One Day & Another: A Lyrical Eclogue

by Madison Julius Cawein

And here alone I sit and it is so!—
O vales and hills! O valley lands and knobs!
What cure have you for woe?
None that my heart may know!—
The wearying sameness!—yet this thing is so!—
This thing is so, and still the waters flow,
The leaves drop slowly down; the daylight throbs
With sun and wind, and yet this thing is so!—
Here, at this culvert's mouth,
The shadowy water, flowing towards the south,
Seems deepest, stagnant-stayed.—
What is there yonder that makes me afraid?—
Of my own self afraid?—what is't below?
What power draws me to the striate stream?
What evil or what dream?—
Me, dropping pebbles in the quiet wave,
That echoes, strange as music in a cave,
Hollow and thin; vibrating in the shade
Like sound of tears—the shadow of some woe,
An ailing phantom that will not be laid,
Since this is so, since this sad thing is so.

There, in the water, how the lank green grass
Mats its rank blades, each blade a crooked kris,
Making a marsh; 'mid which the currents miss
Their rock-born melodies.
But there, and there one sees
The wide-belled mallow, as within a glass,
Long-pistiled, leaning o'er
The root-contorted shore,
As if its own pink image it would kiss.
And there the tangled wild-potato vine
Lifts conical blossoms, each a cup of wine,
As pale as moonlight is.
And there tall gipsy lilies, all a-sway,
Their savage, coppery faces, fierce of hue,
Dull purple-streaked, bend in inverted view.—
And where the stream around those rushes creeps,
The dragon-fly, in endless error, keeps
Sewing the pale gold gown of day
With tangled stitches of a burning blue:
Its brilliant body seems a needle fine,
A thread of azure ray.
But here below me where my pensive shade
Looks up at me, the stale stream stagnant lies,
Deep, dark, but clear and silent; save the hiss
Of bursting bubbles in the spawny ooze.—
All flowers here refuse
To grow or blossom; beauties, too, are few,
That haunt its depths: no glittering minnows braid
Its languid crystal; and no gravels strew
With colored orbs its bottom. Half afraid
I shrink from my own eyes
There in its cairngorm skies—
I know not why, and yet it seems 'tis this:—

I know not what—but where the kildees wade
Slim in the foamy scum,
From that direction hither doth it come,
And makes my heart afraid.
Nearer it draws to where those low rocks ail,
Warm rocks on which some water-snake hath clomb
To bask its spotted body, coiling numb.—
At first it seemed a prism on the grail,
A bubble's prism yonder; then a trail,
An angled sparkle in a shadow, swayed
Frog-like through deeps, to crouch a flaccid, pale,
Squat bulk below.... Reflected trees and skies,
And breeze-blown clouds that lounge at sunny loss,
Seem in its stolid eyes,
Deep down—the dim disguise
Of something ghoulish there, whose features fail,
Then come again in rhythmic waviness,
With arms like tentacles that seem to press
Up towards me. Limbs that writhe, and fade,
And clench—tough limbs, that twist and cross
Through flabby hair like smoky moss.

How horrible to see this thing at night!
Or when the sunset slants its brimstone light
Above the water! when, in phantom flight,
The will-o'-the-wisps, perhaps, above it reel.
Then haply would it rise, a rotting green,
Up, up, and gather me with arms of steel,
Soft steel, and drag me where the wave is white,
Beneath that boulder there, that plants a keel
Against the ripple there, a shoulder lean.—
No! no! I must away before 'tis night!
Before the fire-flies dot
The dusk with sulphur blurrings bright!
Before upon yon height
The white wild-carrots vanish from the sight;
And boneset blossoms, tossing there in clusters,
Fade to a ridge, a streak of ghostly lustres.
And in yon sunlit spot,
That cedar tree is not!—
But a huge cap instead, that, half-asleep,
Some giant dropped while driving home his sheep.
And 'mid those fallow browns
And russet grays, the fragrant peak
Of yonder timothy stack,
Is not a stack, but something hideous, black,
That threatens and, grotesquely demon, frowns.

I must away from here.—
Already dusk draws near.
The owlet's dolorous hoot
Sounds quavering as a gnome's wild flute;
The toad, within the wet,
Begins to tune its goblin flageolet.
The slow sun sinks behind
Those hills; and like a withered cheek,
Distorted there, the spectral moon's defined
Above those trees; above that mass of vines
That, like a wrecked appentice, roofs those pines.—
Oh, I am faint and weak.—
I must away, away,
Before the close of day!—
Already at my back
I feel the woods grow black;
And sense the evening wind,
Guttural and gaunt and blind,
Snarling behind me like a were-wolf pack.—
When will it cease to pierce,
This anguish dull and fierce,
At heart and soul? when will it let me go?—

At last, with footsteps slow,
With half averted cheek,
I've reached this woodland creek,
Far from that place of fear;
And still I seem to hear
A dripping footstep near;
A gurgling voice dim glimmering at my ear.
I try to fly!—I can not!—yes, and no!—
What horror holds me!—God! that obscene, slow,
Sure mastering chimera there
Has yet some horrible feeler round my neck,
Or in my scattered hair!—
Off! off! thou devil's coil!—
The waters, thrashing, boil—
Once more I'm free! once more I'm free!
Glad of that firefly fleck,
That, like a lamp of golden fairy oil,
Lights me the way I flee.—
No more I stare, magnetic-fixed; nor reck,
Nor little care to foil
The madness there! the murder there! that slips
Back to its lair of slime, that seeps and drips,
That sought in vain to fasten on my lips.

6

Taking a letter from his pocket, he hurries away.

What can it mean for me? What have I done to her?
I, in our season of love as a sun to her:
She, all its heaven of silvery, numberful
Stars and its moon shining golden and slumberful;
Who on my life, that was thorny and lowery,
Gazed—and made beautiful; smiled—and made flowery.
She, to my heart and my soul a divinity!
She, who—I dreamed!—seemed my spirit's affinity!—
What have I done to her? what have I done?

What can she mean by this?—what have I said to her!
I, who have idolized, worshipped, and pled to her;
Sung for her, laughed for her, sorrowed and sighed for her;
Lived for her only; would gladly have died for her!
See!—she has written me thus! she has written me....
Sooner would dagger or serpent had smitten me!—
Would you had shriveled ere ever you'd read of it,
Eyes, that are wide to the bitterest dread of it!—
What have I said to her? what have I said?