
    O'er the lone land swoons away.

    The woods are 'roused from rest,
    A scent of earth and brine,
By brake and lake the wild things wake,
    And torrents leap and shine.

    But she in one gray tower
    White-f...

Madison Julius Cawein

Portents

Above the world a glare
Of sunset guns and spears;
An army, no one hears,
Of mist and air:
Long lines of bronze and gold,
Huge helmets, each a cloud;
And then a fortress old
There in the night that phantoms seem to crowd.

A face of flame; a hand
Of crimson alchemy
Is waved: and, solemnly,
At its command,
Opens a fiery well,
A burning hole,
From which a stream of hell,
A river of blood, in frenzy, seems to roll.

And there, upon a throne,
Like some vast precipice,
Above that River of Dis,
Behold a King! alone!
Around whom shapes of blood
Take form: each one the peer
Of those, who, in the wood
Of Dante's Hell froze up the heart with fear.

Then shapes, that breast to breast
Gallop to face a foe:
A...

Madison Julius Cawein

The Fen-Fire.

The misty rain makes dim my face,
The night's black cloak is o'er me;
I tread the dripping cypress-place,
A flickering light before me.

Out of the death of leaves that rot
And ooze and weedy water,
My form was breathed to haunt this spot,
Death's immaterial daughter.

The owl that whoops upon the yew,
The snake that lairs within it,
Have seen my wild face flashing blue
For one fantastic minute.

But should you follow where my eyes
Like some pale lamp decoy you,
Beware! lest suddenly I rise
With love that shall destroy you.

Madison Julius Cawein

The House Of Fear.

Vast are its halls, as vast the halls and lone
Where DEATH stalks listening to the wind and rain;
And dark that house, where I shall meet again
My long-dead Sin in some dread way unknown;
For I have dreamed of stairs of haunted stone,
And spectre footsteps I have fled in vain;
And windows glaring with a blood-red stain,
And horrible eyes, that burn me to the bone,
Within a face that looks as that black night
It looked when deep I dug for it a grave, -
The dagger wound above the brow, the thin
Blood trickling down slantwise the ghastly white; -
And I have dreamed not even GOD can save
Me and my soul from that risen Sin.

Madison Julius Cawein