PULVIS
ET UMBRA
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THERE
is dust upon my fingers,
Pale gray dust of
beaten wings,
Where a great moth came and settled
From the night’s
blown winnowings.
Harvest with her low red planets
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Wheeling
over Arrochar;
And the lonely hopeless calling
Of the bell-buoy on
the bar,
Where the sea with her old secret
Moves in sleep and
cannot rest.
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From
that dark beyond my doorway,
Silent the unbidden
guest
Came and tarried, fearless, gentle,
Vagrant of the starlit
gloom,
One frail waif of beauty fronting
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| Immortality
and doom;
Through the chambers of the twilight
Roaming from the
vast outland,
Resting for a thousand heart-beats
In the hollow of
my hand.
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"Did the volley of a thrush-song
Lodge among some leaves
and dew
Hillward, then across the gloaming
This dark mottled
thing was you?
"Or is my mute guest whose coming
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So
unheralded befell
From the border wilds of dreamland,
Only whimsy Ariel,
"Gleaning with the wind, in furrows
Lonelier than dawn
to reap,
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Dust
and shadow and forgetting,
Frost and reverie
and sleep?
"In the hush when Cleopatra
Felt the darkness
reel and cease,
Was thy soul a wan blue lotus
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| Laid
upon her lips for peace?
"And through all the years that wayward
Passion in on mortal
breath,
Making thee a thing of silence,
Make thee as the
lords of death?
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"Or did goblin men contrive thee
In the forges of the
hills
Out of thistle-drift and sundown
Lost amid their tawny
rills,
"Every atom on their anvil
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Beaten
fine and bolted home,
Every quiver wrought to cadence
From the rapture of
a gnome?
"Then the lonely mountain wood-wind,
Straying up from
dale to dale,
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Gave
thee spirit, free forever,
Thou immortal and
so frail!
"Surly thou art not that sun-bright
Psyche, hoar with
age, and hurled
On the northern shore of Lethe,
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| To
this wan Auroral world!
"Ghost of Psyche, uncompanioned,
Are the yester-years
all done?
Have the oars of Charon ferried
All thy playmates
from the sun?
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"In thy wings the beat and breathing
Of the wind of life
abides,
And the night whose sea-gray cohorts
Swing the stars up
with the tides.
"Did they once make sail and wander
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Through
the trembling harvest sky,
Where the silent Northern streamers
Change and rest not
till they die?
"Or from clouds that tent and people
The blue firmamental
waste,
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Did
they learn the noiseless secret
Of eternity’s
unhaste?
"Where learned they to rove and loiter,
By the margin of
what sea?
Was it with outworn Demeter,
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| Searching
for Persephone?
"Or did that girl-queen behold thee
In the fields of
moveless air?
Did these wings which break no whisper
Brush the poppies
in her hair?
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"Is it thence they wear the pulvil—
Ash of ruined days
and sleep,
And the two great orbs of splendid
Melting sable deep
on deep!
"Pilot of the shadow people,
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Steering
whither by what star
Hast thou come to hapless port here,
Thou gray ghost of
Arrochar?"
For man walks the world with mourning
Down to death, and
leaves no trace,
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With
the dust upon his forehead,
And the shadow in
his face.
Pillared dust and fleeing shadow
As the roadside
wind goes by,
And the fourscore years that vanish
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| In
the twinkling of an eye.
Beauty, the fine frosty trace-work
Of some breath upon
the pane;
Spirit, the keen wintry moonlight
Flashed thereon
to fade again.
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Beauty, the white clouds a-building
When God said and
it was done;
Spirit, the sheer brooding rapture
Where no mid-day brooks
no sun.
So. And here, the open casement
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Where
my fellow-mate goes free;
Eastward, the untrodden star-road
And the long wind
on the sea
What’s to hinder but I follow
This my gypsy guide
afar,
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When
the bugle rouses slumber
Sounding taps on Arrochar?
"Where, my brother, wends the by-way,
To what bourne beneath
what sun,
Thou and I are set to travel
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| Till
the shifting dream be done?
Comrade of the dusk, forever
I pursue the endless
way
Of the dust and shadow kindred,
Thou art perfect
for a day.
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"Yet from beauty marred and broken,
Joy and memory and
tears,
I shall crush the clearer honey
In the harvest of
the years.
"Thou art faultless as a flower
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Wrought
of sun and wind and snow,
I survive the fault and failure.
The wise Fates will
have it so.
"For man walks the world in twilight,
But the morn shall
wipe all trace
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Of the
dust from off his forehead,
And the shadow from
his face.
"Cheer thee on, my tidings-bearer!
All the valor of
the North
Mounts as soul from flesh escaping
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| Through
the night, and bids thee forth.
"Go, and when thou has discovered
Her whose dark eyes
match thy wings,
Bid that lyric heart beat lighter
For the joy thy
beauty brings."
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Then I leaned far out and lifted
My light guest up,
and bade speed
On the trail where no one tarries
That wayfarer few
will heed.
Pale gray dust upon my fingers;
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And
from this my cabined room
The white soul of eager message
Racing seaward in
the gloom.
Far off shore, the sweet low calling
Of the bell-buoy
on the bar,
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Warning
night of dawn and ruin
Lonelily on Arrochar. |
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