Blooms of the Berry

by Madison Julius Cawein

"For thou dost love me, and this life is naught
Without thy majesty of form and mind,
For, dark to all, alone art fair to me!
And to thy level and thy passions all
I raise the puny hillock of my soul,
Tho' oft it droops below thy lofty height,
Far 'mid the crimson clouds of windless dawns
Reaching the ruby of a glorious crest.
And then aspire I not, but cower in awe
Down 'mid low, printless winds that take no morn.—

"At least my countenance may win from thee
A reflex of that alabaster cold
That stones thy brow, and pale in kindred woe!
And when this stony brow of thine is cleft
By myriad furrows, tortures of slow Time,
And all the beauties of thy locks are past,
Now glossy as the brown seal's velvet fur,
Their drifts of winter strown around this cave
To gray the glutton gloom that hangs like lead,—
For Idunn's fruit is now debarred thy lips,
And thou shalt age e'en as I age with thee!—
Then will the thought of that dread twilight cheer
The burthen of thy anguish; for wilt thou
Not in the great annihilation aid
Of gods and worlds, that roll thro' misty grooves
Of cycled ages to wild Ragnaroke?
Then shalt thou joy! for all those stars which glue
Their blinking scales unto old Ymer's skull
In clots shall fall! and as this brooding night
Sticks to and gluts us till we strangling clutch
With purple lips for air—and feel but frost
Drag laboring down the throat to swell the freight
That cuddles to the heart and clogs its life,
So shall those falling flakes spread sea-like far
In lakes of flame and foggy pestilence
O'er the hot earth, and drown all men and gods.

"But, oh, thy face! pale, pale its marble gleams
Thro' the thick night! and low the serpent wreathes
And twists his scaly coils that livid hang
Above thee alabaster as a shrine!—
Oh, could I kiss the lips toward which he writhes
And yield them the last spark of living flame
That burns in my wan blood, and, yielding—die!
Oh, could I gaze once more into large eyes
Whose liquid depths glassed domes of molten stars,
And see them as they glowed when Morning danced
O'er scattered flowers from the rosy hills
That lined the orient skies beneath one star!
When first we met and loved among the pines,
The melancholy pines that plumed the cliffs
And rocked and sang unto the smooth fiords
Like old wild women to their sleeping babes!
Then could I die e'en as the mortals die,
And smile in dying!—But the reptile baulks
All effort to behold, or on white lips
To feast the ardor of my vain desire!
Thy face alone shines on my straining sight
Like some dim moon beneath a night of mist,—
And now the creatures come to feel at me—
The serpent swings above and darts his fang,
And I can naught but hold the cup and breathe."

Then thro' the blackness of the dripping cave
Tumultuous spake he, rage his utterance;
Large as the thunder when it lunging rolls,
Heavy with earthquake and portending ruin,
Tempestuous words o'er everlasting seas
Dumb with the silence of eternal ice;
His eyes in horrid spasms, and his throat,
Corded and gnarled with veins of boisterous blood,
Swollen with fury, and stern, wintery lips
Flaked with rebellious foam and agony
For thwarted rage and baulkment of designs.
Rash vaunter of loud wrath, one brawny fist,
Convulsed with clenchment in its gyve of ore,
Clutched mad defiance and bold blasphemy,
Headlong for battle-launching at all gods
That bow meek necks before high Odin's throne;
Yet all unhurled and vain as mists of morn,
Or foam wind-wasted on the sterile sands
Of rainy seas where Ran, from whistling caves
Watching the tempest ravened dragon wreck,
Feels 'twixt lean miser fingers slippery
Already oily gold of Vikings' drowned.
Reverberated, the loud-scoffing rock
All his unburdened blasphemies again
Flung back a million fold from riotous throats
In which demoniac laughter howled and roared,
Bellowing tremendous tumult, till his ears,
Flooded and gorged with maniac curses, grew
Stunned, deaf and senseless, and the rebel words,
Erst rolled and thundered in his godly speech,
Recoiled in oaths that, shrunk in serpent loops,
Coiled mad anathemas of violence,
Voluminous-ringed, about his heart of ice,
That now in wasted wrath of bitter foam,—
Which burst and bare big ineffectual groans,
Wretched and huge with infinite weariness,—
Spent all its storm of ponderous misery.

Her sorrow found some vent in rain of tears,
And all the cave was dumb and dead with night,
Unbroken save of Sigin's heaving sobs,
Or the baulked god's deep groans where chain'd he lay
To see the spotted serpent crisp above
And aye gape poison at his lidless eyes.

And when her bowl was brimmed till one more drop
Had cast the fifth white o'er the scorching edge,
Into the black, deep flood beside she poured
Its stagnant torture; one second's tithe the time—
The reptile's bale blurs all his milky cheek,
Burns to his bones; he starting fell, stiff twists
The sinewy steel that hugs his massive limbs
And shrieks so loud within those solitudes,
The caverns yawn unto the stormy skies,
The orey mountains rock and groan for fear,
High spew their fiery thunders, smoke, and stones.

And this all in a mist-land dim and numb,
Where giants reign, rude kings in holds of ice
Based crag-like on high vivid frozen cliffs,
The bandit castles of the Northern wastes.
Beneath the shimmering dance of Arctic lights,
Which lamp them on, they storm to fight the gods;
Swathed in their stubborn mail of sleet and snow,
Embattled 'mid the clouds with fiends of ruin,
In militant throng-legions scorn the gods;
From yawning trumpets wrought of whirling clouds
Snarl war to Thor, who, in his goat-dragged wain,
Hurls thundering forth to fight their lowering troops,
That lift black 'scutcheons of tempests orbed,
Great brands of wind, and slings of whistling storm,
From which are flung their hurricanes of hail.
With such they oft withstand the strength of Thor's
Dwarf-stithied mace, Mjolner, when he rings
To find admittance to their brains of mist,
And, cleaving, drives them to their barren realms,
Where echoes of lost wars and wars to be
Rumble 'mid ruined icebergs to the caves,
Or clang with northern shock of icy spears;
While Balder, from the abyss of deathful fogs
Restored, smiles kindlier on the whit'ning lands.

Here Loke is doomed to lie in tortures chained
Until that last dread twilight of the gods,
Wild Ragnaroke, when Odin's self shall pass:
The moon and sun consumed, the fiery host
From Muspelheim shall flaming split the heavens,
Blot out the stars with lustre of their arms;
And down the squarèd legions led by Surt
Swift whirl in fogs of flame to war with gods;
Nor Thor avail, but suffocated fall
In contest with the Midgard serpent vast.
All men and gods abolished with the world,
Which into an abyss of fume and flame
Sinks like a meteor of the Summer night,
That slides into the gold of burning eve
And with eve's gold is burning, blent and lost.
But, like an exhalation, from the wreck
A new and lovelier world with juster gods
And better men shall rise, and soar away
On wings of Love thro' skies where Truth displays
The glory of her form, Wisdom her eyes.—
Behold! the Golden Age again returns!

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