



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 <DW72>s 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