Myth and Romance

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Title: Myth and Romance
Being a Book of Verses
Author: Madison Cawein
Release Date: August 16, 2005 [EBook #16535]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
? START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MYTH AND ROMANCE ***
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Myth and Romance
Being a Book of verses
By MADISON CAWEIN
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1899
TO
MY FRIEND
WILLIAM WARWICK THUM
CONTENTS
VISIONS AND VOICES
Myth and Romance
Genius Loci
The Rain-Crow
The Harvest Moon
The Old Water-Mill
Anthem of Dawn
Dithyrambics
Hymn to Desire
Music
Jotunheim
Dionysia
The Last Song
Romaunt of the Oak
Morgan le Fay
The Dream of Roderick
Zyps of Zirl
The Glowworm
Ghosts
The Purple Valleys
The Land of Illusion
Spirit of Dreams
LINES AND LYRICS
To a Wind-Flower
Microcosm
Fortune
Death
The Soul
Conscience
Youth
Life's Seasons
Old Homes
Field and Forest Call
Meeting in Summer
Swinging
Rosemary
Ghost Stories
Dolce far Niente
Words
Reasons
Evasion
In May
Will you Forget?
Clouds of the Autumn Night
The Glory and the Dream
Snow and Fire
Restraint
Why Should I Pine?
When Lydia Smiles
The Rose
A Ballad of Sweethearts
Her Portrait
A Song for Yule
The Puritans' Christmas
Spring
Lines
When Ships put out to Sea
The "Kentucky"
Quatrains
Processional
PROEM.
_There is no rhyme that is half so sweet?As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;?There is no metre that's half so fine?As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;?And the loveliest lyric I ever heard?Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.--?If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach?My heart their beautiful parts of speech.?And the natural art that they say these with,?My soul would sing of beauty and myth?In a rhyme and a metre that none before?Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore,?And the world would be richer one poet the more._
VISIONS AND VOICES
_Myth and?Romance_
I
When I go forth to greet the glad-faced Spring,?Just at the time of opening apple-buds,?When brooks are laughing, winds are whispering,?On babbling hillsides or in warbling woods,?There is an unseen presence that eludes:--?Perhaps a Dryad, in whose tresses cling?The loamy odors of old solitudes,?Who, from her beechen doorway, calls; and leads?My soul to follow; now with dimpling words?Of leaves; and now with syllables of birds;?While here and there--is it her limbs that swing??Or restless sunlight on the moss and weeds?
II
Or, haply, 't is a Naiad now who slips,?Like some white lily, from her fountain's glass,?While from her dripping hair and breasts and hips,?The moisture rains cool music on the grass.?Her have I heard and followed, yet, alas!?Have seen no more than the wet ray that dips?The shivered waters, wrinkling where I pass;?But, in the liquid light, where she doth hide,?I have beheld the azure of her gaze?Smiling; and, where the orbing ripple plays,?Among her minnows I have heard her lips,?Bubbling, make merry by the waterside.
III
Or now it is an Oread--whose eyes?Are constellated dusk--who stands confessed,?As naked as a flow'r; her heart's surprise,?Like morning's rose, mantling her brow and breast:?She, shrinking from my presence, all distressed?Stands for a startled moment ere she flies,?Her deep hair blowing, up the mountain crest,?Wild as a mist that trails along the dawn.?And is't her footfalls lure me? or the sound?Of airs that stir the crisp leaf on the ground??And is't her body glimmers on yon rise??Or dog-wood blossoms snowing on the lawn?
IV
Now't is a Satyr piping serenades?On a slim reed. Now Pan and Faun advance?Beneath green-hollowed roofs of forest glades,?Their feet gone mad with music: now, perchance,?Sylvanus sleeping, on whose leafy trance?The Nymphs stand gazing in dim ambuscades?Of sun-embodied perfume.--Myth, Romance,?Where'er I turn, reach out bewildering arms,?Compelling me to follow. Day and night?I hear their voices and behold the light?Of their divinity that still evades,?And still allures me in a thousand forms.
_Genius?Loci_
I
What wood-god, on this water's mossy curb,?Lost in reflections of earth's loveliness,?Did I, just now, unconsciously disturb??I, who haphazard, wandering at a guess,?Came on this spot, wherein, with gold and flame?Of buds and blooms, the season writes its name.--?Ah, me! could I have seen him ere alarm?Of my approach aroused him from his calm!?As he, part Hamadryad and, mayhap,?Part Faun, lay here; who left the shadow warm?As wildwood rose, and filled the air with balm?Of his sweet breath as with ethereal sap.
II
Does not the moss retain some vague impress,?Green dented in, of where he lay or trod??Do not the flow'rs, so reticent, confess?With conscious looks the contact of a god??Does not the very water garrulously?Boast the indulgence of a deity??And, hark! in burly beech and sycamore?How all the birds proclaim it! and the leaves?Rejoice with clappings of their myriad hands!?And shall not I believe, too, and adore,?With such wide proof?--Yea, though my soul perceives?No evident presence, still it understands.
III
And for a while it moves me to lie down?Here on the spot his god-head sanctified:?Mayhap some dream he