  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 Wheeling over Arrochar; And the lonely hopeless calling Of the bell-buoy on the bar, Moves in sleep and cannot rest. 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 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. Lodge among some leaves and dew Hillward, then across the gloaming This dark mottled thing was you? "Or is my mute guest whose coming So unheralded befell From the border wilds of dreamland, Only whimsy Ariel, "Gleaning with the wind, in furrows Lonelier than dawn to reap, Dust and shadow and forgetting, Frost and reverie and sleep? Felt the darkness reel and cease, Was thy soul a wan blue lotus Laid upon her lips for peace? "And through all the years that wayward Passion in one mortal breath, Making thee a thing of silence, Made thee as the lords of death? "Or did goblin men contrive thee In the forges of the hills Out of thistle-drift and sundown Lost amid their tawny rills, 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, Gave thee spirit, free forever, Thou immortal and so frail! "Surely thou art not that sun-bright Psyche, hoar with age, and hurled On the northern shore of Lethe, To this wan Auroral world! Are the yester-years all done? Have the oars of Charon ferried All thy playmates from the sun? "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 Through the trembling harvest sky, Where the silent Northern streamers Change and rest not till they die? The blue firmamental waste, 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, 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? Ash of ruined days and sleep, And the two great orbs of splendid Melting sable deep on deep! "Pilot of the shadow people, 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, With the dust upon his forehead, And the shadow in his face. As the roadside wind goes by, And the fourscore years that vanish 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. 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. 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, 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 Till the shifting dream be done? I pursue the endless way Of the dust and shadew kindred, Thou art perfect for a day. "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 Wrought of sun and wind and snow, I survive the fault and failure. The wise Fates will have it so. But the morn shall wipe all trace 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 Through the night, and bids thee forth. "Go, and when thou hast discovered Her whose dark eyes match thy wings, Bid that lyric heart beat lighter For the joy thy beauty brings." My light guest up, and bade speed On the trail where no one tarries That wayfarer few will heed. |
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