The Lost Dream

The black night showed its hungry teeth,
And gnawed with sleet at roof and pane;
Beneath the door I heard it breathe
A beast that growled in vain.

The hunter wind stalked up and down,
And crashed his ice-spears through each tree;
Before his rage, in tattered gown,
I saw the maid moon flee.

There stole a footstep to my door;
A voice cried in my room and there!
A shadow cowled and gaunt and hoar,
Death, leaned above my chair.

He beckoned me; he bade me rise,
And follow through the madman night;
Into my heart's core pierced his eyes,
And lifted me with might.

I rose; I made no more delay;
And followed where his eyes compelled;
And through the darkness, far away,
They lit me and enspelled.

Until we reached an ancient wood,
That flung its twisted arms around,
As if in anguish that it stood
On dark, unhallowed ground.

And then I saw it cold and blind
The dream, that had my heart to share,
That fell, before its feet could find
Its home, and perished there.

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

Miriam.

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

Ku Klux

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

Comradery

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

The Christmas Tree

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 Dead Dream

Between the darkness and the day
As, lost in doubt, I went my way,
I met a shape, as faint as fair,
With star-like blossoms in its hair:
Its body, which the moon shone through,
Was partly cloud and partly dew:
Its eyes were bright as if with tears,
And held the look of long-gone years;
Its mouth was piteous, sweet yet dread,
As if with kisses of the dead:
And in its hand it bore a flower,
In memory of some haunted hour.
I knew it for the Dream I'd had
In days when life was young and glad.
Why had it come with love and woe
Out of the happy Long-Ago?
Upon my brow I felt its breath,
Heard ancient. words of faith and death,
Sweet with the immortality
Of many a fragrant memory:
And to my heart again I took
Its joy and sorrow in a look,

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

The Forest Of Dreams.

I.

Where was I last Friday night?
Within the forest of dark dreams
Following the blur of a goblin-light,
That led me over ugly streams,
Whereon the scum of the spawn was spread,
And the blistered slime, in stagnant seams;
Where the weed and the moss swam black and dead,
Like a drowned girl's hair in the ropy ooze:
And the jack-o'-lantern light that led,
Flickered the fox-fire trees o'erhead,
And the owl-like things at airy cruise.


II.

Where was I last Friday night?
Within the forest of dark dreams
Following a form of shadowy white
With my own wild face it seems.
Did a raven's wing just flap my hair?
Or a web-winged bat brush by my face?
Or the hand of something I did not dare
Look round to see in that obscene place?<...

Madison Julius Cawein

At Dawn.

Far off I heard dark waters rush;
The sky was cold; the dawn broke green;
And wrapped in twilight and strange hush
The gray wind moaned between.

A voice rang through the House of Sleep,
And through its halls there went a tread;
Mysterious raiment seemed to sweep
Around the pallid dead.

And then I knew that I had died,
I, who had suffered so and sinned -
And 't was myself I stood beside
In the wild dawn and wind.

Madison Julius Cawein

The Old House In The Wood

Weeds and dead leaves, and leaves the Autumn stains
With hues of rust and rose whence moisture weeps;
Gnarl'd thorns, from which the knotted haw-fruit rains
On paths the gray moss heaps.

One golden flower, like a dreamy thought
In the sad mind of Age, makes bright the wood;
And near it, like a fancy Childhood-fraught,
The toadstool's jaunty hood.

Webs, in whose snares the nimble spiders crouch,
Waiting the prey that comes, moon-winged, with night:
Slugs and the snail which trails the mushroom's pouch,
That marks the wood with white.

An old gaunt house, round which the trees decay,
Its porches fallen and its windows gone,
Starts out at you as if to bar the way,
Or bid you hurry on.

A picket fence, grim as a skeleton arm,
Is flung ar...

Madison Julius Cawein

The Haunted Room.

Its casements' diamond disks of glass
Stare myriad on a terrace old,
Where urns, unkempt with ragged grass,
Foam o'er with frothy cold.
The snow rounds o'er each stair of stone;
The frozen fount is hooped with pearl;
Down desolate walks, like phantoms lone,
Thin, powd'ry snow-wreaths whirl.

And to each rose-tree's stem that bends
With silver snow-combs, glued with frost,
It seems each summer rosebud sends
Its airy, scentless ghost.
The stiff Elizabethan pile
Chatters with cold thro' all its panes,
And rumbling down each chimney file
The mad wind shakes his reins.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *

Lone in the Northern angle, dim
With immemorial dust, it lay,
Where each gaunt casement's stony rim
Stared lidless to the day.

Madison Julius Cawein