The Age Of Gold

The clouds that tower in storm, that beat
Arterial thunder in their veins;
The wildflowers lifting, shyly sweet,
Their perfect faces from the plains, -
All high, all lowly things of Earth
For no vague end have had their birth.

Low strips of mist that mesh the moon
Above the foaming waterfall;
And mountains, that God's hand hath hewn,
And forests, where the great winds call, -
Within the grasp of such as see
Are parts of a conspiracy;

To seize the soul with beauty; hold
The heart with love: and thus fulfill
Within ourselves the Age of Gold,
That never died, and never will, -
As long as one true nature feels
The wonders that the world reveals.

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 Spring

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Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

The Mountain-Still

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Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

English

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The Age Of Gold

The clouds that tower in storm, that beat
Arterial thunder in their veins;
The wildflowers lifting, shyly sweet,
Their perfect faces from the plains,
All high, all lowly things of Earth
For no vague end have had their birth.

Low strips of mist that mesh the moon
Above the foaming waterfall;
And mountains, that God's hand hath hewn,
And forests, where the great winds call,
Within the grasp of such as see
Are parts of a conspiracy;

To seize the soul with beauty; hold
The heart with love: and thus fulfill
Within ourselves the Age of Gold,
That never died, and never will,
As long as one true nature feels
The wonders that the world reveals.

Madison Julius Cawein

The Golden Hour

Gold-haired she stood among the golden-rod,
A girl, embodying all the Golden Age,
Who made that autumn day a glorious page
Out of a book of gold inspired of God
And made for Him by priests and worshippers
Of Truth and Beauty, putting their praise in gold.
The golden blossoms round her and, gold-rolled,
The fields before, were as a golden verse
Of which she was the bright initial: she!
My heart-song's gold beginning, from whom grew
Love's golden ritual, filled with aureate gleams
And music, which my soul read wonderingly
Within Love's book of gold, that mightily drew
Our souls together, binding them with dreams.

Madison Julius Cawein

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

The Hills

There is no joy of earth that thrills
My bosom like the far-off hills!
Th' unchanging hills, that, shadowy,
Beckon our mutability
To follow and to gaze upon
Foundations of the dusk and dawn.
Meseems the very heavens are massed
Upon their shoulders, vague and vast
With all the skyey burden of
The winds and clouds and stars above.
Lo, how they sit before us, seeing
The laws that give all Beauty being!
Behold! to them, when dawn is near,
The nomads of the air appear,
Unfolding crimson camps of day
In brilliant bands; then march away;
And under burning battlements
Of twilight plant their tinted tents.
The truth of olden myths, that brood
By haunted stream and haunted wood,
They see; and feel the happiness
Of old at which we only guess:

Madison Julius Cawein

The Miracle Of The Dawn

What it would mean for you and me
If dawn should come no more!
Think of its gold along the sea,
Its rose above the shore!
That rose of awful mystery,
Our souls bow down before.

What wonder that the Inca kneeled,
The Aztec prayed and pled
And sacrificed to it, and sealed,
With rights that long are dead,
The marvels that it once revealed
To them it comforted.

What wonder, yea! what awe, behold!
What rapture and what tears
Were ours, if wild its rivered gold,
That now each day appears,
Burst on the world, in darkness rolled,
Once every thousand years!

Think what it means to me and you
To see it even as God
Evolved it when the world was new!
When Light rose, earthquake-shod,
And slow its gradual splendor grew
O'...

Madison Julius Cawein

Substratum.

Hear you r o music in the creaks
    Made by the sallow grasshopper,
Who in the hot weeds sharply breaks
    The mellow dryness with his cheer?
    Or did you by the hearthstones hear
The cricket's kind, shrill strain when frost
    Worked mysteries of silver near
Upon the casement's panes, and lost
Without the gate-post seemed a sheeted ghost?

Or through the dank, dim Springtide's night
    Green minstrels of the marshlands tune
Their hoarse lyres in the pale twilight,
    Hailing the sickle of the moon
    From flag-thronged pools that glassed her lune?
Or in the Summer, dry and loud,
    The hard cicada whirr aboon
His long lay in a poplar's cloud,
When the thin heat rose wraith-like in a shroud?

The cloud that lids the naked moon,

Madison Julius Cawein