Dreams Dust | Page 4

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! . . .?"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