echo." Yet if the petal be authentic rose, the answer will surely come.
Some poets seek to raft oblivion by putting on frock coats and reading
their works aloud to the women's clubs. Don Marquis has no taste for
that sort of mummery. But little by little his potent, yeasty verses,
fashioned from the roaring loom of every day, are winning their way into
circulation. Any reader who went to _Dreams and Dust_ (poems, published
October, 1915) expecting to find light and waggish laughter, was on a
blind quest. In that book speaks the hungry and visionary soul of this
man, quick to see beauty and grace in common things, quick to question
the answerless face of life--

Still mounts the dream on shining pinion,
Still broods the dull distrust;
Which shall have ultimate dominion,
Dream, or dust?

Heavy men are light on their feet: it takes stout poets to write nimble
verses (Mr. Chesterton, for instance). Don Marquis has something of
Dobsonian cunning to set his musings to delicate, austere music. He can
turn a rondeau or a triolet as gracefully as a paying teller can roll
Durham cigarettes.

How neat this is:

TO A DANCING DOLL

Formal, quaint, precise, and trim,
You begin your steps demurely--
There's a spirit almost prim
In the feet that move so surely.