Chapter II: Introduction

Since the disappearance of the latest survivors of that graceful and somewhat academic school of poets who ruled American literature so long from the shores of Massachusetts, serious poetry in the United States seems to have been passing through a crisis of languor. Perhaps there is no country on the civilized globe where, in theory, verse is treated with more respect and, in practice, with greater lack of grave consideration than in America. No conjecture as to the reason of this must be attempted here, further than to suggest that the extreme value set upon sharpness, ingenuity and rapid mobility is obviously calculated to depreciate and to condemn the quiet practice of the most meditative of the arts. Hence we find that it is what is called "humorous" verse which is mainly in fashion on the western side of the Atlantic. Those rhymes are most warmly welcomed which play the most preposterous tricks with language, which dazzle by the most mountebank swiftness of turn, and which depend most for their effect upon paradox and the negation of sober thought. It is probable that the diseased craving for what is "smart," "snappy," and wide-awake, and the impulse to see everything foreshortened and topsy-turvy, must wear themselves out before cooler and more graceful tastes again prevail in imaginative literature.

Whatever be the cause, it is certain that this is not a moment when serious poetry, of any species, is flourishing in the United States. The absence of anything like a common impulse among young writers, of any definite and intelligible, if excessive, _parti pris_, is immediately observable if we contrast the American, for instance, with the French poets of the last fifteen years. Where there is no school and no clear trend of executive ambition, the solitary artist, whose talent forces itself up into the light and air, suffers unusual difficulties, and runs a constant danger of being choked in the aimless mediocrity that surrounds him. We occasionally meet with a poet in the history of literature, of whom we are inclined to say: "Charming as he is, he would have developed his talent more evenly and conspicuously, if he had been accompanied from the first by other young men like-minded, who would have formed for him an atmosphere and cleared for him a space." This is the one regret I feel in contemplating, as I have done for years past, the ardent and beautiful talent of Mr. Madison Cawein. I deplore the fact that he seems to stand alone in his generation; I think his poetry would have been even better than it is, and its qualities would certainly have been more clearly perceived, and more intelligently appreciated, if he were less isolated. In his own country, at this particular moment, in this matter of serious nature-painting in lyric verse, Mr. Cawein possesses what Cowley would have called "a monopoly of wit." In one of his lyrics Mr. Cawein asks--

"The song-birds, are they flown away,
The song-birds of the summer-time,
That sang their souls into the day,
And set the laughing hours to rhyme?
No cat-bird scatters through the hush
The sparkling crystals of her song;
Within the woods no hermit-thrush
Trails an enchanted flute along."

To this inquiry, the answer is: the only hermit-thrush now audible seems to sing from Louisville, Kentucky. America will, we may be perfectly sure, calm herself into harmony again, and possess once more her school of singers. In those coming days, history may perceive in Mr. Cawein the golden link that bound the music of the past to the music of the future through an interval of comparative tunelessness.

The career of Mr. Madison Cawein is represented to me as being most uneventful. He seems to have enjoyed unusual advantages for the cultivation and protection of the poetical temperament. He was born on the 23rd of March, 1865, in the metropolis of Kentucky, the vigorous city of Louisville, on the southern side of the Ohio, in the midst of a country celebrated for tobacco and whisky and Indian corn. These are commodities which may be consumed in excess, but in moderation they make glad the heart of man. They represent a certain glow of the earth, they indicate the action of a serene and gentle climate upon a rich soil. It was in this delicate and voluptuous state of Kentucky that Mr. Cawein was born, that he was educated, that he became a poet, and that he has lived ever since. His blood is full of the color and odor of his native landscape. The solemn books of history tell us that Kentucky was discovered in 1769, by Daniel Boone, a hunter. But he first discovers a country who sees it first, and teaches the world to see it; no doubt some day the city of Louisville will erect, in one of its principal squares, a statue to "Madison Cawein, who discovered the Beauty of Kentucky." The genius of this poet is like one of those deep rivers of his native state, which cut paths through the forests of chestnut and hemlock as they hurry towards the south and west, brushing with the impulsive fringe of their currents the rhododendrons and calmias and azaleas that bend from the banks to be mirrored in their flashing waters.

Mr. Cawein's vocation to poetry was irresistible. I do not know that he even tried to resist it. I have even the idea that a little more resistance would have been salutary for a talent which nothing could have discouraged, and which opposition might have taught the arts of compression and selection. Mr. Cawein suffered at first, I think, from lack of criticism more than from lack of eulogy. From his early writings I seem to gather an impression of a Louisville more ready to praise what was second-rate than what was first-rate, and practically, indeed, without any scale of appreciation whatever. This may be a mistake of mine; at all events, Mr. Cawein has had more to gain from the passage of years in self-criticism than in inspiring enthusiasm. The fount was in him from the first; but it bubbled forth before he had digged a definite channel for it. Sometimes, to this very day, he sports with the principles of syntax, as Nature played games so long ago with the fantastic caverns of the valley of the Green River or with the coral-reefs of his own Ohio. He has bad rhymes, amazing in so delicate an ear; he has awkwardness of phrase not expected in one so plunged in contemplation of the eternal harmony of Nature. But these grow fewer and less obtrusive as the years pass by.

The virgin timber-forests of Kentucky, the woods of honey-locust and buckeye, of white oak and yellow poplar, with their clearings full of flowers unknown to us by sight or name, from which in the distance are visible the domes of the far-away Cumberland Mountains,--this seems to be the hunting-field of Mr. Cawein's imagination. Here all, it must be confessed, has hitherto been unfamiliar to the Muses. If Persephone "of our Cumnor cowslips never heard," how much less can her attention have been arrested by clusters of orchids from the Ocklawaha, or by the song of the whippoorwill, rung out when "the west was hot geranium-red" under the boughs of a black-jack on the slopes of Mount Kinnex. "Not here," one is inclined to exclaim, "not here, O Apollo, are haunts meet for thee," but the art of the poet is displayed by his skill in breaking down these prejudices of time and place. Mr. Cawein reconciles us to his strange landscape--the strangeness of which one has to admit is mainly one of nomenclature,--by the exercise of a delightful instinctive pantheism. He brings the ancient gods to Kentucky, and it is marvelous how quickly they learn to be at home there. Here is Bacchus, with a spicy fragment of calamus-root in his hand, trampling the blue-eyed grass, and skipping, with the air of a hunter born, into the hickory thicket, to escape Artemis, whose robes, as she passes swiftly with her dogs through the woods, startle the humming-birds, silence the green tree-frogs, and fill the hot still air with the perfumes of peppermint and pennyroyal. It is a queer landscape, but one of new natural beauties frankly and sympathetically discovered, and it forms a _mise en scene_ which, I make bold to say, would have scandalized neither Keats nor Spenser.

It was Mr. Howells,--ever as generous in discovering new talent as he is unflinching in reproof of the effeteness of European taste,--who first drew attention to the originality and beauty of Mr. Cawein's poetry. The Kentucky poet had, at that time, published but one tentative volume, the _Blooms of the Berry_, of 1887. This was followed, in 1888, by _The Triumph of Music_, and since then hardly a year has passed without a slender sheaf of verse from Mr. Cawein's garden. Among these (if a single volume is to be indicated), the quality which distinguishes him from all other poets,--the Kentucky flavor, if we may call it so,--is perhaps to be most agreeably detected in _Intimations of the Beautiful_.

But it is time that I should leave the American lyrist to make his own appeal, with but one additional word of explanation, namely, that in this introduction Mr. Cawein's narrative poems on medieval themes, and in general his cosmopolitan writings, have been neglected of mention in favor of such nature lyrics as would present him most vividly in his own native landscape, no visitor in spirit to Europe, but at home in that bright and exuberant West--

"Where, in the hazy morning, runs
The stony branch that pools and drips,
Where red haws and the wild-rose hips
Are strewn like pebbles; where the sun's
Own gold seems captured by the weeds;
To see, through scintillating seeds,
The hunters steal with glimmering guns.
To stand within the dewy ring
Where pale death smites the boneset's blooms,
And everlasting's flowers, and plumes
Of mint, with aromatic wing!
And hear the creek,--whose sobbing seems
A wild man murmuring in his dreams,--
And insect violins that sing!"

So sweet a voice, so consonant with the music of the singers of past times, heard in a place so fresh and strange, will surely not pass without its welcome from lovers of genuine poetry.

EDMUND GOSSE.

_London, England._

CONTENTS

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY PAGE

AT REST 45
AVATARS 61
CLOUDS 59
DEAD LILY, A 40
DEAD OREAD, THE 41
DEFICIENCY 50
DISTANCE 48
DIURNAL 55
DREAMER OF DREAMS, A 24
DRYAD, THE 38
FAMILY BURYING GROUND, THE 57
HEPATICAS 17
HERON, THE 60
IN LATE FALL 72
IN MIDDLE SPRING 12
IN NOVEMBER 71
LILLITA 63
LONGINGS 9
LOVELINESS 4
MIDSUMMER 52
MIDWINTER 79
MIRABILE DICTU 22
MIRIAM 65
MOONRISE AT SEA 69
OLD BYWAY, THE 32
PAN 27
PAX VOBISCUM 43
SOUND OF THE SAP, THE 36
SPIRITS OF SPRING 19
SPRING SHOWER, A 14
STORMY SUNSET, A 29
SWEET O' THE YEAR, THE 10
TWO DAYS 67
TYRANNY 76
WAITING 7
WHAT YOU WILL 77
WITH THE SEASONS 73
WOOD GOD, THE 1
WOODLAND GRAVE, A 30
WOODPATH, THE 34

IN THE GARDENS OF FALERINA
ALCALDE'S DAUGHTER, THE 187
AMADIS AT MIRAFLORES 108
AN ANTIQUE 129
BLODEUWEDD 101
EPIC, THE 183
ERMENGARDE 125
EVE OF ALL-SAINTS, THE 164
FACE TO FACE 160
GARDENS OF FALERINA, THE 85
GUINEVERE, A 153
HACKELNBERG 127
HAWKING 117
IN MYTHIC SEAS 193
ISHMAEL 189
JAAFER THE BARMECIDE 131
KING, THE 138
LOKÉ AND SIGYN 197
LOVE AS IT WAS IN THE TIME OF LOUIS XIV 171
MATER DOLOROSA 169
MELANCHOLIA 141
MINSTREL AND THE PRINCESS, THE 185
MY ROMANCE 181
ORLANDO 119
PERLE DES JARDINS 156
PRE-EXISTENCE, A 134
ROMANCE 87
TO GERTRUDE 83
TROUBADOUR, THE 176
URGANDA 112
VALLEY OF MUSIC, THE 90
WAR-SONG OF HARALD THE RED 207
WOMAN OF THE WORLD, A 150
YOLANDA OF THE TOWERS 121
YULE 209

OLD WORLD IDYLLS

ACCOLON OF GAUL 219
AFTER THE TOURNAMENT 340
AN EPISODE 440
ARABAH 458
AT THE CORREGIDOR'S 437
BEHRAM AND EDDETMA 476
BLIND HARPER, THE 345
CHILDE RONALD 347
DARK TOWER, THE 342
DAUGHTER OF MERLIN, THE 363
DEMON LOVER, THE 358
DREAM OF SIR GALAHAD, THE 335
FORESTER, THE 371
GERALDINE 431
ISOLT 329
KHALIF AND THE ARAB, THE 450
KNIGHT-ERRANT, THE 368
LADY OF THE HILLS, THE 356
MAMELUKE, THE 466
MOATED MANSE, THE 391
MORGAN LE FAY 353
MY LADY OF VERNE 422
NORMAN KNIGHT, THE 448
OLD TALE RETOLD, AN 409
PEREDUR, THE SON OF EVRAWC 307
PORTRAIT, THE 471
PRINCESS OF THULE, A 360
ROMAUNT OF THE ROSES 468
ROSICRUCIAN, THE 445
SEVEN DEVILS, THE 460
SLAVE, THE 443
THAMUS 462
TO R. E. LEE GIBSON 217
TORQUEMADA 485
TRISTRAM TO ISOLT 365

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"IT SHALL GO HARD WITH HIM THROUGH THEE,
UNCONQUERABLE BLADE" _Frontispiece_
PAGE

SHE RAISED HER OBLONG LUTE AND SMOTE SOME
CHORDS (See page 230) 124

IN HER ECSTASY A LOVELY DEVIL (See page 303) 250

AND GRASPED OF BOTH WILD HANDS, SWUNG
TRENCHANT (See page 285) 374

LYRICS

_Wine-warm winds that sigh and sing
Led me, wrapped in many moods,
Through the green, sonorous woods
Of belated spring._

_Till I came where, glad with heat,
Waste and wild the fields were strewn,
Olden as the olden moon,
At my weary feet._

_Wild and white with starry bloom,
One far milky-way that dashed,
When some mad wind down it flashed,
Into billowy foam._

_I, bewildered, gazed around,
As one on whose heavy dreams
Comes a sudden burst of beams,
Like a mighty sound...._

_If the grander flowers I sought,
But these berry-blooms to you,
Evanescent as the dew,
Only these I brought._

BLOOMS OF THE BERRY.

THE WOOD GOD

I

What deity for dozing Laziness
Devised the lounging leafiness of this
Secluded nook?--And how!--did I distress
His musing ease that fled but now? or his
Communion with some forest-sister, fair
And shy as is the whippoorwill-flower there,
Did I disturb?--Still is the wild moss warm
And fragrant with late pressure,--as the palm
Of some hot Hamadryad, who, a-nap,
Props her hale cheek upon it, while her arm
Is wildflower-buried; in her hair the balm
Of a whole spring of blossoms and of sap.--

II

See, how the dented moss, that pads the hump
Of these distorted roots, elastic springs
From that god's late reclining! Lump by lump
Its points, impressed, rise in resilient rings,
As stars crowd, qualming through gray evening skies.--
Invisible presence, still I feel thy eyes
Regarding me, bringing dim dreams before
My half-closed gaze, here where great, green-veined leaves
Reach, waving at me, their innumerable hands,
Stretched towards this water where the sycamore
Stands burly guard; where every ripple weaves
A ceaseless, wavy quivering as of bands.

III

Of elfin chivalry, that, helmed with gold,
Invisible march, making a twinkling sound.--
What brought thee here?--this wind, that steals the old
Gray legends from the forests and around
Whispers them now? Or, in those purple weeds
The hermit brook so busy with his beads?--
Lulling the silence with his prayers all day,
Droning soft _Aves_ on his rosary
Of bubbles.--Or, that butterfly didst mark
On yon hag-taper, towering by the way,
A witch's yellow torch?--Or didst, like me,
Watch, drifting by, these curled, brown bits of bark?

IV

Or con the slender gold of this dim, still
Unmoving minnow 'neath these twisted roots,
Thrust o'er the smoky topaz of this rill?--
Or, in this sunlight, did those insect flutes,
Sleepy with summer, drowsily forlorn,
Remind thee of Tithonos and the Morn?
Until thine eyes dropped dew, the dimpled stream
Crinkling with crystal o'er the winking grail?--
Or didst perplex thee with some poet plan
To drug this air with beauty to make dream,--
Presence unseen, still watching in yon vale!--
Me, wildwood-wandered from the haunts of man!

LOVELINESS

I

Now let us forth to find the young witch Spring,
Seated amid her bow'rs and birds and buds,
Busy with loveliness.--And, wandering
Among old forests that the sunlight floods,
Or vales of hermit-holy solitudes,
Dryads shall beckon us from where they cling,
Their limbs an oak-bark brown; their hair--wild woods
Have perfumed--wreathed with earliest leaves: and they,
Regarding us with a dew-sparkling eye,
Shall whispering greet us, as the rain the rye,
Or from wild lips melodious welcome fling,
Like hidden waterfalls with winds at play.

II

Let us surprise the Naiad ere she slips--
Nude at her toilette--in her fountain's glass;
With damp locks dewy and evasive hips,
Cool-dripping, but an instant seen, alas!
When from indented moss and plushy grass--
Fear in her great eyes' rainbow-blue--she dips,
Irised, the cloven water; as we pass
Making a rippled circle that shall hide,
From our exploring eyes, what watery path
She gleaming took; what crystal haunt she hath
In minnowy freshness, where her murmurous lips,
Bubbling, make merry 'neath the rocky tide.

III

Then we may meet the Oread, whose eyes
Are dewdrops where twin heavens shine confessed:
She, all the maiden modesty's surprise
Rosying her temples,--to slim loins and breast
Tempestuous, brown, bewildering tresses pressed,--
Shall stand a moment's moiety in wise
Of some delicious dream, then shrink, distressed,
Like some wild mist that, hardly seen, is gone,
Footing the ferny hillside without sound;
Or, like storm sunlight, her white limbs shall bound,
A thistle's instant, towards a woody rise,
A flying glimmer o'er the dew-drenched lawn.