Poems of Madison Cawein Vol. 4 — The Ruined Mill

THE RUINED MILL

On the wild South Fork of Harrod's Creek, O'ergrown with creepers, if you should seek, You will find an ancient water-mill Of stone below a wooded hill.

Its weedy wheel is not less still Than its image that sleeps in the grassy pool Where the moccasin swims; and, slimly cool Like streaks of light through blurs of sun, The silver minnows and crawfish run.

So lone the place, in its sycamore The blue crane builds; and from the shore The shitepoke wanders about its door.

The burdock sprawls on its sill of pine;

And, in its pathway, eglantine And blackberry tangle and intertwine;

Ox-daisies checker with pearl and gold The bushy banks of its mill-race old;

The owl in its loft as safely lairs As the fox in its cellar, that whelps and cares Naught for the hunters who gallop by With their baying hounds; the martins fly Around its chimney and build therein;

And wasp and hornet, with murmurous din, Plaster their nests, that none disturb, On window-lintel and hopper-curb.

Once I stood in this old, stone mill, Once as the day died over the hill, And night came on; and stark and still I met with phantoms upon its stairs;

Shadows, that took me unawares, Eyed with fire and cowled with gloom-- Twilight phantoms, that crowded, dark, Its dim interior, each eye a spark Of sunset, creviced, within the room-- While a moist, chill, moldering, dead perfume Of crumbling timbers and rotting grain, On floors all warped with the sun and rain, Made of the stagnant air a cell, Round the cobwebbed rafters hung like a spell;

Making my mind, despite me, run On thoughts of a hidden skeleton, There in the walls; or, dripping dank, Under the floor, 'neath a certain plank;

Glowering, grim in the mossy wet, In its hollow eyes a dark regret.

I had entered when the evening-star In the saffron heaven was sparkling afar, In all its glory of light divine, Like a diamond drowned in kingly wine;

And I stayed till the heavens hung low and gray, And the clouds of the storm drove down and away, Like the tattered leaves of an Autumn day;

And the wild rain beat on the rotting roof The goblin dance of the Fiend's own hoof, Till the spider dropped from its dusty woof;

And the thunder throbbed like a mighty heart;

And the wild wind filled each crannied part Of the mill with moanings, that seemed to be The voice of an ancient agony-- Till the beetle shrunk in its board of pine;-- While the lightning lit with its instant shine The tossing terror of tree and vine ...

Then, all on a sudden, the storm was still-- And I saw _her_ there, near the shattered sill, At the window, gazing from the mill Into the darkness under the storm;

Around her flickering hair and form Unearthly glimmer.

She seemed to lean To the rushing waters that roared unseen: A moment only she seemed to sway Before me there in the lightning gray, Then vanished utterly away: Like a blown-out light....

And was it she, The miller's daughter who died, they say, Who flung herself on the mill's great wheel, Long years ago, in her heart's despair?

-- Or was it a dream, a fantasy, That the place and the moment made me feel, And imagination imaged there?