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Title: Orlando Mad
Author: Madison Julius Cawein [
More Titles by Cawein]
I.
In mail of black my limbs I girt,
Angelica!
And when the bugles clanged the charge,
The rolling battle's bristling marge
Beheld me a black storm of war
Dash on the foe;
While Durindana glitt'ring far
Made many a foeman mouth the dirt
In bleeding woe:--
For thou didst fire me to the war
'Mid many a Paynim scimetar,
Angelica!
II.
No more the battle fires my blood,
Angelica!
No more gay lists flaunt all their guiles,
And chivalry's charge, and beauty's smiles!
I wander lone the thistly wold
When night-snows fall,
And crispy frosts the wild grass hold.
Great knights go glimmering thro' the wood,
The clarion's call
Wakes War upon his desert wold--
I see the dawning breaking cold,
Angelica!
III.
When Southern winds sowed all the skies,
Angelica!
With bloom-storms of the flowering May;
When all the battle-field was gay
With scented garb of sainted flowers,
I found a stream
Cold as thy heart to paramours!
Deep as the depth of thy blue eyes!
And like a dream
I found a grotto 'mid the flowers,
Cool 'mid the sunlight-sprinkled bowers,
Angelica!
IV.
My casque I dofft to scoop the fount,
Angelica!
With beaded pureness bubbling cool--
It clashed into the purling pool;--
Thy name lay chiseled in the rock,
And underneath--
And then meseemed deep night did block
My steel-chained heart in one huge mount
Foreshadowing death!--
Medoro deep in every rock!
The Moorish name my soul did mock,
Angelica!
V.
No more wild war my veins ensteeps,
Angelica!
No more gay lists flaunt all their guiles!--
White wastes before me miles on miles
With one low, ruby sunset bound--
Thou fleest before,
I follow on: a far off sound
Of oceans gnawing at dark steeps
Swells to a roar.--
'Mid foam thou smil'st: I spurn the ground--
I sink, I swim, waves hiss around--
Oh, could I sink 'neath the profound,
And think of thee no more!
[The end]
Madison Julius Cawein's poem: Orlando Mad
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