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Title: To Revery
Author: Madison Julius Cawein [
More Titles by Cawein]
What ogive gates from gold of Ophir wrought,
What walls of bastioned Parian, lucid rose,
What marts of crystal, for the eyes of Thought
Hast builded on what Islands of Repose!
Vague onyx columns ranked Corinthian,
Or piled Ionic, colonnading heights
That loom above long burst of mythic seas:
Vast gynaeceums of carnelian;
Micaceous temples, far marmorean flights,
Where winds the arabesque and plastique frieze.
Where bulbous domes of coruscating ore
Cloud--like convulsive sunsets--lands that dream,
Myrrh-fragrant, over siren seas and hoar,
Dashed with stiff, breezy foam of ocean's stream.
Tempestuous architecture-revelries;
Built melodies of marble or clear glass;
Effulgent sculptures chiseled out of thought
In misty attitudes, whose majesties
Feed full the pleasure as those beauties pass
To pale extinctions which are beauty fraught.
On rebeck and on rose in plinths of spars,
On glimmering solitudes of flower and stone,
A twilight-glow swoons settled, burned with stars,
Deep violet dusk developing nor done.
Where float fair nacreous shapes like deities,--
Existences of glory musical,--
'Round whose warm hair twist fillets' coiling gold,
Their limbs Olympian lovely, and their eyes
Dark oblique fervors; and most languorous tall
In woven white with girdling gold threefold.
There darkling the consummate vintage sleeps,--
Lethe-nepenthes for Earth-agony,--
In sealed amphorae some Sybil keeps,
World-old, forever cellared secretly.
A wine of Xeres or of Syracuse?
A fierce Falernian?--Ah! no vile Sabine!--
A stol'n ambrosia of what olden god?
Whose bubbled rubies maiden feet did bruise
From crusted vats of vintage rich, I ween,
Vivacious purple of some Samian sod.
Oh, for the cold conclusion of one draught!
Elysian ecstacy of classic earth!--
Where heroes warred with gods and where gods laughed
In eyes of mortal brown, a lusty mirth
Of deity delirious with desire:
Where danced the sacrifice to horned shrines,
And splashed the full libation blue as blood.--
Oh, to be drunk with dreaming! to inspire
The very soul of beauty whence it shines
Too lost for utterance yet understood!
In cogitation of what verdurous shades,
Dull-droning quietudes where wild-bees lolled
Suck, lulled in pulpy lilies of the glades,
Barbaric-smothered with the kerneled gold:
Teased by some torso of the golden age,
Nude breasts of Cytherea, famous fair,
Uncestus'd, yet suggestive of what loves
Immortal! yearn enamoured; or to rage
With sun-burnt Poesy whose throat breathes bare
O'er leopard skins and flute among her groves.
[The end]
Madison Julius Cawein's poem: To Revery
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