Dreams Dust | Page 9

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 stood among the boats and nets;
We saw the swift clouds fall,

We watched the schooners scamper in
Before the sudden squall;--

The jolly squall strove lustily
To whelm the sheltered street--
The
merry squall that piled the seas
About the patient headland's knees

And chased the fishing fleet.
She laughed; as if with wings her mirth
Arose and left the wingless
earth
And all tame things behind;
Rose like a bird, wild with delight

Whose briny pinions flash in flight
Through storm and sun and
wind.
Her laughter sought those skies because
Their mood and hers were
one,
For she and I were drunk with love
And life and storm and
sun!

And while she laughed, the Sun himself
Leapt laughing through the
rain
And struck his harper hand along
The ringing coast; and that
wind-song
Whose joy is mixed with pain
Forgot the undertone of
grief
And joined the jocund strain,
And over every hidden reef

Whereon the waves broke merrily
Rose jets and sprays of melody

And leapt and laughed again.
II
MOONLIGHT
We stood among the boats and nets . . .
We marked the risen moon

Walk swaying o'er the trembling seas
As one sways in a swoon;
The little stars, the lonely stars,
Stole through the hollow sky,
And
every sucking eddy where
The waves lapped wharf or rotten stair

Moaned like some stricken thing hid there
And strangled with its own
despair
As the shuddering tide crept by.
I loved her, and I hated her--
Or did I hate myself because,
Bound
by obscure, strong, silken laws,
I felt myself the worshiper
Of
beauty never wholly mine?
With lures most apt to snare, entwine,

With bonds too subtle to define,
Her lighter nature mastered mine;

Herself half given, half withheld,
Her lesser spirit still compelled
Its
tribute from my franker soul:
So--rebel, slave, and worshiper!--
I
loved her and I hated her.
I gazed upon her, I, her thrall,
And musing, murmured, What if
death
Were just the answer to it all?--
Suppose some dainty dagger
quaffed
Her life in one deep eager draught?--
Suppose some
amorous knife caressed
The lovely hollow of her breast?"--
She
turned a mocking look to mine:
She read the thought within my eyne,

She held me with her look--and laughed!

Now who may tell what stirs, controls,
And shapes mad fancies into
facts?
What trivial things may quicken souls
To irrevocable, swift
acts?
Now who has known, who understood,
Wherefore some idle
thing
May stab with deadlier sting
Than well-considered insult
could?--
May spur the languor of a mood
And rouse a tiger in the
blood?--
Ah, Christ!--had she not laughed just when
That fancy came! . . . for
then . . . and then . . .
A sudden mist dropped from the sky,
A mist swept in across the sea . . .
A mist that hid her face from
me . . .
A weeping mist all tinged with red,
A dripping mist that
smelt like blood . . .
It choked my throat, it burnt my brain . . .
And
through it peered one sallow star,
And through it rang one shriek of
pain . . .
And when it passed my hands were red,
My soul was
dabbled with her blood;
And when it passed my love was