Tag: Madison Julius Cawein

Superstition by Madison Julius Cawein

In the waste places, in the dreadful night,
When the wood whispers like a wandering mind,
And silence sits and listens to the wind,
Or, ‘mid the rocks, to some wild torrent’s flight;
Bat-browed thou wadest with thy wisp of light
Among black pools the moon can never find;
Or, owlet-eyed, thou hootest to the blind
Deep darkness from some cave or haunted height.
He who beholds but once thy fearsome face,
Never again shall walk alone! but wan
And terrible attendants shall be his
Unutterable things that have no place
In God or Beauty that compel him on,
Against all hope, where endless horror is.

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.

The Haunted Garden by Madison Julius Cawein

There a tattered marigold
And dead asters manifold,
Showed him where the garden old
Of time bloomed:
Briar and thistle overgrew
Corners where the rose once blew,
Where the phlox of every hue
Lay entombed.

Here a coreopsis flower
Pushed its disc above a bower,
Where once poured a starry shower,
Bronze and gold:
And a twisted hollyhock,
And the remnant of a stock,
Struggled up, ‘mid burr and dock,
Through the mold.

Flower-pots, with mossy cloak,
Strewed a place beneath an oak,
Where the garden-bench lay broke
By the tree:
And he thought of her, who here
Sat with him but yesteryear;
Her, whose presence now seemed near
Stealthily.

And the garden seemed to look
For her coming. Petals shook
On the spot where, with her book,
Oft she sat.—
Suddenly there blew a wind:
And across the garden blind,
Like a black thought in a mind,
Stole a cat.

Lean as hunger; like the shade
Of a dream; a ghost unlaid;
Through the weeds its way it made,
Gaunt and old:
Once ’t was hers. He looked to see
If she followed to the tree.—
Then recalled how long since she
Had been mold.

The Headless Horseman by Madison Julius Cawein

On the black road through the wood
As I rode,
There the Headless Horseman stood;
By the wild pool in the wood,
As I rode.

From the shadow of an oak,
As I rode,
Demon steed and rider broke;
By the thunder-shattered oak,
As I rode.

On the waste road through the plain,
As I rode,
At my back he whirled like rain;
On the tempest-blackened plain,
As I rode.

Four fierce hoofs shod red with fire,
As I rode,
Woke the wild rocks, dark and dire;
Eyes and nostrils streamed with fire,
As I rode.

On the deep road through the rocks,
As I rode,
I could reach his horse’s locks;
Through the echo-hurling rocks,
As I rode.

And again I looked behind,
As I rode, –
Dark as night and swift as wind,
Towering, he rode behind,
As I rode.

On the steep road down the dell,
As I rode,
In the night I heard a bell,
In the village in the dell,
As I rode.

And my soul called out in prayer,
As I rode, –
Lo! the demon went in air,
Leaving me alone in prayer,
As I rode.

The Shadow by Madison Julius Cawein

I
Mother, mother, what is that gazing through the darkness?
What is that that looks at me with its awful eyes?
Tell me, mother, what it is, freezing me to starkness?
Through the house it seems to go with its icy sighs,
What is that, oh, what is that, mother, in the darkness?

II
Child, my child! my little child! ‘tis a waving willow,
That the night wind bows and sways near the window-pane:
Here’s my breast, my little son. Let it be your pillow.
Have no fear, love, in my arms. Go to sleep again.
Go to sleep and turn your face from the windy willow.

III
Mother, mother, what is that? going round and round there?
Round the house and at the door stops and turns the knob.
Hold me close, O mother love! keep me from that sound there!
Hear it how it’s knocking now? Don’t you hear it sob?
Guard me from the ghostly thing that goes round and round there.

IV
Child, my child! my little child! ’tis the wind that wanders:
‘Tis the wandering wind that knocks, crying at the door.
Hark no more and heed no more what the night wind maunders.
Rest your head on mother’s heart, list its faery lore.
Go to sleep and have no fear of the wind that wanders.

V
Mother, mother, look and see! what is that that stands there?
With its lantern face and limbs, mantled all in black!
Gaunt and grim and horrible with its knuckled hands there!
Now before me! now beside me! now behind my back!
Mother! mother! face it now! ask it why it stands there!

VI
Child, my child! my little child! ’tis a shadow only!
Shadow of the lamp-shade here near your little bed!
No! it will not come again when the night lies lonely.
Sleep, oh, sleep, my little son. See! the thing is fled.
Mother will not leave her boy with that shadow only….

VII
Will he live? or will he die? Answer; fearful Shadow!
O thou Death who hoverest near, hold thy hands away!
Oh, that night were past and light lay on hill and meadow!
Does he sleep? or is he dead? God! that it were day!
Light to help my love to fight with that crouching shadow!

The Wood Water by Madison Julius Cawein

An evil, stealthy water, dark as hate,
Sunk from the light of day,
‘Thwart which is hung a ruined water-gate,
Creeps on its stagnant way.

Moss and the spawny duckweed, dim as air,
And green as copperas,
Choke its dull current; and, like hideous hair,
Tangles of twisted grass.

Above it sinister trees, as crouched and gaunt
As huddled Terror, lean;
Guarding some secret in that nightmare haunt,
Some horror they have seen.

Something the sunset points at from afar,
Spearing the sullen wood
And hag-gray water with a single bar
Of flame as red as blood.

Something the stars, conspiring with the moon,
Shall look on, and remain
Frozen with fear; staring as in a swoon,
Striving to flee in vain.

Something the wisp that, wandering in the night,
Above the ghastly stream,
Haply shall find; and, filled with frantic fright,
Light with its ghostly gleam.

Something that lies there, under weed and ooze,
With wide and awful eyes
And matted hair, and limbs the waters bruise,
That strives, yet can not rise.

The Old House By The Mere by Madison Julius Cawein

Five rotten gables look upon
Wan rotting roses and rank weeds,
Old iron gates on posts of stone,
Dim dingles where the vermin breeds.
Five rotten gables black appear
Above bleak yews and cedars sad,
And thence they see the sleepy mere
In lazy lilies clad.

At morn the slender dragon-fly,
A burnished ray of light, darts past;
The knightly bee comes charging by
Winding a surly blast.
At noon amid the fervid leaves
The quarreling insects gossip hot,
And thro’ the grass the spider weaves
A weft with silver shot.

At eve the hermit cricket rears
His vesper song in shrillful shrieks;
The bat a blund’ring voyage steers
Beneath the sunset’s streaks.
The slimy worm gnaws at the bud,
The Katydid talks dreamily;
The sullen owl in monkish hood
Chants in the old beech tree.

At night the blist’ring dew comes down
And lies as white as autumn frost
Upon the green, upon the brown,
You’d deem each bush a ghost.
The crescent moon with golden prow
Plows thro’ the frothy cloud and ’s gone;
A large blue star comes out to glow
Above the house alone.

The oozy lilies lie asleep
On glist’ring beds of welt’ring leaves;
The starlight through the trees doth peep,
And fairy garments weaves.
And in the mere, all lily fair,
A maiden’s corpse floats evermore,
Naked, and in her raven hair
Wrapped o’er and o’er.

And when the clock of yon old town
Peals midnight o’er the fenny heath,
In haunted chambers up and down
Marches the pomp of Death:
And stiff, stiff silks make rustlings,
Sweep sable satins murmuringly;
And then a voice so sweetly sings
An olden melody.

And foam-white creatures flit and dance
Along the dusty galleries,
With long, loose locks that strangely glance
And demon-glaring eyes.
But in one chamber, when the moon
Casts her cold silver wreath on wreath,
Holds there proud state on ghastly throne
The skeleton Death.

The Haunted House by Madison Julius Cawein

I.
The shadows sit and stand about its door
Like uninvited guests and poor;
And all the long, hot summer day
The grating locust dins its roundelay
In one old sycamore.
The squirrel leaves upon its rotting roof,
In empty hulls, its tracks;
And in its clapboard cracks
The spider weaves a windy woof;
Its cells the mud-wasp packs.
The she-fox whelps upon its floor;
The owlet roosts above its door;
And where the musty mosses run,
The freckled snake basks in the sun.

II.
The children of what fathers sleep
Beneath these melancholy pines?
The slow slugs crawl among their graves where creep
The doddered poison-vines.
The orchard, near the meadow deep,
Lifts up decrepit arms,
Gray-lichened in a withering heap.
No sap swells up to make it leap
As once in calms and storms;
No blossom lulls its age asleep;
Each breeze brings sad alarms.
Big, bell-round pears and apples, russet-red,
No maiden gathers now;
The worm-bored trunks weep gum, like tears, instead,
From each decaying bough.

III.
The woodlands around it are solitary
And fold it like gaunt hands;
The sunlight is sad and the moonlight is dreary,
And the hum of the country is weary, so weary!
And the bees go by in bands
To other lovelier lands.
The grasses are rotting in walk and in bower;
The lonesomeness,–dank and rank
As a chamber where lies for a lonely hour
An old-man’s corpse with many a flower,–
Is hushed and blank.
And even the birds have passed it by,
To sing their songs to a happier sky,
A happier sky and bank.

IV.
In its desolate halls are lying,
Gold, blood-red and browned,
Drifted leaves of summer dying;
And the winds, above them sighing,
Turn them round and round,
Make a ghostly sound
As of footsteps failing, flying,
Voices through the chambers crying,
Of the haunted house.

V.
Gazing down in her white shroud,
Shroud of windy cloud,
Comes at night the phantom moon;
Comes and all the shadows soon,
Crowding in the rooms, arouse;
Shadows, ghosts, her rays lead on,
Till beneath the cloud
Like a ghost she’s gone,
In her gusty shroud,
O’er the haunted house.