Poems of Madison Cawein Vol. 3 — Quatrains

_Penury_ Above his misered embers, gaunt and gray, With toil-gnarled limbs he stoops: around his hut, Want, like a hobbling hag, goes, night and day, Trying the windows and the doors tight-shut.

II

_Strategy_ Craft’s silent sister and the daughter deep Of Contemplation, she, who spreads below A hostile tent soft comfort for her foe, With eyes of Jael watching till he sleep.

III

_Tempest_ With helms of lightning, glittering in the skies, On steeds of thunder, form on cloudy form, Terrific beauty in their hair and eyes, Sweep down the wild Valkyries of the storm.

IV

_The Locust Blossom_ The spirit Spring, in rainy raiment, met The spirit Summer for a moonlit hour: Sweet from their greeting kisses, warm and wet, Was born the fragrant beauty of this flower.

V

_Melancholy_ With shadowy immortelles of memory About her brow, she sits with eyes that look Upon the stream of Lethe wearily, In hesitant hands Death’s partly-opened book.

VI

_Content_ Among the meadows of Life’s sad unease-- In labor still renewing her soul’s youth-- With trust, for patience, and with love, for peace, Singing she goes with the calm face of Ruth.

VII

_Life and Death_ Of our own selves God makes a glass, wherein Two shades are imaged, passing like a breath: And one is Life, whose other name is Sin;

And one is Love, whose other name is Death.

VIII

_Sorrow_ Death takes her hand and leads her through the waste Of her own soul, wherein she hears the voice Of lost Love’s tears, and, famishing, can but taste The dead-sea fruit of Life’s remembered joys.