The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5)

THE SPIRIT OF THE VAN
(Love Ideal)

“Among the mountains of Carmarthen, lies a beautiful and romantic piece of water, named The Van Pools. Tradition relates, that after midnight, on New Year’s Eve, there appears on this lake a being named The Spirit of the Van. She is dressed in a white robe, bound by a golden girdle; her hair is long and golden; her face is pale and melancholy.”—Keightley’s “Fairy Mythology.”

 
Midsummer-night; the Van. Through night’s wan noon,
Wading the storm-scud of an eve of storm,
Pale o’er Carmarthen’s peaks the mounting moon.—
Wilds of Carmarthen! sombre heights, that swarm
Girdling this water, as old giants might
Crouch, guarding some enchanted gem of charm,—
Wilds of Carmarthen, that for me each night
Reëcho prayers and pleadings,—all the year
Unanswered,—made to listening waters white!
Mountains, behold me yet again! Bend near!
Behold her lover! hers, that shape of snow,
Who dwells amid these pools; who will not hear
My heart’s wild pleading, calling loud, now low,
Unhappy, to her, ’mid the lonely hills.
 
 
Whene’er a ripple trembles into glow,
Where yeasty moonshine scuds the foam, straight thrills
Heart’s expectation through my veins, and high
With “she!” each pulse the exultation fills.
But she ’tis never. Once … and then! would I,
Would I had perished, so beholding!—World,
’Twas you, O world, who would not let me die!
Once I beheld her!—If some fiend had curled
Stiff talons in my hair, and, twisting tight,
Had raised me high, then into Hell had hurled;
Fresh from that vision of her beauty white,
With Heaven in my soul, I, unamerced,
Shackled with tortures, yet might mock Hell’s spite.
 
 
Immortal memory, quench in me this thirst!—
O starlike vision, that a moment clove
My sight, and then for ever left me curst!
Oh, make me mad with love, with all thy love!
Me, me, who seek thee ’mid these wilds when gloom
Storms or drip gold the sibylline stars above!—
Let thy high coming in a flash consume
The light of all the stars! and make me mad,
Mad with love’s madness! fill me with sweet doom!
 
 
Sleep will I not now, for my soul is sad:
For, should I sleep, there might come other dreams,—
Sadder than thou art,—in thy beauty clad
And all thy tyranny. To me it seems
Better to wake here, underneath this pine,
Until thy face upon my vision gleams.—
Thou, who art wrought of elements divine,
And I of crasser clay, clay that will think,
“Since I am hers, why should she not be mine?”
Again, its usual phantom, on the brink
Of thy lone lake, I ask thee: “Must I yearn
Forever, haunted of that vision’s wink?”—
When, glassing out great circles, which did urn
Some intense essence of interior light,
(As clouds, that clothe the moon, unbinding, burn,
Riven, erupt her orb, triumphant white,)
I saw, midmost the Van, a feathering fire
Dilating ivory-wan.—Expectant night
Tiptoed attentive, fearful to suspire.—
Wherefrom arose—what white divinity?
What godhead sensed with glory and desire?
Born for the moment for the eyes of me!
Then re-absorbed into the brassy gloom
Of whispering waves that sighed their ecstasy.
Thou! in whose path harmonious colors bloom,
Pale pearl and lilac, asphodel and rose,—
Like many flow’rs auroral of perfume,—
Thou leftst me thus, to marvel as who knows
He is not dead and yet it seems he is,
Since all his soul with spirit-rapture glows.—
O sylph-like brow! lips like an angel’s kiss!
High immortality! whose face was such
As starlight in a lily’s loveliness!…
The gold that bound thee seemed too base to clutch
Thy chastity, though clear as golden gum
That almugs sweat, and fragrance to the touch!
Thy hair—not hair!—seemed rays, like those that come
Strained through the bubble of a chrysolite.—
No word I said: thy beauty struck me dumb.
Thy face, that is upon my soul’s quick sight
Eternal seared, hath made of me a shade,
A wandering shadow of the day and night:
A seeker ’mid the hoary hills for aid,
The sole society of my sick heart, who
Shuns all companionship of man and maid:
Who, comrade of the mountain blossoms blue,
And intimate of old trees, goes dreaming they,—
As in that legendary world that drew
Oracles from lips in oaks—, may sometime say
Prophetic precepts to it: how were won
A spirit loved to love a mortal;—yea,
In vain.—
But one day, frog-like in the sun,
Beside a cave,—the nightshade vines made rank
And hairy henbane, where huge spiders spun,—
Wrinkled as Magic, I a grizzled, lank,
Squat something startled, naught save skin and hair;
With eyes wherein dwelt demons; flames, that shrank
And grew;—familiars, who fixed me with glare
As, raising claw-like hands when I drew near,
Frog-like he croaked, “Thou fool! go seek her there!
Woo her with thy heart’s actions! making clear
Thy soul’s white passage for her coming feet!—
In! in! thou fool! plunge in! Fear naught but fear!”
 
 
Yet I have waited many weeks. Repeat.
Acts of the heart with passionate offering
Of love whose anguish makes it seven times sweet.
Still all in vain, in vain. To-night I bring
My self alone; my soul unfearing, see!
My soul unto thee!—Shall the clay still cling
Clogging fulfillment? and achievement be
Balked still by flesh?—no! let me in—to die,
Haply; or, for a moment’s mystery,
Gaze in thine eyes: one splendid instant lie
In thy white arms and bosom; and thy kiss,
My elemental immortality!—
Part of thy breathing waves, to laugh or hiss
In foam; or winds, that rock the awful deeps,
Or build with song vast temples for thy bliss.
Wherein, responsive as thy white hand sweeps
The chords of some sad shell, I’ll dream and roam
Through glaucous chambers where the green day sleeps.
Dead not with death, what secrets hath thy home
Not mine then, epoched in exultant foam?…
Deeper, down deeper! yea, at last I come!
 

THE CAVERNS OF KAF
(Love Sensual)

“‘Where am I?’ cried he; ‘what are these dreadful rocks? these valleys of darkness? are we arrived at the horrible Kaf?’”—Vathek.

 
One, Benreddin, I have heard,
Near the town of Mosul sleeping,
In a dream beheld a bird,
Wonderful, with plumes of sweeping
Whiteness, crowned pomegranate-red:
And, it seemed, his soul it led,
Brilliant as a blossom, keeping
Near the Tigris as it fled.
 
 
Following, at last he came
To a haggard valley, shouldered
Under peaks that had no name:
Where it vanished. ’Mid the bouldered
Savageness a woman, fair,
In a white simarre, stood there,
Auburn-haired; around whom smoldered
Pensive lights of purple air.
 
 
And she led him down to vast
Caves of sardonyx, whose ceiling
Domed one chrysoberyl. Blast
On blast of music,—stealing
Out of aural atmospheres,—
Beat like surf upon his ears;
Then receded, faintly pealing
Psalteries and dulcimers.
 
 
Living figures seemed to heave
High the walls, where, wild, embattled,
Warred Amshaspand and the Deev:
Over all two splendors rattled
Arms of Heaven, arms of Hell;
Forms of flame that seemed to swell
Godlike: Aherman who battled
With Ormuzd he could not quell.
 
 
There she left him wond’ring; till
The reverberant music, drifting,
Strong beyond his utmost will,
Drew him onward where, high lifting
Pillar and entablature,
Vast with emblem, yawned a door—
Valves of liquid lightning, shifting
In and out and up and o’er.
 
 
Through the door he swept: deep-domed,
Green with serpentine and beryl,
Loomed a cavern, crusted, foamed,
Tortuous with gems of peril:
Difficult, a colonnade
Seemed, of satin-spar, to braid
Deeps of labyrinthed and sterile
Tiger-spar that, twisting, rayed.
 
 
Dizzy stones of magic price
Crammed volute and loaded corbel:
Irridescent shafts of ice
Leapt: with long reëchoed warble
Waters unto waters sang:
Crystal arc and column sprang
Into fire as each marble
Fountain flung its foam that rang.
 
 
And around him, filled with sound,
Streams of resonant colors jetted:
Rainbow surf that interwound
Crypts and arcades, crescent-fretted:
Mists of citron and of roon;
Lemon lights that mocked the moon;
Shot with scarlet, veined and netted,
Beating golden hearts of tune.
 
 
Suns arose, of blinding blue;
Moons of green-dilating splendor:
In whose centers slowly grew
Spots like serpents’ eyes that, slender,
Glared; at first, prismatic beams;
Then, intolerable gleams;
Hissing trails of fire, tender
As an houri’s breath that dreams.
 
 
Characters of Arabic,
Cabalistic, red as coral,
Flashed through violet veils, so quick
None might read: as if, in quarrel,
Iran wrote of Turan there
Hate and scorn, or, everywhere,
Wrought some talisman of moral
Strength no Afrit’s heart would dare.
 
 
Sounding splendors drew him on
To another cavern; hollow;
Hewn of alabastar wan;
Lucid; where his gaze could follow
Caves in caves; transparent flights
Rolling, lost in moving lights,
Glaucous gold: he like a swallow
O’er a lake the morning smites.
 
 
Down the dome flashed out and in
Instant faces of the Peris:
Restless eyes of Deevs and Jinn
In the walls watched: unseen Faeries
Out of rainbows rained and tossed
Flowers of fire full of frost;
Blossoms where the fire varies,
Gold and green and crimson-mossed.
 
 
Then there met him, face to face,
Seven odalisques of Heaven,
Swinging in a silver space
Flaming censers: and the seven,
Crowned with stars of burning green,
Seemed to turn to incense; seen,
As it rose, to be a driven
Hippogrif, or rosmarine.
 
 
Aloes, Nard, and Ambergris,
Sandal, Frankincense, and Civet,—
Genii of the fragrances,—
Rein each winged aroma; give it
Spurs and race it down the lull
Of the caverns, clouded dull
With wild manes of musk; now vivid,
Vaporous white and wonderful.
 
 
And Benreddin’s aching soul,
In each sense intoxicated,
Reached, at last, what seemed the goal
Of all passion: golden-gated,
Vast, a fountain: where he saw
Limbs of light without a flaw;
Breasts and arms of bloom; that waited
For his soul to nearer draw.
 
 
Houri faces shimmered there;
Fluid forms.—It, with a thunder
Of wild music, like the hair
Of a genie, flamed from under
Caverns of the demon-world:
Filled with voices, high it hurled,
Calling him, with beckoning wonder
Of cœrulean forms that swirled.
 
 
And with burning lips and eyes
In he plunged: hoarse laughter greeted,
Demon laughter: then sad sighs,
Dying downward: passion-heated
Hands seemed drawing him away,
Downward: where a rocking ray
Flamed and swung, and Eblis-sheeted
Shadows wandered ghostly gray.
 

* * *

 
And, ’tis said, that he was young,
Young that morning. When the darting,
Anguish-throated bulbuls sung,
In the silent starlight starting,
One, a Baghdad merchant, led
By the hoarness of its head,
Found what seemed a mummy: parting
Hair from brow, Benreddin—dead.
 

THE SALAMANDER
(Love Dæmonic)

“The Fire-Philosophers, and the Rosicrucians, or Illuminati, taught that all knowable things (both of the soul and of the body) were evolved out of fire, and finally resolvable into it: and that fire was the last and the only-to-be known God: as that all things were capable of being searched down into it, and all things were capable of being thought up into it.”—The Rosicrucians.

 

 
Once she breathed upon my eyes,
Touched the soul that dreamed within me;
All the magic that might win me
Whispered to my heart with sighs—
Darkness can not make them lies!…
 
 
Bring me moly, hellebore!
Mix them for my soul’s nepenthe,
For my spirit’s dread Amenti,
For the curse that comes once more
With unutterable lore!
 
 
Sunlight, starlight or the moon,
Stormlight, firelight or the sheening
Witchlight intimate no meaning
Of her glory’s plenilune;
Of her soul’s unriddled rune,
 
 
And most awful beauty! nor
Actual, nor yet ideal!—
Insubstantial and yet real;
Partly flame and partly star,
Yet no part of what these are.
 
 
I am hers and—woe is mine!…
Has she drugged me with the sadness
Of some elemental madness?—
Like a demigod I pine
’Twixt the mortal and divine....
 
 
When I see her, lo, she stands
In the luminous electre
Of a star: a smiling spectre
With white scintillating hands
Luring to unhallowed lands.
 
 
Then, behold, in fearful file,
A mirage of tower and terrace,
Lawn and mountain range,—that buries
Flame in frost,—looms! mile on mile
Of her crescent-glowing Isle:
 
 
Where the lurid waters lull
Shores that roll the rainbow fire;
Where, with living lute and lyre,
Rose-red, swiftly as a gull,
Glides her star-like galley’s hull.
 
 
And, behold, before I know,
I am where her walls of amber,
Towers of limpid ruby, clamber
Over terraces below
Summits of refulgent snow.
 
 
Lambent lazuli and shell
Colonnade her courts of marble;
Where, of lightning, fountains warble
Out of basined pearl, or well
Into hollowed carbuncle.
 
 
Rosy silver seems her skin,
And a flame her arm commanding,
With its gleaming hand, me, standing
At her gates, to enter in,
Burning as a Seraphin.
 
 
Lucid darkness are her eyes,
Where the frozen fire smolders;
And upon her shining shoulders,
Like a tangible glitter, lies
Auburn hair like sunset skies.
 
 
Mouth of sibilant soft flame;
Lilith lips, whose roses lighten
With illusive love; and brighten
With wild passion and the name
Of desire no man may tame.
 
 
Passion, and the thoughts that wed
Love and loathing; such caresses
Of sweet touch as naught expresses
Here on Earth, yet full of dread,
Madness, whereof death is bred.
 
 
She hath drawn me to her lips;
Borne me through her palace portal;
And the fire, which is immortal,
From me like a garment slips—
Ah, the spirit-part’s eclipse!
 
 
As when moon and planet swoon
Unto each, my body kindles,
Strangely, while my spirit dwindles,
Like the Earth-o’ershadowed moon,
Darkening from lune to lune.
 
 
Then she laughs; and leads me where
Cloudy, wild, chameleon color
Marbles halls with hues, the duller
For her astral presence there,
Beaming white with beaming hair:
 
 
Where, in roses purple pale,—
Dropping like a ruby bubble
Through the moon dust,—“double double,”
Throbs the crimson nightingale,
There she lures me with some tale.
 
 
Or to where the scarlet snake
Coils beneath great flaming flowers;
Where the musk mimosa bowers
Roll their rosy clouds, and make
Sunset heavens of each lake.
 
 
Where the bees and moths go by,
Fiery diamond; opal-burning
Butterflies, and iris-turning
Peacock-painted birds, that vie
With the flow’rs, like fragments fly
Of wild rainbow: Where, in rills,
Down the rocks, that lichens redden,
Constellated moss and leaden
Fungus glow; and all the hills,
As with flames, the orchid fills.
 
 
Where, in coruscating light,
Glare the golden-checkered zinnias;
And the bugle-bloomed gloxinias,
Making morning of each height,
Float like mists of ruby white.
 
 
There, beneath some blazing vine,
Where the liquid moonlight glitters
Of a river,—coral litters
Red with grail,—like prisms in wine
I have watched the fishes shine.
 
 
Or, o’er sunset-colored moss,
Glow-worms trail their beryls; sprinkling
Green the smouldering shade; while, twinkling,
With convulsive sapphire gloss,
Fireflies rained blue lights across.
 
 
Where the reeds seemed rays of rose,
And white mirrored moons, the lotus—
Each a spirit giving notice
Of the inner light that glows
Where the under water flows—
 
 
Shapes arose of flashing spray:—
Where, a wild auroral splendor,
Rolled the forest,—emerald-tender
As the light of breaking day,—
Beckoned forms of starry ray.
 
 
Through the violetish light,
Winged with nautilus and lily
Flame, adown the forests stilly
Vistas, moony whirls of white,
Floated shapes with eyes of night.
 
 
I must follow where she leads.—
Blinding portals of her castle
To my entering feet are facile....
Love no terrible trumpet needs
At her gates to bugle deeds....
 
 
Lo, my being never veils
Aught from her. To her caresses
All my heart knows it confesses
With a faith that never fails,
Though it hears the truth that wails
In its soul’s admonishment,
Of the curse that sits in session
In each amorous expression
Of her love; its violent
Flame, by which my life is rent.
 
 
I have drained the feverish cup
Of all darkness. Made a leman
Of an elemental demon;
And my soul lies, staring up,
Draining poison at each sup.—
 
 
While she smiles on me ’tis well:
I shall follow, though she make me
What her self is; never wake me
From the dream I can not tell,
That is neither heaven nor hell:
 
 
Where I drink mesmeric gold
Of wild vision,—that romances
In informing Protean fancies
With a beauty never old,
And emotion never cold.—
 
 
Let me drink and never wake
From the trances that environ
Me, and ’neath the subtle siren
See the demon, like a snake,
With destroying eyes that ache.
 
 
While the slow laconic look
Of her eyes express no censure,
Gazing in them, I adventure,—
Far beyond the wisest book,—
Ways her serpent fancy took.
 
 
Yet I know I reverence
One whose gaze in God’s negation;
One who, like an emanation
Of all evil, chains my sense
With satanic influence.
 
 
Yet, while still I hear her say,
“One more kiss before the morning!
One more bliss for love’s adorning!
One more kiss ere break of day,”
Still my soul with her must stay.
 
 
Stay, nor know, nor ever see!
Till her basilisk beauty flashes,
And the curse, from out the ashes
Of her passion, fiery,
Strikes—destroying utterly.
 

LYANNA

“These elementary beings, we are told, were by their constitution more long-lived than man, but with this essential disadvantage, that at death they wholly ceased to exist. In the meantime they were inspired with an earnest desire for immortality; and there was one way left for them, by which this desire might be gratified. If they were so happy as to awaken in any of the initiated (Rosicrucians) a passion, the end of which was marriage, then the sylph became immortal.”—Godwin’s “Lives of the Necromancers.”

 
Summer came over the Indian Ocean
Girdled with fire, tiaraed with light;
Her eyes all languor, her lips—a potion
To quaff—of poppy. And gold and white
She flashed and sparkled; all gleam and motion,
All blush and blossom she came; and I,
Of the race of the sylphs, o’er the Indian Ocean
Followed her through the sky.
 
 
Self-exiled so from the sylphs that cluster,
Pulsing with pearl and burning with blue,
In domes of the dawn,—where the organs bluster
Low of the winds,—where they glow like dew
As the day dreams up, and their armies muster,
Ranges of glitter, in cloudy gold,
At the gates of the Dawn, of blinding luster,
To forth when her gates unfold.
 
 
For Summer murmured me, “Follow! follow!”
Whispered one word that was all of love.—
Winged with the speed of the sweeping swallow,
I followed the word she had breathed above:
“Follow! follow!”—the god Apollo
Never followed, with speed as strong
The flying nymph through holt and hollow,
As I that word of song.
 
 
Fleet as the winds are fleet, yea, and fleeter
Far than the stars that throb, like foam,
Through the firmament’s blue, in musical metre
Winnowed my wings; and the golden gloam
Rang; and life was a passion, completer
Than a life in Eden; and love,—a lyre
That sang in my heart and made life sweeter
With hope,—a leaping fire.
 
 
Thus to the north my wings went maying
Radiant ways, till a castle shone
Gaunt on great cliffs, with the late skies graying
O’er walls of war and their towers lone,
With tortuous steps to the sea, where, spraying,
Thundered the breakers; and terrace and stair,
Rock o’er the waters, rose rosy and raying
Deep in the sunset’s glare.
 
 
A dewdrop burns when the dawn lights prickle:
And all my being tingled with light,
Bloomed when I saw her, tarrying fickle,
White on the castled height:
Slender she shone as the moon in sickle,
The slim new-moon, like a pearl-pale streak;
And golden, too, as the honey-trickle
Of combs where the wax is weak.
 
 
In dreams I came to her, lo! as a vision:
Yea, by her side as a dream I stood;
To her innermost spirit I sighed my mission,
In the vestal ear of her maidenhood:
And she deemed me a dream; and I made a prison
Of my arms for her soul while she, smiling, slept:
Her body lay still, but her soul had arisen,
And looked on my face and wept:
 
 
“Lyanna, I hoop thee with arms of fire!”—
My words were music, a harp afloat,—
“Lyanna, my heart is a vibrant wire,
Thy love is its only note.
Let it sing forever. Let it sound entire,
Full as the angels’ who hover and harp
To the glory that’s God, like a golden lyre
Borne in a beam that is sharp....
 
 
“Behold me, thy rose! full of flame and splendor!
Thy rose to pluck: thy ruby bloom:
Thy sylphid rose, with eyes that are tender;
Lips that are fire; and limbs of perfume
And fragrant fire: thy heart’s defender!
Thy airy lover!” … And, bending above,
Sweeter my speech than a flower’s that, slender,
Tells to the stars its love.
 
 
Lo, as I spoke, with thoughts that thicken,
Her heart seemed filled; and she spoke; but sleep
Shadowed her words, till my kiss did quicken
And free, like stars from the night that leap:—
“Long I have waited; and long did sicken
To clasp thee thus, O my rose of love!
Oft have I dreamed of thee, yea, and was stricken
With joy at the thought thereof.
 
 
“White are the clouds; but I saw thee whiter
’Mid dazzling domes of the dawn; and knew
Tho’ bright are God’s stars, that thine eyes were brighter,
Brighter and burning blue.
And my heart was thine, though it held thee slighter
Than hues that the mists of the morning take:
And waited and yearned, and the yearning tighter
Than tears in the hearts that break.
 
 
“‘Lyanna! Lyanna!’ I heard thee ever
Calling ‘Lyanna,’ a ripple of flame:
‘Lyanna! Lyanna!’ like song forever;
And I marveled at my name.
The sound was such—that if stars could sever
And silver-syllable a word of beams,
So would it sound.—I turned; but never
Beheld thee, only in dreams.
 
 
“Thou walkedst a beauty afar: a glitter
Of gleaming aroma: and I, with moan,
Reached thee my arms: but thy gaze was bitter,
Calmer and sterner than stone:
Avoiding thou passedst in scorn: a sitter,
I seemed, on the uttermost bounds of bliss:
When, lo! on the wind,—a flame, a flitter
Of fire,—thy laugh, and thy kiss!”—
 
 
I had won her love. And, behold! the thunder
Trumpeted tempest: I heard the seas
Lunge at the walls like a roaring wonder,
And the rain-wind sing in the trees.—
Lyanna my bride.—And the heavens asunder
Rushed—chasms of glaring storm, where poured
The thunder’s cataracts, rolling under—
And showed me, horde on horde,
 
 
The shouting spirits of storm.—The portal
Of sleep was riven; she rose, and saw:
And I said to her soul, “Of the utterly mortal
Mine the eternal lot and law.”—
“I love thee!” she answered.—And I, “Immortal
Am I through thy love!” … And so we fled....
Behold! when they came in the morn, astartle,
Men whispered—“Lyanna is dead!”