Hello everyone –
For the final
installment of this year’s October Tales series, I have a trio of poems by
Madison Julius Cawein (1865-1914), a Kentuckian poet who was very popular
during the early years of the 20th century. His poems – which filled
16+ published volumes during his lifetime – have a Romantic quality that earned
him the title of “the Keats of Kentucky,” and I understand that at least some
of his books adorned the shelves of my great-grandparents’ parlor in Henderson
County, Kentucky. So here are some verses in celebration of this night –
Halloween – the Keltik New Year’s Eve!
“A Forest
Child”
There is a place I
search for still,
Sequestered as the
world of dreams,
A bushy hollow,
and a hill
That whispers with
descending streams,
Cool, careless
waters, wandering down,
Like Innocence who
runs to town,
Leaving the
wildwood and its dreams,
And prattling like
the forest streams.
But still in
dreams I meet again
The child who
bound me, heart and hand,
And led me with a
wildflower chain
Far from our
world, to Faeryland:
Who made me see
and made me know
The lovely Land of
Long-Ago,
Leading me with
her little hand
Into the world of
Wonderland.
The years have
passed: how far away
The day when there
I met the child,
The little maid,
who was a fay,
Whose eyes were
dark and undefiled
And crystal as a
woodland well,
That holds within
its depths a spell,
Enchantments,
featured like a child,
A dream, a poetry
undefiled.
Around my heart
she wrapped her hair,
And bound my soul
with lips and eyes,
And led me to a
cavern, where
Grey Legend dwelt
in kingly guise,
Her kinsman,
dreamier than the moon,
Who called her
Fancy, read her rune,
And bade her with
paternal eyes
Divest herself of
her disguise.
And still I walk with
her in dreams,
Though many years
have passed since then,
And that high hill
and its wild streams
Are lost as is
that faery glen.
And as the years
go swiftly by
I find it harder,
when I try,
To meet with her,
who led me then
Into the wildness
of that glen.
“Halloween”
It was down in the
woodland on last Hallowe'en,
Where
silence and darkness had built them a lair,
That I felt the
dim presence of her, the unseen,
And
heard her still step on the hush-haunted air.
It was last
Hallowe'en in the glimmer and swoon
Of
mist and of moonlight, where once we had sinned,
That I saw the
gray gleam of her eyes in the moon,
And
hair, like a raven, blown wild on the wind.
It was last
Hallowe'en where starlight and dew
Made
mystical marriage on flower and leaf,
That she led me
with looks of a love, that I knew
Was
dead, and the voice of a passion too brief.
It was last
Hallowe'en in the forest of dreams,
Where
trees are eidolons and flowers have eyes,
That I saw her
pale face like the foam of far streams,
And
heard, like the night-wind, her tears and her sighs.
It was last
Hallowe'en, the haunted, the dread,
In
the wind-tattered wood, by the storm-twisted pine,
That I, who am
living, kept tryst with the dead,
And
clasped her a moment who once had been mine.
“The World Of
Faery”
I. When in the
pansy-purpled stain
Of sunset one far
star is seen,
Like some bright
drop of rain,
Out of the forest,
deep and green,
O'er me at Spirit
seems to lean,
The fairest of her
train.
II. The Spirit,
dowered with fadeless youth,
Of Lay and Legend,
young as when,
Close to her side,
in sooth,
She led me from
the marts of men,
A child, into her
world, which then
To me was true as
truth.
III. Her hair is
like the silken husk
That holds the
corn, and glints and glows;
Her brow is white
as tusk;
Her body like a
wilding rose,
And through her
gossamer raiment shows
Like starlight
closed in musk.
IV. She smiles at
me; she nods at me;
And by her looks I
am beguiled
Into the mystery
Of ways I knew
when, as a child,
She led me 'mid
her blossoms wild
Of faery fantasy.
V. The blossoms
that, when night is here,
Become sweet
mouths that sigh soft tales;
Or, each, a
jeweled ear
Leaned to the
elfin dance that trails
Down moonrayed
cirques of haunted vales
To cricket song
and cheer.
VI. The blossoms
that, shut fast all day,
Primrose and
poppy, darkness opes,
Slowly, to free a
fay,
Who, silken-soft,
leaps forth and ropes
With rain each web
that, starlit, slopes
Between each
grassy spray.
VII. The blossoms
from which elves are born,
Sweet wombs of
mingled scent and snow,
Whose deeps are
cool as morn;
Wherein I oft have
heard them blow
Their pixy
trumpets, silvery low
As some bee's
drowsy horn.
VIII. So was it
when my childhood roamed
The woodland's dim
enchanted ground,
Where every
mushroom domed
Its disc for them
to revel 'round;
Each glow-worm
forged its flame, green drowned
In hollow snow
that foamed
IX. Of lilies, for
their lantern light,
To lamp their
dance beneath the moon;
Each insect of the
night,
That rasped its
thin, vibrating tune,
And owl that
raised its sleepy croon,
Made music for
their flight.
X. So is it still
when twilight fills
My soul with
childhood's memories
That haunt the
far-off hills,
And people with
dim things the trees,
With faery forms
that no man sees,
And dreams that no
man kills.
XI. Then all
around me sway and swing
The Puck-lights of
their firefly train,
Their elfin
reveling;
And in the
bursting pods, that rain
Their seeds around
my steps, again
I hear their
footsteps ring;
XII. Their faery
feet that fall once more
Within my way; and
then I see,
As oft I saw
before,
Her Spirit rise,
who shimmeringly
Fills all my world
with poetry,
The Loveliness of
Yore.
Happy Keltik New
Year tomorrow! 😊
Rob
