Читать книгу The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5) - Cawein Madison Julius - Страница 56

And he had lived such loveless years

That suffering had made him wise;

And she had known no graver tears

Than those of girlhood’s eyes.

And he, perhaps, had loved before—

One, who had wedded, or had died;—

So life to him had been but poor

In love for which he sighed.

In years and heart she was so young

Love paused and beckoned at the gate,

And bade her hear his songs, unsung;

She laughed that “love must wait.”

He understood. She only knew

Love’s hair was faded, face was gray—

Nor saw the rose his autumn blew

There in her heedless way.

If he had come to her when May

Danced down the wildwood,—every way

Marked with white flow’rs, as if her gown

Had torn and fallen,—it might be

She had not met him with a frown,

Nor used his love so bitterly.

Or if he had but come when June

Set stars and roses to one tune,

And breathed in honeysuckle throats

Clove-honey of her spicy mouth,

His heart had found some loving notes

In hers to cheer his life’s long drouth.

He came when Fall made mad the sky,

And on the hills leapt like a cry

Of battle; when his youth was dead;

To her, the young, the wild, the white;

Whose symbol was the rose, blood-red,

And his the red leaf pinched with blight.

He might have known, since youth was flown,

And autumn claimed him for its own;

And winter neared with snow, wild whirled,

His love to her would seem absurd;

To youth like hers; whose lip had curled

Yet heard him to his last sad word.

Then laughed and—well, his heart denied

The words he uttered then in pride;

And he remembered how the gray

Was his of autumn, ah! and hers,

The rose-hued colors of the May,

And May was all her universe.

And then he left her: and, like blood,

In her deep hair, the rose; whose bud

Was badge to her: while unto him,

His middle-age, must still remain

The red-leaf, withering at the rim,

As symbol of the all-in-vain.

“Such days as these,” she said, and bent

Among her marigolds, all dew,

And dripping zinnia stems, “were meant

For spring not autumn; days we knew

In childhood; these endearing those;

Much dearer since they have grown old:

Days, once imperfect with the rose,

Now perfect with the marigold.”

“Such days as these,” he said, and gazed

Long with unlifted eyes that held

Sad autumn nights, “our hopes have raised

In futures that are mist-enspelled.

And so it is the fog blows in

Days dearer for the death they paint

With hues of life and joy,—as sin,

At death, puts off all earthly taint.”

Like deeds of hearts that have not kept

Their riches, as a miser, when

Sad souls have asked, with eyes that wept,

Among the toiling tribes of men,

The summer days gave Earth sweet alms

In silver of white lilies, while

Each night, with healing, outstretched palms

Stood Christ-like with its starry smile.

Will she remember him when dull

Months drag their duller hours by?

With feet that crush the beautiful

And leave the beautiful to die?

Or never see? nor sit with lost

Dreams withered, ’mid hope’s empty husks,

And wait, heart-counting-up the cost

Of love’s illusions ’mid life’s dusks?

He is as one who, treading salty scurf

Of lonely sea-sands, hears the roaring rocks

Of some lost isle of misty crags and lochs;

Who sees no sea, but, through a world of surf,

Gray ghosts of gulls and screaming petrel flocks:

When, from the deep’s white ruin and wild wreck,

Above the fog, beneath the ghostly gull,

The iron ribs of some storm-shattered hull

Loom, packed with pirate treasure to the deck

A century rotten: feels his wealth replete,

When long-baulked ocean claims it; and one dull

Wave flings, derisive at despondent feet,

A skull, one doubloon rattling in the skull.

And when full autumn sets the dahlia stems

On fire with flowers, and the chill dew turns

The maple trees, above geranium urns,

To Emir tents, and strings with flawless gems

The moon-flower and the wahoo-bush that burns;

Calmly she sees the year grow sad and strange,

And stands with one among the wilted walks

Of the old garden of the gray, old grange,

And feels no sorrow for the frost-maimed stalks

Since—though the wailing autumn to her talks—

Youth marks swift spring on life’s far mountain-range.

Or she will lean to her old harpsichord;

A youthful face beside her; and the glow

Of hickory on the hearth will balk the blow

Of blustering rain that beats the casement hard;

And sing of summer and so thwart the snow.

“Haply, some day, she yet may sit alone,”

He thinks, “within the shadow-saddened house,

When round the gables stormy echoes moan,

And in the closet gnaws the lonesome mouse;

And Memory come stealing down the stair

From dusty attics where is piled the Past—

Like so much rubbish that we hate to keep—

And turn the knob; and, framed in frosty hair,

A grave, forgotten face look in at last,

And she will know, and bow her head and weep.”