The Project Gutenberg eBook ofDreams and DustThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Dreams and DustAuthor: Don MarquisRelease date: March 1, 1996 [eBook #458]Most recently updated: January 1, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Judith Boss*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DREAMS AND DUST ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Dreams and DustAuthor: Don MarquisRelease date: March 1, 1996 [eBook #458]Most recently updated: January 1, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Judith Boss
Title: Dreams and Dust
Author: Don Marquis
Author: Don Marquis
Release date: March 1, 1996 [eBook #458]Most recently updated: January 1, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Judith Boss
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DREAMS AND DUST ***
Produced by Judith Boss
DREAMS & DUST
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.
I AM mine own priest, and I shrive myselfOf all my wasted yesterdays. Though sinAnd sloth and foolishness, and all ill weedsOf error, evil, and neglect grow rankAnd ugly there, I dare forgive myselfThat 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'erWith fog of futile sighs and vain regrets?
This is another day! And flushed Hope walksAdown the sunward slopes with golden shoon.This is another day; and its young strengthIs laid upon the quivering hills until,Like Egypt's Memnon, they grow quick with song.This is another day, and the bold worldLeaps up and grasps its light, and laughs, as leaptPrometheus up and wrenched the fire from Zeus.
This is another day—are its eyes blurredWith 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 mineOld selves I dare to lift a singing heartAnd living faith; my spirit dares drink deepOf the red mirth mantling in the cup of morn.
FLEET across the grassesFlash the feet of Spring,Piping, as he passesFleet across the grasses,"Follow, lads and lasses!Sing, world, sing!"Fleet across the grassesFlash the feet of Spring!
Idle winds deliverRumors through the town,Tales of reeds that quiver,Idle winds deliver,Where the rapid riverDrags the willows down—Idle winds deliverRumors through the town.
In the country placesBy the silver brooksApril airs her graces;In the country placesWayward April paces,Laughter in her looks;In the country placesBy the silver brooks.
Hints of alien glamorEven reach the town;Urban muses stammerHints of alien glamor,But the city's clamorBeats the voices down;Hints of alien glamorEven reach the town.
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 traceIf 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 hungFor a lamp in the darkness of spaceWe are whirled, we are swirled, we are flung;Singing and shining we raceAnd our light on the uplifted faceOf dreamer or prophet afarMay fall as a symbol of grace:This earth, it is also a star!
Looking out where our planet is swungDoubt loses his writhen grimace,Dry hearts drink the gleams and are young;—Where agony's boughs interlaceHis 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 caseYearn to us through the vapors that bar:Canst think of that, soul, and be base?—This earth, it is also a star!
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 deviousways,By noon or night, through cloud or flame,My heart has followed all my daysSomething I cannot name.
In sunlight on some woman's hair,Or starlight in some woman's eyne,Or in low laughter smothered whereHer 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,"Love is the name,"I thought.
Sometimes when sudden afterglowsIn futile glory storm the skiesWithin their transient gold and roseThe secret stirs and dies;Or when the trampling morn walks o'erThe troubled seas, with feet of flame,My awed heart whispers,"Ask no more,For Beauty is the name!"
Or dreaming in old chapels whereThe dim aisles pulse with murmuringsThat part are music, part are prayer—(Or rush of hidden wings)Sometimes I lift a startled headTo some saint's carven countenance,Half fancying that the lips have said,All names mean God, perchance!"
THERE is a legend that the love of GodSo quickened under Mary's heart it wroughtHer very maidenhood to holier stuff….However that may be, the birth befellUpon a night when all the Syrian starsSwayed tremulous before one lordlier orbThat rose in gradual splendor,Paused,Flooding the firmament with mystic light,And dropped upon the breathing hillsA sudden musicLike a distillation from its gleams;A rain of spirit and a dew of song!
THE soul of the Spring through its body of earthBursts in a bloom of fire,And the crocuses come in a rainbow riot of mirth….They flutter, they burn, they take wing, theyaspire….Wings, motion and music and flame,Flower, woman and laughter, and all these thesame!She is light and first love and the youth of theworld,She is sandaled with joy … she is lifted andwhirled,She is flung, she is swirled, she is driven alongBy the carnival winds that have torn her awayFrom the coronal bloom on the brow of theMay….She is youth, she is foam, she is flame, she isvisible Song!
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 longFor to utter the sense of the silence in song.
Down-stream all the rapids are troubled with pebblesThat fetter and fret what the water would utter,And it rushes and splashes in tremulous trebles;It makes haste through the shallows, its soul isaflutter;
But here all the sound is serene and outspreadIn 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, arebound;Every hush is in love with a sound, every soundBy 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 aquiverWith the exquisite hints of the reticent river,Here, where the lips of this pool are the lipsOf 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 soundLet us strive for some secret of all the profoundDeep and calm Silence that meshes men 'round!There's as much of God hinted in one ripple'splashes—There's as much of Truth glints in yondragon-fly's flight—There's as much Purpose gleams where yondertrout flashesAs in—any book else!—could we read thingsaright.
Then nymph of mine indolence, here let us hide,Learn, listen, and question; idle here and abideWhere the rushes and lilies lean low to the tide.
"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! …"They had no poet, and they died."
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! …"They had no poet, and they died."
Heroes, the braggart trumps that dinnedTheir 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! …"They had no poet, and they died."
Dumb oracles, and priests withdrawn,Was it but flesh they deified?Their gods were … Ask oblivion! …"They had no poet, and they died."
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 swirledThrough 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 seizedme and swayed me,Have lifted, have swung me aroundIn their whorls as of cyclonic sound;Her passions have torn me and tossed me andbrayed me;Drunken and tranced and dazzled with visionsand gleams,
I have spun with her dervish priests;I have searched to the souls of her hunted beastsAnd 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 withher pains;I have swelled with her foolish pride;I have raged through a thick red mist at onewith 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 asoul,I have known, I have felt, and been shakenthereby!Wakened and shaken and broken,For I hear in thy thunders terrific that throbthrough thy rapid veinsThe beat of the heart of a world.
(1914)
CLOTHED on with thunder and with steelAnd black against the dawnThe whirling armies clash and reel….A wind, and they are goneLike 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 sunsSeem shaken in their place,Trust thou the leaping love that runsCreative over space:Take heart of grace,Take heart of grace!
What though great kingdoms fall on deathBefore 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 clodShall fail not, but endure,Shall rise, though beaten to the sod,Shall hold its vantage sure—As sure as God,As sure as God!
A LITTLE while, with love and youth,He wandered, singing:—He felt life's pulses hot and strongBeat 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 dweltThat at rare times and rapt he feltThe fleshly barriers yield and melt;He trembled, looking onCreation at her miracles;His soul-sight pierced the earthly shellsAnd 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 urgeOf earth's full tides that storm the vergeOf heaven with their sweep and surgeShall lift, shall bear him on;Where is the golden hope that ledHim 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 thingsWars with the heart that dares and sings;—It is not always Dawn!A little while, with age and death,He wanders, dreaming.
Put by the sword(a dreamer saith),The years of peace draw nigh!Already the millennial dawnMakes red the eastern sky!
Be not deceived. It comes not yet!The ancient passions keepAlive beneath their changing masks.They are not dead. They sleep.
Surely peace comes. As sure as ManRose from primeval slime.That was not yesterday. There's stillA weary height to climb!
And we can dwell too long with dreamsAnd play too much with words,Forgetting our inheritanceWas bought and held with swords.
But Truth(you say)makes tyrants quail—Beats down embattled Wrong?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 faithOur 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 comeWhich puts us to the proof.
Then, that we hold the trust we haveSafeguarded for our sons,Let us cease dreaming! Let us haveMore ships, more troops, more guns!
ABOVE, the baffled twilight fails; beneath, theblind snakes creep;Beside us glides the charnel shark, our pilotthrough the deep;And, lurking where low headlands shield fromcruising scout and spy,We bide the signal through the gloom that bidsus slay or die.
All watchful, mute, the crouching guns that guardthe strait sea lanes—Watchful and hawklike, plumed with hate, thedesperate aeroplanes—And still as death and swift as fate, above thedarkling coasts,The spying Wireless sows the night with troopsof stealthy ghosts,
While hushed through all her huddled streets thetide-walled city waitsThe drumming thunders that announce brutebattle at her gates.
Southward a hundred windy leagues, throughstorms that blind and bar,Our cheated cruisers search the waves, our captainsseek the war;But here the port of peril is; the foeman'sdreadnoughts rideSullen and black against the moon, upon a sullentide.And only we to launch ourselves against theirstark advance—To guide uncertain lightnings through thesetreacherous seas of chance!
. . . . . .
And now a wheeling searchlight paints a signal onthe night;And now the bellowing guns are loud with thewild lust of fight.
. . . . . .
And now, her flanks of steel apulse with all thepower of hell,Forth from the darkness leaps in pride a hatefulmiracle,The flagship of their Admiral—and now God helpand save!—We challenge Death at Death's own game; wesink beneath the wave!
. . . . . .
Ah, steady now—and one good blow—one straightstab 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!—Christ! in the dark!
(1912)
HE speaks as straight as his rifles shot,As straight as a thrusting blade,Waiting the deed that shall trouble the truceHis 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 KingAs 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 tookYou 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!
"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."—From a newspaper report of an antarctic expedition.
HUDDLED within their savage lairThey hearkened to the prowling wind;They heard the loud wings of despair …And madness beat against the mind….A sunless world stretched stark outsideAs if it had cursed God and died;Dumb plains lay prone beneath the weightOf 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 vastUnpeopled void stirred into life;
The dead world quickened, the mad blastHushed for an hour its idiot strifeWith 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 dispelsThe bitterer part of loneliness …And when they vanished each man dreamedHis dream there in the wilderness….One heard the chime of Christmas bells,And, staring down a country lane,Saw bright against the window-paneThe firelight beckon warm and red….And one turned from the watersideWhere Thames rolls down his slothful tideTo breast the human sea that beatsThrough roaring London's battered streets
And revel in the moods of men….And one saw all the April hillsMade glad with golden daffodils,And found and kissed his love again….
. . . . . .
By all the troubled hearts he cheersIn homely ways or by lost trails,By all light shed through all dark yearsWhen 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 priestOf mirth and lord of cleansing tears!
LEADER no more, be judged of us!Hailed Chief, and loved, of yore—Youth, and the faith of youth, cry out:Leader and Chief no more!
We dreamed a Prophet, flushed with faith,Content to toil in painIf that his sacrifice might be,Somehow, his people's gain.
We saw a vision, and our bloodBeat red and hot and strong:"Lead us(we cried)to war againstSome foul, embattled wrong!"
We dreamed a Warrior whose swordWas edged for sham and shame;We dreamed a Statesman far aboveThe vulgar lust for fame.
We were not cynics, and we dreamedA Man who made no truceWith lies nor ancient privilegeNor old, entrenched abuse.
We dreamed … we dreamed … Youth dreameda dream!And even you forgotYourself, one moment, and dreamed, too—Struck, while your mood was hot!
Struck three or four good blows … and thenTurned 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 LittlenessWho turned from ImmortalityTo fawn upon Success!
O blind with love of self, who ledYouth'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:Leader and Chief no more!
(1914)
THE great guns slay from a league away, the death-boltsfly unseen,And bellowing hill replies to hill, machine to brutemachine,But still in the end when the long lines bend andthe battle hangs in doubtThey take to the steel in the same old way thattheir fathers fought it out—It is man to man and breast to breast and eyeto bloodshot eyeAnd the reach and twist of the thrusting wrist, asit was in the days gone by!
Along the shaken hills the guns their drummingthunder roll—But the keen blades thrill with the lust to killthat leaps from the slayer's soul!
For hand and heart and living steel, one pulse ofhate they feel.Is your clan afraid of the naked blade? Does itflinch from the bitter steel?Perish your dreams of conquest then, your swollenhopes and bold,For empire dwells with the stabbing blade, as itdid in the days of old!
(1914)
EACH nation as it draws the swordAnd flings its standard to the airPetitions piously the Lord—Vexing the void abyss with prayer.
O irony too deep for mirth!O posturing apes that rant, and dareThis antic attitude! O Earth,With your wild jest of wicked prayer!
I dare not laugh … a rising swellOf laughter breaks in shrieks somewhere—No doubt they relish it in Hell,This cosmic jest of Earth at prayer!
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 ceaseI 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-dayWhen ye heard a voice in the calling wind?Why did ye falter and look behindAt 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 menhate!Ah, a weary time has the waiting been,But here in the shadows I wait, I wait!
LEAGUES before me, leagues behind,Clamor warring wastes of flood,All the streams of all the worldsFlung 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 by the gallows-tree,The gallows-tree, the gallows-tree,(While the twitching body mocked the sun)Lifted to Heaven her broken heartAnd 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 inTo 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 ghostWhimpering overhead.)
The mother by the gallows-tree,The gallows-tree, the gallows-tree,Lifted to Christ her broken heartAnd called in agony.
Then Lord Christ bent to her and said:"Be comforted, be comforted;I know your grief; the whole world's woeI 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 understandWho never had a son!"
LAZY and slow, through the snags and treesMove 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 LakeFrom his hiding-place in the draggled brake.
What is the secret the slim reeds knowThat 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 underthe root!Look underthe root!"
The hoarse frog croaks and the stark owl hootsOf 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 mistAt 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 theycroak:"Deep, deep!Death-deep!Deep, deep!Death-deep!"And the dark tide slides and glisters and glidesSnakelike over the secret it hides.
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 tideCould hold ye fast from me:—Come, ah, come to me!
Three spells I have laid on the rising sunAnd three on the waning moon—Are ye held in the bonds of the night or the dayYe 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 foamYe must drift again home, ye must drift againhome—
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!
Oh, why do they hunt so hard, so hard, who haveno need of food?Do they hunt for sport, do they hunt for hate, dothey hunt for the lust of blood?
. . . . . .
If I were a god I would get me a spear, I wouldget me horse and dog,And merrily, merrily I would ride through covertand brake and bog,
With hound and horn and laughter loud, over thehills and away—For there is no sport like that of a god with aman 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 andheads for the hills in flight;
A minute's law for the harried thing—then followhim, follow him fast,With the bellow of dogs and the beat of hoofsand the mellow bugle's blast.
. . . . . .
_Hillo! Halloo! they have marked a man! there issport in the world to-day—And a clamor swells from the heart of the wood thattells of a soul at bay!
WHERE tides of tossed wistaria bloomFoam up in purple turbulence,Where twining boughs have built a roomAnd wing'd winds pause to garner scentsAnd 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 fallIn broken music for her ears?What voices thrill her and recallThe poignant joy of happier years?
She dreams 'tis not the winds which passThat whisper through the shaken vine;Whose footstep stirs the rustling grassNone else that listened might divine;She sees her child that never wasLook up with longing in his eyne.
Unkissed, his lifted forehead gainsA 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 deadThat wander wistful, uncaressed,Their seeking lips by love unfed,She fain would cradle on her breastFor his sweet sake whose lonely headHas 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 moodsPulse with low whispers as they pass,And in their eerier interludesShe hears a voice that never was.
MUCH listening through the silences,Much staring through the night,And lo! the dumb blind distancesAre bridged with speech and sight!
Magician Thought, informed of Love,Hath fixed her on the air—Oh, Love and I laughed down the fatesAnd clasped her, here as there!
Across the eerie silencesShe came in headlong flight,She stormed the serried distances,She trampled space and night!
Oh, foolish scientists might giveThis miracle a name—But Love and I care but to knowThat when we called she came.
And since I find the distancesSubservient to my thought,And of the sentient silencesMore 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!
WE stood among the boats and nets;We saw the swift clouds fall,We watched the schooners scamper inBefore the sudden squall;—The jolly squall strove lustilyTo whelm the sheltered street—The merry squall that piled the seasAbout the patient headland's kneesAnd chased the fishing fleet.
She laughed; as if with wings her mirthArose and left the wingless earthAnd all tame things behind;Rose like a bird, wild with delightWhose briny pinions flash in flightThrough storm and sun and wind.
Her laughter sought those skies becauseTheir mood and hers were one,For she and I were drunk with loveAnd life and storm and sun!
And while she laughed, the Sun himselfLeapt laughing through the rainAnd struck his harper hand alongThe ringing coast; and that wind-songWhose joy is mixed with painForgot the undertone of griefAnd joined the jocund strain,And over every hidden reefWhereon the waves broke merrilyRose jets and sprays of melodyAnd leapt and laughed again.
We stood among the boats and nets …We marked the risen moonWalk swaying o'er the trembling seasAs one sways in a swoon;
The little stars, the lonely stars,Stole through the hollow sky,And every sucking eddy whereThe waves lapped wharf or rotten stairMoaned like some stricken thing hid thereAnd strangled with its own despairAs 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 worshiperOf 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 compelledIts 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,What if death
Were just the answer to it all?—Suppose some dainty dagger quaffedHer life in one deep eager draught?—Suppose some amorous knife caressedThe lovely hollow of her breast?"—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 soulsTo irrevocable, swift acts?Now who has known, who understood,Wherefore some idle thingMay stab with deadlier stingThan well-considered insult could?—May spur the languor of a moodAnd rouse a tiger in the blood?—
Ah, Christ!—had she not laughed just whenThat 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 deadAnd tossed upon the troubled flood.
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 slowAround, around the corpse they go,All bloodless o'er the sickened seaBeneath the ailing moon!
And are they only wisps of fogThat dance along the waves?Only shapes of mist the windDrives along the waves?Or are they spirits that the seaHas 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 evermoreThe sobbing reef and hollowed shoreAnd always-murmuring caves?
Ah, surely something more than fog,More than starlit mist!For starlight never makes a soundAnd 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:
Ever, ever, ever,Drifting like a blossomSeaward, with the starlightWan upon her bosom—Ever when the quickenedHeart of night is throbbing,Ever when the tremblingTide sets seaward, sobbing,Shall you see this burdenBorne upon its ebbing:See her drifting seawardLike a broken blossom,
_Ever see the starlightKiss her bruised bosom.
Flight availeth nothing …Still the subtle beachesDraw you back where HorrorWalks their shingled reaches …Ever shall your spiritHear the surf resounding,Evermore the oceanThwarting you and bounding;Vainly struggle inland!Lashing you and hounding,Still the vision hales youFrom 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-bellClangs across the shallows,_
Leaping where the spindriftHurtles o'er the hollows,Ringing where the moonlightGleams along the billows,Ever, ever, ever,Ever shall her laughter,Hounding you and haunting,Whip and follow after!
I stood among the boatsThe sinking sun, the angry sun,Across the sullen waveLaid the sudden strength of his red wrathLike to a shaken glaive:—Or did the sun pause in the westTo lift a sword at me,Or was it she, or was it she,Rose for an instant on some crestAnd plucked the red blade from her breastAnd brandished it at me?
THE wraiths of murdered hopes and lovesCome whispering at the door,Come creeping through the weeping mistThat drapes the barren moor;But we within have turned the key'Gainst Hope and Love and Care,Where Wit keeps tryst with Folly, atThe Tavern of Despair.
And we have come by divers waysTo keep this merry tryst,But few of us have kept withinThe Narrow Way, I wist;For we are those whose ampler witsAnd hearts have proved our curse—Foredoomed to ken the better thingsAnd aye to do the worse!
Long since we learned to mock ourselves;And from self-mockery fell
To heedless laughter in the faceOf 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 thornsThat rim the "Primrose Path."
We mock the eerie glimmering shapesThat range the outer wold,We mock our own cold hearts becauseThey are so dead and cold;We flout the things we might have beenHad 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 earthNo madder crew of wastrels thanThis fellowship of mirth….(Of mirth … drink, fools!—nor let it flagLest from the outer mistCreep in that other companyUnbidden to the tryst.
We're grown so fond of paradoxPerverseness holds us thrall,So what each jester loves the bestHe mocks the most of all;But as the jest and laugh go round,Each in his neighbor's eyesReads, while he flouts his heart's desire,The knowledge that he lies.
Not one of us but had some pearlsAnd flung them to the swine,Not one of us but had some gift—Some spark of fire divine—Each might have been God's ministerIn the temple of some art—Each feels his gift perverted moveWormlike through his dry heart.
If God called Azrael to Him nowAnd bade Death bend the bowAgainst the saddest heart that beatsHere on this earth below,Not any sobbing breast would gainThe guerdon of that barb—
The saddest ones are those that wearThe jester's motley garb.
Whose shout aye loudest rings, and whoseThe maddest cranks and quips—Who mints his soul to laughter's coinAnd wastes it with his lips—Has grown too sad for sighs and seeksTo cheat himself with mirth;We fools self-doomed to motley areThe weariest wights on earth!
But yet, for us whose brains and heartsStrove aye in paths perverse,Doomed still to know the better thingsAnd still to do the worse,—What else is there remains for usBut make a jest of careAnd set the rafters ringing, inOur Tavern of Despair?