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Read Ebook: Dreams and Dust by Marquis Don
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Ebook has 468 lines and 28790 words, and 10 pages
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 slopes 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!
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
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 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;
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.
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!
Heroes, the braggart trumps that dinned Their futile triumphs, monarch, pawn, Wild tribesmen, kingdoms disciplined, Passed like a whirlwind and were gone;
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
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!
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