Madison Julius Cawein: Verses about Oblivion

In years to come, will you forget,
Dear girl, how often we have met?
And I have gazed into your eyes
And there beheld no sad regret
To cloud the gladness of their skies,
While in your heart-unheard as yet
Love slept, oblivious of my sighs?
In years to come, will you forget?

Ah, me! I only pray that when,
In other days, some man of men
Has taught those eyes to laugh and weep
With joy and sorrow, hearts must ken
When love awakens in their deep,
I only pray some memory then,
Or sad or sweet, you still will keep
Of me and love that might have been.

How many things, that we would remember,
Sweet or sad, or great or small,
Do our minds forget! and how one thing only,
One little thing endures o'er all!
For many things have I forgotten,
But this one thing can never forget
The scent of a primrose, woodland-wet,
Long years ago I found in a far land;
A fragile flower that April set,
Rainy pink, in her forehead's garland.

II.

How many things by the heart are forgotten!
Sad as sweet, or little or great!
And how one thing that could mean nothing
Stays knocking still at the heart's red gate!
For many things has my heart forgotten,
But this one thing can never forget
The face of a girl, a moment met,
Who smiled in my eyes; whom I passed in pity;
A flower-like face, with weeping wet,
Flung to the streets of a mighty city.

'Teach me the wisdom of thy beauty, pray,
That, being thus wise, I may aspire to see
What beauty is, whence, why, and in what way
Immortal, yet how mortal utterly:
For, shrinking loveliness, thy brow of day
Pleads plaintive as a prayer, anemone.

'Teach me wood-wisdom, I am petulant:
Thou hast the wildness of a Dryad's eyes,
The shyness of an Oread's, wild plant:-
Behold the bashful goddess where she lies
Distinctly delicate!- inhabitant
Ambrosial-earthed, star-cousin of the skies.

'Teach me thy wisdom, for, thro' knowing, yet,
When I have drunk dull Lethe till each vein
Thuds full oblivion, I shall not forget;-
For beauty known is beauty; to sustain
Glad memories with life, while mad regret
And sorrow perish, being Lethe slain.'

'Teach thee my beauty being beautiful
And beauty wise?- My slight perfections, whole
As world, as man, in their creation full
As old a Power's cogitation roll.
Teach thee?- Presumption! thought is young and dull-
Question thy God what God is, soul what soul.'

That day we wandered 'mid the hills,—so lone
Clouds are not lonelier,—the forest lay
In emerald darkness 'round us. Many a stone
And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way:
And many a bird the glimmering light along
Showered the golden bubbles of its song.
Then in the valley, where the brook went by,
Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,
An isolated slip of fallen sky,
Epitomizing heaven in its sum,
An iris bloomed—blue, as if, flower-disguised,
The gaze of Spring had there materialized.
I have forgotten many things since then
Much beauty and much happiness and grief;
And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men,
Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief.
''T is winter now,' so says each barren bough;
And face and hair proclaim 't is winter now.
I would forget the gladness of that spring!
I would forget that day when she and I,
Between the bird-song and the blossoming,
Went hand in hand beneath the soft spring sky!
Much is forgotten, yea— and yet, and yet,
The things we would we never can forget.
Nor I how May then minted treasuries
Of crowfoot gold; and molded out of light
The sorrel's cups, whose elfin chalices
Of limpid spar were streaked with rosy white.
Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort,
And mandrake moons with which her brows were girt.
But most of all, yea, it were well for me,
Me and my heart, that I forget that flower,
The wild blue iris, azure fleur-de-lis,
That she and I together found that hour.
Its recollection can but emphasize
The pain of loss, remindful of her eyes.

That day we wandered 'mid the hills,-so lone
Clouds are not lonelier, the forest lay
In emerald darkness round us. Many a stone
And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way:
And many a bird the glimmering light along
Showered the golden bubbles of its song.

Then in the valley, where the brook went by,
Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,-
An isolated slip of fallen sky,
Epitomizing heaven in its sum,-
An iris bloomed-blue, as if, flower-disguised,
The gaze of Spring had there materialized.

I have forgotten many things since then-
Much beauty and much happiness and grief;
And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men,
Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief.
''Tis winter now,' so says each barren bough;
And face and hair proclaim 'tis winter now.

I would forget the gladness of that spring!
I would forget that day when she and I,
Between the bird-song and the blossoming,
Went hand in hand beneath the soft May sky!-
Much is forgotten, yea-and yet, and yet,
The things we would we never can forget.

Nor I how May then minted treasuries
Of crowfoot gold; and molded out of light
The sorrel's cups, whose elfin chalices
Of limpid spar were streaked with rosy white:
Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort,
And mandrake moons with which her brows were girt.

But most of all, yea, it were well for me,
Me and my heart, that I forget that flower,
The blue wild iris, azure fleur-de-lis,
That she and I together found that hour.
Its recollection can but emphasize
The pain of loss, remindful of her eyes.

I

He was not learned in any art;
But Nature led him by the hand;
And spoke her language to his heart
So he could hear and understand:
He loved her simply as a child;
And in his love forgot the heat
Of conflict, and sat reconciled
In patience of defeat.

II

Before me now I see him rise-
A face, that seventy years had snowed
With winter, where the kind blue eyes
Like hospitable fires glowed:
A small gray man whose heart was large,
And big with knowledge learned of need;
A heart, the hard world made its targe,
That never ceased to bleed.

III

He knew all Nature. Yea, he knew
What virtue lay within each flower,
What tonic in the dawn and dew,
And in each root what magic power:
What in the wild witch-hazel tree
Reversed its time of blossoming,
And clothed its branches goldenly
In fall instead of spring.

IV

He knew what made the firefly glow
And pulse with crystal gold and flame;
And whence the bloodroot got its snow,
And how the bramble's perfume came:
He understood the water's word
And grasshopper's and cricket's chirr;
And of the music of each bird
He was interpreter.

V

He kept no calendar of days,
But knew the seasons by the flowers;
And he could tell you by the rays
Of sun or stars the very hours.
He probed the inner mysteries
Of light, and knew the chemic change
That colors flowers, and what is
Their fragrance wild and strange.

VI

If some old oak had power of speech,
It could not speak more wildwood lore,
Nor in experience further reach,
Than he who was a tree at core.
Nature was all his heritage,
And seemed to fill his every need;
Her features were his book, whose page
He never tired to read.

VII

He read her secrets that no man
Has ever read and never will,
And put to scorn the charlatan
Who botanizes of her still.
He kept his knowledge sweet and clean,
And questioned not of why and what;
And never drew a line between
What's known and what is not.

VIII

He was most gentle, good, and wise;
A simpler heart earth never saw:
His soul looked softly from his eyes,
And in his speech were love and awe.

Yet Nature in the end denied
The thing he had not asked for-fame!
Unknown, in poverty he died,
And men forget his name.

The gray dawn finds me thinking still
Of thee who hadst my thoughts all night;
Of thee, who art my lute's sweet skill,
And of my soul the only light;
My star of song to whom I turn
My face and for whose love I yearn.

Thou dost not know thy troubadour
Lies sick to death; no longer sings:
That this alone may work his cure
To feel thy white hand, weighed with rings,
Smoothed softly through his heavy hair,
Or resting with the old love there.

To feel thy warm cheek laid to his;
Thy bosom fluttering with love;
Then on his eyes and lips thy kiss
Thy kiss alone were all enough
To heal his heart, to cure his soul,
And make his mind and body whole.

The drought, these three months past, hath slain
All green things in this weary land,
As in my life thy high disdain
Hath killed ambition: yea, my hand
Forgets its cunning; and my heart,
Sick to stagnation, all its art.

Once to my castle there at Puy,
In honor of thy beauty, came
The Angevin nobility,
To hear me sing of thee, whose fame
Was high as Helen's. Azalis,
Hast thou forgot? Forget'st thou this?

And in the lists how often there
I broke a spear for thee? and placed
The crown of beauty on thy hair,
While thou sat'st, like the fair moon faced,
Amid the human firmament
Of faces that toward thee bent.

I take my hawk, my peregrine
No falconer or page beside
And ride from morn till eve begin;
I ride forgetting that I ride,
And all save this: that thou no more
Dost ride beside me as of yore.

A heron sweeps above me: I
Remember then how oft were cast
Thy hawk and mine at such: and sigh
Thinking of thee and days long past,
When through the Anjou fields and bowers
We used to hawk and hunt for hours.

And when, unhappy, I return,
And take my lute and seek again
The terrace where, beside some urn,
The castle gathers, while the stain
Of sunset crimsons all the sea,
And sing old songs once loved of thee:

The soul within me overflows
With longing; and I seem to hear
Thy voice through fountains and the rose
Calling afar, while, wildly near,
The rossignol makes mute my tongue
With memories of things long sung.

Here in Provence I pine for thee;
And there in Anjou dost forget!
All beauty here is less to me
Than is the ribbon lightly set
At thy white throat; or, on thy foot,
The shoe that I have loved to lute.

Thy foot, that I have loved to kiss;
To kiss and sing of! Song hath died
In me since then, my Azalis;
Since to my soul e'en that 's denied:
Thy kiss, that now alone could cure
The sick heart of thy Troubadour.