Madison Julius Cawein

Had a birthday yesterday.
First one for, I think, a year.
Won't have one again, they say,
Till another year is here.
Funny, don't you think so? I
Can't just understand now why.

Anyhow my birthday came;
And I had, oh! lots of things
Birthday gifts I just can't name,
Even count them: toys and rings;
Hoops and books and hats. Indeed,
Everything that I don't need.

What I wanted was n't suits;
Wooden toys and"Wonderland";
But a hoe to dig up roots;
And a spade to shovel sand;
Rake to rake where father said
He has made a flower-bed.

But I did n't get them; and
Did n't get a box of paints,
Which I wanted. I raised sand,
Till my mother said, "My saints!
If you don't behave yourself,
Party'll be laid on the shelf."

I had not found the road too short,
As once I had in days of youth,
In that old forest of long ruth,
Where my young knighthood broke its heart,
Ere love and it had come to part,
And lies made mockery of truth.
I had not found the road too short.

A blind man, by the nightmare way,
Had set me right when I was wrong.
I had been blind my whole life long
What wonder then that on this day
The blind should show me how astray
My strength had gone, my heart once strong.

A blind man pointed me the way.
The road had been a heartbreak one,
Of roots and rocks and tortured trees,
And pools, above my horse's knees,
And wandering paths, where spiders spun
'Twixt boughs that never saw the sun,
And silence of lost centuries.

The road had be...

I had not found the road too short,
As once I had in days of youth,
In that old forest of long ruth,
Where my young knighthood broke its heart,
Ere love and it had come to part,
And lies made mockery of truth.
I had not found the road too short.

A blind man, by the nightmare way,
Had set me right when I was wrong. -
I had been blind my whole life long -
What wonder then that on this day
The blind should show me how astray
My strength had gone, my heart once strong.
A blind man pointed me the way.

The road had been a heartbreak one,
Of roots and rocks and tortured trees,
And pools, above my horse's knees,
And wandering paths, where spiders spun
'Twixt boughs that never saw the sun,
And silence of lost centuries.
The road had been...

I know not if she be unkind,
If she have faults I do not care;
Search through the world - where will you find
A face like hers, a form, a mind?
I love her to despair.

If she be cruel, cruelty
Is a great virtue, I will swear;
If she be proud - then pride must be
Akin to Heaven's divinest three -
I love her to despair.

Why speak to me of that and this?
All you may say weighs not a hair!
In her, - whose lips I may not kiss, -
To me naught but perfection is! -
I love her to despair.

And thus it came my feet were led
To wizard walls that hairy hung
Old as their rock the moss made dead;
And, like a ditch of fire flung
Around it, uncouth flowers red
Thrust spur and fang and tongue.

And here I harped. Did dead men list?
Or was it hollow hinges gnarred
Huge, iron scorn in donjon-twist?
And when I thought a face sword-scarred
Would curse me, lo! a woman kissed
At me hands ringed and starred.

And so I sang; for she had leaned
Rare beauty to me, dark and tall;
I sang of Love, whose Court is queened
Of Aliénor the virginal,
Nor saw how rolled on me a fiend
Wolf-eyeballs from the wall.

Oh, how I sang! until she laughed
Red lips that made lute harmony;
I sang of knights who fought and quaffed
To Love's own ...

From morn till noon upon the window-pane
The tempest tapped with rainy finger-nails,
And all the afternoon the blustering gales
Beat at the door with furious feet of rain.
The rose, near which the lily bloom lay slain,
Like some red wound dripped by the garden rails,
On which the sullen slug left slimy trails
Meseemed the sun would never shine again.
Then in the drench, long, loud and full of cheer,
A skyey herald tabarded in blue,
A bluebird bugled... and at once a bow
Was bent in heaven, and I seemed to hear
God's sapphire spaces crystallizing through
The strata'd clouds in azure tremolo.

This is the path he used to take,
That ended at a rose-porched door:
He takes it now for oldtime's sake;
And love of yore.

The blue mertensia, by the stone,
Lifts questioning eyes, that seem to say,
'Why is it now you walk alone
On this dim way?"

And then a wild bird, from a bough,
Out of his heart the answer takes:
"He walks alone with memory now
And heart that breaks.

"And Loss and Longing, witches, who
Usurp the wood and change to woe
The dream of happiness he knew
Long, long ago.

"The faery princess, from whose gaze
The blue mertensia learned that look,
Retaining still beside these ways
The joy it took."

He listens, conscious of no part
In wildwood question and reply
The wood, from out its mighty ...

And he had mused on lands each bird,
That winged from realms of Falerina,
O'er seas of the Enchanted Sword,
In romance sang him, till he heard
Vague foam on Islands of Alcina.

For rich Levant and old Castile
Let other seamen freight their galleys;
With Polo he and Mandeville
Through stranger seas a dreamy keel
Sailed into wonder-peopled valleys.

Far continents of flow'r and fruit,
Of everlasting spring; where fountains
'Mid flow'rs, with human faces, shoot;
Where races dwell, both man and brute,
In cities under golden mountains.

Where cataracts their thunders hurl
From heights the tempest has at mercy;
Vast peaks that touch the moon, and whirl
Their torrents down of gold and pearl;
And forests strange as those of Circe.

Sodden and shivering, in mud and rain,
Half in the light that serves but to reveal
The blackness of an alley and the reel
Homeward of wretchedness in tattered train,
A boy stands crouched; big drops of drizzle drain
Slow from a rag that was a hat: no steel
Is harder than his look, that seems to feel
More than his small life's share of woe and pain.
The pack of papers, huddled by his arm,
Is pulp; and still he hugs the worthless lot....
A door flares open to let out a curse
And drag him in out of the night and storm.
Out of the night, you say? You know not what!
To blacker night, God knows! and hell, or worse!

I.

There's a boy who lives next door;
And this boy is just as bad
As a boy can be; and poor!
He's so poor it makes me sad
When I see him. Out at knee;
And no shoes; and, more than that,
Hardly any shirt or hat.
He's as poor as Poverty.

II.

But I like him; yes, I do.
He can play 'most any game,
And tell fairy stories, too;
Funny stories, just the same
As my father does. And he
Told me one about a frog,
Living near a lake or bog,
Frog that married a bumblebee.

III.

And another of Jumping Joan
And Hink Minx, the old witch that
Sits before the fire alone
Frying fat for her black cat.
And of Craney Crow; her dog
And her chicken. But the best,
One I like more than the rest,
'S that one o...

Out in Oldham County once
Met a boy who showed me how
He could milk an old red cow.
Yes; he was n't any dunce.
Put me on an old-gray mare;
Rode me to an old mill, where
They were grinding corn. He filled
A big sack and then we sat
By the dam and there he killed
A black snake, as long as that.

Then he showed me how to row
In an old flat boat that leaked,
Where the dam was stained and streaked
With big lilies, white as snow.
Then he showed me how to swim
Jumping from a sycamore limb:
While he splashed around, why, I
Waded up and down the shore;
Then, when he was dressed and dry,
Mounted that old mare once more.

And he took the bag of meal
"That's for corn-cakes, " so he said:
"And it makes the grandest bread!
Cornbr...

Youth, with an arrogant air,
Passes me by:
Age, on his tottering staff,
Stops with a sigh.

"Here is a flower, "he says,
"I knew when young:
It keeps its oldtime place
The woods among.

"Fresh and fragrant as when
I was a boy;
Still is it young as then,
And full of joy.

"Years have not changed it, no;
In leaf and bloom
It keeps the selfsame glow,
And the same perfume.

"Time, that has grayed my hair,
And bowed my form,
Retains it young and fair
And full of charm.

"The root from which it grows
Is firm and fit,
And every year bestows
New strength on it.

"Not so with me. The years
Have changed me much;
And care and pain and tears
Have left their touch.

"It keeps a s...

It seemed the listening forest held its breath
Before some vague and unapparent form
Of fear, approaching with the wings of death,
On the impending storm.

Above the hills, big, bellying clouds loomed, black
And ominous, yet silent as the blue
That pools calm heights of heaven, deepening back
'Twixt clouds of snowdrift hue.

Then instantly, as when a multitude
Shout riot and war through some tumultuous town,
Innumerable voices swept the wood
As wild the wind rushed down.

And fierce and few, as when a strong man weeps,
Great rain-drops dashed the dust; and, overhead,
Ponderous and vast down the prodigious deeps,
Went slow the thunder's tread.

And swift and furious, as when giants fence,
The lightning foils of tempest went insane;

To it the forest tells
The mystery that haunts its heart and folds
Its form in cogitation deep, that holds
The shadow of each myth that dwells
In nature be it Nymph or Fay or Faun
And whispering of them to the dales and dells,
It wanders on and on.

To it the heaven shows
The secret of its soul; true images
Of dreams that form its aspect; and with these
Reflected in its countenance it goes,
With pictures of the skies, the dusk and dawn,
Within its breast, as every blossom knows,
For them to gaze upon.

Through it the world-soul sends
Its heart's creating pulse that beats and sings
The music of maternity whence springs
All life; and shaping earthly ends,
From the deep sources of the heavens drawn,
Planting its ways with beauty, on it we...

Not far from here, it lies beyond
That low-hilled belt of woods. We'll take
This unused lane where brambles make
A wall of twilight, and the blond
Brier-roses pelt the path and flake
The margin waters of a pond.

This is its fence - or that which was
Its fence once - now, rock rolled from rock,
One tangle of the vine and dock,
Where bloom the wild petunias;
And this its gate, the iron-weeds block,
Hot with the insects' dusty buzz.

Two wooden posts, wherefrom has peeled
The weather-crumbled paint, still rise;
Gaunt things - that groan when someone tries
The gate whose hinges, rust-congealed,
Snarl open: - on each post still lies
Its carven lion with a shield.

We enter; and between great rows
Of locusts winds a grass-grown road;

I.

Ere wild haws, looming in the glooms,
Build bolted drifts of breezy blooms;
And in the whistling hollow there
The red-bud bends as brown and bare
As buxom Roxy's up-stripped arm;
From some slick hickory or larch,
Sighed o'er the sodden meads of March,
The sad heart thrills and reddens warm
To hear thee braving the rough storm,
Frail courier of green-gathering powers, -
Rebelling sap in trunks and flowers;
Love's minister come heralding;
O sweet saint-voice among bleak bowers! -
Thou brown-red pursuivant of Spring!


II.

"Moan" sob the woodland cascades still
Down bloomless ledges of the hill;
And gray, gaunt clouds like harpies hang
In harpy heavens, and swoop and clang
Sharp beaks and talons of the wind:

I.

In some glad way I know thereof:
A garden glows down in my heart,
Wherein I meet and often part
With many an ancient tale of love
A Romeo garden, banked with bloom,
And trellised with the eglantine;
In which a rose climbs to a room,
A balcony one mass of vine,
Dim, haunted of perfume
A balcony, whereon she gleams,
The soft Desire of all Dreams,
And smiles and bends like Juliet,
Year after year.
While to her side, all dewy wet,
A rose stuck in his ear,
Love climbs to draw her near.

II.

And in another way I know:
Down in my soul a graveyard lies,
Wherein I meet, in ghostly wise,
With many an ancient tale of woe
A graveyard of the Capulets,
Deep-vaulted with ancestral gloom,
Through whose dark yews the ...

I.

Ere wild-haws, looming in the glooms,
Build bolted drifts of breezy blooms;
And in the whistling hollow there
The red-bud bends, as brown and bare
As buxom Roxy's up-stripped arm;
From some gray hickory or larch,
Sighed o'er the sodden meads of March,
The sad heart thrills and reddens warm
To hear you braving the rough storm,
Frail courier of green-gathering powers;
Rebelling sap in trees and flowers;
Love's minister come heralding
O sweet saint-voice among bleak bowers!
O brown-red pursuivant of Spring!

II.

'Moan' sob the woodland waters still
Down bloomless ledges of the hill;
And gray, gaunt clouds like harpies hang
In harpy heavens, and swoop and clang
Sharp beaks and talons of the wind:
Black scowl the forests...