Madison Cawein, whom English critics name the greatest living American poet, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, March 23, 1865. He was christened "Madison Julius Cawein," but he had not gotten far in the literary lane before his middle name was dropped, though the "J." may be found upon the title-pages of his earlier books. After some preparatory work he entered the Louisville Male High School, in 1881, at the age of sixteen years. At high school Madison Cawein began to write rhymes which he read to the students and teachers upon stated occasions, and he was hailed by them as a true maker of song. He was graduated in 1886 in a class of thirteen members. Being poor in purse, Mr. Cawein accepted a position in a Louisville business house, and he is one of the few American poets who wrote in the midst of such commercialism. His was the singing heart, not to be crushed by conditions or environment of any kind. The year after his graduation he collected the best of his school verse and published them as his first book, Blooms of the Berry (Louisville, 1887). In some way William Dean Howells and Thomas Bailey Aldrich saw this volume, praised it, and fixed the future poet in his right path. The Triumph of Music (Louisville, 1888), sounded after The Blooms of the Berry, and since that time hardly a year has passed without the poet putting forth a slender volume. The next few years saw the publication of his Accolon of Gaul (Louisville, 1889); Lyrics and Idyls (Louisville, 1890); Days and Dreams (New York, 1891); Moods and Memories (New York, 1892); Red Leaves and Roses (New York, 1893); Poems of Nature and Love (New York, 1893); Intimations of the Beautiful (New York, 1894), one of his longest poems; The White Snake (Louisville, 1895), metrical translations from the German poets; Undertones (Boston, 1896), which contained some of the finest lyrics he has done so far; The Garden of Dreams (Louisville, 1896); Shapes and Shadows (New York, 1898); Idyllic Monologues (Louisville, 1898); Myth and Romance (New York, 1899); One Day and Another (Boston, 1901), a lyrical eclogue; Weeds by the Wall (Louisville, 1901); A Voice on the Wind (Louisville, 1902). A glance at these titles, following fast upon each other, convinces the reader that Mr. Cawein was writing and publishing far too much, that he was not sufficiently critical of his work. Edmund Gosse, the famous English critic, has always been one of Mr. Cawein's most ardent admirers, and, in 1903, he selected the best of his poems, wrote a delightful introduction for them, and they were published in London under the title of Kentucky Poems. This volume brought the poet many new friends, as it assembled the best of his work from volumes long out of print and rather difficult to procure. The Vale of Tempe (New York, 1905), contained the best of Mr. Cawein's work written since the publication of Weeds by the Wall in 1901. Nature-Notes and Impressions (New York, 1906), a collection of poems and prose-pastels, was especially notable for the fact that it contained the first and only short-story the poet has written, entitled "Woman or—What?"

The Poems of Madison Cawein (Indianapolis, 1907, five volumes), charmingly illustrated by Mr. Eric Pape, the Boston artist, with Mr. Gosse's introduction, brought together all of Mr. Cawein's work that he cared to rescue from many widely scattered volumes. He made many revisions in the poems, some of which (in the judgment of the writer) tend to mar their original beauty. But it is a work of which any poet may be proud; and it is not surpassed in quality or quantity by any living American.

Mr. Cawein's Ode in Commemoration of the Founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Louisville, 1908), which he read at Gloucester in August, 1907, was rather lengthy, but it contained many strong and fine lines; and a group of New England sonnets, some of the best he has done, appeared at the end of the ode. His New Poems (London, 1909), was followed by The Giant and the Star (Boston, 1909), a small collection of children's verse, dedicated to his little son, who furnished their inspiration. Let Us Do the Best that We Can (Chicago, 1909), was a beautiful brochure; and The Shadow Garden and Other Plays (New York, 1910), was four chamber-dramas which have been highly praised, and which contain some of the most delicate work the poet has done. So Many Ways (Chicago, 1911), was another pamphlet-poem; and it was followed by Poems (New York, 1911), selected from the whole range of his work by himself, with a foreword by William Dean Howells. Mr. Cawein's latest volume is entitled The Poet, the Fool and the Faeries (Boston, 1912). It brings together his work of the last two or three years, both in the field of the lyric and of the drama. And from the mechanical aspect it is his most beautiful book. The poet will publish two books through a Cincinnati firm in 1913, to be entitled The Republic—a Little Book of Homespun Verse, and Minions of the Moon.

In March, 1912, literary Louisville celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Blooms of the Berry, and the forty-seventh birthday of its author, Madison Cawein, the city's most distinguished man of letters. This was the first public recognition Mr. Cawein has received in the land of his birth, though it is now proposed to place a bust of him in the public library of Louisville. He is better known in New York or London than he is in Kentucky, but it will not be long before the people of his own land realize that they have been entertaining a world-poet, possibly, unawares. He is so far removed from any Kentucky poet of the present school that to mention him in the same breath with any of them is to make one's self absurd. Looking backward to the beginnings of our literature and coming carefully down the slope to this time, but two poets rise out of the mist of yesterday to greet Cawein and challenge him for the laureateship of Kentucky makers of song: Theodore O'Hara with his immortal elegy, and Daniel Henry Holmes with his sheaf of tender lyrics. These three are the nearest approach to the ineffable poets—who left the earth with the passing of Tennyson—yet nurtured upon Kentucky soil.

Mr. Cawein is, of course, a poet of Nature, a landscape poet in particular who paints every color on the palette into his work. Had he been an artist he would have exhausted all colors conceived thus far by man, and would fain have originated new ones. There are literally hundreds of his poems in which every line is as surely a stroke as if done with the brush of a painter. Color, color, is his shibboleth-scheme, and he who would woo Nature in her richest robes may read Cawein and be content.

Amazing as it may seem Mr. Cawein has thirty-four volumes to his credit—almost one for every year of his life. This statement stamps him as one of the most prolific poets of modern times, if not, indeed, of all time. And that it is not all quantity, may be seen in the recent declaration of The Poetry Review of London: "He appears quite the biggest figure among American poets; his return to nature has no tinge of affectation; it is genuine to the smallest detail. If he suffers from fatigue, it is in him, at least, not through that desperate satiety of town life which with so many recent poets has ended in impressionism and death."

Bibliography. Poets of the Younger Generation, by William Archer (London, 1901); The Younger American Poets, by Jessie B. Rittenhouse (Boston, 1904); History of American Literature, by R. P. Halleck (New York, 1911); The Poetry Review (London, October, 1912).

CONCLUSION[43]

[From Undertones (Boston, 1896)]

INDIAN SUMMER[44]

[From Kentucky Poems (London, 1903)]

HOME[45]

[From Nature-Notes and Impressions (New York, 1906)]

LOVE AND A DAY[46]

[From The Poems of Madison Cawein (Indianapolis, 1907, v. ii)]

IN A SHADOW GARDEN[47]

[From The Shadow Garden, and Other Plays (New York, 1910)]

UNREQUITED[48]

[From Poems (New York, 1911)]

A TWILIGHT MOTH

[From the same]