Days and Dreams: Poems

Days and Dreams: Poems
Madison Cawein

Madison Julius Cawein

Days and Dreams: Poems

O lyrist of the lowly and the true,
The song I sought for you
Hides yet unsung. What hope for me to find,
Lost in the dædal mind,
The living utterance with lovely tongue!
To say, as erst was sung
By Ariosto of Knight-errantry, —
Through lands of Poesy,
Song's Paladin, knight of the dream and day,
The wizard shield you sway
Of that Atlantes power, sweet and terse,
The skyey-builded verse:
The shield that dazzles, brilliant with surprise,
Our unanointed eyes. —
Oh, had I written as 't were worthy you,
Each line, a spark of dew, —
As once Ferdusi shone in Persia, —
Had strung each rosy spray
Of the unfolding flower of each song;
And Iran's bulbul tongue
Had sobbed its heart out o'er the fountain's slab
In gardens of Afrasiab.

ONE DAY AND ANOTHER

PART I

1

He waits musing

Herein the dearness of her is:
The thirty perfect days of June
Made one, in beauty and in bliss
Were not more white to have to kiss,
To love not more in tune.

And oft I think she is too true,
Too innocent for our day;
For in her eyes her soul looks new —
Two crowfoot-blossoms watchet-blue
Are not more soft than they.

So good, so kind is she to me,
In darling ways and happy words,
Sometimes my heart fears she may be
Too much with God and secretly
Sweet sister to the birds.

2

Becoming impatient

The owls are quavering, two, now three,
And all the green is graying;
The owls our trysting dials be —
There is no time for staying.

I wait you where this buckeye throws
Its tumbled shadow over
Wood-violet and the bramble-rose,
Long lady-fern and clover.

Spice-seeded sassafras weighs deep
Rough rail and broken paling,
Where all day long the lizards sleep
Like lichen on the railing.

Behind you you will feel the moon's
Gold stealing like young laughter;
And mists – gray ghosts of picaroons —
Its phantom treasure after.

And here together, youth and youth,
Love will be doubly able;
Each be to each as true as truth,
And dear as fairy fable.

The owls are calling and the maize
With fallen dew is dripping —
Ah, girlhood, through the dewy haze
Come like a moonbeam slipping.

3

He hums

There is a fading inward of the day,
And all the pansy sunset hugs one star;
To eastward dwindling all the land is gray,
While barley meadows westward smoulder far.

Now to your glass will you pass