Dreams & Dust

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DREAMS & DUST

DON

🙢

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.

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.

A Golden Lad

"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.

A Hymn

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!

A Mood of Pavlowa

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

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!

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.

April Song

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.

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!

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.

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!"

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.

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!

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.

Envoi

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.

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!

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!

Haunted

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!

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!

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?

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.