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Title: Vanishing Visions
Author: Madison Julius Cawein [
More Titles by Cawein]
1
Vanishing visions, whose lineaments steal into slumbers,
Loosened the lids of the sight the night that encumbers;
Secretly, sweetly with fingers of fog that were slow,
Slow as a song that mysterious
Passions the soul, till delirious,
Wrapped in mad melody mastering the uttermost woe,
Deep to the innermost deep it is shaken
Ruffled and rippled and tossed,
Tantalized, terrorized, cursed with a thirst that, unslaken,
Debauches with eyes that burn stolid, yet only shall waken
With infinite scorn of the cost
If no note of the rhapsody's lost.
2.
Oh, for the music of moonbeams that master and sweep
Chords of the resonant deep!
Smiting loud lyres of Night, sonorous as fire,
Leap fluttering fingers of vanquishing flash and of flake
Fain at each firmament-universe-instrument star-strung.
Vibrating-vestured in garments of woven desire,
Stoop to me, breathe on me, smile on me, waver, "Awake!
From waking to sleeping, to silence from manifold clamor,
To revelous regions of multiform glamour!"
Murmur and whisper "Awake!"
Oh, necromance banquets by fountains of fairy, the spar-sprung!
Oh, sorcerous beauties and wonders of wizards! oh take
The millions of morning-spun gleams,
All glitters of galloping streams,
The glimmer the gasp the clutch and the grasp,
That colorless crystals and virtuous jewels
As spasmodic fuels
Cuddle and huddle and clasp:
The wrinkle and crinkle of scintillant heat in white metals;
The quiver of terrible gold and the pearly
Lithe brilliance of soft, holy petals,
Of slender, sad blossoms, tumultuous tossed crispy and curly
In shadowy reaches of violet dark;
The burn of the stars and the spark
Fragile of foams that are fluted, to make
One cordial of dreams
To drink and to sink
Deep, deep into dreams nor awake.
[The end]
Madison Julius Cawein's poem: Vanishing Visions
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