Dreams Dust | Page 4

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 dragonfly'
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!