Poems of Madison Cawein Vol. 4 — Self and Soul

SELF AND SOUL

It came to me in my sleep, And I rose in my sleep and went Out in the night to weep, Out where the trees were bent.

With my soul, it seemed, I stood Alone in a wind-swept wood.

And my soul said, gazing at me, "I will show you another land Different from that you see," And took into hers my hand.

-- We passed from the wood to a heath As starved as the ribs of Death.

There, every leaf and the grass Was a thorn or a thistle hoar, The rocks rose mass on mass, Black bones on an iron moor.

And my soul said, looking at me, "The past of your life you see."

And a swineherd passed with his swine, Deformed, with the face of an owl;

Two eyes of a wolfish shine Burned under his eyebrows foul.

And my soul said, "This is the Lust, That soils my beauty with dust."

Then a goose-wife hobbled by, On a crutch, with the devil's geese, A-mumbling that God is a lie, And cursing the world without cease.

And my soul said, "This is Unfaith Who maketh me that which she saith."

Then we came to a garden, close To a hollow of graves and tombs;

A garden as red as a rose, Hung over of obscene glooms;

The heart of each rose was a spark That smouldered or glared in the dark.

And I was aware of a girl With a wild-rose face, who came, With a mouth like a shell's split pearl, Rose-clad in a robe of flame;

And she plucked the roses and gave, And I was her veriest slave.

She vanished.

My lips would have kissed The flowers she gave me with sighs, But they writhed from my hands and hissed, In their hearts were a serpent's eyes.

And my soul said, "Pleasure is she.

The joys of the flesh you see."

Then I bowed with a heart too weary, That longed to rest, to sleep;

And it seemed in the darkness dreary I heard my sad heart weep;

And my soul to the silence say,-- "O God!

for the break of day!"