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diff --git a/old/ddust10.txt b/old/ddust10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1b2b07b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/ddust10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3979 @@ +**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis** +#1 in our series by Don Marquis + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + +Note: In "The Parting," page 161, line 4, I have changed "they +face" to "thy face"; in "The Struggle," page 173, line 4, I have +changed "l!o" to "lo!" + + +DREAMS & DUST + +POEMS BY DON MARQUIS + + + + +TO +MY MOTHER +VIRGINIA WHITMORE MARQUIS + + + + + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PROEM + + +DAYLIGHT HUMORS + +THIS IS ANOTHER DAY +APRIL SONG +THE EARTH, IT IS ALSO A STAR +THE NAME +THE BIRTH +A MOOD OF PAVLOWA +THE POOL +"THEY HAD NO POET" +NEW YORK +A HYMN +THE SINGER +WORDS ARE NOT GUNS +WITH THE SUBMARINES +NICHOLAS OF MONTENEGRO +DICKENS +A POLITICIAN +THE BAYONET +THE BUTCHERS AT PRAYER + + + + +SHADOWS + +HAUNTED +A NIGHTMARE +THE MOTHER +IN THE BAYOU +THE SAILOR'S WIFE SPEAKS +HUNTED +A DREAM CHILD +ACROSS THE NIGHT +SEA CHANGES +THE TAVERN OF DESPAIR + + +COLORS AND SURFACES + +A GOLDEN LAD +THE SAGE AND THE WOMAN +NEWS FROM BABYLON +A RHYME OF THE ROADS +THE LAND OF YESTERDAY +OCTOBER +CHANT OF THE CHANGING HOURS + + +DREAMS AND DUST + +SELVES +THE WAGES +IN MARS, WHAT AVATAR? +THE GOD-MAKER, MAN +UNREST +THE PILTDOWN SKULL +THE SEEKER +THE AWAKENING +A SONG OF MEN +THE NOBLER LESSON +AT LAST + + +LYRICS + +"KING PANDION, HE IS DEAD" +DAVID TO BATHSHEBA +THE JESTERS +"MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY" +THE TRIOLET +FROM THE BRIDGE +"PALADINS, PALADINS, YOUTH NOBLE-HEARTED" +"MY LANDS, NOT THINE" +TO A DANCING DOLL +LOWER NEW YORK--A STORM +AT SUNSET +A CHRISTMAS GIFT +SILVIA +THE EXPLORERS +EARLY AUTUMN +"TIME STEALS FROM LOVE" +THE RONDEAU +VISITORS +THE PARTING +AN OPEN FIRE + + +REALITIES + +REALITIES +THE STRUGGLE +THE REBEL +THE CHILD AND THE MILL +"SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI" +THE COMRADE +ENVOI + + + + + +PROEM + +"SO LET THEM PASS, THESE SONGS OF MINE" + +So let them pass, these songs of mine, +Into oblivion, nor repine; +Abandoned ruins of large schemes, +Dimmed lights adrift from nobler dreams, + +Weak wings I sped on quests divine, +So let them pass, these songs of mine. +They soar, or sink ephemeral-- +I care not greatly which befall! + +For if no song I e'er had wrought, +Still have I loved and laughed and fought; +So let them pass, these songs of mine; +I sting too hot with life to whine! + +Still shall I struggle, fail, aspire, +Lose God, and find Gods in the mire, +And drink dream-deep life's heady wine-- +So let them pass, these songs of mine. + + + + + +DAYLIGHT HUMORS + + + + + +THIS IS ANOTHER DAY + +I AM mine own priest, and I shrive myself +Of all my wasted yesterdays. Though sin +And sloth and foolishness, and all ill weeds +Of error, evil, and neglect grow rank +And ugly there, I dare forgive myself +That error, sin, and sloth and foolishness. +God knows that yesterday I played the fool; +God knows that yesterday I played the knave; +But shall I therefore cloud this new dawn o'er +With fog of futile sighs and vain regrets? + +This is another day! And flushed Hope walks +Adown the sunward slopes with golden shoon. +This is another day; and its young strength +Is laid upon the quivering hills until, +Like Egypt's Memnon, they grow quick with song. +This is another day, and the bold world +Leaps up and grasps its light, and laughs, as leapt +Prometheus up and wrenched the fire from Zeus. + +This is another day--are its eyes blurred +With maudlin grief for any wasted past? +A thousand thousand failures shall not daunt! +Let dust clasp dust; death, death--I am alive! +And out of all the dust and death of mine +Old selves I dare to lift a singing heart +And living faith; my spirit dares drink deep +Of the red mirth mantling in the cup of morn. + + +APRIL SONG + +FLEET across the grasses + Flash the feet of Spring, +Piping, as he passes +Fleet across the grasses, +"Follow, lads and lasses! + Sing, world, sing!" +Fleet across the grasses + Flash the feet of Spring! + +<i>Idle winds deliver + Rumors through the town, +Tales of reeds that quiver, +Idle winds deliver, +Where the rapid river + Drags the willows down-- +Idle winds deliver + Rumors through the town.</i> + +In the country places + By the silver brooks +April airs her graces; +In the country places +Wayward April paces, + Laughter in her looks; +In the country places + By the silver brooks. + +<i>Hints of alien glamor + Even reach the town; +Urban muses stammer +Hints of alien glamor, +But the city's clamor + Beats the voices down; +Hints of alien glamor + Even reach the town.</i> + + + THIS EARTH, IT IS ALSO A STAR + +WHERE the singers of Saturn find tongue, + Where the Galaxy's lovers embrace, +Our world and its beauty are sung! + They lean from their casements to trace + If our planet still spins in its place; +Faith fables the thing that we are, + And Fantasy laughs and gives chase: +This earth, it is also a star! + +Round the sun, that is fixed, and hung + For a lamp in the darkness of space +We are whirled, we are swirled, we are flung; + Singing and shining we race + And our light on the uplifted face +Of dreamer or prophet afar + May fall as a symbol of grace: +This earth, it is also a star! + +Looking out where our planet is swung + Doubt loses his writhen grimace, +Dry hearts drink the gleams and are young;-- + Where agony's boughs interlace + His Garden some Jesus may pace, +Lifting, the wan avatar, + His soul to this light as a vase! +This earth, it is also a star! + +Great spirits in sorrowful case + Yearn to us through the vapors that bar: +Canst think of that, soul, and be base?-- + This earth, it is also a star! + + +THE NAME + +IT shifts and shifts from form to form, + It drifts and darkles, gleams and glows; +It is the passion of the storm, + The poignance of the rose; +Through changing shapes, through devious + ways, + By noon or night, through cloud or flame, +My heart has followed all my days + Something I cannot name. + +In sunlight on some woman's hair, + Or starlight in some woman's eyne, +Or in low laughter smothered where + Her red lips wedded mine, +My heart hath known, and thrilled to know, + This unnamed presence that it sought; +And when my heart hath found it so, + <i>"Love is the name,"</i> I thought. + +Sometimes when sudden afterglows + In futile glory storm the skies +Within their transient gold and rose + The secret stirs and dies; +Or when the trampling morn walks o'er + The troubled seas, with feet of flame, +My awed heart whispers, <i>"Ask no more, + For Beauty is the name!"</i> + +Or dreaming in old chapels where + The dim aisles pulse with murmurings +That part are music, part are prayer-- + (Or rush of hidden wings) +Sometimes I lift a startled head + To some saint's carven countenance, +Half fancying that the lips have said, + <i>All names mean God, perchance!"</i> + + +THE BIRTH + +THERE is a legend that the love of God +So quickened under Mary's heart it wrought +Her very maidenhood to holier stuff. . . . +However that may be, the birth befell +Upon a night when all the Syrian stars +Swayed tremulous before one lordlier orb +That rose in gradual splendor, +Paused, +Flooding the firmament with mystic light, +And dropped upon the breathing hills +A sudden music +Like a distillation from its gleams; +A rain of spirit and a dew of song! + + +A MOOD OF PAVLOWA + +THE soul of the Spring through its body of earth + Bursts in a bloom of fire, +And the crocuses come in a rainbow riot of mirth.... + They flutter, they burn, they take wing, they + aspire. . . . +Wings, motion and music and flame, +Flower, woman and laughter, and all these the + same! +She is light and first love and the youth of the + world, +She is sandaled with joy . . . she is lifted and + whirled, +She is flung, she is swirled, she is driven along + By the carnival winds that have torn her away + From the coronal bloom on the brow of the + May. . . . +She is youth, she is foam, she is flame, she is + visible Song! + + +THE POOL + +REACH over, my Undine, and clutch me a reed-- +Nymph of mine idleness, notch me a pipe-- +For I am fulfilled of the silence, and long +For to utter the sense of the silence in song. + +Down-stream all the rapids are troubled with pebbles + That fetter and fret what the water would utter, +And it rushes and splashes in tremulous trebles; + It makes haste through the shallows, its soul is + aflutter; + +But here all the sound is serene and outspread + In the murmurous moods of a slow-swirling pool; + Here all the sounds are unhurried and cool; +Every silence is kith to a sound; they are wed, +They are mated, are mingled, are tangled, are + bound; +Every hush is in love with a sound, every sound +By the law of its life to some silence is bound. + +Then here will we hide; idle here and abide, +In the covert here, close by the waterside-- +Here, where the slim flattered reeds are aquiver +With the exquisite hints of the reticent river, + Here, where the lips of this pool are the lips +Of all pools, let us listen and question and wait; + Let us hark to the whispers of love and of death, +Let us hark to the lispings of life and of fate-- +In this place where pale silences flower into sound +Let us strive for some secret of all the profound +Deep and calm Silence that meshes men 'round! +There's as much of God hinted in one ripple's + plashes-- + There's as much of Truth glints in yon dragon- + fly's flight-- +There's as much Purpose gleams where yonder + trout flashes + As in--any book else!--could we read things + aright. + +Then nymph of mine indolence, here let us hide, +Learn, listen, and question; idle here and abide +Where the rushes and lilies lean low to the tide. + + +"THEY HAD NO POET . . ." + +"Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride! + They had no poet and they died."--POPE. + +By Tigris, or the streams of Ind, + Ere Colchis rose, or Babylon, +Forgotten empires dreamed and sinned, + Setting tall towns against the dawn, + +Which, when the proud Sun smote upon, + Flashed fire for fire and pride for pride; +Their names were . . . Ask oblivion! . . . + <i>"They had no poet, and they died."</i> + +Queens, dusk of hair and tawny-skinned, + That loll where fellow leopards fawn . . . +Their hearts are dust before the wind, + Their loves, that shook the world, are wan! + +Passion is mighty . . . but, anon, + Strong Death has Romance for his bride; +Their legends . . . Ask oblivion! . . . + <i>"They had no poet, and they died."</i> + +Heroes, the braggart trumps that dinned + Their futile triumphs, monarch, pawn, +Wild tribesmen, kingdoms disciplined, + Passed like a whirlwind and were gone; + +They built with bronze and gold and brawn, + The inner Vision still denied; +Their conquests . . . Ask oblivion! . . . + <i>"They had no poet, and they died."</i> + +Dumb oracles, and priests withdrawn, + Was it but flesh they deified? +Their gods were . . . Ask oblivion! . . . + <i>"They had no poet, and they died."</i> + + +NEW YORK + +SHE is hot to the sea that crouches beside, + Human and hot to the cool stars peering down, + My passionate city, my quivering town, +And her dark blood, tide upon purple tide, +With throbs as of thunder beats, + With leaping rhythms and vast, is swirled +Through the shaken lengths of her veined streets... + She pulses, the heart of a world! + +I have thrilled with her ecstasy, agony, woe-- +Hath she a mood that I do not know? +The winds of her music tumultuous have seized + me and swayed me, + Have lifted, have swung me around + In their whorls as of cyclonic sound; +Her passions have torn me and tossed me and + brayed me; +Drunken and tranced and dazzled with visions + and gleams, + + I have spun with her dervish priests; + I have searched to the souls of her hunted beasts + And found love sleeping there; +I have soared on the wings of her flashing dreams; + I have sunk with her dull despair; +I have sweat with her travails and cursed with + her pains; + I have swelled with her foolish pride; +I have raged through a thick red mist at one + with her branded Cains, + With her broken Christs have died. + +O beautiful half-god city of visions and love! + O hideous half-brute city of hate! +O wholly human and baffled and passionate town! + The throes of thy burgeoning, stress of thy fight, +Thy bitter, blind struggle to gain for thy body a + soul, + I have known, I have felt, and been shaken + thereby! + Wakened and shaken and broken, +For I hear in thy thunders terrific that throb + through thy rapid veins + The beat of the heart of a world. + + +A HYMN + +(1914) + +CLOTHED on with thunder and with steel + And black against the dawn +The whirling armies clash and reel. . . . + A wind, and they are gone + Like mists withdrawn, + Like mists withdrawn! + +Like clouds withdrawn, like driven sands, + Earth's body vanisheth: +One solid thing unconquered stands, + The ghost that humbles death. + All else is breath, + All else is breath! + +Man rose from out the stinging slime, + Half brute, and sought a soul, +And up the starrier ways of time, + Half god, unto his goal, + + He still must climb, + He still must climb! + +What though worlds stagger, and the suns + Seem shaken in their place, +Trust thou the leaping love that runs + Creative over space: + Take heart of grace, + Take heart of grace! + +What though great kingdoms fall on death + Before the stabbing blade, +Their brazen might was only breath, + Their substance but a shade-- + Be not dismayed, + Be not dismayed! + +Man's dream which conquered brute and clod + Shall fail not, but endure, +Shall rise, though beaten to the sod, + Shall hold its vantage sure-- + As sure as God, + As sure as God! + + +THE SINGER + +A LITTLE while, with love and youth, + He wandered, singing:-- + He felt life's pulses hot and strong + Beat all his rapid veins along; + He wrought life's rhythms into song: + He laughed, he sang the Dawn! + So close, so close to life he dwelt + That at rare times and rapt he felt + The fleshly barriers yield and melt; + He trembled, looking on + Creation at her miracles; + His soul-sight pierced the earthly shells + And saw the spirit weave its spells, + The veil of clay withdrawn;-- +A little while, with love and youth, + He wandered, singing! + +A little while, with age and death, + He wanders, dreaming;-- + + No more the thunder and the urge + Of earth's full tides that storm the verge + Of heaven with their sweep and surge + Shall lift, shall bear him on; + Where is the golden hope that led + Him comrade with the mighty dead? + The love that aureoled his head?-- + The glory is withdrawn! + How shall one soar with broken wings? + The leagued might of futile things + Wars with the heart that dares and sings;-- + It is not always Dawn! +A little while, with age and death, + He wanders, dreaming. + + +WORDS ARE NOT GUNS + +<i>Put by the sword</i> (a dreamer saith), + <i>The years of peace draw nigh! +Already the millennial dawn + Makes red the eastern sky!</i> + +Be not deceived. It comes not yet! + The ancient passions keep +Alive beneath their changing masks. + They are not dead. They sleep. + +Surely peace comes. As sure as Man + Rose from primeval slime. +That was not yesterday. There's still + A weary height to climb! + +And we can dwell too long with dreams + And play too much with words, +Forgetting our inheritance + Was bought and held with swords. + +<i>But Truth</i> (you say) <i>makes tyrants quail-- + Beats down embattled Wrong?</i> +If truth be armed! Be not deceived. + The strife is to the strong. + +Words are not guns. Words are not ships. + And ships and guns prevail. +Our liberties, that blood has gained, + Are guarded, or they fail. + +Truth does not triumph without blows, + Error not tamely yields. +But falsehood closes with quick faith, + Fierce, on a thousand fields. + +And surely, somewhat of that faith + Our fathers fought for clings! +Which called this freedom's hemisphere, + Despite Earth's leagued kings. + +Great creeds grow thews, or else they die. + Thought clothed in deed is lord. +What are thy gods? Thy gods brought love? + They also brought a sword. + +Unchallenged, shall we always stand, + Secure, apart, aloof? +Be not deceived. That hour shall come + Which puts us to the proof. + +Then, that we hold the trust we have + Safeguarded for our sons, +Let us cease dreaming! Let us have + More ships, more troops, more guns! + + +WITH THE SUBMARINES + +ABOVE, the baffled twilight fails; beneath, the + blind snakes creep; +Beside us glides the charnel shark, our pilot + through the deep; +And, lurking where low headlands shield from + cruising scout and spy, +We bide the signal through the gloom that bids + us slay or die. + +All watchful, mute, the crouching guns that guard + the strait sea lanes-- +Watchful and hawklike, plumed with hate, the + desperate aeroplanes-- +And still as death and swift as fate, above the + darkling coasts, +The spying Wireless sows the night with troops + of stealthy ghosts, + +While hushed through all her huddled streets the + tide-walled city waits +The drumming thunders that announce brute + battle at her gates. + +Southward a hundred windy leagues, through + storms that blind and bar, +Our cheated cruisers search the waves, our cap- + tains seek the war; +But here the port of peril is; the foeman's dread- + noughts ride +Sullen and black against the moon, upon a sullen + tide. +And only we to launch ourselves against their + stark advance-- +To guide uncertain lightnings through these treach- + erous seas of chance! + +. . . . . . + +And now a wheeling searchlight paints a signal on + the night; +And now the bellowing guns are loud with the + wild lust of fight. + +. . . . . . + +And now, her flanks of steel apulse with all the + power of hell, +Forth from the darkness leaps in pride a hateful + miracle, +The flagship of their Admiral--and now God help + and save!-- +We challenge Death at Death's own game; we + sink beneath the wave! + +. . . . . . + +Ah, steady now--and one good blow--one straight + stab through the gloom-- +Ah, good!--the thrust went home!--she founders-- + flounders to her doom!-- +Full speed ahead!--those damned quick-firing guns + --but let them bark-- +What's that--the dynamos?--they've got us, men! + --<i>Christ! in the dark!</i> + + +NICHOLAS OF MONTENEGRO + +(1912) + +HE speaks as straight as his rifles shot, + As straight as a thrusting blade, +Waiting the deed that shall trouble the truce + His savage guns have made. + +"You have dared the wrath of a dozen states," + Was the challenge that he heard; +"We can die but once!" said the grim old King + As he gripped his mountain sword. + +"For I paid in blood for the town I took, + The blood of my brave men slain,-- +And if you covet the town I took + You must buy it with blood again!" + +Stern old King of the stark, black hills, + Where the lean, fierce eagles breed, +Your speech rings true as your good sword rings-- + And you are a king indeed! + + +DICKENS + + "The only book that the party had was a volume of Dickens. +During the six months that they lay in the cave which they +had hacked in the ice, waiting for spring to come, they read +this volume through again and again."--<i>From a newspaper +report of an antarctic expedition.</i> + +HUDDLED within their savage lair + They hearkened to the prowling wind; +They heard the loud wings of despair . . . + And madness beat against the mind. . . . +A sunless world stretched stark outside +As if it had cursed God and died; +Dumb plains lay prone beneath the weight +Of cold unutterably great; + Iron ice bound all the bitter seas, +The brutal hills were bleak as hate. . . . + Here none but Death might walk at ease! + +Then Dickens spoke, and, lo! the vast + Unpeopled void stirred into life; + +The dead world quickened, the mad blast + Hushed for an hour its idiot strife +With nothingness. . . . + + And from the gloom, + Parting the flaps of frozen skin, + Old friends and dear came trooping in, +And light and laughter filled the room. . . . +Voices and faces, shapes beloved, + Babbling lips and kindly eyes, +Not ghosts, but friends that lived and moved . . . + They brought the sun from other skies, +They wrought the magic that dispels + The bitterer part of loneliness . . . +And when they vanished each man dreamed + His dream there in the wilderness. . . . +One heard the chime of Christmas bells, +And, staring down a country lane, +Saw bright against the window-pane +The firelight beckon warm and red. . . . +And one turned from the waterside +Where Thames rolls down his slothful tide +To breast the human sea that beats +Through roaring London's battered streets + +And revel in the moods of men. . . . + And one saw all the April hills + Made glad with golden daffodils, +And found and kissed his love again. . . . + +. . . . . . + +By all the troubled hearts he cheers + In homely ways or by lost trails, +By all light shed through all dark years + When hope grows sick and courage quails, +We hail him first among his peers; + Whether we sorrow, sing, or feast, +He, too, hath known and understood-- + Master of many moods, high priest +Of mirth and lord of cleansing tears! + + +A POLITICIAN + +LEADER no more, be judged of us! + Hailed Chief, and loved, of yore-- +Youth, and the faith of youth, cry out: + <i>Leader and Chief no more!</i> + +We dreamed a Prophet, flushed with faith, + Content to toil in pain +If that his sacrifice might be, + Somehow, his people's gain. + +We saw a vision, and our blood + Beat red and hot and strong: +<i>"Lead us</i> (we cried) <i>to war against + Some foul, embattled wrong!"</i> + +We dreamed a Warrior whose sword + Was edged for sham and shame; +We dreamed a Statesman far above + The vulgar lust for fame. + +We were not cynics, and we dreamed + A Man who made no truce +With lies nor ancient privilege + Nor old, entrenched abuse. + +We dreamed . . . we dreamed . . . Youth dreamed + a dream! + And even you forgot +Yourself, one moment, and dreamed, too-- + Struck, while your mood was hot! + +Struck three or four good blows . . . and then + Turned back to easier things: +The cheap applause, the blatant mob, + The praise of underlings! + +Praise . . . praise . . . was ever man so filled, + So avid still, of praise? +So hungry for the crowd's acclaim, + The sycophantic phrase? + +O you whom Greatness beckoned to . . . + O swollen Littleness +Who turned from Immortality + To fawn upon Success! + +O blind with love of self, who led + Youth's vision to defeat, +Bawling and brawling for rewards, + Loud, in the common street! + +O you who were so quick to judge-- + Leader, and loved, of yore-- +Hear now the judgment of our youth: + <i>Leader and Chief no more!</i> + + +THE BAYONET + +(1914) + +THE great guns slay from a league away, the death- + bolts fly unseen, +And bellowing hill replies to hill, machine to brute + machine, +But still in the end when the long lines bend and + the battle hangs in doubt +They take to the steel in the same old way that + their fathers fought it out-- +It is man to man and breast to breast and eye + to bloodshot eye +And the reach and twist of the thrusting wrist, as + it was in the days gone by! + +Along the shaken hills the guns their drumming + thunder roll-- +But the keen blades thrill with the lust to kill + that leaps from the slayer's soul! + +For hand and heart and living steel, one pulse of + hate they feel. +Is your clan afraid of the naked blade? Does it + flinch from the bitter steel? +Perish your dreams of conquest then, your swollen + hopes and bold, +For empire dwells with the stabbing blade, as it + did in the days of old! + + +THE BUTCHERS AT PRAYER + +(1914) + +EACH nation as it draws the sword + And flings its standard to the air +Petitions piously the Lord-- + Vexing the void abyss with prayer. + +O irony too deep for mirth! + O posturing apes that rant, and dare +This antic attitude! O Earth, + With your wild jest of wicked prayer! + +I dare not laugh . . . a rising swell + Of laughter breaks in shrieks somewhere-- +No doubt they relish it in Hell, + This cosmic jest of Earth at prayer! + + + + +SHADOWS + + + + + +HAUNTED + +(THE GHOST SPEAKS) + +A GHOST is the freak of a sick man's brain? + Then why do ye start and shiver so? +That's the sob and drip of a leaky drain? + But it sounds like another noise we know! + The heavy drops drummed red and slow, +The drops ran down as slow as fate-- + Do ye hear them still?--it was long ago!-- +But here in the shadows I wait, I wait! + +Spirits there be that pass in peace; + Mine passed in a whorl of wrath and dole; +And the hour that your choking breath shall cease + I will get my grip on your naked soul-- + Nor pity may stay nor prayer cajole-- +I would drag ye whining from Hell's own gate: + To me, to me, ye must pay the toll! +And here in the shadows I wait, I wait! + +The dead they are dead, they are out of the way? + And a ghost is the whim of an ailing mind? +Then why did ye whiten with fear to-day + When ye heard a voice in the calling wind? + Why did ye falter and look behind +At the creeping mists when the hour grew late? + Ye would see my face were ye stricken blind! +And here in the shadows I wait, I wait! + +Drink and forget, make merry and boast, + But the boast rings false and the jest is thin-- +In the hour that I meet ye ghost to ghost, + Stripped of the flesh that ye skulk within, + Stripped to the coward soul 'ware of its sin, +Ye shall learn, ye shall learn, whether dead men + hate! + Ah, a weary time has the waiting been, +But here in the shadows I wait, I wait! + + +A NIGHTMARE + +LEAGUES before me, leagues behind, + Clamor warring wastes of flood, +All the streams of all the worlds + Flung together, mad of mood; +Through the canon beats a sound, + Regular of interval, +Distant, drumming, muffled, dull, + Thunderously rhythmical; + +Crafts slip by my startled soul-- + Soul that cowers, a thing apart-- +They are corpuscles of blood! + That's the throbbing of a heart! +God of terrors!--am I mad?-- + Through my body, mine own soul, +Shrunken to an atom's size, + Voyages toward an unguessed goal! + + +THE MOTHER + +THE mother by the gallows-tree, + The gallows-tree, the gallows-tree, +(While the twitching body mocked the sun) +Lifted to Heaven her broken heart + And called for sympathy. + +Then Mother Mary bent to her, + Bent from her place by God's left side, +And whispered: "Peace--do I not know?-- + My son was crucified!" + +"O Mother Mary," answered she, + "You cannot, cannot enter in +To my soul's woe--you cannot know-- + For your son wrought no sin!" + +(And men whose work compelled them there, + Their hearts were stricken dead; + +They heard the rope creak on the beam; + I thought I heard the frightened ghost + Whimpering overhead.) + +The mother by the gallows-tree, + The gallows-tree, the gallows-tree, +Lifted to Christ her broken heart + And called in agony. + +Then Lord Christ bent to her and said: + "Be comforted, be comforted; +I know your grief; the whole world's woe + I bore upon my head." + +"But O Lord Christ, you cannot know, + No one can know," she said, "no one"-- +(While the quivering corpse swayed in the wind)-- +"Lord Christ, no one can understand + Who never had a son!" + + +IN THE BAYOU + +LAZY and slow, through the snags and trees + Move the sluggish currents, half asleep; +Around and between the cypress knees, + Like black, slow snakes the dark tides creep-- +How deep is the bayou beneath the trees? +"Knee-deep, + Knee-deep, + Knee-deep, + Knee-deep!" +Croaks the big bullfrog of Reelfoot Lake +From his hiding-place in the draggled brake. + +What is the secret the slim reeds know +That makes them to shake and to shiver so, +And the scared flags quiver from plume to foot?-- +The frogs pipe solemnly, deep and slow: +"Look under + the root! + Look under + the root!" + +The hoarse frog croaks and the stark owl hoots +Of a mystery moored in the cypress roots. + +Was it love turned hate? Was it friend turned foe? +Only the frogs and the gray owl know, + For the white moon shrouded her face in a mist +At the spurt of a pistol, red and bright-- +At the sound of a shriek that stabbed the night-- + And the little reeds were frightened and whist; +But always the eddies whimper and choke, +And the frogs would tell if they could, for they + croak: +"Deep, deep! + Death-deep! + Deep, deep! + Death-deep!" +And the dark tide slides and glisters and glides +Snakelike over the secret it hides. + + +THE SAILOR'S WIFE SPEAKS + +YE are dead, they say, but ye swore, ye swore, + Ye would come to me back from the sea! +From out of the sea and the night, ye cried, +Nor the crawling weed nor the dragging tide + Could hold ye fast from me:-- + Come, ah, come to me! + +Three spells I have laid on the rising sun + And three on the waning moon-- +Are ye held in the bonds of the night or the day +Ye must loosen your bonds and away, away! + Ye must come where I wait ye, soon-- + Ah, soon! soon! soon! + +Three times I have cast my words to the wind, + And thrice to the climbing sea; +If ye drift or dream with the clouds or foam +Ye must drift again home, ye must drift again + home-- + + Wraith, ye are free, ye are free; + Ghost, ye are free, ye are free! + +Are the coasts of death so fair, so fair? + But I wait ye here on the shore! +It is I that ye hear in the calling wind-- +I have stared through the dark till my soul is blind! + O lover of mine, ye swore, + Lover of mine, ye swore! + + +HUNTED + +<i>Oh, why do they hunt so hard, so hard, who have + no need of food? +Do they hunt for sport, do they hunt for hate, do + they hunt for the lust of blood?</i> + +. . . . . . + +If I were a god I would get me a spear, I would + get me horse and dog, +And merrily, merrily I would ride through covert + and brake and bog, + +With hound and horn and laughter loud, over the + hills and away-- +For there is no sport like that of a god with a + man that stands at bay! + +Ho! but the morning is fresh and fair, and oh! + but the sun is bright, +And yonder the quarry breaks from the brush and + heads for the hills in flight; + +A minute's law for the harried thing--then follow + him, follow him fast, +With the bellow of dogs and the beat of hoofs + and the mellow bugle's blast. + +. . . . . . + +<i>Hillo! Halloo! they have marked a man! there is + sport in the world to-day-- +And a clamor swells from the heart of the wood that + tells of a soul at bay! + + +A DREAM CHILD + +WHERE tides of tossed wistaria bloom + Foam up in purple turbulence, +Where twining boughs have built a room + And wing'd winds pause to garner scents +And scattered sunlight flecks the gloom, + She broods in pensive indolence. + +What is the thought that holds her thrall, + That dims her sight with unshed tears? +What songs of sorrow droop and fall + In broken music for her ears? +What voices thrill her and recall + The poignant joy of happier years? + +She dreams 'tis not the winds which pass + That whisper through the shaken vine; +Whose footstep stirs the rustling grass + None else that listened might divine; +She sees her child that never was + Look up with longing in his eyne. + +Unkissed, his lifted forehead gains + A grace not earthly, but more rare-- +For since her heart but only feigns, + Wherefore should love not feign him fair? +Put blood of roses in his veins, + Weave yellow sunshines for his hair? + +All ghosts of little children dead + That wander wistful, uncaressed, +Their seeking lips by love unfed, + She fain would cradle on her breast +For his sweet sake whose lonely head + Has never known that tender rest. + +And thus she sits, and thus she broods, + Where drifted blossoms freak the grass; +The winds that move across her moods + Pulse with low whispers as they pass, +And in their eerier interludes + She hears a voice that never was. + + +ACROSS THE NIGHT + +MUCH listening through the silences, + Much staring through the night, +And lo! the dumb blind distances + Are bridged with speech and sight! + +Magician Thought, informed of Love, + Hath fixed her on the air-- +Oh, Love and I laughed down the fates + And clasped her, here as there! + +Across the eerie silences + She came in headlong flight, +She stormed the serried distances, + She trampled space and night! + +Oh, foolish scientists might give + This miracle a name-- +But Love and I care but to know + That when we called she came. + +And since I find the distances + Subservient to my thought, +And of the sentient silences + More vital speech have wrought, + +Then she and I will mock Death's self, + For all his vaunted might-- +There are no gulfs we dare not leap, + As she leapt through the night! + + + +SEA CHANGES + + +I + +MORNING + +WE stood among the boats and nets; + We saw the swift clouds fall, +We watched the schooners scamper in + Before the sudden squall;-- +The jolly squall strove lustily + To whelm the sheltered street-- +The merry squall that piled the seas +About the patient headland's knees + And chased the fishing fleet. + +She laughed; as if with wings her mirth +Arose and left the wingless earth + And all tame things behind; +Rose like a bird, wild with delight +Whose briny pinions flash in flight + Through storm and sun and wind. + +Her laughter sought those skies because + Their mood and hers were one, +For she and I were drunk with love + And life and storm and sun! + +And while she laughed, the Sun himself + Leapt laughing through the rain +And struck his harper hand along +The ringing coast; and that wind-song + Whose joy is mixed with pain +Forgot the undertone of grief + And joined the jocund strain, +And over every hidden reef +Whereon the waves broke merrily +Rose jets and sprays of melody + And leapt and laughed again. + + +II + +MOONLIGHT + +We stood among the boats and nets . . . + We marked the risen moon +Walk swaying o'er the trembling seas + As one sways in a swoon; + +The little stars, the lonely stars, + Stole through the hollow sky, +And every sucking eddy where +The waves lapped wharf or rotten stair +Moaned like some stricken thing hid there +And strangled with its own despair + As the shuddering tide crept by. + +I loved her, and I hated her-- + Or did I hate myself because, + Bound by obscure, strong, silken laws, +I felt myself the worshiper + Of beauty never wholly mine? +With lures most apt to snare, entwine, +With bonds too subtle to define, +Her lighter nature mastered mine; +Herself half given, half withheld, +Her lesser spirit still compelled +Its tribute from my franker soul: + So--rebel, slave, and worshiper!-- + I loved her and I hated her. + +I gazed upon her, I, her thrall, + And musing, murmured, <i>What if death</i> + +<i>Were just the answer to it all?-- + Suppose some dainty dagger quaffed + Her life in one deep eager draught?-- +Suppose some amorous knife caressed +The lovely hollow of her breast?"</i>-- +She turned a mocking look to mine: +She read the thought within my eyne, + She held me with her look--and laughed! + +Now who may tell what stirs, controls, + And shapes mad fancies into facts? +What trivial things may quicken souls + To irrevocable, swift acts? +Now who has known, who understood, + Wherefore some idle thing + May stab with deadlier sting +Than well-considered insult could?-- +May spur the languor of a mood +And rouse a tiger in the blood?-- + +Ah, Christ!--had she not laughed just when +That fancy came! . . . for then . . . and then . . . + A sudden mist dropped from the sky, + +A mist swept in across the sea . . . +A mist that hid her face from me . . . + A weeping mist all tinged with red, +A dripping mist that smelt like blood . . . + It choked my throat, it burnt my brain . . . +And through it peered one sallow star, + And through it rang one shriek of pain . . . +And when it passed my hands were red, + My soul was dabbled with her blood; +And when it passed my love was dead + And tossed upon the troubled flood. + + +III + +MOONSET + +But see! . . . the body does not sink; + It rides upon the tide +(A starbeam on the dagger's haft), + With staring eyes and wide . . . +And now, up from the darkling sea, + Down from the failing moon, +Are come strange shapes to mock at me . . . +All pallid from the star-pale sea, + White from the paling moon . . . + +Or whirling fast or wheeling slow +Around, around the corpse they go, +All bloodless o'er the sickened sea + Beneath the ailing moon! + +And are they only wisps of fog + That dance along the waves? +Only shapes of mist the wind + Drives along the waves? +Or are they spirits that the sea + Has cheated of their graves? +The ghosts of them that died at sea, +Of murdered men flung in the sea, + Whose bodies had no graves?-- +Lost souls that haunt for evermore +The sobbing reef and hollowed shore + And always-murmuring caves? + +Ah, surely something more than fog, + More than starlit mist! +For starlight never makes a sound + And fogs are ever whist-- +But hearken, hearken, hearken, now, + For these sing as they dance! + +As airily, as eerily, + They wheel about and whirl, +They jeer at me, they fleer at me, + They flout me as they swirl! +As whirling fast or swaying slow, +Reeling, wheeling, to and fro, +Around, around the corpse they go, + They chill me with their chants! +These be neither men nor mists-- + Hearken to their chants: + +<i>Ever, ever, ever, + Drifting like a blossom +Seaward, with the starlight + Wan upon her bosom-- +Ever when the quickened + Heart of night is throbbing, +Ever when the trembling + Tide sets seaward, sobbing, +Shall you see this burden + Borne upon its ebbing: +See her drifting seaward + Like a broken blossom,</i> + +<i>Ever see the starlight + Kiss her bruised bosom. + +Flight availeth nothing . . . + Still the subtle beaches +Draw you back where Horror + Walks their shingled reaches . . . +Ever shall your spirit + Hear the surf resounding, +Evermore the ocean + Thwarting you and bounding; +Vainly struggle inland! + Lashing you and hounding, +Still the vision hales you + From the upland reaches, +Goading you and gripping, + Binds you to the beaches! + +Ever, ever, ever, + Ever shall her laughter, +Hunting you and haunting, + Mock and follow after; +Rising where the buoy-bell + Clangs across the shallows,</i> + +<i>Leaping where the spindrift + Hurtles o'er the hollows, +Ringing where the moonlight + Gleams along the billows, +Ever, ever, ever, + Ever shall her laughter, +Hounding you and haunting, + Whip and follow after!</i> + + +IV + +SUNSET + +I stood among the boats +The sinking sun, the angry sun, + Across the sullen wave +Laid the sudden strength of his red wrath + Like to a shaken glaive:-- +Or did the sun pause in the west + To lift a sword at me, + Or was it she, or was it she, +Rose for an instant on some crest +And plucked the red blade from her breast + And brandished it at me? + + +THE TAVERN OF DESPAIR + +THE wraiths of murdered hopes and loves + Come whispering at the door, +Come creeping through the weeping mist + That drapes the barren moor; +But we within have turned the key + 'Gainst Hope and Love and Care, +Where Wit keeps tryst with Folly, at + The Tavern of Despair. + +And we have come by divers ways + To keep this merry tryst, +But few of us have kept within + The Narrow Way, I wist; +For we are those whose ampler wits + And hearts have proved our curse-- +Foredoomed to ken the better things + And aye to do the worse! + +Long since we learned to mock ourselves; + And from self-mockery fell + +To heedless laughter in the face + Of Heaven, Earth, and Hell. +We quiver 'neath, and mock, God's rod; + We feel, and mock, His wrath; +We mock our own blood on the thorns + That rim the "Primrose Path." + +We mock the eerie glimmering shapes + That range the outer wold, +We mock our own cold hearts because + They are so dead and cold; +We flout the things we might have been + Had self to self proved true, +We mock the roses flung away, + We mock the garnered rue; + +The fates that gibe have lessoned us; + There sups to-night on earth +No madder crew of wastrels than + This fellowship of mirth. . . . +(Of mirth . . . drink, fools!--nor let it flag + Lest from the outer mist +Creep in that other company + Unbidden to the tryst. + +We're grown so fond of paradox + Perverseness holds us thrall, +So what each jester loves the best + He mocks the most of all; +But as the jest and laugh go round, + Each in his neighbor's eyes +Reads, while he flouts his heart's desire, + The knowledge that he lies. + +Not one of us but had some pearls + And flung them to the swine, +Not one of us but had some gift-- + Some spark of fire divine-- +Each might have been God's minister + In the temple of some art-- +Each feels his gift perverted move + Wormlike through his dry heart. + +If God called Azrael to Him now + And bade Death bend the bow +Against the saddest heart that beats + Here on this earth below, +Not any sobbing breast would gain + The guerdon of that barb-- + +The saddest ones are those that wear + The jester's motley garb. + +Whose shout aye loudest rings, and whose + The maddest cranks and quips-- +Who mints his soul to laughter's coin + And wastes it with his lips-- +Has grown too sad for sighs and seeks + To cheat himself with mirth; +We fools self-doomed to motley are + The weariest wights on earth! + +But yet, for us whose brains and hearts + Strove aye in paths perverse, +Doomed still to know the better things + And still to do the worse,-- +What else is there remains for us + But make a jest of care +And set the rafters ringing, in + Our Tavern of Despair? + + + + +COLORS AND SURFACES + + + + + +A GOLDEN LAD + +(D. V. M.) + +"Golden lads and lasses must + Like chimney-sweepers come to dust." +--SHAKESPEARE. + +So young, but already the splendor + Of genius robed him about-- +Already the dangerous, tender + Regard of the gods marked him out-- + +(On whom the burden and duty + They bind, at his earliest breath, +Of showing their own grave beauty, + They love and they crown with death.) + +We were of one blood, but the olden + Rapt poets spake out in his tone; +We were of one blood, but the golden + Rathe promise was his, his alone. + +And ever his great eye glistened + With visions I could not see, +Ever he thrilled and listened + To voices withholden from me. + +Young lord of the realms of fancy, + The bright dreams flocked to his call +Like sprites that the necromancy + Of a Prospero holds in thrall-- + +Quick visions that served and attended, + Elusive and hovering things, +With a quiver of joy in the splendid + Wild sweep of their luminous wings; + +He dwelt in an alien glamor, + He wrought of its gleams a crown,-- +But the world, with its cruelty and clamor, + Broke him and beat him down; + +So he passed; he was worn, he was weary, + He was slain at the touch of life;-- +With a smile that was wistful and eerie + He passed from the senseless strife;-- + +So he ceased (is their humor satiric, + These gods that make perfect and blight?)-- +He ceased like an exquisite lyric + That dies on the breast of night. + + +THE SAGE AND THE WOMAN + +'TWIXT ancient Beersheba and Dan +Another such a caravan +Dazed Palestine had never seen +As that which bore Sabea's queen +Up from the fain and flaming South +To slake her yearning spirit's drouth + At wisdom's pools, with Solomon. + +With gifts of scented sandalwood, +And labdanum, and cassia-bud, +With spicy spoils of Araby +And camel-loads of ivory +And heavy cloths that glanced and shone +With inwrought pearl and beryl-stone + She came, a bold Sabean girl. + +And did she find him grave, or gay? + Perchance his palace breathed that day +With psalters sounding solemnly-- +Or cymbals' merrier minstrelsy-- +Perchance the wearied monarch heard +Some loose-tongued prophet's meddling word;-- + None knows, no one--but Solomon! + +She looked--with eyne wherein were blent +All ardors of the Orient; +She spake--all magics of the South +Were compassed in the witch's mouth;-- +He thought the scarlet lips of her +More precious than En Gedi's myrrh, + The lips of that Sabean girl; + +By many an amorous sun caressed, +From lifted brow to amber breast +She gleamed in vivid loveliness-- +And lithe as any leopardess-- +And verily, one blames thee not +If thine own proverbs were forgot, + O Solomon, wise Solomon! + +She danced for him, and surely she +Learnt dancing from some moonlit sea + +Where elfin vapors swirled and swayed +While the wild pipes of witchcraft played +Such clutching music 'twould impel +A prophet's self to dance to hell-- + So spun the light Sabean girl. + +He swore her laughter had the lilt +Of chiming waters that are spilt +In sprays of spurted melody +From founts of carven porphyry, +And in the billowy turbulence +Of her dusk hair drowned soul and sense-- + Dark tides and deep, O Solomon! + +Perchance unto her day belongs +His poem called the Song of Songs, +Each little lyric interval +Timed to her pulse's rise and fall;-- +Or when he cried out wearily +That all things end in vanity + Did he mean that Sabean girl? + +The bright barbaric opulence, +The sun-kist Temple, Kedar's tents,-- + +How many a careless caravan +'Twixt Beersheba and ruined Dan, +Within these forty centuries, +Has flung their dust to many a breeze, + With dust that was King Solomon! + +But still the lesson holds as true, +O King, as when she lessoned you: +<i>That very wise men are not wise +Until they read in Folly's eyes +The wisdom that escapes the schools, +That bids the sage revise his rules + By light of some Sabean girl!</i> + + +NEWS FROM BABYLON + + "Archaeologists have discovered a love-letter among the ruins +of Babylon." --Newspaper report. + +<i>The world hath just one tale to tell, and it is very old, +A little tale--a simple tale--a tale that's easy told: +"There was a youth in Babylon who greatly loved a + maid!" +The world hath just one song to sing, but sings it + unafraid, +A little song--a foolish song--the only song it hath: +"There was a youth in Ascalon who loved a girl in + Gath!"</i> + +Homer clanged it, Omar twanged it, Greece and + Persia knew!-- +Nimrod's reivers, Hiram's weavers, Hindu, Kurd, + and Jew-- +Crowning Tyre, Troy afire, they have dreamed + the dream; +Tiber-side and Nilus-tide brightened with the + gleam-- + +Oh, the suing, sighing, wooing, sad and merry + hours, +Blisses tasted, kisses wasted, building Babel's + towers! +Hearts were aching, hearts were breaking, lashes + wet with dew, +When the ships touched the lips of islands Sappho + knew; +Yearning breasts and burning breasts, cold at last, + are hid +Amid the glooms of carven tombs in Khufu's + pyramid-- +Though the sages, down the ages, smile their cynic + doubt, +Man and maid, unafraid, put the schools to rout; +Seek to chain love and retain love in the bonds of + breath, +Vow to hold love, bind and fold love even unto + death! + +<i>The dust of forty centuries has buried Babylon, +And out of all her lovers dead rises only one; +Rises with a song to sing and laughter in his eyes, +The old song--the only song--for all the rest are lies!</i> + +<i>For, oh, the world has just one dream, and it is very + old-- +'Tis youth's dream--a silly dream--but it is flushed + with gold!</i> + + +A RHYME OF THE ROADS + +PEARL-SLASHED and purple and crimson and + fringed with gray mist of the hills, +The pennons of morning advance to the music of + rock-fretted rills, +The dumb forest quickens to song, and the little + gusts shout as they fling +A floor-cloth of orchard bloom down for the flash- + ing, quick feet of the Spring. + +To the road, gipsy-heart, thou and I! 'Tis the + mad piper, Spring, who is leading; +'Tis the pulse of his piping that throbs through + the brain, irresistibly pleading; +Full-blossomed, deep-bosomed, fain woman, light- + footed, lute-throated and fleet, +We have drunk of the wine of this Wanderer's song; + let us follow his feet! + +Like raveled red girdles flung down by some + hoidenish goddess in mirth +The tangled roads reach from rim unto utter- + most rim of the earth-- +We will weave of these strands a strong net, we + will snare the bright wings of delight,-- +We will make of these strings a sweet lute that + will shame the low wind-harps of night. + +The clamor of tongues and the clangor of trades + in the peevish packed street, +The arrogant, jangling Nothings, with iterant, dis- + sonant beat, +The clattering, senseless endeavor with dross of + mere gold for its goal, +These have sickened the senses and wearied the + brain and straitened the soul. + +"Come forth and be cleansed of the folly of strife + for things worthless of strife, +Come forth and gain life and grasp God by fore- + going gains worthless of life"-- + +It was thus spake the wizard wildwood, low- + voiced to the hearkening heart, +It was thus sang the jovial hills, and the harper + sun bore part. + +O woman, whose blood as my blood with the fire + of the Spring is aflame, +We did well, when the red roads called, that we + heeded the call and came-- +Came forth to the sweet wise silence where soul + may speak sooth unto soul, +Vine-wreathed and vagabond Love, with the goal + of Nowhere for our goal! + +What planet-crowned Dusk that wanders the + steeps of our firmament there +Hath gems that may match with the dew-opals + meshed in thine opulent hair? +What wind-witch that skims the curled billows + with feet they are fain to caress +Hath sandals so wing'd as thine art with a god- + like carelessness? + +And dare we not dream this is heaven?--to wan- + der thus on, ever on. +Through the hush-heavy valleys of space, up the + flushing red slopes of the dawn?-- +For none that seeks rest shall find rest till he + ceaseth his striving for rest, +And the gain of the quest is the joy of the road + that allures to the quest. + + +THE LAND OF YESTERDAY + +AND I would seek the country town +Amid green meadows nestled down +If I could only find the way +Back to the Land of Yesterday! + +How I would thrust the miles aside, + Rush up the quiet lane, and then, +Just where her roses laughed in pride, + Find her among the flowers again. +I'd slip in silently and wait +Until she saw me by the gate, +And then . . . read through a blur of tears +Quick pardon for the selfish years. + +This time, this time, I would not wait +For that brief wire that said, <i>Too late!</i>-- +If I could only find the way +Into the Land of Yesterday. + +I wonder if her roses yet + Lift up their heads and laugh with pride, +And if her phlox and mignonette + Have heart to blossom by their side; +I wonder if the dear old lane +Still chirps with robins after rain, +And if the birds and banded bees +Still rob her early cherry-trees. . . . + +I wonder, if I went there now, +How everything would seem, and how-- +But no! not now; there is no way +Back to the Land of Yesterday. + + +OCTOBER + +CEASE to call him sad and sober, +Merriest of months, October! +Patron of the bursting bins, +Reveler in wayside inns, +I can nowhere find a trace +Of the pensive in his face; +There is mingled wit and folly, +But the madcap lacks the grace +Of a thoughtful melancholy. +Spendthrift of the seasons' gold, +How he flings and scatters out +Treasure filched from summer-time!-- +Never ruffling squire of old +Better loved a tavern bout +When Prince Hal was in his prime. +Doublet slashed with gold and green; +Cloak of crimson; changeful sheen, +Of the dews that gem his breast; +Frosty lace about his throat; + +Scarlet plumes that flaunt and float +Backward in a gay unrest-- +Where's another gallant drest +With such tricksy gaiety, +Such unlessoned vanity? +With his amber afternoons +And his pendant poets' moons-- +With his twilights dashed with rose +From the red-lipped afterglows-- +With his vocal airs at dawn +Breathing hints of Helicon-- +Bacchanalian bees that sip +Where his cider-presses drip-- +With the winding of the horn +Where his huntsmen meet the morn-- +With his every piping breeze +Shaking from familiar trees +Apples of Hesperides-- +With the chuckle, chirp, and trill +Of his jolly brooks that spill +Mirth in tangled madrigals +Down pebble-dappled waterfalls-- +(Brooks that laugh and make escape +Through wild arbors where the grape + +Purples with a promise of +Racy vintage rare as love)-- +With his merry, wanton air, +Mirth and vanity and folly +Why should he be made to bear +Burden of some melancholy +Song that swoons and sinks with care? +Cease to call him sad or sober,-- +He's a jolly dog, October! + + +CHANT OF THE CHANGING HOURS + +THE Hours passed by, a fleet, confused crowd; + With wafture of blown garments bright as fire, +Light, light of foot and laughing, morning-browed, + And where they trod the jonquil and the briar +Thrilled into jocund life, the dreaming dells +Waked to a morrice chime of jostled bells;-- +They danced! they danced! to piping such as + flings +The garnered music of a million Springs + Into one single, keener ecstasy;-- +One paused and shouted to my questionings: + "Lo, I am Youth; I bid thee follow me!" + +The Hours passed by; they paced, great lords and + proud, + Crowned on with sunlight, robed in rich attire; +Before their conquering word the brute deed + bowed, + And Ariel fancies served their large desire; + +They spake, and roused the mused soul that dwells +In dust, or, smiling, shaped new heavens and + hells, +Dethroned old gods and made blind beggars kings: +"And what art thou," I cried to one, "that brings + His mistress, for a brooch, the Galaxy?"-- +"I am the plumed Thought that soars and sings: + Lo, I am Song; I bid thee follow me!" + +The Hours passed by, with veiled eyes endowed + Of dream, and parted lips that scarce suspire, +To breathing dusk and arrowy moonlight vowed, + South wind and shadowy grove and murmuring + lyre;-- +Swaying they moved, as drows'd of wizard spells +Or tranc'd with sight of recent miracles, +And yet they trembled, down their folded wings +Quivered the hint of sweet withholden things, + Ah, bitter-sweet in their intensity! +One paused and said unto my wonderings: + "Lo, I am Love; I bid thee follow me!" + +The Hours passed by, through huddled cities loud + With witless hate and stale with stinking mire: + +So cowled monks might march with bier and shroud + Down streets plague-spotted toward some cleans- + ing pyre;-- +Yet, lo! strange lilies bloomed in lightless cells, +And passionate spirits burst their clayey shells +And sang the stricken hope that bleeds and + clings: +Earth's bruised heart beat in the throbbing strings, + And joy still struggled through the threnody! +One stern Hour said unto my marvelings: + "Lo, I am Life; I bid thee follow me!" + +The Hours passed by, the stumbling hours and + cowed, + Uncertain, prone to tears and childish ire,-- +The wavering hours that drift like any cloud + At whim of winds or fortunate or dire,-- +The feeble shapes that any chance expells; +Their wisdom useless, lacking the blood that swells +The tensed vein: the hot, swift tide that stings +With life. Ah, wise! but naked to the slings + Of fate, and plagued of youthful memory! +A cracked voice broke upon my pityings: + "Lo, I am Age; I bid thee follow me!" + +Ah, Youth! we dallied by the babbling wells +Where April all her lyric secret tells;-- +Ah, Song! we sped our bold imaginings +As far as yon red planet's triple rings;-- + O Life! O Love! I followed, followed thee! +There waits one word to end my journeyings: + "Lo, I am Death; I bid thee follow me!" + + + + +DREAMS AND DUST + + + + +SELVES + +<i>My dust in ruined Babylon + Is blown along the level plain, +And songs of mine at dawn have soared + Above the blue Sicilian main.</i> + +We are ourselves, and not ourselves . . . + For ever thwarting pride and will +Some forebear's passion leaps from death + To claim a vital license still. + +Ancestral lusts that slew and died, + Resurgent, swell each living vein; +Old doubts and faiths, new panoplied, + Dispute the mastery of the brain. + +The love of liberty that flames + From written rune and stricken reed +Shook the hot hearts of swordsmen sires + At Marathon and Runnymede. + +<i>What are these things we call our "selves"? . . . + Have I not shouted, sobbed, and died +In the bright surf of spears that broke + Where Greece rolled back the Persian tide?</i> + +Are we who breathe more quick than they + Whose bones are dust within the tomb? +Nay, as I write, what gray old ghosts + Murmur and mock me from the gloom. . . . + +They call . . . across strange seas they call, + Strange seas, and haunted coasts of time. . . . +They startle me with wordless songs + To which the Sphinx hath known the rhyme. + +Our hearts swell big with dead men's hates, + Our eyes sting hot with dead men's tears; +We are ourselves, but not ourselves, + Born heirs, but serfs, to all the years! + +<i>I rode with Nimrod . . . strove at Troy . . . + A slave I stood in Crowning Tyre, +A queen looked on me and I loved + And died to compass my desire.</i> + + +THE WAGES + +EARTH loves to gibber o'er her dross, + Her golden souls, to waste; +The cup she fills for her god-men + Is a bitter cup to taste. + +Who sees the gyves that bind mankind + And strives to strike them off +Shall gain the hissing hate of fools, + Thorns, and the ingrate's scoff. + +Who storms the moss-grown walls of eld + And beats some falsehood down +Shall pass the pallid gates of death + <i>Sans</i> laurel, love or crown; + +For him who fain would teach the world + The world holds hate in fee-- +For Socrates, the hemlock cup; + For Christ, Gethsemane. + + +IN MARS, WHAT AVATAR? + +"In Vishnu-land, what avatar?" + --BROWNING. + +PERCHANCE the dying gods of Earth +Are destined to another birth, +And worn-out creeds regain their worth + In the kindly air of other stars-- +What lords of life and light hold sway +In the myriad worlds of the Milky Way? + What avatars in Mars? + +What Aphrodites from the seas +That lap the plunging Pleiades + Arise to spread afar +The dream that was the soul of Greece? + In Mars, what avatar? + +Which hundred moons are wan with love + For dull Endymions? +Which hundred moons hang tranced above + Audacious Ajalons? + +What Holy Grail lures errants pale + Through the wastes of yonder star? +What fables sway the Milky Way? + In Mars, what avatar? + +When morning skims with crimson wings + Across the meres of Mercury, +What dreaming Memnon wakes and sings + Of miracles on Mercury? +What Christs, what avatars, +Claim Mars? + + + +THE GOD-MAKER, MAN + +NEVERMORE + Shall the shepherds of Arcady follow +Pan's moods as he lolls by the shore + Of the mere, or lies hid in the hollow; +Nevermore + Shall they start at the sound of his reed-fashioned + flute; + +Fallen mute + Are the strings of Apollo, +His lyre and his lute; + And the lips of the Memnons are mute +Evermore; + And the gods of the North,--are they dead or + forgetful, +Our Odin and Baldur and Thor? + Are they drunk, or grown weary of worship and + fretful, +Our Odin and Baldur and Thor? + +And into what night have the Orient dieties + strayed? +Swart gods of the Nile, in dusk splendors arrayed, + Brooding Isis and somber Osiris, + You were gone ere the fragile papyrus, +(That bragged you eternal!) decayed. + +The avatars + But illumine their limited evens +And vanish like plunging stars; + They are fixed in the whirling heavens +No firmer than falling stars; +Brief lords of the changing soul, they pass +Like a breath from the face of a glass, + Or a blossom of summer blown shallop-like over + The clover +And tossed tides of grass. + +Sink to silence the psalms and the paeans + The shibboleths shift, and the faiths, +And the temples that challenged the aeons + Are tenanted only by wraiths; +Swoon to silence the cymbals and psalters, + The worships grow senseless and strange, + +And the mockers ask, <i>"Where be thy altars?"</i> + Crying, <i>"Nothing is changeless--but Change!"</i> + +Yes, nothing seems changeless, but Change. +And yet, through the creed-wrecking years, +One story for ever appears; +The tale of a City Supernal-- +The whisper of Something eternal-- +A passion, a hope, and a vision + That peoples the silence with Powers; +A fable of meadows Elysian + Where Time enters not with his Hours;-- +Manifold are the tale's variations, + Race and clime ever tinting the dreams, +Yet its essence, through endless mutations, + Immutable gleams. + +Deathless, though godheads be dying, + Surviving the creeds that expire, +Illogical, reason-defying, + Lives that passionate, primal desire; +Insistent, persistent, forever +Man cries to the silences, <i>Never</i> + +<i>Shall Death reign the lord of the soul, +Shall the dust be the ultimate goal-- +I will storm the black bastions of Night! + I will tread where my vision has trod, +I will set in the darkness a light, + In the vastness, a god!"</i> + +As the forehead of Man grows broader, so do + his creeds; +And his gods they are shaped in his image, and + mirror his needs; +And he clothes them with thunders and beauty, + he clothes them with music and fire; +Seeing not, as he bows by their altars, that he + worships his own desire; +And mixed with his trust there is terror, and + mixed with his madness is ruth, +And every man grovels in error, yet every man + glimpses a truth. + +For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds + are true; +And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, + there will I bow, too; + +For no form of a god, and no fashion +Man has made in his desperate passion +But is worthy some worship of mine;-- +Not too hot with a gross belief, + Nor yet too cold with pride, +I will bow me down where my brothers bow, + Humble--but open-eyed! + + +UNREST + +A FIERCE unrest seethes at the core + Of all existing things: +It was the eager wish to soar + That gave the gods their wings. + +From what flat wastes of cosmic slime, + And stung by what quick fire, +Sunward the restless races climb!-- + Men risen out of mire! + +There throbs through all the worlds that are + This heart-beat hot and strong, +And shaken systems, star by star, + Awake and glow in song. + +But for the urge of this unrest + These joyous spheres were mute; +But for the rebel in his breast + Had man remained a brute. + +When baffled lips demanded speech, + Speech trembled into birth-- +(One day the lyric word shall reach + From earth to laughing earth)-- + +When man's dim eyes demanded light + The light he sought was born-- +His wish, a Titan, scaled the height + And flung him back the morn! + +From deed to dream, from dream to deed, + From daring hope to hope, +The restless wish, the instant need, + Still lashed him up the slope! + +. . . . . . + +I sing no governed firmament, + Cold, ordered, regular-- +I sing the stinging discontent + That leaps from star to star! + + +THE PILTDOWN SKULL + +WHAT was his life, back yonder + In the dusk where time began, +This beast uncouth with the jaw of an ape + And the eye and brain of a man?-- +Work, and the wooing of woman, + Fight, and the lust of fight, +Play, and the blind beginnings + Of an Art that groped for light?-- + +In the wonder of redder mornings, + By the beauty of brighter seas, +Did he stand, the world's first thinker, + Scorning his clan's decrees?-- +Seeking, with baffled eyes, +In the dumb, inscrutable skies, +A name for the greater glory + That only the dreamer sees? + +One day, when the afterglows, + Like quick and sentient things, + + With a rush of their vast, wild wings, +Rose out of the shaken ocean + As great birds rise from the sod, +Did the shock of their sudden splendor +Stir him and startle and thrill him, +Grip him and shake him and fill him + With a sense as of heights untrod?-- +Did he tremble with hope and vision, + And grasp at a hint of God? + +London stands where the mammoth + Caked shag flanks with slime-- +And what are our lives that inherit + The treasures of all time? +Work, and the wooing of woman, + Fight, and the lust of fight, +A little play (and too much toil!) + With an Art that gropes for light; +And now and then a dreamer, + Rapt, from his lonely sod +Looks up and is thrilled and startled + With a fleeting sense of God! + + +THE SEEKER + +THE creeds he wrought of dream and thought + Fall from him at the touch of life, + His old gods fail him in the strife-- +Withdrawn, the heavens he sought! + +Vanished, the miracles that led, + The cloud at noon, the flame at night; +The vision that he wing'd and sped + Falls backward, baffled, from the height; + +Yet in the wreck of these he stands + Upheld by something grim and strong; + Some stubborn instinct lifts a song +And nerves him, heart and hands: + +He does not dare to call it hope;-- + It is not aught that seeks reward-- + +Nor faith, that up some sunward slope + Runs aureoled to meet its lord; + +It touches something elder far + Than faith or creed or thought in man, + It was ere yet these lived and ran +Like light from star to star; + +It touches that stark, primal need + That from unpeopled voids and vast +Fashioned the first crude, childish creed,-- + And still shall fashion, till the last! + +For one word is the tale of men: + They fling their icons to the sod, + And having trampled down a god +They seek a god again! + +Stripped of his creeds inherited, + Bereft of all his sires held true, +Amid the wreck of visions dead + He thrills at touch of visions new. . . . + +He wings another Dream for flight. . . . + He seeks beyond the outmost dawn + A god he set there . . . and, anon, +Drags that god from the height! + +. . . . . . + +But aye from ruined faiths and old + That droop and die, fall bruised seeds; +And when new flowers and faiths unfold + They're lovelier flowers, they're kindlier creeds. + + +THE AWAKENING + +THE steam, the reek, the fume, of prayer + Blown outward for a million years, + Becomes a mist between the spheres, +And waking Sentience struggles there. + +Prayer still creates the boon we pray; + And gods we've hoped for, from those hopes +Will gain sufficient form one day + And in full godhood storm the slopes +Where ancient Chaos, stark and gray, +Already trembles for his sway. + +When that the restless worlds would fly + Their wish created rapid wings, +But not till aeons had passed by + With dower of many idler things; +And when dumb flesh demanded speech + Speech struggled to the lips at last;-- + Now the unpeopled Void, and vast, + +Clean to that uttermost blank beach +Whereto the boldest thought may reach + That voyages from the vaguest past-- + (Dim realm and ultimate of space)-- +Is vexed and troubled, stirs and shakes, +In prescience of a god that wakes, + Born of man's wish to see God's face! + +The endless, groping, dumb desires,-- + The climbing incense thick and sweet, +The lovely purpose that aspires, + The wraiths of vapor wing'd and fleet + That rise and run with eager feet +Forth from a myriad altar fires: + All these become a mist that fills +The vales and chasms nebular; + A shaping Soul that moves and thrills +The wastes between red star and star! + + +A SONG OF MEN + +OUT of the soil and the slime, +Reeking, they climb, + +Out of the muck and the mire, +Rank, they aspire; + +Filthy with murder and mud, +Black with shed blood, + +Lust and passion and clay-- +Dying, they slay; + +Stirred by vague hints of a goal, +Seeking a soul! + +Groping through terror and night +Up to the light: + +Life in the dust and the clod +Sensing a God; + +Flushed of the glamor and gleam +Caught from a dream; + +Stained of the struggle and toil, +Stained of the soil, + +Ally of God in the end-- +Helper and friend-- + +Hero and prophet and priest +Out of the beast! + + +THE NOBLER LESSON + +CHRIST was of virgin birth, and, being slain, +The creedists say, He rose from death again. +Oh, futile age-long talk of death and birth!-- +His life, that is the one thing wonder-worth; +Not how He came, but how He lived on earth. +For if gods stoop, and with quaint jugglery +Mock nature's laws, how shall that profit thee?-- +The nobler lesson is that mortals can +Grow godlike through this baffled front of man! + + +AT LAST + +EACH race has died and lived and fought for the + "true" gods of that poor race, +Unconsciously, divinest thought of each race gild- + ing its god's face. +And every race that lives and dies shall make itself + some other gods, +Shall build, with mingled truth and lies, new icons + from the world-old clods. +Through all the tangled creeds and dreams and + shifting shibboleths men hold +The false-and-true, inwoven, gleams: a matted + mass of dross and gold. +Prove, then, thy gods in thine own soul; all others' + gods, for thee, are vain; +Nor swerved be, struggling for the goal, by bribe + of joy nor threat of pain. + +As skulls grow broader, so do faiths; as old tongues + die, old gods die, too, + +And only ghosts of gods and wraiths may meet + the backward-gazer's view. +Where, where the faiths of yesterday? Ah, + whither vanished, whither gone? +Say, what Apollos drive to-day adown the flaming + slopes of dawn? +Oh, does the blank past hide from view forgotten + Christs, to be reborn, +The future tremble where some new Messiah- + Memnon sings the morn? +Of all the worlds, say any earth, like dust wind- + harried to and fro, +Shall give the next Prometheus birth; but say-- + at last--you do not know. + +How should I know what dawn may gleam beyond + the gates of darkness there?-- +Which god of all the gods men dream? Why + should I whip myself to care? +Whichever over all hath place hath shaped and + made me what I am; +Hath made me strong to front his face, to dare + to question though he damn. + +Perhaps to cringe and cower and bring a shrine + a forced and faithless faith +Is far more futile than to fling your laughter in + the face of Death. +For writhe or whirl in dervish rout, they are not + flattered there on high, +Or sham belief to hide a doubt--no gods are mine + that love a lie! +Nor gods that beg belief on earth with portents + that some seer foretells-- +Is life itself not wonder-worth that we must cry + for miracles? +Is it not strange enough we breathe? Does every- + thing not God reveal? +Or must we ever weave and wreathe some creed + that shall his face conceal? +Some creed of which its prophets cry it holds + the secret's all-in-all: +Some creed which ever bye and bye doth crumble, + totter, to its fall! +Say any dream of all the dreams that drift and + darkle, glint and glow, +Holds most of truth within its gleams; but say + --at last--you do not know. + +Oh, say the soul, from star to star, with victory + wing'd, leap on through space +And scale the bastioned nights that bar the secret's + inner dwelling-place; +Or say it ever roam dim glades where pallid + wraiths of long-dead moons +Flit like blown feathers through the shades, borne + on the breath of sobbing tunes: +Say any tide of any time, of all the tides that ebb + and flow, +Shall buoy us on toward any clime; but say--at + last--you do not know! + + + + +LYRICS + + +"KING PANDION, HE IS DEAD" + +"King Pandion, he is dead; + All thy friends are lapp'd in lead." +--SHAKESPEARE. + + +DREAMERS, drinkers, rebel youth, + Where's the folly free and fine +You and I mistook for truth? + Wits and wastrels, friends of wine, + Wags and poets, friends of mine, +Gleams and glamors all are fled, + Fires and frenzies half divine! +King Pandion, he is dead! + +Time's unmannerly, uncouth! + Here's the crow's-foot for a sign! +And, upon our brows, forsooth, + Wits and wastrels, friends of wine, + Time hath set his mark malign; +Frost has touched us, heart and head, + Cooled the blood and dulled the eyne: +King Pandion, he is dead! + +Time's a tyrant without ruth:-- + Fancies used to bloom and twine +Round a common tavern booth, + Wits and wastrels, friends of wine, + In that youth of mine and thine! +'Tis for youth the feast is spread; + When we dine now--we but dine!-- +King Pandion, he is dead! + +How our dreams would glow and shine, +Wits and wastrels, friends of wine, +Ere the drab Hour came that said: +King Pandion, he is dead! + + +DAVID TO BATHSHEBA + +VERY red are the roses of Sharon, +But redder thy mouth, +There is nard, there is myrrh, in En Gedi, +From the uplands of Lebanon, heavy +With balsam, the winds +Drift freighted and scented and cedarn-- +But thy mouth is more precious than spices! + +Thy breasts are twin lilies of Kedron; +White lilies, that sleep +In the shallows where loitering Kedron +Broadens out and is lost in the Jordan; +Globed lilies, so white +That David, thy King, thy beloved +Declareth them meet for his gardens. + +Under the stars very strangely +The still waters gleam; +Deep down in the waters of Hebron + +The soul of the starlight is sunken, +But deep in thine eyes +Stirs a more wonderful secret +Than pools ever learn of the starlight. + + +THE JESTERS + +A TOAST to the Fools! + Pierrot, Pantaloon, +Harlequin, Clown, + Merry-Andrew, Buffoon-- +Touchstone and Triboulet--all of the tribe.-- +Dancer and jester and singer and scribe. +We sigh over Yorick--(unfortunate fool, +Ten thousand Hamlets have fumbled his skull!)-- +But where is the Hamlet to weep o'er the biers + Of his brothers? +And where is the poet solicits our tears + For the others? +They have passed from the world and left never + a sign, + And few of us now have the courage to sing + That their whimsies made life a more livable + thing-- +We, that are left of the line, +Let us drink to the jesters--in gooseberry wine! + +Then here's to the Fools! +Flouting the sages +Through history's pages +And driving the dreary old seers into rages-- +The humbugging Magis +Who prate that the wages +Of Folly are Death--toast the Fools of all ages! +They have ridden like froth down the whirlpools + of time, + They have jingled their caps in the councils of + state, +They have snared half the wisdom of life in a + rhyme, + And tripped into nothingness grinning at fate-- +Ho, brothers mine, +Brim up the glasses with gooseberry wine! + +Though the prince with his firman, +The judge in his ermine, +Affirm and determine + Bold words need the whip, +Let them spare us the rod and remit us the + sermon, +For Death has a quip + +Of the tomb and the vermin + That will silence at last the most impudent lip! +Is the world but a bubble, a bauble, a joke? +Heigho, Brother Fools, now your bubble is broke, +Do you ask for a tear?--or is it worth while? +Here's a sigh for you, then--but it ends in a smile! +Ho, Brother Death, +We would laugh at you, too--if you spared us the + breath! + + +"MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY" + +"Mary, Mary, quite contrary, + How does your garden grow? +With silver bells and cockle-shells + And pretty maids all in a row!" +--Mother Goose. + +MARY, Mistress Mary, + How does your garden grow? +From your uplands airy, +Mary, Mistress Mary, +Float the chimes of faery + When the breezes blow! +Mary, Mistress Mary, + How does your garden grow? + +With flower-maidens, singing + Among the morning hills-- +With silvern bells a-ringing, +With flower-maidens singing, +With vocal lilies, springing + By chanting daffodils; +With flower-maidens, singing + Among the morning hills! + + +THE TRIOLET + +YOUR triolet should glimmer + Like a butterfly; +In golden light, or dimmer, +Your triolet should glimmer, +Tremble, turn, and shimmer, + Flash, and flutter by; +Your triolet should glimmer + Like a butterfly. + + +FROM THE BRIDGE + +HELD and thrilled by the vision + I stood, as the twilight died, +Where the great bridge soars like a song + Over the crawling tide-- + +Stood on the middle arch-- + And night flooded in from the bay, +And wonderful under the stars + Before me the city lay; + +Girdled with swinging waters-- + Guarded by ship on ship-- +A gem that the strong old ocean + Held in his giant grip; + +There was play of shadows above + And drifting gleams below, +And magic of shifting waves + That darkle and glance and glow; + +Dusky and purple and splendid, + Banded with loops of light, +The tall towers rose like pillars, + Lifting the dome of night; + +The gliding cars of traffic + Slid swiftly up and down +Like monsters, fiery mailed, + Leaping across the town. + +Not planned with a thought of beauty; + Built by a lawless breed; +Builded of lust for power, + Builded of gold and greed. + +Risen out of the trader's + Brutal and sordid wars-- +And yet, behold! a city + Wonderful under the stars! + + +"PALADINS, PALADINS, YOUTH NOBLE-HEARTED" + +GALAHADS, Galahads, Percivals, gallop! +Bayards, to the saddle!--the clangorous trumpets, +Hoarse with their ecstasy, call to the mellay. +Paladins, Paladins, Rolands flame-hearted, +Olivers, Olivers, follow the bugles! + +Girt with the glory and glamor of power, +Error sits throned in the high place of justice; +Paladins, Paladins, youth noble-hearted, +Saddle and spear, for the battle-flags beckon! +Thrust the keen steel through the throat of the liar. + +Star (or San Grael) that illumines thy pathway, +Follow it, follow that far Ideal!-- +Thine not the guerdon to gain it or grasp it; +Soul of thee, passing, ascendeth unto it, +Augmenting its brightness for them that come + after. + +Heed then the call of the trumpets, the trumpets, +Hoarse with the fervor, the frenzy of battle,-- +Paladins, Paladins, saddle! to saddle! +Bide not, abide not, God's bugles are calling!-- +Thrust the sharp sword through the heart of the + liar. + + +"MY LANDS, NOT THINE" + +MY lands, not thine, we look upon, +Friend Croesus, hill and vale and lawn. + Mine every woodland madrigal, + And mine thy singing waterfall +That vaguely hints of Helicon. + +Mark how thine upland slopes have drawn +A golden glory from the dawn!-- +<i>Fool's gold?</i>--thy dullness proves them all + My lands--not thine! + +For when all title-deeds are gone, +Still, still will satyr, nymph, and faun + Through brake and covert pipe and call + In dances bold and bacchanal-- +For them, for me, you hold in pawn, + My lands--not thine! + + +TO A DANCING DOLL + +FORMAL, quaint, precise, and trim, + You begin your steps demurely-- +There's a spirit almost prim + In the feet that move so surely, +So discreetly, to the chime +Of the music that so sweetly + Marks the time. + +But the chords begin to tinkle + Quicker, +And your feet they flash and flicker-- + Twinkle!-- +Flash and flutter to a tricksy + Fickle meter; +And you foot it like a pixie-- + Only fleeter! + +Now our current, dowdy + Things-- + +"Turkey-trots" and rowdy + Flings-- +For they made you overseas +In politer times than these, +In an age when grace could please, + Ere St. Vitus +Clutched and shook us, spine and knees;-- + Loosed a plague of jerks to smite us! + +Well, our day is far more brisk + And our manner rather slacker), +And you are nothing more than bisque + And lacquer-- +But you shame us with the graces +Of courtlier times and places + When the cheap +And vulgar wasn't "art"-- + When the faunal prance and leap + Weren't "smart." + +Have we lost the trick of wedding + Grace to pleasure? +Must we clown it at the bidding + Of some tawdry, common measure? + +Can't you school us in the graces +Of your pose and dainty paces?-- +Now the chords begin to tinkle + Quicker-- +And your feet they flash and flicker-- + Twinkle!-- +And you mock us as you featly + Swing and flutter to the chime +Of the music-box that sweetly + Marks the time! + + +LOWER NEW YORK--A STORM + +WHITE wing'd below the darkling clouds + The driven sea-gulls wheel; +The roused sea flings a storm against + The towers of stone and steel. + +The very voice of ocean rings + Along the shaken street-- +Dusk, storm, and beauty whelm the world + Where sea and city meet-- + +But what care they for flashing wings, + Quick beauty, loud refrain, +These huddled thousands, deaf and blind + To all but greed and gain? + + +AT SUNSET + +THE sun-god stooped from out the sky + To kiss the flushing sea, +While all the winds of all the world + Made jovial melody; +The night came hurrying up to hide + The lovers with her tent; +The governed thunders, rank on rank, + Stood mute with wonderment; +The pale worn moon, a jealous shade, + Peered from the firmament; +The early stars, the curious stars, + Came peering forth to see +What mighty nuptials shook the world + With such an ecstasy +Whenas the sun-god left the sky + To mingle with the sea. + + +A CHRISTMAS GIFT + +ALACK-A-DAY for poverty! +What jewels my mind doth give to thee! + +Carved agate stone porphyrogene, +Green emerald and beryl green, +Deep sapphine and pale amethyst, +Sly opal, cloaking with a mist +The levin of its love elate, +Shy brides' pearls, flushed and delicate, +Sea-colored lapis lazuli, +Sardonyx and chalcedony, +Enkindling diamond, candid gold, +Red rubies and red garnets bold: +And all their humors should be blent + In one intolerable blaze, +Barbaric, fierce, and opulent, + To dazzle him that dared to gaze! + +Alack-a-day for poverty: +My rhymes are all you get of me! +Yet, if your heart receive, behold! +The worthless words are set in gold. + + +SILVIA + +I STILL remember how she moved +Among the rathe, wild blooms she loved, +(When Spring came tip-toe down the slopes, +Atremble 'twixt her doubts and hopes, +Half fearful and all virginal)-- +How Silvia sought this dell to call +Her flowers into full festival, +And chid them with this madrigal: + +<i>"The busy spider hangs the brush + With filmy gossamers, +The frogs are croaking in the creek, + The sluggish blacksnake stirs, +But still the ground is bare of bloom + Beneath the fragrant firs. + +"Arise, arise, O briar rose, + And sleepy violet! +Awake, awake, anemone, + Your wintry dreams forget--</i> + +<i>For shame, you tardy marigold, + Are you not budded yet? + +"The Swallow's back, and claims the eaves + That last year were his home; +The Robin follows where the plow + Breaks up the crusted loam; +And Red-wings spies the Thrush and pipes: + 'Look! Speckle-breast is come!' + +"Up, blooms! and storm the wooded slopes, + The lowlands and the plain-- +Blow, jonquil, blow your golden horn + Across the ranks of rain! +To arms! to arms! and put to flight + The Winter's broken train!"</i> + +She paused beside this selfsame rill, +And as she ceased, a daffodil +Held up reproachfully his head +And fluttered into speech, and said: + +<i>"Chide not the flowers! You little know +Of all their travail 'neath the snow,</i> + + <i>Their struggling hours +Of choking sorrow underground. + Chide not the flowers! +You little guess of that profound + And blind, dumb agony of ours! + Yet, victor here beside the rill, +I greet the light that I have found, + A Daffodil!"</i> + +And when the Daffodil was done +A boastful Marigold spake on: + +<i>"Oh, chide the white frost, if you choose, +The heavy clod, so hard to loose, + The preying powers +Of worm and insect underground. + Chide not the flowers! +For spite of scathe and cruel wound, + Unconquered by the sunless hours, + I rise in regal pride, a bold +And golden-hearted, golden-crowned + Marsh Marigold!"</i> + +And when she came no more, her creek +Would not believe, but bade us seek + +Hither, yon, and to and fro-- +Everywhere that children go + When the Spring + Is on the wing +And the winds of April blow-- +"I will never think her dead; +"She will come again!" it said; +And then the birds that use the vale, +Broken-hearted, turned the tale +Into syllables of song +And chirped it half a summer long: + +<i>"Silvia, Silvia, + Be our Song once more, +Our vale revisit, Silvia, + And be our Song once more: +For joy lies sleeping in the lute; +The merry pipe, the woodland flute, +And all the pleading reeds are mute + That breathed to thee of yore.</i> + +<i>"Silvia, Silvia, + Be our Moon again,</i> + +<i>Shine on our valley, Silvia, +And be our Moon again: +The fluffy owl and nightingale +Flit silent through the darkling vale, +Or utter only words of wail + From throats all harsh with pain. + +"Silvia, Silvia, + Be Springtime, as of old; +Come clad in laughter, Silvia, + Our Springtime, as of old: +The waiting lowlands and the hills +Are tremulous with daffodils +Unblown, until thy footstep thrills + Their promise into gold."</i> + +And, musing on her here, I too +Must wonder if it can be true +She died, as other mortals do. +The thought would fit her more, to feign + That, full of life and unaware +That earth holds aught of grief or stain, + The fairies stole and hold her where +Death enters not, nor strife nor pain;-- + +That, drowsing on some bed of pansies, +By Titania's necromancies +Her senses were to slumber lulled, +Deeply sunken, steeped and dulled, + And by wafture of swift pinions +She was borne out through earth's portals + To the fairy queen's dominions, +To some land of the immortals. + + +THE EXPLORERS + +AND some still cry: <i>"What is the use? + The service rendered? What the gain? +Heroic, yes!--but in what cause? + Have they made less one earth-borne pain? +Broadened the bounded spirit's scope? +Or died to make the dull world hope?"</i> + +Must man still be the slave of Use?-- + But these men, careless and elate, +Join battle with a burly world + Or come to wrestling grips with fate, +And not for any good nor gain + Nor any fame that may befall-- +But, thrilling in the clutch of life, + Heed the loud challenge and the call;-- +And grown to symbols at the last, + Stand in heroic silhouette + Against horizons ultimate, + As towers that front lost seas are set;-- + +The reckless gesture, the strong pose, + Sharp battle-cry flung back to Earth, +And buoyant humor, as a god +Might say: <i>"Lo, here my feet have trod!"</i>-- + There lies the meaning and the worth! + +They bring no golden treasure home, + They win no acres for their clan, +Nor dream nor deed of theirs shall mend + The ills of man's bedeviled span-- +Nor are they skilled in sleights of speech, + (Nor overeager) to make plain +The use they serve, transcending use,-- + The gain beyond apparent gain! + + +EARLY AUTUMN + +WITH half-hearted levies of frost that make foray, + retire, and refrain-- +Ambiguous bugles that blow and that falter to + silence again-- + +With banners of mist that still waver above them, + advance and retreat, +The hosts of the Autumn still hide in the hills, + for a doubt stays their feet;-- + +But anon, with a barbaric splendor to dazzle the + eyes that behold, +And regal in raiment of purple and umber and + amber and gold, + +And girt with the glamor of conquest and scarved + with red symbols of pride, +From the hills in their might and their mirth on + the steeds of the wind will they ride, + +To make sport and make spoil of the Summer, + who dwells in a dream on the plain, +Still tented in opulent ease in the camps of her + indolent train. + + +"TIME STEALS FROM LOVE" + +TIME steals from Love all but Love's wings; +And how should aught but evil things, + Or any good but death, befall + Him that is thrall unto Time's thrall, +Slave to the lesser of these Kings? + +O heart of youth that wakes and sings! +O golden vows and golden rings! + Life mocks you with the tale of all + Time steals from Love! + +O riven lute and writhen strings, +Dead bough whereto no blossom clings, + The glory was ephemeral! + Nor may our Autumn grief recall +The passion of the perished Springs + Time steals from Love! + + +THE RONDEAU + +YOUR rondeau's tale must still be light-- +No bugle-call to life's stern fight! + Rather a smiling interlude + Memorial to some transient mood +Of idle love and gala-night. + +Its manner is the merest sleight +O' hand; yet therein dwells its might, + For if the heavier touch intrude + Your rondeau's stale. + +Fragrant and fragile, fleet and bright, +And wing'd with whim, it gleams in flight + Like April blossoms wind-pursued + Down aisles of tangled underwood;-- +Nor be too serious when you write + Your rondeau's tail! + + +VISITORS + +THEY haunt me, they tease me with hinted +Withheld revelations, +The songs that I may not utter; +They lead me, they flatter, they woo me. +I follow, I follow, I snatch +At the veils of their secrets in vain-- +For lo! they have left me and vanished, +The songs that I cannot sing. + +There are visions elusive that come +With a quiver and shimmer of wings;-- +Shapes shadows and shapes, and the murmur +Of voices;-- +Shapes, that out of the twilight +Leap, and with gesture appealing +Seem to deliver a message, +And are gone 'twixt a breath and a breath;-- +Shapes that race in with the waves +Moving silverly under the moon, + +And are gone ere they break into foam on the rocks +And recede;-- +Breathings of love from invisible +Flutes, +Blown somewhere out in the tender +Dusk, +That die on the bosom of Silence;-- +Formless, +And fleeter than thought, +Vaguer than thought or emotion, +What are these visitors? + +Out of the vast and uncharted +Realms that encircle the visible world, +With a glimmer of light on their pinions, +They rush . . . +They waver, they vanish, +Leaving me stirred with a dream of the ultimate + beauty, +A sense of the ultimate music, +I never shall capture;-- + +They are Beauty, +Formless and tremulous Beauty, + +Beauty unborn; +Beauty as yet unappareled +In thought; +Beauty that hesitates, +Falters, +Withdraws from the verge of birth, +Flutters, +Retreats from the portals of life;-- +O Beauty for ever uncaptured! +O songs that I never shall sing! + + +THE PARTING + +WE have come "the primrose way," + Folly, thou and I! +Such a glamor and a grace +Ever glimmered on thy face, +Ever such a witchery +Lit the laughing eyes of thee, +Could a fool like me withstand +Folly's feast and beckoning hand? +Drinking, how thy lips' caress +Spiced the cup of waywardness! +So we came "the primrose way," + Folly, thou and I! + +But now, Folly, we must part, + Folly, thou and I! +Shall one look with mirth or tears +Back on all his wasted years, +Purposes dissolved in wine, +Pearls flung to the heedless swine?-- + +Idle days and nights of mirth, +Were they pleasures nothing worth? +Well, there's no gainsaying we +Squandered youth right merrily! +But now, Folly, we must part, + Folly, thou and I! + + +AN OPEN FIRE + +THESE logs with drama and with dream are rife, + For all their golden Summers and green Springs +Through leaf and root they sucked the forest's life, + Drank in its secret, deep, essential things, +Its midwood moods, its mystic runes, + Its breathing hushes stirred of faery wings, +Its August nights and April noons; +The garnered fervors of forgotten Junes +Flare forth again and waste away; + And in the sap that leaps and sings + We hear again the chant the cricket flings +Across the hawthorn-scented dusks of May. + + + + + + +REALITIES + + + + +REALITIES + +WE are deceived by the shadow, we see not the + substance of things. +For the hills are less solid than thought; and + deeds are but vapors; and flesh +Is a mist thrown off and resumed by the soul, as + a world by a god. +Back of the transient appearance dwells in inef- + fable calm +The utter reality, ultimate truth; this seems and + that is. + + +THE STRUGGLE + +I HAVE been down in a dark valley; +I have been groping through a deep gorge; +Far above, the lips of it were rimmed with moon- + light, +And here and there the light lay on the dripping + rocks +So that it seemed they dripped with moonlight, + not with water; +So deep it was, that narrow gash among the hills, +That those great pines which fringed its edge +Seemed to me no larger than upthrust fingers +Silhouetted against the sky; +And at its top the vale was strait, +And the rays were slant +And reached but part way down the sides; +I could not see the moon itself; +I walked through darkness, and the valley's edge +Seemed almost level with the stars, +The stars that were like fireflies in the little trees. + +It was the midnight of defeat; +I felt that I had failed; +I was mocked of the gods; +There was no way out of that gorge; +The paths led no whither +And I could not remember their beginnings; +I was doomed to wander evermore, +Thirsty, with the sound of mocking waters in + mine ears, +Groping, with gleams of useless light +Splashed in ironic beauty on the rocks above. +And so I whined. + +And then despair flashed into rage; +I leapt erect, and cried: +<i>"Could I but grasp my life as sculptors grasp the clay +And knead and thrust it into shape again!-- +If all the scorn of Heaven were but thrown +Into the focus of some creature I could clutch!-- +If something tangible were but vouchsafed me +By the cold, far gods!-- +If they but sent a Reason for the failure of my life +I'd answer it; +If they but sent a Fiend, I'd conquer it!--</i> + +<i>But I reach out, and grasp the air, +I rage, and the brute rock echoes my words in + mockery-- +How can one fight the sliding moonlight on the cliffs? +You gods, coward gods, +Come down, I challenge you!-- +You who set snares with roses and with passion, +You who make flesh beautiful and damn men through + the flesh, +You who plump the purple grape and then put poison + in the cup, +You who put serpents in your Edens, +You who gave me delight of my senses and broke me + for it, +You who have mingled death with beauty, +You who have put into my blood the impulses for + which you cursed me, +You who permitted my brain the doubts wherefore + you damn me, +Behold, I doubt you, gods, no longer, but defy!-- +I perish here? +Then I will be slain of a god! +You who have wrapped me in the scorn of your silence, +The divinity in this same dust you flout</i> + +i>Flames through the dust, +And dares, +And flings you back your scorn,-- +Come, face to face, and slay me if you will, +But not until you've felt the weight +Of all betricked humanity's contempt +In one bold blow!-- +Speak forth a Reason, and I will answer it, +Yes, to your faces I will answer it; +Come garmented in flesh and I will fight with you, +Yes, in your faces will I smite you, gods; +Coward gods and tricksters that set traps +In paradise!-- +Far gods that hedge yourselves about with silence +And with distance; +That mock men from the unscalable escarpments of + your Heavens."</i> + +Thus I raved, being mad. +I had no sooner finished speaking than I felt +The darkness fluttered by approaching feet, +And the silence was burned through by trembling + flames of sound, +And I was 'ware that Something stood by me. + +And with a shout I leapt and grasped that Being, +And the Thing grasped me. +We came to wrestling grips, +And back and forth we swayed, +Hand seeking throat, and crook'd knee seeking +To encrook unwary leg, +And spread toes grasping the uneven ground; +The strained breast muscles cracked and creaked, +The sweat ran in my eyes, +The plagued breath sobbed and whistled through + my throat, +I tasted blood, and strangled, but still struggled + on-- +The stars above me danced in swarms like yellow + bees, +The shaken moonlight writhed upon the rocks;-- +But at the last I felt his breathing weaker grow, +The tense limbs grow less tense, +And with a bursting cry I bent his head right + back, +Back, back, until +I heard his neck bones snap; +His spine crunched in my grip; +I flung him to the earth and knelt upon his breast + +And listened till the fluttering pulse was stilled. +Man, god, or devil, I had wrenched the life from + him! + +And lo!--even as he died +The moonlight failed above the vale,-- +And somehow, sure, I know now how!-- +Between the rifted rocks the great Sun struck +A finger down the cliff, and that red beam +Lay sharp across the face of him that I had slain; +And in that light I read the answer of the silent + gods +Unto my cursed-out prayer, +For he that lay upon the ground was--I! +I understood the lesson then; +It was myself that lay there dead; +Yes, I had slain my Self. + + +THE REBEL + +No doubt the ordered worlds speed on + With purpose in their wings; +No doubt the ordered songs are sweet + Each worthy angel sings; +And doubtless it is wise to heed + The ordered words of Kings; + +But how the heart leaps up to greet + The headlong, rebel flight, +Whenas some reckless meteor + Blazes across the night! +Some comet--Byron--Lucifer-- + Has dared to Be, and fight! + +No doubt but it is safe to dwell + Where ordered duties are; +No doubt the cherubs earn their wage + Who wind each ticking star; + +No doubt the system is quite right!-- + Sane, ordered, regular; + +But how the rebel fires the soul + Who dares the strong gods' ire! +Each Byron!--Shelley!--Lucifer!-- + And all the outcast choir +That chant when some Prometheus + Leaps up to steal Jove's fire! + + +THE CHILD AND THE MILL + +BETTER a pauper, penniless, asleep on the kindly + sod-- +Better a gipsy, houseless, but near to the heart + of God, + +That beats for ears not dulled by the clanking + wheels of care-- +Better starvation and freedom, hope and the good + fresh air + +Than death to the Something in him that was + born to laugh and dream, +That was kin to the idle lilies and the ripples of + the stream. + +For out of the dreams of childhood, that careless + come and go, +The boy gains strength, unknowing, that the Man + will prove and know. + +But these fools with their lies and their dollars, + their mills and their bloody hands, +Who make a god of a wheel, who worship their + whirring bands, + +They are flinging the life of a people, raw, to the + brute machines. +Dull-eyed, weary, and old--old in his early teens-- + +Stunted and stupid and twisted, marred in the + mills of grief, +Can your factories fashion a Man of this thing-- + a Man and a Chief? + +Dumb is the heart of him now, at the time when + his heart should sing-- +Wasters of body and brain, what race will the + future bring? + +What of the nation's nerve whenas swift crises + come? +What of the brawn that should heave the guns on + the beck of the drum? + + +Thieves of body and soul, who can neither think + nor feel, +Swine-eyed priests of little false gods of gold and + steel, + +Bow to your obscene altars, worship your loud + mills then! +Feed to Moloch and Baal the brawn and brains + of men-- + +But silent and watchful and hidden forever over + all +The masters brood of those Mills that "grind + exceeding small." + +And it needs no occult art nor magic to foreshow +That a people who sow defeat they will reap the + thing they sow. + +"SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI" + +CONQUERORS leonine, lordly, + Princes and vaunting kings, +Ye are drunk with the sound of your braggart + trumps-- + <i>But lo! ye are little things! + +Earth . . . it is charnel with monarchs! + And the puffs of dust that start +Where your war steeds stamp with their ringing hoofs + Were each some warrior's heart.</i> + +Peoples imperial, mighty, + Masterful, challenging fate, +The tread of your cohorts shakes the hills-- + <i>But lo! ye are not great! + +Nations that swarm and murmur, + Ye are moths that flutter and climb-- +Ye are whirling gnats, ye are swirling bees, + Tossed in the winds of time!</i> + +Earth that is flushed with glory, + A marvelous world ye are! +<i>But lo! in the midst of a million stars + Ye are only one pale star! + +A breath stirs the dark abysses. . . . + The deeps below the deep +Are troubled and vexed . . . and a thousand worlds + Fall on eternal sleep!</i> + + +THE COMRADE + +I + +HATH not man at his noblest +An air of something more than man?-- +A hint of grace immortal, +Born of his greatly daring to assist the gods +In conquering these shaggy wastes, +These desert worlds, +And planting life and order in these stars?-- +So Woman at her best: +Her eyes are bright with visions and with dreams +That triumph over time; +Her plumed thought, wing for wing, is mate with + his. + + +II + +The world rolls on from dream to dream, +And 'neath the vast impersonal revenges of its + going, + +Crushed fools that cried defeat +Lie dead amid the dust they prophesied-- +Ye doubters of man's larger destiny, +Ye that despair, +Look backward down the vistaed years, +And all is battle--and all victory! +Man fought, to be a man! +Through painful centuries the slow beast fought, +Blinded and baffled, fought to gain his soul;-- +Wild, hairy, shag, and feared of shadows, +Yet the clouds +Made him strange signals that he puzzled o'er;-- +Beast, child, and ape, +And yet the winds harped to him, and the sea +Rolled in upon his consciousness +Its tides of wonder and romance;-- +Uncouth and caked with mire, +And yet the stars said something to him, and the + sun +Declared itself a god;-- +The lagging cycles turned at last +The pictures into thought, +Thought flowered in soul;-- +But, oh, the myriad weary years +Ere Caliban was Shakespeare's self +And Darwin's ape had Darwin's brain!-- +The battling, battling, and the steep ascent, +The fight to hold the little gained, +The loss, the doubt, the shaken heart, +The stubborn, groping slow recovery!-- +But looking backward toward the dim beginnings, +You that despair, +Hath he not climbed and conquered? +Look backward and all's Victory! +What coward looks forward and foresees defeat? + + +III + +Who climbed beside him, and who fought +And suffered and was glad? +Is she a lesser thing than he, +Who stained the slopes with bloody feet, or stood +Beside him on some hard-won eminence of hope +Exulting as the bold dawn swept +A harper hand along the ringing hills? +Flesh of his flesh, and of his soul the soul, +Hath she not fought, hath she not climbed? + +And how is she a lesser thing?-- +Nay, if she ever was +'Twas we that made her so, who called her queen +But kept her slave. + + +IV + +Had she not courage for the fight? +Hath she not courage for the years to come? +Hath she not courage who descends alone-- +(How pitifully alone, except for Love!) +Where man's thought even falters that would + follow, +Into the shadowy abyss +(Through vast and murmurous caverns dark with + crowding dread +And terrible with hovering wings), +To battle there with Death?--to battle +There with Death, and wrest from him, +O Conqueror and Mother, +Life! + + +V + +Hath she too long dwelt dream-bound in the world + of love, + +Unconscious of the sterner throes, +The more austere, impersonal, wide faith, +The urge that drives Christs to the cross +Not for the love of one beloved, +But for the love of all? +If so, she wakes! +Wakes and demands a share in all man's bolder + destinies, +The high, audacious ventures of the soul +That thinks to scale the bastioned slopes +And strike stark Chaos from his throne. +We still stand in the dawn of time. +Not meanly let us stand nor shaken with low + doubts! +For there beyond the verge and margin of gray cloud +The future thrills with promise +And the skies are tremulous with golden light;-- +She too would share those victories, +Comrade, and more than comrade;-- +New times, new needs confront us now; +We must evolve new powers +To battle with;-- +We must go forward now together, +Or perchance we fail! + + +ENVOI + +A LITTLE WHILE + +<i>A little while the tears and laughter, + The willow and the rose-- +A little while, and what comes after + No man knows. + +An hour to sing, to love and linger . . . + Then lutanist and lute +Will fall on silence, song and singer + Both be mute. + +Our gods from our desires we fashion. . . . + Exalt our baffled lives, +And dream their vital bloom and passion + Still survives; + +But when we're done with mirth and weeping, + With myrtle, rue, and rose, +Shall Death take Life into his keeping? . . . + No man knows.</i> + +<i>What heart hath not, through twilight places, + Sought for its dead again +To gild with love their pallid faces? . . . + Sought in vain! . . . + +Still mounts the Dream on shining pinion . . . + Still broods the dull distrust . . . +Which shall have ultimate dominion, + Dream, or dust? + +A little while with grief and laughter, + And then the day will close; +The shadows gather . . . what comes after + No man knows!</i> + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis + diff --git a/old/ddust10.zip b/old/ddust10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..03e5570 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/ddust10.zip |