Dreams Dust | Page 8

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