GHOSTS
by Madison Cawein

Low, weed-climbed cliffs, o'er which at noon
The sea-mists swoon:
Wind-twisted pines, through which the crow
Goes winging slow:

Dim fields the sower never sows,
Or reaps or mows:
And near the sea a ghostly house of stone
Where all is old and lone.

A garden, falling in decay,
Where statues gray
Peer, broken, out of tangled weed
And thorny seed;

Satyr and Nymph, that once made love
By walk and grove:
And, near a fountain, shattered, green with mould,
A sundial, lichen-old.

Like some sad life bereft,
To musing left,
The house stands: love and youth
Both gone, in sooth:

But still it sits and dreams:
And round it seems
Some memory of the past, still young and fair,
Haunting each crumbling stair.

And suddenly one dimly sees,
Come through the trees,
A woman, like a wild moss-rose:
A man, who goes

Softly: and by the dial
They kiss a while:
Then drowsily the mists blow round them, wan,
And they like ghosts are gone.

AN AUTUMN NIGHT
by Madison Cawein

Some things are good on Autumn nights,

When with the storm the forest fights,

And in the room the heaped hearth lights

    Old-fashioned press and rafter:

Plump chestnuts hissing in the heat,

A mug of cider, sharp and sweet,

And at your side a face petite,

    With lips of laughter.

Upon the roof the rolling rain,

And tapping at the window-pane,

The wind that seems a witch's cane

    That summons spells together:

A hand within your own awhile;

A mouth reflecting back your smile;

And eyes, two stars, whose beams exile

    All thoughts of weather.

And, while the wind lulls, still to sit

And watch her fire-lit needles flit

A-knitting, and to feel her knit

    Your very heartstrings in it:

Then, when the old clock ticks 'tis late,

To rise, and at the door to wait,

Two words, or at the garden gate,

    A kissing minute.

AUTUMN SORROW

by Madison Cawein

Ah me! too soon the autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims
With wet the moonflower's elfin moons;
And, like exhausted starlight, dims
The last slim lily-disk; and swoons
With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
And build the west's cadaverous fires,
Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
And hands that wake an ancient lyre,
Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

THE WHIPPOORWILL

by Madison Cawein

I

Above lone woodland ways that led
To dells the stealthy twilights tread
The west was hot geranium red;
  And still, and still,
Along old lanes the locusts sow
With clustered pearls the Maytimes know,
Deep in the crimson afterglow,
We heard the homeward cattle low,
And then the far-off, far-off woe
  Of "whippoorwill!" of "whippoorwill!"

II

Beneath the idle beechen boughs
We heard the far bells of the cows
Come slowly jangling towards the house;
  And still, and still,
Beyond the light that would not die
Out of the scarlet-haunted sky;
Beyond the evening-star's white eye
Of glittering chalcedony,
Drained out of dusk the plaintive cry
  Of "whippoorwill," of "whippoorwill."

III

And in the city oft, when swims
The pale moon o'er the smoke that dims
Its disc, I dream of wildwood limbs;
  And still, and still,
I seem to hear, where shadows grope
Mid ferns and flowers that dewdrops rope,--
Lost in faint deeps of heliotrope
Above the clover-sweetened slope,--
Retreat, despairing, past all hope,
  The whippoorwill, the whippoorwill.

CLOUDS OF THE AUTUMN NIGHT

by Madison Cawein

Clouds of the autumn night,
  Under the hunter's moon,--
Ghostly and windy white,--
  Whither, like leaves wild strewn,
Take ye your stormy flight?

Out of the west, where dusk,
  From her rich windowsill,
Leaned with a wand of tusk,
  Witch-like, and wood and hill
Phantomed with mist and musk.

Into the east, where morn
  Sleeps in a shadowy close,
Shut with a gate of horn,
  'Round which the dreams she knows
Flutter with rose and thorn.

Blow from the west, oh, blow,
  Clouds that the tempest steers!
And with your rain and snow
  Bear of my heart the tears,
And of my soul the woe.

Into the east then pass,
  Clouds that the night winds sweep!
And on her grave's sear grass,
  There where she lies asleep.
There let them fall, alas!

GHOST STORIES

by Madison Cawein

When the hoot of the owl comes over the hill,
At twelve o'clock when the night is still,
And pale on the pools, where the creek-frogs croon,
Glimmering gray is the light o' the moon;
And under the willows, where waters lie,
The torch of the firefly wanders by;
They say that the miller walks here, walks here,
All covered with chaff, with his crooked staff,
And his horrible hobble and hideous laugh;
The old lame miller hung many a year:
When the hoot of the owl comes over the hill,
He walks alone by the rotting mill.

When the bark of the fox comes over the hill,
At twelve o'clock when the night is shrill,
And faint, on the ways where the crickets creep,
The starlight fails and the shadows sleep;
And under the willows, that toss and moan,
The glow-worm kindles its lanthorn lone;
They say that a woman floats dead, floats dead,
In a weedy space that the lilies lace,
A curse in her eyes and a smile on her face,
The miller's young wife with a gash in her head:
When the bark of the fox comes over the hill,
She floats alone by the rotting mill.

When the howl of the hound comes over the hill,
At twelve o'clock when the night is ill,
And the thunder mutters and forests sob,
And the fox-fire glows like the lamp of a Lob;
And under the willows, that gloom and glance,
The will-o'-the-wisps hold a devils' dance;
They say that that crime is re-acted again,
And each cranny and chink of the mill doth wink
With the light o' hell or the lightning's blink,
And a woman's shrieks come wild through the rain:
When the howl of the hound comes over the hill,
That murder returns to the rotting mill.

THE HARVEST MOON

by Madison Cawein

I


Globed in Heav'n's tree of azure, golden mellow
  As some round apple hung
High in hesperian boughs, thou hangest yellow
  The branch-like mists among:
Within thy light a sunburnt youth, named Health,
  Rests 'mid the tasseled shocks, the tawny stubble;
And by his side, clad on with rustic wealth
  Of field and farm, beneath thy amber bubble,
A nut-brown maid, Content, sits smiling still:
  While through the quiet trees,
  The mossy rocks, the grassy hill,
Thy silvery spirit glides to yonder mill,
  Around whose wheel the breeze
And shimmering ripples of the water play,
As, by their mother, little children may.


II


Sweet spirit of the moon, who walkest,--lifting
  Exhaustless on thy arm,
A pearly vase of fire,--through the shifting
  Cloud-halls of calm and storm,
Pour down thy blossoms! let me hear them come,
  Pelting with noiseless light the twinkling thickets,
Making the darkness audible with the hum
  Of many insect creatures, grigs and crickets:
Until it seems the elves hold revelries
  By haunted stream and grove;
  Or, in the night's deep peace,
The young-old presence of Earth's full increase
  Seems telling thee her love,
Ere, lying down, she turns to rest, and smiles,
Hearing thy heart beat through the myriad miles.

THE EVE OF ALL-SAINTS

by Madison Cawein

1.

This is the tale they tell,

Of an Hallowe’en;

This is the thing that befell

Me and the village Belle,

Beautiful Aimee Dean.

2.

Did I love her?—God and she,

They know and I!

And love was the life of me—

Whatever else may be,

Would God that I could die!

3.

That All-Saints’ eve was dim;

The forest lay white

Under strange stars and a slim

Moon in the graveyeard grim,

An Autumn ghost of light.

4.

They told her: “Go alone,

With never a word,

To the burial plot’s unknown

Grave with the grayest stone,

When the clock on twelve is heard;

5.

“Three times around it pass,

With never a sound;

Each time a wisp of grass

And myrtle pluck, and pass

Out of the ghostly ground.

6.

“And the bridegroom that’s to be

At smiling wait,

With a face like mist to see,

With graceful gallantry

Will bow you to the gate.”

7.

She laughed at this, and so

Bespoke us how

To burial place she’d go:—

And I was gald to know,

For I’d be there to bow.

8.

An acre from the farm

The homestead graves

Lay walled from sun and storm;

Old cedars of priestly form

Around like sentinel slaves.

9.

I loved, but never could say

Such words to her,

And waited from day to day,

Nursing the hope that lay

Under the doubts that were.—

10.

She passed ‘neath the iron arch

Of the legended ground,

And the moon like a twisted torch

Burned over one lonesome larch;

She passed with never a sound.

11.

Three times had the circle traced,

Three times had bent

To the grave that the myrtle graced;

Three times, then softly faced

Homeward, and slowly went.

12.

Had the moonlight changed me so?

Or fear undone

Her stepping strange and slow?

Did she see and did not know?

Or loved she another one?

13.

Who knows?—She turned to flee

With a face so white

That it haunts and will haunt me;

The wind blew gustily,

The graveyard gate clanged tight.

14.

Did she think it me or—what,

Clutching her dress?

Her face so pinched that not

A star in a stormy spot

Shows half as much distress.

15.

Did I speak? did she answer aught?

O God! had I said

“Aimee, ‘t is I!” but naught!—

And the mist and the moon distraught

Stared with me on her—dead….

16.

This is the tale they tell

Of the Hallowe’en;

This is the thing that befell

Me and the village Belle,

Beautiful Aimee Dean.