Produced by Judith Boss

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!

  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.

  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.

  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.

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,
    "Love is the name," 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, "Ask no more,
    For Beauty is the name!"

  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,
    All names mean God, perchance!"

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! …
    "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 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! …
    "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."

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

  Put by the sword (a dreamer saith),
    The years of peace draw nigh!
  Already the millennial dawn
    Makes red the eastern sky!

  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.

  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 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 captains
      seek the war;
  But here the port of peril is; the foeman's
      dreadnoughts 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
      treacherous 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!
      —Christ! in the dark!

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."—From a newspaper report of an antarctic expedition.

  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:
    Leader and Chief no more!

  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:
  "Lead us (we cried) to war against
    Some foul, embattled wrong!"

  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:
    Leader and Chief no more!

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

  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?

. . . . . .

  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.

. . . . . .

  _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, What if death

  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?"—
  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:

  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,

  _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,_

  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!

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