To My Good Friend W. T. H. Howe

Friend, for the sake of loves we hold in common,
The love of books, of paintings, rhyme and fiction;
And for the sake of that divine affliction,
The love of art, passing the love of woman;
By which all life's made nobler, superhuman,
Lifting the soul above, and, without friction
Of Time, that puts failure in his prediction,
Works to some end through hearts that dreams illumine:
To you I pour this Cup of Dreams a striver,
And dreamer too in this sad world, unwitting
Of that you do, the help that still assureth,
Lifts up the heart, struck down by that dark driver,
Despair, who, on Life's pack-horse effort sitting,
Rides down Ambition through whom Art endureth.

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 Rain-Crow

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

Little Boy Bad And Little Girl Rude

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

Amadis And Oriana

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

Quiet

Madison Julius Cawein, Simple Poetry

English

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Afterword.

The old enthusiasms
Are dead, quite dead, in me;
Dead the aspiring spasms
Of art and poesy,
That opened magic chasms,
Once, of wild mystery,
In youth's rich Araby.
That opened magic chasms.

The longing and the care
Are mine; and, helplessly,
The heartache and despair
For what can never be.
More than my mortal share
Of sad mortality,
It seems, God gives to me,
More than my mortal share.

O world! O time! O fate!
Remorseless trinity!
Let not your wheel abate
Its iron rotary!
Turn round! nor make me wait,
Bound to it neck and knee,
Hope's final agony!
Turn round! nor make me wait.

Madison Julius Cawein

Heart's Encouragement.

Nor time nor all his minions
Of sorrow or of pain,
Shall dash with vulture pinions
The cup she fills again
Within the dream-dominions
Of life where she doth reign.

Clothed on with bright desire
And hope that makes her strong,
With limbs of frost and fire,
She sits above all wrong,
Her heart, a living lyre,
Her love, its only song.

And in the waking pauses
Of weariness and care,
And when the dark hour draws his
Black weapon of despair,
Above effects and causes
We hear its music there.

The longings life hath near it
Of love we yearn to see;
The dreams it doth inherit
Of immortality;
Are callings of her spirit
To something yet to be.

Madison Julius Cawein

To G. F. M. This Volume Is Inscribed In Memory Of Many Days. (One Day And Another)

What though I dreamed of mountain heights,
    Of peaks, the barriers of the world,
Around whose tops the Northern Lights
    And tempests are unfurled.

Mine are the footpaths leading through
    Life's lowly fields and woods, - with rifts,
Above, of heaven's Eden blue, -
    By which the violet lifts

Its shy appeal; and holding up
    Its chaliced gold, like some wild wine,
Along the hillside, cup on cup,
    Blooms bright the celandine.

Where soft upon each flowering stock
    The butterfly spreads damask wings;
And under grassy loam and rock
    The cottage cricket sings.

Where overhead eve blooms with fire,
    In which the new moon bends her bow,
And, arrow-like, one white star by her
 ...

Madison Julius Cawein

The Love Of Loves.
I Have not seen her face, and yet
She is more sweet than any thing
Of Earth than rose or violet
That Mayday winds and sunbeams bring.

Of all we know, past or to come,
That beauty holds within its net,
She is the high compendium:
And yet

I have not touched her robe, and still
She is more dear than lyric words
And music; or than strains that fill
The throbbing throats of forest birds.

Of all we mean by poetry,
That rules the soul and charms the will,
She is the deep epitome:
And still

She is my world; ah, pity me!
A dream that flies whom I pursue;
Whom all pursue, whoe'er they be,
Who toil for art and dare and do.

The shadow-love for whom they sigh,
The far ideal affinity,
For whom they live and gladly ...
Madison Julius Cawein

A Motive In Gold And Gray
I.

To-night he sees their star burn, dewy-bright,
Deep in the pansy, eve hath made for it,
Low in the west; a placid purple lit
At its far edge with warm auroral light:
Love's planet hangs above a cedared height;
And there in shadow, like gold music writ
Of dusk's dark fingers, scale-like fire-flies flit
Now up, now down the balmy bars of night.
How different from that eve a year ago!
Which was a stormy flower in the hair
Of dolorous day, whose sombre eyes looked, blurred,
Into night's sibyl face, and saw the woe
Of parting near, and imaged a despair,
As now a hope caught from a homing word.

II.

She came unto him, as the springtime does
Unto the land where all lies dead and cold,
Until her rosary of days is told
And beaut...
Madison Julius Cawein

Friendship.
[From "Letters of Julius to Raphael," an unpublished Novel.]

Friend! the Great Ruler, easily content,
Needs not the laws it has laborious been
The task of small professors to invent;
A single wheel impels the whole machine
Matter and spirit; yea, that simple law,
Pervading nature, which our Newton saw.

This taught the spheres, slaves to one golden rein,
Their radiant labyrinths to weave around
Creation's mighty hearts: this made the chain,
Which into interwoven systems bound
All spirits streaming to the spiritual sun
As brooks that ever into ocean run!

Did not the same strong mainspring urge and guide
Our hearts to meet in love's eternal bond?
Linked to thine arm, O Raphael, by thy side
Might I aspire to reach to souls beyond
Our earth, ...
Friedrich Schiller