The Magic House and Other Poems

by Duncan Campbell Scott

© Ottawa: Durie, 1893.

A Little Song

The sunset in the rosy west
    Burned soft and high;
A shore-lark fell like a stone to his nest
    In the waving rye.

A wind came over the garden beds

    From the dreamy lawn,
The pansies nodded their purple heads,
    The poppies began to yawn.

One pansy said: It is only sleep,
    Only his gentle breath:

But a rose lay strewn in a snowy heap,
    For the rose it was only death.

Heigho, we’ve only one life to live,
    And only one death to die:

The Hill Path

To H.D.S

Are the little breezes blind,
They that push me as they pass?
Do they search the tangled grass
For some path they want to find?
Take my fingers, little wind;

The Voice and the Dusk

The slender moon and one pale star,
    A rose leaf and a silver bee
From some god’s garden blown afar,
    Go down the gold deep tranquilly.

Within the south there rolls and grows  

    A mighty town with tower and spire,
From a cloud bastion masked with rose
    The lightning flashes diamond fire.

The purple-martin darts about
    The purlieus of the iris fen; 

The king-bird rushes up and out,
    He screams and whirls and screams again.

A thrush is hidden in a maze
    Of cedar buds and tamarac bloom,
He throws his rapid flexile phrase, 

    A flash of emeralds in the gloom.

A voice is singing from the hill
    A happy love of long ago;
Ah! tender voice, be still, be still,
    ‘’Tis sometimes better not to know.’

The rapture from the amber height
    Floats tremblingly along the plain,
Where in the reeds with fairy light
    The lingering fireflies gleam again.

Buried in dingles more remote, 

    Or drifted from some ferny rise,
The swooning of the golden throat
Drops in the mellow dusk and dies.

A soft wind passes lightly drawn.
    A wave leaps silverly and stirs 

For Remembrance

rolled,

    Or pulled the blood-root in the underbrush,
    And marked the ringing of the tawny thrush,
While all the west was broken burning gold.

And so I bind with rhymes these memories;
    As girls press pansies in the poet’s leaves

The Message

 Wind of the gentle summer night,
    Dwell in the lilac tree,
Sway the blossoms clustered light,
    Then blow over to me.

Wind, you are sometimes strong and great,

    You frighten the ships at sea,
Now come floating your delicate freight
    Out of the lilac tree.

Wind, you must waver a gossamer sail
    To ferry a scent so light,

Will you carry my love a message as frail
    Through the hawk-haunted night?

For my heart is sometimes strange and wild,
    Bitter and bold and free,
I scare the beautiful timid child,  

    As you frighten the ships at sea;

But now when the hawks are piercing the air,
    With the golden stars above,
The only thing my heart can bear
    Is a lilac message of love.  

The Silence of Love

My heart would need the earth,
    My voice would need the sea,
To only tell the one half
    How dear you are to me.

And if I had the winds,  

An Impromptu

The stars are in the ebon sky,
    Burning, gold, alone;
The wind roars over the rolling earth,
    Like water over a stone.

We are like things in a river-bed,

    The stream runs over,
They see the iris, and arrowhead,
    Anemone, and clover.

But they cannot touch the shining things,
    For all their strife,

For the strong river swirls and swings—
    And that is much like life.

For life is a plunging and heavy stream,
    And there’s something bright above;
But the ills of breathing only seem,

    When we know the light is love.

The stars are in the ebon sky,
    Burning, gold, alone;
The wind roars over the rolling earth,
    Like water over a stone.

From the Farm on the Hill

To A.P.S.

Is hardly stirred.

The sky is veiled with clouds,
With diaphanous tissue;
Through their dissolving films
The stars shine,

But how infinitely removed;
How inaccessible!

In the distant city
Under the obscure towers
The lights of watchers gleam;

Haunted with vain melancholy,
A whip-poor-will wanders,
Forcing his monotonous song.

All the ancient desire
Of the human spirit

At Scarboro’ Beach

  The wave is over the foaming reef
    Leaping alive in the sun,
Seaward the opal sails are blown
    Vanishing one by one.

’Tis leagues around the blue sea curve

    To the sunny coast of Spain,
And the ships that sail so deftly out
    May never come home again.

A mist is wreathed round Richmond point,
    There’s a shadow on the land,

But the sea is in the splendid sun,
    Plunging so careless and grand.

The sandpipers trip on the glassy beach,
    Ready to mount and fly;
Whenever a ripple reaches their feet

    They rise with a timorous cry.

Take care, they pipe, take care, take care,
    For this is the treacherous main,
And though you may sail so deftly out,
    You may never come home again.

The Fifteenth of April

To A.L.

Falls and spreads and searches,
    Where, beyond the wood,
Starts a group of silver birches,
    Bursting into bud.

Under Venus sings the vesper sparrow,  

    Quivering silver-strong
From the field a hidden shore-lark
    Shakes his sparkling song.

Now the dewy sounds begin to dwindle,
    Dimmer grow the burnished rills,

November

To Winter

Come, O thou conqueror of the flying year;
Come from thy fastness of the Arctic suns;
Mass on the purple waste and wide frontier
Thy wanish hosts and silver clarions.

Then heap this sombre shoulder of the world

With shifting bastions; let thy storm winds blare;
Drift wide thy pallid gonfalon unfurled;
And arm with daggers all the desperate air.

These are but raids in dreams, and friendly brawls;
Thou art a gentle giant that half sleeps,  

And blusters grandly to his frozen thralls,
The more to charm them with the wealth he keeps:

We hardly hear thy bluff and hearty word,
When over the first the first flower sings the first bird.

To Winter

Come, O thou season of intense repose;
Come with thy lidded eyes and crystal breath;
Come gently with thy soft release of snows;
And bring thy few short months of tender death.

Build a huge tomb within the desert frore,

With green clear chambers in the icy rift,
Carve the sleep rune above the crystal door,
And trench a legend in the pallid drift.

Let the large stars about the horizon lie,
Watching the confines of the world’s great sleep;

Spread the vast province of the purple sky,
With thy wan curtains dropped from deep to deep.

Then hush the stir and bid the movement cease;
Pass gently, leave the tired world in peace. 

The Ideal

 Let your soul grow a thing apart,
    Untroubled by the restless day,
Sublimed by some unconscious art,
    Controlled by some divine delay.

For life is greater than they think,

A Summer Storm

 Last night a storm fell on the world
    From heights of drouth and heat,
The surly clouds for weeks were furled,
    The air could only sway and beat,

The beetles clattered at the blind,

    The hawks fell twanging from the sky,
The west unrolled a feathery wind,
    And the night fell sullenly.

The storm leaped roaring from its lair,
    Like the shadow of doom,

The poignard lightning searched the air,
    The thunder ripped the shattered gloom,

The rain came down with a roar like fire,
    Full-voiced and clamorous and deep,
The weary world had its heart’s desire,

And now in the morning early,
    The clouds are sailing by
Clearly, oh! so clearly,
    The distant mountains lie.  

The wind is very mild and slow,
    The clouds obey his will,
They part and part and onward go,
    Travelling together still.

’Tis very sweet to be alive,

    On a morning that’s so fair,
For nothing seems to stir or strive,
    In the unconscious air.

A tawny thrush is in the wood,
    Ringing so wild and free;

Life and Death

I thought of death beside the lonely sea,
That went beyond the limit of my sight,
Seeming the image of his mastery,
The semblance of his huge and gloomy might,

But firm beneath the sea went the great earth,  

With sober bulk and adamantine hold,
The water but a mantle for her girth,
That played about her splendour fold on fold.

And life seemed like this dear familar shore,
That stretched from the wet sands’ last wavy crease,

Beneath the sea’s remote and sombre roar,
To inland stillness and the wilds of peace.

Death seems triumphant only here and there;
Life is the sovereign presence everywhere. 

In the Country Churchyard

To the memory of my father

And the last gold that smote the ashen west
       Lies garnered here between the harvest hills.

This spot has never known the heat of toil,
    Save when the angel with the mighty spade
    Has turned the sod and built the house of shade; 

But here old chance is guardian of the soil;
       Green leaf and grey,
The barrows blossom with the tangled spoil,
       And God’s own weeds are fair in God’s own

       And tells the robin his forgotten song.

These flowers may rise amid the dewy fern,
    They may not root within this antique wall,
    The dead have chosen for their coronal,
No buds that flaunt of life and flare and burn;

       They have agreed,
To choose a beauty puritan and stern,
       The universal grass, the homely weed.

This is the paradise of common things,
    The scourged and trampled here find peace to

In the vast province of perpetual night,
       He holds secure, inviolate, alone.

The poor forgets that ever he was poor,
    The priest has lost his science of the truth,
    The maid her beauty, and the youth his youth,  

The statesman has forgot his subtle lure,
       The old his age,
The sick his suffering, and the leech his cure,
       The poet his perplexed and vacant page.

These swains that tilled the uplands in the sun  

       The last harsh harvest from the earth’s patient

O dwellers in the valley vast and fair,
    I would that calling from your tranquil clime,
    You make a truce for me with cruel time;
For I am weary of this eager care

       That never dies;
I would be born into your tranquil air,
       Your deserts crowned and sovereign silences.

I would, but that the world is beautiful,
    And I am more in love with the sliding years,  

Within the orchard, where the red tree spills,
       The fragrant fruitage over branch and prop.

The cows go lowing through the lovely vale;
    The clarion peacock warns the world of rain,
    Perched on the barn a gaudy weather-vane;  

The farm lad holloes from the shifted rail,
       Along the grove
He beats a measure on his ringing pail,
       And sings the heart-song of his early love.

There is a honey scent along the air;  

       That lifts and lingers in the hollow shade.

And now a spirit in the east, unseen,
    Raises the moon above her misty eyes,
    And travels up the veiled and starless skies,
Viewing the quietude of her demesne;  

       Stainless and slow,
I watch the lustre of her planet’s sheen,
       From burnished gold to liquid silver flow.

And now I leave the dead with you, O night;
    You wear the semblance of their fathomless state,

       Crowned with strange stars and silences

Song

The Magic House

In the House of Dreams

    The limpid west, a pallid poplar wove
    A spell of shadow; through the meadow drove
A deep unbroken brook without a ford.

A fountain flung and poised a golden ball;
    On the soft grass a frosted serpent lay,  

II

    Then flushing red with rage, his spear did fling,
And cut the gladiolus at one blow.

Then back he swung his flaming weapon high,
    And smote the snake and called a magic name;
Then the whole garden vanished utterly,  

The River Town

 There’s a town where shadows run
    In the sparkle and the blue,
By the river and the sun
    Swept and flooded thro’ and thro’.

There the sailor trolls a song,  

    There the sea-gull dips her wing,
There the wind is clear and strong,
    There the waters break and swing.

But at night with leaden sweep
    Come the clouds along the flood,  

Lifting in the vaulted deep
    Pinions of a giant brood.

Charging by the slip, the whole
    River rushes black and sheer,
There the great fish heave and roll  

    In the gloom beyond the pier.

All the lonely hollow town
    Towers above the windy quay,
And the ancient tide goes down
    With its secret to the sea.  

Off the Isle aux Coudres

    Swaying the light marish grasses more and more
    Until they float, and the slow tide brims o’er,
And then a rivulet runs along the breeze.

O night! thou art so beautiful, so strange, so sad;
    I feel that sense of scope and ancientness,  

At les Eboulements

To M.E S.

The bay is set with ashy sails,
    With purple shades that fade and flee,
And curling by in silver wales,
    The tide is straining from the sea.

The grassy points are slowly drowned,  

    The water laps and over-rolls,
The wicker pêche; with shallow sound
    A light wave labours on the shoals.

The crows are feeding in the foam,
    They rise in crowds tumultuously,  

Above St. Irénée

       Down to the sombre sea,
          And clustered by the leaping brook,
       The roofs of white St. Irénée.

The sapphire hills on either hand
    Broke down upon the silver tide,  

       Where far away the south shore gleams.

I walked a mile along the height
    Between the flowers upon the road,
       Asters and golden-rod;
          And in the gardens pinks and stocks,  

And gaudy poppies shaking light,
       And daisies blooming near the sod,
          And lowly pansies set in flocks,
       With purple monkshood overawed.

And there I saw a little child  

          No other name methought could cling
       To any one so fair as she.

And when we came at last to meet,
    I spoke a simple word to her,
       ‘Where are you going Marie?’  

Written in a Copy of Archibald Lampman’s Poems

Off Rivière du Loop

 O ship incoming from the sea
    With all your cloudy tower of sail,
Dashing the water to the lee,
    And leaning grandly to the gale;

The sunset pageant in the west  

    Has filled your canvas curves with rose,
And jewelled every toppling crest
    That crashes into silver snows!

You know the joy of coming home,
    After long leagues to France or Spain;  

You feel the clear Canadian foam
    And the gulf water heave again.

Between these sombre purple hills
    That cool the sunset’s molten bars,
You will go on as the wind wills,  

    Beneath the river’s roof of stars.

You will toss onward toward the lights
    That spangle over the lonely pier,
By hamlets glimmering on the heights,
    By level islands black and clear.  

You will go on beyond the tide,
    Through brimming plains of olive sedge,
Through paler shallows light and wide,
    The rapids piled along the ledge.

At evening off some reedy bay  

At the Cedars

To W.W.C.

You had two girls—Baptiste—
One is Virginie—
Hold hard—Baptiste!
Listen to me.

The whole drive was jammed  

From above.

The gang yelled and tore
For the shore,
The logs gave a grind
Like a wolf’s jaws behind,  

Were ashore.

He leaped on a log in the front of the

And came down on his own.

He went up like a block
With the shock,
And when he was there
In the air,  

And crushed him;
When he rose from his place
There was blood on his face.

There were some girls, Baptiste,
Picking berries on the hillside,  

The birch cracked like a shell
In that rush of hell,
And I saw them both sink—

Baptiste!—
He had two girls,  

The End of the Day

The day is done, done, done,
       The day is done.

The dew has gathered in the flowers,
    Like tears from some unconscious deep:
The swallows whirl around the towers,  

       The light runs out beyond the long cloud bars,
       And leaves the single stars;
’Tis time for sleep, sleep, sleep,
       ’Tis time for sleep.

The hermit thrush begins again,—  

The Reed-Player

To B.C.By a dim shore where water darkening
    Took the last light of spring,
I went beyond the tumult, hearkening
    For some diviner thing.

When the bats flew from the black elms like leaves,

    That trembled and was still.

It seemed as if a line of amber fire
    Had shot the gathered dusk,
As if had blown a wind from ancient Tyre
    Laden with myrrh and musk.

He gave his luring note amid the fern;
    Its enigmatic fall
Haunted the hollow dusk with golden turn
    And argent interval.

I could not know the message that he bore,

    The springs of life from me
Hidden; his incommunicable lore
    As much a mystery.

And as I followed far the magic player
    He passed the maple wood,

A Flock of Sheep

To C.G.D.R.

Over the field the bright air clings and tingles,
    In the gold sunset while the red wind swoops;
Upon the nibbled knolls and from the dingles,
    The sheep are gathering in frightened groups.

From the wide field the laggards bleat and follow,

    A drover hurls his cry and hooting laugh;
And one young swain, too glad to whoop or hollo,
    Is singing wildly as he whirls his staff.

Now crowding into little groups and eddies
    They swirl about and charge and try to pass;  

The sheep-dog yelps and heads them off and

    And rounds and moulds them in a seething mass.

They stand a moment with their heads uplifted
    Till the wise dog barks loudly on the flank,
They all at once roll over and are drifted  

    Down the small hill toward the river bank.

Covered with rusty marks and purple blotches
    Around the fallen bars they flow and leap;
The wary dog stands by and keenly watches
    As if he knew the name of every sheep.

Now down the road the nimble sound decreases,
    The drovers cry, the dog delays and whines,
And now with twinkling feet and glimmering fleeces
    They round and vanish past the dusky pines.

The drove is gone, the ruddy wind grows colder,  

A Portrait

Slender clouds above the dawn,
Or like ferns above her eyes,
Ferns and pools in Paradise.

Her sweet mouth is like a flower,
Like a poppy full of power,  

Shaken light and crimson stain,
Pressed together by the rain,
Glowing liquid in the sun,
When the rain is done.

When she moves, her motionings  

Like the waters swerving sheer,
In the sunlight magical,
Down a ringing fall.

Here her spirit came to dwell
From the passionate Israfel;  

One of those great songs of his
Rounded to a soul like this;
And when she seems so strange at even,
He must be singing in the heaven;

When she wears that charméd smile,  

At the Lattice

Good-night, Marie, I kiss thine eyes,
    A tender touch on either lid;
They cover, as a cloud, the skies
    Where like a star your soul lies hid.

My love is like a fire that flows,  

    This touch will leave a tiny scar,
I’ll claim you by it for my rose,
    My rose, my own, where’er you are.

And when you bind your hair, and when
    You lie within your silken nest,  

The First Snow

I

    Between the dusky alders’ woven ranks,
    A stream thought yet about his summer banks,
And made an August music in the place.

Along the horizon’s faded shrunken lines,
    Veiling the gloomy borders of the night,  

II

And traces of the skirmish in the wood.

The stars sprang out and flashed serenely near,
    The solid frost came down with might and  

In November

To J.A.R.

The ruddy sunset lies
    Banked along the west;
In flocks with sweep and rise
    The birds are going to rest.

The air clings and cools,  

    And the reeds look cold,
Standing above the pools,
    Like rods of beaten gold.

The flaunting golden-rod
    Has lost her worldly mood,  

She’s given herself to God,
    And taken a nun’s hood.

The wild and wanton horde,
    That kept the summer revel,
Have taken the serge and cord,  

    And given the slip to the Devil.

The winter’s loose somewhere,
    Gathering snow for a fight;
From the feel of the air
    I think it will freeze to-night.  

The Sleeper

Touched with some divine repose,
    Isabelle has fallen asleep,
Like the perfume from the rose
    In and out her breathings creep.

Dewy are her rosy palms,  

    In her cheek the flushes flit,
And a dream her spirit calms
    With the pleasant thought of it.

All the rounded heavens show
    Like the concave of a pearl,  

Stars amid the opal glow
    Little fronds of flame unfurl.

Then upfloats a planet strange,
    Not the moon that mortals know,
With a magic mountain range,  

    Cones and craters white as snow;

Something different yet the same—
    Rain by rainbows glorified,
Roses lit with lambent flame—
    ’Tis the maid moon’s other side.  

When the sleeper floats from sleep,
    She will smile the vision o’er,
See the veinéd valleys deep,
    No one ever saw before.

Yet the moon is not betrayed,  

 A Night in June

The world is heated seven times,
       The sky is close above the lawn,
       An oven when the coals are drawn.

There is no stir of air at all,
       Only at times an inward breeze  

       Turns back a pale leaf in the trees.

Here’s the syringa’s rich perfume
       Covers the tulip’s red retreat,
       A burning pool of scent and heat.

The pallid ligtning wavers dim  

       Between the trees, then deep and dense
       The darkness settles more intense.

A hawk lies panting in the grass,
       Or plunges upward through the air,
       The lightning shows him whirling there.  

       That splits the gloom with vivid gold;

Dead silence, then a little sound,
       The distance chokes the thunder down,
       It shudders faintly in the town.

A fountain plashing in the dark  

Memory

I see a schooner in the bay
    Cutting the current into foam;
One day she flies and then one day
    Comes like a swallow veering home.

I hear a water miles away  

    Go sobbing down the wooded glen;
One day it lulls and then one day
    Comes sobbing on the wind again.

Remembrance goes but will not stay;
    That cry of unpermitted pain  

Youth and Time

Move not so lightly, Time, away,
    Grant us a breathing-space of tender ruth;
Deal not so harshly with the flying day,
    Leave us the charm of spring, the touch of youth.

Leave us the lilacs wet with dew,  

    Leave us the balsams odorous with rain,
Leave us of frail hepaticas a few,
    Let the red osier sprout for us again.

Leave us the hazel thickets set
    Along the hills, leave us a month that yields  

The fragile bloodroot and the violet,
    Leave us the sorrage shimmering on the fields.

You offer us largess of power,
    You offer fame, we ask not these in sooth,
These comfort age upon his failing hour,  

A Memory in the ‘Inferno’

La Belle Feronière

    Thy dreaming smile; thy subtle loveliness!
    Ah! laughter airier far than ours, I guess,
Lighted thy brow, fleeter than fire in grass.

Yet, there is something fateful in thy face:
    Say, when the master caught it, didst thou know,

A November Day

Ottawa

    The Lamia city of the northern star,
    Than be so hard with craft or wild with war,
Peopled with deeds remembered for their woe.

Thou art too bright for guile, too young for tears,
    And thou wilt live to be too strong for Time;  

Song

Night and the Pines

       While all the trembling stars move on  

Under the cliff there drops a lonely fall,
    Deep and half heard its thunder lifts and

       Upfloats that cry of light despair,
       As if a demon laughed upon the air.

A raven croaks from out his ebon sleep,
    When a brown cone falls near him thorugh the

    Afar within the larches wakes the lark;
       The wind moves on the cedar hill,
       Tossing the weird cry of the whip-poor-will.

Sometimes a titan wind, slumbrous and hushed,
    Takes the dark grove within his swinging power;

And like a cradle softly pushed,
    The shade sways slowly for a lulling hour;
       While through the cavern sweeps a cry,
       A Sibyl with her secret prophecy.

When morning lifts its fragile silver dome,

A Night in March

At eve the fiery sun went forth
    Flooding the clouds with ruby blood,
Up roared a war-wind from the north
    And crashed at midnight through the wood.

The demons danced about the trees,

    The snow slipped singing over the wold,
And ever when the wind would cease
    A lynx cried out within the cold.

A spirit walked the ringing rooms,
    Passing the locked and secret door,  

Heavy with divers ancient dooms,
    With dreams dead laden to the core.

‘Spirit, thou art too deep with woe,
    I have no harbour place for thee,
Leave me to lesser griefs, and go,  

    Go with the great wind to the sea.’

I faltered like a frightened child,
    That fears its nurse’s fairy brood,
And as I spoke, I heard the wild
    Wind plunging through the shattered wood.  

‘Hast thou betrayed the rest of kings,
    With tragic fears and spectres wan,
My dreams are lit with purer things,
    With humbler ghosts, begone, begone.’

The noisy dark was deaf and blind,  

    Still the strange spirit strayed or stood,
And I could only hear the wind
    Go roaring through the riven wood.

‘Art thou the fate for some wild heart,
    That scorned his cavern’s curve and bars,  

That leaped the bounds of time and art,
    And lost thee lingering near the stars?’

It was so still I heard my thought,
    Even the wind was very still,
The desolate deeper silence brought  

    The lynx-moan from the lonely hill.

‘Art thou the thing I might have been,
    If all the dead had known control,
Risen through the ages trembling sheen,
    A mirage of my desert soul?  

The wind rushed down the roof in wrath,
    Then shrieked and held its breath and stood,
Like one who finds beside his path,
    A dead girl in the marish wood.

‘Or have I ceased, as those who die  

    And leave the broken word unsaid,
Art thou the spirit ministry
    That hovers round the newly dead?

The auroras rose in solitude,
    And wanly paled within the room,  

The window showed an ebon rood,
    Upon the blanched and ashen gloom.

I heard a voice within the dark,
    That answered not my idle word,
I could not choose but pause and hark,  

    It was so magically stirred.

It grew within the quiet hour,
    With the rose shadows on the wall,
It had a touch of ancient power,
    A wild and elemental fall;

Its rapture had a dreaming close:
    The dawn grew slowly on the wold,
Spreading in fragile veils of rose,
    In tender lines of lemon-gold.

The world was turning into light,  

September

    And in the dales a deeper silence dwells;
    The crickets mourn with funeral flutes and bells,
For days before the summer had grown old.

Now the night-gloom with hurrying wings is stirred,
    Strangely the comrade pipings rise and sink,  

By the Willow Spring

To E.W.

Scented like almonds, with a flesh like dew
And luscious-sweet as honey through and through.
She left it sadly on the sleepy lawn,
But when she came again her apple gold was gone.

Day after day for days she mutely strove, 

More mute, more eerie, more ethereal;
Her soul burned whitely in its waning shell.

Then came the winter with his frosty breath
And made the world an image of white death,
And like to death he found the charméd child; 

Now she is dead, they thought; but never so,
She died not when the winter winds did blow;
She was a spirit of the summer air,
She would not vanish at the year’s despair.

At length the merry sun grew warm and high, 

They found her dead beside her darling spring.

This is her tale, her murmurous monument
Flows softly where her fragile life was spent,
Not grooved in brass not trenched in pallid stone,
But told by water to the reeds alone.