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Title: The Ruined Mill
Author: Madison Julius Cawein [
More Titles by Cawein]
There is the ruined water-mill
With its rotten wheel, that stands as still
As its image that sleeps in the glassy pool
Where the water snake coils dim and cool
In the flaky light of the setting sun
Showering his gold in bullion.
And the languid daisies nod and shine
By the trickling fall in a starry line;
The drowsy daisies with eyes of gold--
Large as the eyes of a queen of old
Dreaming of revels by day and night--
Coyly o'erdropped with lashes white.
The hawk sails high in the sleepy air,
The buzzard on wings as strong and fair
Circles and stoops 'neath the lazy cloud,
And crows in the wood are cawing aloud.
Will ye enter with me this ruined mill
When the shades of night its chambers fill,
Stand and lurk in the heavy dark
Like scowling fiends, each eye a spark,
A spark of moonlight shot thro' gloom?
While a moist, rank, stifling, dead perfume
Of rotting timbers and rotting grain,
And roofs all warped with the sun and rain
Makes of the stagnant air a cell,
In the haunted chambers broods like a spell?
A spell that makes the awed mind run
To the thoughts of a hidden skeleton,
A skeleton ghastly and livid and lank
'Neath the mossy floors in a cellar dank,
Grinning and glow'ring, moisture wet,
In its hollow eyes a mad regret.
Or with me enter when the evening star
In the saffron heaven is sparkling afar,
In all its glory of light divine,
Like a diamond bathed in kingly wine.
Or when the heavens hang wild and gray,
And the chilly clouds are hurrying away
Like the driven leaves of an Autumn day;
When the night-rain sounds on the sodden roof,
And the spider lulls in his dusty woof;
When the wet wind whines like a hound that's lashed,
'Round the crazy angles strongly dashed,
Or wails in a cranny--'tis she who plays
On her airy harp sad, olden lays,
And sings and moans in a room above
Of a vague despair and a blighted love.
You will see her sit on the shattered sill,
Her sable tresses dropped loose at will;
And down in the West 'neath the storm's black bank
A belt of wild green, cold, livid, and lank,
And a crescent moon, like a demon's barque,
Into the green dips a horn from the dark,
While a lurid light of ghoulish gold
On the eldrich creature falls strangely cold.
Her insane eyes bulge mad with desire,
And her face's beauty is darkly dire;
For she sees in the pool, that solidly lies
'Neath the mill's great wheel and the stormy skies,
Her murdered lover lie faint and white,
A haunting horror, a loadstone's might
Drawing and dragging her soul from its seat
To the glimmering ice of his ghastly feet.
[The end]
Madison Julius Cawein's poem: Ruined Mill
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