“ And every man grovels in error, yet every man glimpses a truth. For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds are true; And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow, too; For no form of a god, and no fashion Man has made in his desperate passion But is worthy some worship of mine;— Not too hot with a gross belief, Nor yet too cold with pride, I will bow me down where my brothers bow, Humble—but open-eyed! UNREST A FIERCE unrest seethes at the core Of all existing things: It was the eager wish to soar That gave the gods their wings. ”
Summary
Quotes from Dreams and Dust (Don Marquis)
“ 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 ”
“ 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 ... ”
“ ENVOI A LITTLE WHILE _A little while the tears and laughter, The willow and the rose— A little while, and what comes after No man knows. An hour to sing, to love and linger ... Then lutanist and lute Will fall on silence, song and singer Both be mute. Our gods from our desires we fashion.... Exalt our baffled lives, And dream their vital bloom and passion Still survives; But when we're done with mirth and weeping, With myrtle, rue, and rose, Shall Death take Life into his keeping? ... ”
“ THE SEEKER THE creeds he wrought of dream and thought Fall from him at the touch of life, His old gods fail him in the strife— Withdrawn, the heavens he sought! Vanished, the miracles that led, The cloud at noon, the flame at night; The vision that he wing'd and sped Falls backward, baffled, from the height; Yet in the wreck of these he stands Upheld by something grim and strong; Some stubborn instinct lifts a song And nerves him, heart and hands: He does not dare to call it hope;— It is not aught that seeks reward ”
“ Say, what Apollos drive to-day adown the flaming slopes of dawn? Oh, does the blank past hide from view forgotten Christs, to be reborn, The future tremble where some new Messiah-Memnon sings the morn? Of all the worlds, say any earth, like dust wind-harried to and fro, Shall give the next Prometheus birth; but say—at last—you do not know. How should I know what dawn may gleam beyond the gates of darkness there?— Which god of all the gods men dream? Why should I whip myself to care? ”
“ The dust of forty centuries has buried Babylon, And out of all her lovers dead rises only one; Rises with a song to sing and laughter in his eyes, The old song—the only song—for all the rest are lies! For, oh, the world has just one dream, and it is very old— 'Tis youth's dream—a silly dream—but it is flushed with gold! ”
“ The wraiths of vapor wing'd and fleet That rise and run with eager feet Forth from a myriad altar fires: All these become a mist that fills The vales and chasms nebular; A shaping Soul that moves and thrills The wastes between red star and star! A SONG OF MEN OUT of the soil and the slime, Reeking, they climb, Out of the muck and the mire, Rank, they aspire; Filthy with murder and mud, Black with shed blood, Lust and passion and clay— Dying, they slay; Stirred by vague hints of a goal, Seeking a soul! Groping through terror and night Up to the light ”
“ Deathless, though godheads be dying, Surviving the creeds that expire, Illogical, reason-defying, Lives that passionate, primal desire; Insistent, persistent, forever Man cries to the silences, Never Shall Death reign the lord of the soul, Shall the dust be the ultimate goal— I will storm the black bastions of Night! I will tread where my vision has trod, I will set in the darkness a light, In the vastness, a god!" As the forehead of Man grows broader, so do his creeds; And his gods they are shaped in his image, and mirror his needs ”
“ V Hath she too long dwelt dream-bound in the world of love, Unconscious of the sterner throes, The more austere, impersonal, wide faith, The urge that drives Christs to the cross Not for the love of one beloved, But for the love of all? If so, she wakes! Wakes and demands a share in all man's bolder destinies, The high, audacious ventures of the soul That thinks to scale the bastioned slopes And strike stark Chaos from his throne. We still stand in the dawn of time. ”
“ Is far more futile than to fling your laughter in the face of Death. For writhe or whirl in dervish rout, they are not flattered there on high, Or sham belief to hide a doubt—no gods are mine that love a lie! Nor gods that beg belief on earth with portents that some seer foretells— Is life itself not wonder-worth that we must cry for miracles? Is it not strange enough we breathe? Does every- thing not God reveal? ”
“ He dwelt in an alien glamor, He wrought of its gleams a crown,— But the world, with its cruelty and clamor, Broke him and beat him down; So he passed; he was worn, he was weary, He was slain at the touch of life;— With a smile that was wistful and eerie He passed from the senseless strife;— So he ceased (is their humor satiric, These gods that make perfect and blight?) — He ceased like an exquisite lyric That dies on the breast of night. ”
“ Shall build, with mingled truth and lies, new icons from the world-old clods. Through all the tangled creeds and dreams and shifting shibboleths men hold The false-and-true, inwoven, gleams: a matted mass of dross and gold. Prove, then, thy gods in thine own soul; all others' gods, for thee, are vain; Nor swerved be, struggling for the goal, by bribe of joy nor threat of pain. As skulls grow broader, so do faiths; as old tongues die, old gods die, too, And only ghosts of gods and wraiths may meet the backward-gazer's view. ”
“ The pennons of morning advance to the music of rock-fretted rills, The dumb forest quickens to song, and the little gusts shout as they fling A floor-cloth of orchard bloom down for the flashing, quick feet of the Spring. To the road, gipsy-heart, thou and I! 'Tis the mad piper, Spring, who is leading; 'Tis the pulse of his piping that throbs through the brain, irresistibly pleading; Full-blossomed, deep-bosomed, fain woman, light-footed, lute-throated and fleet, We have drunk of the wine of this Wanderer's song ”
“ 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. ”
“ 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 of steel apulse with all the power of hell, Forth from the darkness leaps in pride a hateful miracle, The flagship of their Admiral—and now God help and save!— We challenge Death at Death's own game ”
“ 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! ”
“ 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 ”
“ 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! ”
“ It is man to man and breast to breast and eye to bloodshot eye And the reach and twist of the thrusting wrist, as it was in the days gone by! Along the shaken hills the guns their drumming thunder roll— But the keen blades thrill with the lust to kill that leaps from the slayer's soul! For hand and heart and living steel, one pulse of hate they feel. Is your clan afraid of the naked blade? Does it flinch from the bitter steel? Perish your dreams of conquest then, your swollen hopes and bold, For empire dwells with the stabbing blade, as it did in the days of old! ”
“ But how the heart leaps up to greet The headlong, rebel flight, Whenas some reckless meteor Blazes across the night! Some comet—Byron—Lucifer— Has dared to Be, and fight! No doubt but it is safe to dwell Where ordered duties are; No doubt the cherubs earn their wage Who wind each ticking star; No doubt the system is quite right!— Sane, ordered, regular; But how the rebel fires the soul Who dares the strong gods' ire! ”
“ Or utter only words of wail From throats all harsh with pain. "Silvia, Silvia, Be Springtime, as of old; Come clad in laughter, Silvia, Our Springtime, as of old: The waiting lowlands and the hills Are tremulous with daffodils Unblown, until thy footstep thrills Their promise into gold."_ And, musing on her here, I too Must wonder if it can be true She died, as other mortals do. The thought would fit her more, to feign That, full of life and unaware That earth holds aught of grief or stain, The fairies stole and hold her where Death enters not, nor strife nor pain ”
“ And in the sap that leaps and sings We hear again the chant the cricket flings Across the hawthorn-scented dusks of May. REALITIES REALITIES WE are deceived by the shadow, we see not the substance of things. For the hills are less solid than thought; and deeds are but vapors; and flesh Is a mist thrown off and resumed by the soul, as a world by a god. Back of the transient appearance dwells in ineffable calm The utter reality, ultimate truth ”
“ Ah, Song! we sped our bold imaginings As far as yon red planet's triple rings;— O Life! O Love! I followed, followed thee! There waits one word to end my journeyings: "Lo, I am Death; I bid thee follow me!" DREAMS AND DUST SELVES My dust in ruined Babylon Is blown along the level plain, And songs of mine at dawn have soared Above the blue Sicilian main. We are ourselves, and not ourselves ... For ever thwarting pride and will Some forebear's passion leaps from death To claim a vital license still. ”
“ NEWS FROM BABYLON "Archaeologists have discovered a love-letter among the ruins of Babylon." —Newspaper report. The world hath just one tale to tell, and it is very old, A little tale—a simple tale—a tale that's easy told: "There was a youth in Babylon who greatly loved a maid!" The world hath just one song to sing, but sings it unafraid, A little song—a foolish song—the only song it hath: "There was a youth in Ascalon who loved a girl in Gath!" ”
“ For him who fain would teach the world The world holds hate in fee— For Socrates, the hemlock cup; For Christ, Gethsemane. IN MARS, WHAT AVATAR? "In Vishnu-land, what avatar?" —BROWNING. PERCHANCE the dying gods of Earth Are destined to another birth, And worn-out creeds regain their worth In the kindly air of other stars— What lords of life and light hold sway In the myriad worlds of the Milky Way? ”
“ Already the dangerous, tender Regard of the gods marked him out— (On whom the burden and duty They bind, at his earliest breath, Of showing their own grave beauty, They love and they crown with death.) ”
“ A marvelous world ye are! _But lo! in the midst of a million stars Ye are only one pale star! A breath stirs the dark abysses.... The deeps below the deep Are troubled and vexed ... and a thousand worlds Fall on eternal sleep!_ THE COMRADE I HATH not man at his noblest An air of something more than man?— A hint of grace immortal, Born of his greatly daring to assist the gods In conquering these shaggy wastes, These desert worlds, And planting life and order in these stars?— So Woman at her best: Her eyes are bright with visions and with dreams That triumph over time ”
“ Tiber-side and Nilus-tide brightened with the gleam— Oh, the suing, sighing, wooing, sad and merry hours, Blisses tasted, kisses wasted, building Babel's towers! Hearts were aching, hearts were breaking, lashes wet with dew, When the ships touched the lips of islands Sappho knew; Yearning breasts and burning breasts, cold at last, are hid Amid the glooms of carven tombs in Khufu's pyramid— Though the sages, down the ages, smile their cynic doubt, Man and maid, unafraid, put the schools to rout ”
“ Come forth and gain life and grasp God by foregoing gains worthless of life"— It was thus spake the wizard wildwood, low-voiced to the hearkening heart, It was thus sang the jovial hills, and the harper sun bore part. ”
“ They're lovelier flowers, they're kindlier creeds. THE AWAKENING THE steam, the reek, the fume, of prayer Blown outward for a million years, Becomes a mist between the spheres, And waking Sentience struggles there. Prayer still creates the boon we pray; And gods we've hoped for, from those hopes Will gain sufficient form one day And in full godhood storm the slopes Where ancient Chaos, stark and gray, Already trembles for his sway. ”
“ For if gods stoop, and with quaint jugglery Mock nature's laws, how shall that profit thee?— The nobler lesson is that mortals can Grow godlike through this baffled front of man! AT LAST EACH race has died and lived and fought for the "true" gods of that poor race, Unconsciously, divinest thought of each race gilding its god's face. ”
Common terms
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