FRAGMENT OF AN ODE TO CANADA

THIS is the land!
It lies outstretched a vision of delight,
Bent like a shield between the silver seas
It flashes back the hauteur of the sun;
Yet teems with humblest beauties, still a part

Of its Titanic and ebullient heart.

Land of the glacial, lonely mountain ranges,
Where nothing haps save vast Æonian changes,
The slow moraine, the avalanche’s wings,
Summer and Sun,—the elemental things,

Pulses of Awe,—Winter and Night and the lightnings.
Land of the pines that rear their dusky spars
A ready midnight for the earliest stars.
The land of rivers, rivulets, and rills,
Straining incessant everyway to the sea,

With their white thunder harnessed in the mills,
Turning one wealth to another wealth perpetually;
Spinning the lightning with dynamic spindles,
Till some far city dowered with fire enkindles.
The land of fruit, fine-flavoured with the frost,

Land of the cattle, the deep-chested host,
The happy-souled, that contemplate the hours,
Their dew-laps buried in the grass and flowers.
And, O! the myriad-miracle of the grain
Cresting the hill, brimming the level plain,

The miracle of the flower and milk and kernel,
Nurtured by sun-fire and frost-fire supernal,
Until the farmer turns it in his hand,
The million-millioned miracle of the land. [Page 11]

And yet with all these pastoral and heroic graces,

Our simplest flowers wear the loveliest faces;
The sparrows are our most enraptured singers,
And round their songs the fondest memory lingers;
Our forests tower and tremble, star-enchanted,
Their roots are by the timid spirits haunted

Of hermit thrushes,—trancèd is the air,
Ever in doubt when they shall sing or where;
The mountains may with ice and avalanche wrestle,
Far down their rugged steeps dimple and nestle
The still, translucent, turquoise-hearted tarns.

And Thou, O Power, that ’stablishest the Nation,
Give wisdom in the midst of our elation;
Who are so free that we forget we are—
That freedom brings the deepest obligation:
Grant us this presage for a guiding star,

To lead the van of Peace, not with a craven spirit,
But with the consciousness that we inherit
What built the Empire out of blood and fire,
And can smite, too, in passion and with ire.
Purge us of Pride, who are so quick in vaunting

Thy gift, this land, that is in nothing wanting;
Give Mind to match the glory of the gift,
Give great Ideals to bridge the sordid rift
Between our heritage and our use of it.
Then in some day of terror for the world,

When all the flags of the Furies are unfurled,
When Truth and Justice, wildered and unknit,
Shall turn for help to this young, radiant land,
We shall be quick to see and understand: [Page 12]
What shall we answer in that stricken hour?

Shall the deep thought be pregnant then with power?
Shall the few words spring swift and grave and clear?
Use well the present moment.  They shall hear.

August, 1911.

LAST YEAR

BY the grey shores of Rideau,
      The bells are calling clear,
Over the dying ripple,
      The swallows dip and veer,
The spring is coming slow,

      As it came last year!

But a slow spring is sure
      With freshets of cold rain;
As it came last year
      And ever may come again,

With flowers frail and pure,
      Where the pure snow had lain.

The bells have ceased their calling
      But silence calls as clear,
Within the earth’s shadow

      A few stars appear,
The chill night is falling
      As it fell last year. [Page 13]

AT THE CEDARS

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

The whole drive was jammed

In that bend at the Cedars,
The rapids were dammed
With the logs tight rammed
And crammed; you might know
The Devil had clinched them below.

We worked three days—not a budge,
‘She’s tight as a wedge, on the ledge,’
Says our foreman;
‘Mon Dieu! boys, look here,
We must get this thing clear.’

He cursed at the men
And we went for it then;
With our cant-dogs arow,
We just have he-yo-ho;
When she gave a big shove

From above.

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

And as quick as a flash,
With a shove and a crash,
They were down in a mash, [Page 14]
But I and ten more,
All but Isaàc Dufour,

Were ashore.

He leaped on a log in the front of the rush,
And shot out from the bind
While the jam roared behind;
As he floated along

He balanced his pole
And tossed us a song.
But just as we cheered,
Up darted a log from the bottom,
Leaped thirty feet square and fair,

And came down on his own.

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

Kissed his hand
To the land;
When he dropped
My heart stopped,
For the first logs had caught him

And crushed him;
When he rose in his place
There was blood on his face. [Page 15]

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

Where the river curls, Baptiste,
You know—on the still side
One was down by the water,
She saw Isaàc
Fall back.

She did not scream, Baptiste,
She launched her canoe;
It did seem, Baptiste,
That she wanted to die too,
For before you could think

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

Baptiste!—
He had two girls,

One is Virginie,
What God calls the other
Is not known to me. [Page 16]

ROSES ON THE PORTAGE

ROSES—roses—roses—
     How you glow and burn and beam,
Like lamps in the cave of the spruces,
     That tremble and dance and gleam.

You bloom unheeded, unbidden,

     The Indians pass you by,
Wild Toma and ancient Pierrish,
     Arcange with the gypsy eye.

You might catch in their dusky raiment,
     Strange with the odour of smoke,

Your dew might be shaken and scattered,
     Your petals all riven and broke.

Even then in the spangled morning,
     They would not heed a whit,
Your virginal tremulous beauty,

     And the innocence of it.

O, if Arcange on the portage,
     With her swarthy cheek and breast,
Could know but a tithe of your beauty,
     As she pauses there to rest,

Would she pluck you, and hold you, and kiss you,
     Would she laugh as your loveliness clears,
Would she stand there awe-stricken, silent,
     Would her brown eyes fill with tears? [Page 17]

TWIN-FLOWERS ON THE PORTAGE

THEY cover in a twinkling host
     The mosses, green and yellow,
One flower would be Titania’s boast
     Without her lovely fellow.

But linked in fragile twos they droop

     Where’er the vines may wander,
Above the hidden loop in loop
     They seem to drowse and ponder.

If form might wake in sound, these cones
     Would haunt the dewy hollow

With tabors taut and golden drones,
     With dancing flutes to follow.

If odours risen from orient wells
     Might don a sea apparel,
The blooms would beam as rosy shells

     Beneath a flood of beryl.

If thought might form in flowers, these lights
     Would be the gentle seeming
That virgin fairies bend on knights
     When they are half adreaming.

Where on the portage now they droop
     In tint and odour mellow
One flower would grace Titania’s troop
     Without her lovely fellow. [Page 18]

RAPIDS AT NIGHT

HERE at the roots of the mountains,
Between the sombre legions of cedars and tamaracks,
The rapids charge the ravine:
A little light, cast by foam under starlight,
Wavers about the shimmering stems of the birches:

Here rise up the clangorous sounds of battle,
Immense and mournful.
Far above curves the great dome of darkness
Drawn with the limitless lines of the stars and the planets.
Deep at the core of the tumult,

Deeper than all the voices that cry at the surface,
Dwells one fathomless sound,
Under the hiss and cry, the stroke and the plangent clamour.

O human heart that sleeps,
Wild with rushing dreams and deep with sadness!

The abysmal roar drops into almost silence,
While over its sleep play in various cadence
Innumerous voices crashing in laughter;
Then rising calm, overwhelming,
Slow in power,

Rising supreme in utterance,
It sways, and reconquers and floods all the spaces of silence,
One voice, deep with the sadness, [Page 19]
That dwells at the core of all things.
There by a nest in the glimmering birches,

Speaks a thrush as if startled from slumber,
Dreaming of Southern ricefields,
The moted glow of the amber sunlight,
Where the long ripple roves among the reeds.

Above curves the great dome of darkness,

Scored with the limitless lines of the stars and the planets;
Like the strong palm of God,
Veined with the ancient laws,
Holding a human heart that sleeps,
Wild with rushing dreams and deep with the sadness,

That dwells at the core of all things. [Page 20]

AFTERWARDS

I WATCHED thee with devotion
     Through all those silent years,
Thy least regarded motion,
     Thy laughter and thy tears.

But thou, when fate would sever

     The visionary tie,
Unconscious and for ever
     Left me without a sigh.

Yet though I needs must borrow
     My comfort from distress,

I would not give my sorrow
     For thy unconsciousness. [Page 20]

AT THE END

I HAVE learned well,—a child I’ve grown by knowing;
     I have taught well,—I know not why;
A few have garnered well my careless sowing,
     And one sound kernel fills the granary.

I have fought well,—have turned and dared disaster;

     I’ve been well vanquished—and I know not why;
Well have I suffered and called no man master,
     But have wrought sleepless for the mastery.

I have loved well,—and that’s the best of living;
     I’ve been well loved,—I know not why;

But O, the rapture of the giving!
     And of the taking—the wild ecstasy!

I boast too well, you say, a noisy scandal
     Vexing the hearing of the scornful gods:
But life,—yes, life was worth the candle,

     So what’s the odds;

He that cowers now is not the less a varlet,
     I know I’ll brave them well,—I know not why;
Toss me my proudest cloak of green and scarlet,
     Fellows,—old friends,—good bye. [Page 21]

INDIAN PLACE-NAMES

THE race has waned and left but tales of ghosts,
That hover in the world like fading smoke
About the lodges: gone are the dusky folk
That once were cunning with the thong and snare
And mighty with the paddle and the bow;

They lured the silver salmon from his lair,
They drove the buffalo in trampling hosts,
And gambled in the tepees until dawn,
But now their vaunted prowess all is gone,
Gone like a moose-track in the April snow.

But all the land is murmurous with the call
Of their wild names that haunt the lovely glens
Where lonely water falls, or where the street
Sounds all day with the tramp of myriad feet;
Toronto triumphs; Winnipeg flows free,

And clangs the iron height where gaunt Quebec
Lies like a lion in a lily bed,
And Restigouche takes the whelmed sound of sea,
Meductic falls, and flutes the Mirimichi;
Kiskisink where the shy mallard breeds

Breaks into pearls beneath his whirling wings,
And Manitowapah sings;
They flow like water, or like wind they flow,
Waymoucheeching, loon-haunted Manowan,
Far Mistassini by her frozen wells,

Gold-hued Wayagamac brimming her wooded dells:
Lone Kamouraska, Metapedia,
And Metlakahtla ring a round of bells. [Page 22]

NIGHT HYMNS ON LAKE NIPIGON

HERE in the midnight, where the dark mainland and island
Shadows mingle in shadow deeper, profounder,
Sing we the hymns of the churches, while the dead water
              Whispers before us.

Thunder is travelling slow on the path of the lightning;

One after one the stars and the beaming planets
Look serene in the lake from the edge of the storm-cloud,
              Then have they vanished.

While our canoe, that floats dumb in the bursting thunder,
Gathers her voice in the quiet and thrills and whispers,

Presses her prow in the star-gleam, and all her ripple
              Lapses in blackness.

Sing we the sacred ancient hymns of the churches,
Chanted first in old-world nooks of the desert,
While in the wild, pellucid Nipigon reaches

              Hunted the savage.

Now have the ages met in the Northern midnight,
And on the lonely, loon-haunted Nipigon reaches
Rises the hymn of triumph and courage and comfort,
              Adeste Fideles. [Page 23]

Tones that were fashioned when the faith brooded in darkness,
Joined with sonorous vowels in the noble Latin,
Now are married with the long-drawn Ojibwa,
              Uncouth and mournful.

Soft with the silver drip of the regular paddles

Falling rhythm, timed with the liquid, plangent
Sounds from the blades were the whirlpools break and are           carried
              Down into darkness;

Each long cadence, flying like a dove from her shelter
Deep in the shadow, wheels for a throbbing moment,

Poises in utterance, returning in circles of silver
              To nest in the silence.

All wild nature stirs with the infinite, tender
Plaint of a bygone age whose soul is eternal,
Bound in the lonely phrases that thrill and falter

              Back into quiet.

Back they falter as the deep storm overtakes them,
Whelms them in splendid hollows of booming thunder,
Wraps them in rain, that, sweeping, breaks and onrushes,
              Ringing like cymbals. [Page 24]

ON THE WAY TO THE MISSION

THEY dogged him all one afternoon,
Through the bright snow,
Two whitemen servants of greed;
He knew that they were there,
But he turned not his head;

He was an Indian trapper;
He planted his snow-shoes firmly,
He dragged the long toboggan
Without rest.

The three figures drifted

Like shadows in the mind of a seer;
The snow-shoes were whisperers
On the threshold of awe;
The toboggan made the sound of wings,
A wood-pigeon sloping to her nest.

The Indian’s face was calm.
He strode with the sorrow of fore-knowledge,
But his eyes were jewels of content
Set in circles of peace.

They would have shot him;

But momently in the deep forest,
They saw something flit by his side:
Their hearts stopped with fear.
Then the moon rose.
They would have left him to the spirit, [Page 25]

But they saw the long toboggan
Rounded well with furs,
With many a silver fox-skin,
With the pelts of mink and of otter.
They were the servants of greed;

When the moon grew brighter
And the spruces were dark with sleep,
They shot him.
When he fell on a shield of moonlight
One of his arms clung to his burden;

The snow had not melted:
The spirit passed away.

Then the servants of greed
Tore off the cover to count their gains;
They shuddered away into the shadows,

Hearing each the loud heart of the other.
Silence was born.

There in the tender moonlight,
     As sweet as they were in life,
Glimmered the ivory features,

     Of the Indian’s wife.

In the manner of Montagnais women
     Her hair was rolled with braid;
Under her waxen fingers
     A crucifix was laid.

He was drawing her down to the Mission,
     To bury her there in spring,
When the bloodroot comes and the windflower
     To silver everything. [Page 26]

But as a gift of plunder

     Side by side were they laid,
The moon went on to her setting
     And covered them with shade. [Page 27]

IN THE SELKIRKS

THE old gray shade of the Mountain
          Stands in the open sky,
Counting, as if at his leisure,
          The days of Eternity.

The Stream comes down from its Sources,

          Afar in the glacial height,
Rushing along through the valley
          In loops of silver light.

“What is my duty, O Mountain,
          Is it to stand like thee?

Is it, O flashing torrent,
          Like thee—to be free?”

The Man utters the questions,
          He breathes—he is gone!
The Mountain stands in the heavens,

          The Stream rushes on. [Page 27]

THE FORSAKEN

ONCE in the winter
Out on a lake
In the heart of the north-land,
Far from the Fort
And far from the hunters,

A Chippewa woman
With her sick baby,
Crouched in the last hours
Of a great storm.
Frozen and hungry,

She fished through the ice
With a line of the twisted
Bark of the cedar,
And a rabbit-bone hook
Polished and barbed;

Fished with the bare hook
All through the wild day,
Fished and caught nothing;
While the young chieftain
Tugged at her breasts,

Or slept in the lacings
Of the warm tikanagan.
All the lake-surface
Streamed with the hissing
Of millions of iceflakes

Hurled by the wind;
Behind her the round [Page 28]
Of a lonely island
Roared like a fire
With the voice of the storm

In the deeps of the cedars.
Valiant, unshaken,
She took of her own flesh,
Baited the fish-hook,
Drew in a gray-trout,

Drew in his fellows,
Heaped them beside her,
Dead in the snow.
Valiant, unshaken,
She faced the long distance,

Wolf-haunted and lonely,
Sure of her goal
And the life of her dear one:
Tramped for two days,
On the third in the morning,

Saw the strong bulk
Of the Fort by the river,
Saw the wood-smoke
Hang soft in the spruces,
Heard the keen yelp

Of the ravenous huskies
Fighting for whitefish:
Then she had rest. [Page 29]

Years and years after,
When she was old and withered,

When her son was an old man
And his children filled with vigour,
They came in their northern tour on the verge of winter,
To an island in a lonely lake.
There one night they camped, and on the morrow

Gathered their kettles and birch-bark
Their rabbit-skin robes and their mink-traps,
Launched their canoes and slunk away through the islands,
Left her alone forever,
Without a word of farewell,

Because she was old and useless,
Like a paddle broken and warped,
Or a pole that was splintered.
Then, without a sigh,
Valiant, unshaken,

She smoothed her dark locks under her kerchief,
Composed her shawl in state,
Then folded her hands ridged with sinews and corded with veins,
Folded them across her breasts spent with the nourishing of           children,
Gazed at the sky past the tops of the cedars,

Saw two spangled nights arise out of the twilight,
Saw two days go by filled with the tranquil sunshine,
Saw, without pain, or dread, or even a moment of longing: [Page           30]
Then on the third great night there came thronging and thronging
Millions of snowflakes out of a windless cloud;

They covered her close with a beautiful crystal shroud,
Covered her deep and silent.
But in the frost of the dawn,
Up from the life below,
Rose a column of breath

Through a tiny cleft in the snow,
Fragile, delicately drawn,
Wavering with its own weakness,
In the wilderness a sign of the spirit,
Persisting still in the sight of the sun

Till day was done.
Then all light was gathered up by the hand of God and his in His           breast,
Then there was born a silence deeper than silence,
Then she had rest. [Page 31]

THE EAGLE SPEAKS

     The Indians of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains capture eagles by concealing themselves, and seizing the birds as they attempt to take the bait set for them; in the combat that follows, the bird has sometimes been the victor.

NAY, not so near the edge, for far below
The cloud are rocks, and there an icy stream
Would whirl your little bodies like dead leaves
And dash them.  Stretch your wings; your wings
Are power and the air’s your element;

When they are mighty, close under the sun
We’ll fly, and you shall look up at him
And he shall feel impotent in the heavens
When he hears us scream and taunt him.
When they are strong you may fall,—sudden

As the snow rushes from the pass and roars,
And all the stems of trees in the green valley
Snap in the windage of his roar,—and fall—
Fall so unerring and swift and check so fierce
And yet not even disturb a feather on the ledge;

As you saw me now hurled like a bolt
From the slant sun and fall like a furled shadow.
To mount, that is our destiny, to mount—and even
In rest to feel that power that calls us up
To hang above the earth and all the tribes

Of men that creep and scurry upon it,
With their tamed horses and their buffaloes;
They fight together on horseback—I have seen—
Naked and puny and wearing on their heads
Our tail feathers to frighten one another:

They lie in wait to rob us of our plumes, [Page 32]
Hiding in snares about the hollow hills,
Baiting their traps with the dainty antelope,
And if they find a feather on the plain
Dropped in high flight as a cold cloud, careless

Might drop a snow-flake,—boasting about their campfires
How they had braved the dread war eagle
And torn his plumage.  Stretch thy wings,
For they are safety from such pillage, and swiftness
In pursuit, and fiery freedom, dealing

Cold death, as I have dealt it, to the spoiler.

In the slant light toward twilight I had caught
In my slow circlings the scent of plunder,
And stooped down to where a kid had fallen
On the yellow bank of a dry water-course.

I had dropped slow with my wings up-spread
Over it and let down my talons to clutch,—
When I was seized,—astonished I rushed up with power
And dragged this thing out from his snare,
Scattering his little shelter under the kid;

He held me strong and struck at me with a knife,
Whirling him about as I strove in the air,
I tore his scalp and blinded him with his blood,
And as he dragged me down, half-fallen,
I beat him with the shoulders of my wings

On his hard brain-pan, a fury of blows
As wild as hail on a stone mountain top.
Dizzied so, his knife fell and I tore his scalp
Down over his eyes, and with his puny hands
He strove to catch my whirling wings and failed,— [Page 33]

Then smote him to the earth and I was free;
Naked and huddled on his side he lay,
Daubed all with yellow paint streaked with vermilion
Vowéd to this adventure, but all lifeless
As the kid and the dead water course.

I swirled low over earth like flame flattened
By wind, then with a long loop of swiftness
Rose sheer up into the bubble of the air
And left him, carrion with his carrion,
For the dull coyotes to scent and overhaul

With snarls and bickerings lower than the dogs.
Rose to the unattempted heights, spurning
The uséd channels of the air, to the thin reach
Where vapours are unborn and caught the last
Glint of falling light beyond the peak

Of the last mountain, and hung alone serene
Till night, welling up into the void, darkened me,—
Poised with the first cold stars.

                                     Wings,—thy wings,
Strengthen thy wings, for they are more than swiftness,
More than freedom, proud withdrawal are they

Into the region where, after vivid action,
Thought rises the immortal ghost of action,
Above the orb where space assembles silence,
Where all the ache and effort of this petty life
Are quieted with silence. [Page 34]

THE PIPER OF ARLL

THERE  was in Arll a little cove
Where the salt wind came cool and free:
A foamy beach that one would love,
If he were longing for the sea.

A brook hung sparkling on the hill,

The hill swept far to ring the bay;
The bay was faithful, wild or still,
To the heart of the ocean far away.

There were three pines above the comb
That, when the sun flared and went down,

Grew like three warriors reaving home
The plunder of a burning town.

A piper lived within the grove,
Tending the pasture of his sheep;
His heart was swayed with faithful love,

From the springs of God’s ocean clear and deep.

And there a ship one evening stood,
Where ship had never stood before;
A pennon bickered red as blood,
An angel glimmered at the prore.

About the coming on of dew,
The sails burned rosy, and the spars
Were gold, and all the tackle grew
Alive with ruby-hearted stars. [Page 35]

The piper heard an outland tongue,

With music in the cadenced fall;
And when the fairy lights were hung,
The sailors gathered one and all,

And leaning on the gunwales dark,
Crusted with shells and dashed with foam,

With all the dreaming hills to hark,
They sang their longing songs of home.

When the sweet airs had fled away,
The piper, with a gentle breath,
Moulded a tranquil melody

Of lonely love and longed-for death.

When the fair sound began to lull,
From out the fireflies and the dew,
A silence held the shadowy hull,
Until the eerie tune was through.

Then from the dark and dreamy deck
An alien song began to thrill;
It mingled with the drumming beck,
And stirred the braird upon the hill.

Beneath the stars each sent to each

A message tender, till at last
The piper slept upon the beach,
The sailors slumbered round the mast.

Still as a dream till nearly dawn,
The ship was bosomed on the tide;

The streamlet, murmuring on and on,
Bore the sweet water to her side. [Page 36]

Then shaking out her lawny sails,
Forth on the misty sea she crept;
She left the dawning of the dales,

Yet in his cloak the piper slept.

And when he woke he saw the ship,
Limned black against the crimson sun;
Then from the disc he saw her slip,
A wraith of shadow—she was gone.

He threw his mantle on the beach,
He went apart like one distraught,
His lips were moved—his desperate speech
Stormed his inviolable thought.

He broke his human-throated reed,

And threw it in the idle rill;
But when his passion had its mead,
He found it in the eddy still.

He mended well the patient flue,
Again he tried its varied stops;

The closures answered right and true,
And starting out in piercing drops,

A melody began to drip
That mingled with a ghostly thrill
The vision-spirit of the ship,

The secret of his broken will.

Beneath the pines he piped and swayed,
Master of passion and of power;
He was his soul and what he played,
Immortal for a happy hour. [Page 37]

He, singing into nature’s heart,
Guiding his will by the world’s will,
With deep, unconscious, childlike art
Had sung his soul out and was still.

And then at evening came the bark

That stirred his dreaming heart’s desire;
It burned slow lights along the dark
That died in glooms of crimson fire.

The sailors launched a sombre boat,
And bent with music at the oars;

The rhythm throbbing every throat,
And lapsing round the liquid shores,

Was that true tune the piper sent,
Unto the wave-worn mariners,
When with the beck and ripple blent

He heard that outland song of theirs.

Silent they rowed him, dip and drip,
The oars beat out an exequy,
They laid him down within the ship,
They loosed a rocket to the sky.

It broke in many a crimsoned sphere
That grew to gold and floated far,
And left the sudden shore-line clear,
With one slow-changing, drifting star.

Then out they shook the magic sails,

That charmed the wind in other seas,
From where the west line pearls and pales,
They waited for a ruffling breeze. [Page 38]

But in the world there was no stir,
The cordage slacked with never a creak,

They heard the flame begin to purr
Within the lantern at the peak.

They could not cry, they could not move,
They felt the lure from the charmed sea;
They could not think of home or love

Or any pleasant land to be.

They felt the vessel dip and trim,
And settle down from list to list;
They saw the sea-plain heave and swim
As gently as a rising mist.

And down so slowly, down and down,
Rivet by rivet, plank by plank;
A little flood of ocean flown
Across the deck, she sank and sank.

From knee to breast the water wore,

It crept and crept; ere they were ware
Gone was the angel at the prore,
They felt the water float their hair.

They saw the salt plain spark and shine,
They threw their faces to the sky;

Beneath a deepening film of brine
They saw the star-flash blur and die.

She sank and sank by yard and mast,
Sank down the shimmering gradual dark;
A little drooping pennon last

Showed like the black fin of a shark. [Page 39]

And down she sank till, keeled in sand,
She rested safely balanced true,
With all her upward gazing band,
The piper and the dreaming crew.

And there, unmarked of any chart,
In unrecorded deeps they lie,
Empearled within the purple heart
Of the great sea for aye and aye.

Their eyes are ruby in the green

Long shaft of sun that spreads and rays,
And upward with a wizard sheen
A fan of sea-light leaps and plays.

Tendrils of or and azure creep,
And globe of amber light are rolled,

And in the gloaming of the deep
Their eyes are starry pits of gold.

And sometimes in the liquid night
The hull is changed, a solid gem,
That glows with a soft stony light,

The lost prince of a diadem.

And at the keel a vine is quick,
That spreads its bines and works and weaves
O’er all the timbers veining thick
A plenitude of silver leaves. [Page 40]

SPRING ON MATTAGAMI

FAR in the east the rain-clouds sweep and harry,
     Down the long haggard hills, formless and low,
Far in the west the shell-tints meet and marry,
     Piled gray and tender blue and roseate snow;
East—like a fiend, the bolt-breasted, streaming

     Storm strikes the world with lightning and with hail;
West—like the thought of a seraph that is dreaming,
     Venus leads the young moon down the vale.

Through the lake furrow between the gloom and bright’ning
     Firm runs our long canoe with a whistling rush,

While Potàn the wise and the cunning Silver Lightning
     Break with their slender blades the long clear hush;
Soon shall I pitch my tent amid the birches,
     Wise Potàn shall gather boughs of balsam fir,
While for bark and dry wood Silver Lightning searches;

     Soon the smoke shall hang and lapse in the moist air.

Soon shall I sleep—if I may not remember
     One who lives far away where the storm-cloud went;
May it part and starshine burn in many a quiet ember,
     Over her towered city crowned with large content;

Dear God, let me sleep, here where deep peace is,
     Let me own a dreamless sleep once for all the years,
Let me know a quiet mind and what heart ease is,
     Lost to light and life and hope, to longing and to tears.
[Page 41]

Here in the solitude less her memory presses,

     Yet I see her lingering where the birches shine,
All the dark cedars are sleep-laden like her tresses,
     The gold-moted wood-pools pellucid as her eyen;
Memories and ghost-forms of the days departed
     People all the forest lone in the dead of night;

While Potàn and Silver Lightning sleep, the happy-hearted,
     Troop they from their fastnesses upon my sight.

Once when the tide came straining from the Lido,
     In a sea of flame our gondola flickered like a sword,
Venice lay abroad builded like beauty’s credo,

     Smouldering like a gorget on the breast of the Lord:
Did she mourn for fame foredoomed or passion shattered
     That with a sudden impulse she gathered at my side?
But when I spoke the ancient fates were flattered,
     Chill there crept between us the imperceptible tide.

Once I well remember in her twilight garden,
     She pulled a half-blown rose, I thought it meant for me,
But poising in the act, and with half a sigh for pardon,
     She hid it in her bosom where none may dare to see:
Had she a subtle meaning?—would to God I knew it,

     Where’er I am I always feel the rose leaves nestling there,
If I might know her mind and the thought which then flashed           through it,
     My soul might look to heaven not commissioned to despair.
[Page 42]

Though she denied at parting the gift that I besought her,
     Just a bit of ribbon or a strand of her hair;

Though she would not keep the token that I brought her.
     Proud she stood and calm and marvellously fair;
Yet I saw her spirit—truth cannot dissemble—
     Saw her pure as gold, staunch and keen and brave,
For she knows my worth and her heart was all atremble,

     Lest her will should weaken and make her heart a slave.

If she could be here where all the world is eager
     For dear love with the primal Eden sway,
Where the blood is fire and no pulse is thin or meager,
     All the heart of all the world beats one way!

There is the land of fraud and fame and fashion,
     Joy is but a gaud and withers in an hour,
Here is the land of quintessential passion,
     Where in a wild throb Spring wells up with power.

She would hear the partridge drumming in the distance,

     Rolling out his mimic thunder in the sultry noons;
Hear beyond the silver reach in ringing wild persistence
     Reel remote the ululating laughter of the loons;
See the shy moose fawn nestling by its mother,
     In a cool marsh pool where the sedges meet;

Reset by a moss-mound where the twin-flowers smother
     With a drowse of orient perfume drenched in light and heat: [Page 43]

She would see the dawn rise behind the smoky mountain,
     In a jet of colour curving up to break,
While like spray from the iridescent fountain,

     Opal fires weave over all the oval of the lake:
She would see like fireflies the stars alight and spangle
     All the heaven meadows thick with growing dusk,
Feel the gipsy airs that gather up and tangle
     The woodsy odours in a maze of myrrh and musk:

There in the forest all the birds are nesting,
     Tells the hermit thrush the song he cannot tell,
While the white-throat sparrow never resting,
     Even in the deepest night rings his crystal bell:
O, she would love me then with a wild elation,

     Then she must love me and leave her lonely state,
Give me love yet keep her soul’s imperial reservation,
     Large as her deep nature and fathomless as fate:

Then, if she would lie beside me in the even,
     On my deep couch heaped of balsam fir,

Fragrant with sleep as nothing under heaven,
     Let the past and future mingle in one blur;
While all the stars were watchful and thereunder
     Earth breathed not but took their silent light,
All life withdrew and wrapt in a wild wonder

     Peace fell tranquil on the odorous night: [Page 44]

She would let me steal,—not consenting or denying—
     One strong arm beneath her dusky hair,
She would let me bare, not resisting or complying,
     One sweet breast so sweet and firm and fair;

Then with the quick sob of passion’s shy endeavour,
     She would gather close and shudder and swoon away,
She would be mine for ever and for ever,
     Mine for all time and beyond the judgment day.

Vain is the dream, and deep with all derision—

     Fate is stern and hard—fair and false and vain—
But what would life be worth without the vision,
     Dark with sordid passion, pale with wringing pain?
What I dream is mine, mine beyond all cavil,
     Pure and fair and sweet, and mine for evermore,

And when I will my life I may unravel,
     And find my passion dream deep at the red core.

Venus sinks first lost in ruby splendour,
     Stars like wood-daffodils grow golden in the night,
Far, far above, in a space entranced and tender,

     Floats the growing moon pale with virgin light.
Vaster than the world or life or death my trust is
     Based in the unseen and towering far above;
Hold me, O Law, that deeper lies than Justice,
     Guide me, O Light, that stronger burns than Love. [Page 45]

THE HEIGHT OF LAND

HERE is the height of land:
The watershed on either hand
Goes down to Hudson Bay
Or Lake Superior;
The stars are up, and far away

The wind sounds in the wood, wearier
Than the long Ojibwa cadence
In which Potàn the Wise
Declares the ills of life
And Chees-que-ne-ne makes a mournful sound

Of acquiescence.  The fires burn low
With just sufficient glow
To light the flakes of ash that play
At being moths, and flutter away
To fall in the dark and die as ashes:

Here there is peace in the lofty air,
And Something comes by flashes
Deeper than peace;—
The spruces have retired a little space
And left a field of sky in violet shadow

With stars like marigolds in a water-meadow.

Now the Indian guides are dead asleep;
There is no sound unless the soul can hear
The gathering of the waters in their sources. [Page 46]

We have come up through the spreading lakes

From level to level,—
Pitching our tents sometimes over a revel
Of roses that nodded all night,
Dreaming within our dreams,
To wake at dawn and find that they were captured

With no dew on their leaves;
Sometimes mid sheaves
Of bracken and dwarf-cornel, and again
On a wide blueberry plain
Brushed with the shimmer of a bluebird’s wing;

A rocky islet followed
With one lone poplar and a single nest
Of white-throat-sparrows that took no rest
But sang in dreams or woke to sing,—
To the last portage and the height of land—:

Upon one hand
The lonely north enlaced with lakes and streams,
And the enormous targe of Hudson Bay,
Glimmering all night
In the cold arctic light;

On the other hand
The crowded southern land
With all the welter of the lives of men.
But here is peace, and again
That Something comes by flashes

Deeper than peace,—a spell
Golden and inappellable
That gives the inarticulate part
Of our strange being one moment of release
That seems more native than the touch of time, [Page 47]

And we must answer in chime;
Though yet no man may tell
The secret of that spell
Golden and inappellable.

Now are there sounds walking in the wood,

And all the spruces shiver and tremble,
And the stars move a little in their courses.
The ancient disturber of solitude
Breathes a pervasive sigh,
And the soul seems to hear

The gathering of the waters at their sources;
Then quiet ensues and pure starlight and dark;
The region-spirit murmurs in meditation,
The heart replies in exaltation
And echoes faintly like an inland shell

Ghost tremors of the spell;
Thought reawakens and is linked again
With all the welter of the lives of men.
Here on the uplands where the air is clear
We think of life as of a stormy scene,—

Of tempest, of revolt and desperate shock;
And here, where we can think, on the bright uplands
Where the air is clear, we deeply brood on life
Until the tempest parts, and it appears
As simple as to the shepherd seems his flock:

A Something to be guided by ideals—
That in themselves are simple and serene—
Of noble deed to foster noble thought,
And noble thought to image noble deed,
Till deed and thought shall interpenetrate, [Page 48]

Making life lovelier, till we come to doubt
Whether the perfect beauty that escapes
Is beauty of deed or thought or some high thing
Mingled of both, a greater boon than either:
Thus we have seen in the retreating tempest

The victor-sunlight merge with the ruined rain,
And from the rain and sunlight spring the rainbow.

The ancient disturber of solitude
Stirs his ancestral potion in the gloom,
And the dark wood

Is stifled with the pungent fume
Of charred earth burnt to the bone
That takes the place of air.
Then sudden I remember when and where,—
The last weird lakelet foul with weedy growths

And slimy viscid things the spirit loathes,
Skin of vile water over viler mud
Where the paddle stirred unutterable stenches,
And the canoes seemed heavy with fear,
Not to be urged toward the fatal shore

Where a bush fire, smouldering, with sudden roar
Leaped on a cedar and smothered it with light
And terror.  It had left the portage-height
A tangle of slanted spruces burned to the roots,
Covered still with patches of bright fire

Smoking with incense of the fragrant resin
That even then began to thin and lessen
Into the gloom and glimmer of ruin. [Page 49]

’Tis overpast.  How strange the stars have grown;
The presage of extinction glows on their crests

And they are beautied with impermanence;
They shall be after the race of men
And mourn for them who snared their fiery pinions,
Entangled in the meshes of bright words.

A lemming stirs the fern and in the mosses

Eft-minded things feel the air change, and dawn
Tolls out from the dark belfries of the spruces.
How often in the autumn of the world
Shall the crystal shrine of dawning be rebuilt
With deeper meaning!  Shall the poet then,

Wrapped in his mantle on the height of land,
Brood on the welter of the lives of men
And dream of his ideal hope and promise
In the blush sunrise?  Shall he base his flight
Upon a more compelling law than Love

As Life’s atonement; shall the vision
Of noble deed and noble thought immingled
Seem as uncouth to him as the pictograph
Scratched on the cave side by the cave-dweller
To us of the Christ-time?  Shall he stand

With deeper joy, with more complex emotion,
In closer commune with divinity,
With the deep fathomed, with the firmament charted,
With life as simple as a sheep-boy’s song,
What lies beyond a romaunt that was read

Once on a morn of storm and laid aside
Memorious with strange immortal memories?
Or shall he see the sunrise as I see it [Page 50]
In shoals of misty fire the deluge-light
Dashes upon and whelms with purer radiance,

And feel the lulled earth, older in pulse and motion,
Turn the rich lands and the inundant oceans
To the flushed color, and hear as now I hear
The thrill of life beat up the planet’s margin
And break in the clear susurrus of deep joy

That echoes and reëchoes in my being?
O Life is intuition the measure of knowledge
And do I stand with heart entranced and burning
At the zenith of our wisdom when I feel
The long light flow, the long wind pause, the deep

Influx of spirit, of which no man may tell
The Secret, golden and inappellable?

I DO NOT ASK

I DO not ask, now that the day is over
For certitudes the daylight did not bring,
I do no long for colour through the shadow,
Nor in winter for the spring;
Only for rest,

And what is best
Maybe of all Life’s store,
The power to reassemble
Memories of passion and endeavour
That made Life throb and tremble

But are no more. [Page 51]

THE NOVEMBER PANSY

THIS is not June,—by Autumn’s stratagem
     Thou hast been ambushed in the chilly air;
     Upon thy fragile crest virginal fair
The rime has clustered in a diadem;
     The early frost

Has nipped thy roots and tried thy tender stem,
     Seared thy gold petals, all thy charm is lost.

Thyself the only sunshine: in obeying
     The law that bids thee blossom in the world
     Thy little flag of courage is unfurled;

Inherent pansy-memories are saying
     That there is sun,
That there is dew and colour and warmth repaying
     The rain, and starlight when the light is done.

These are the gaunt forms of the hollyhocks

     That shower the seeds from out their withered purses;
     Here were the pinks; there the nasturtium nurses
The last of colour in her gaudy smocks;
     The ruins yonder
Show but a vestige of the flaming phlox;

     The poppies on their faded glory ponder.

Here visited the vagrant humming-bird,
     The nebulous darting green, the ruby-throated;
     The warm fans of the butterfly here floated;
Those two nests reared the robins, and the third

     Was left forlorn
Muffled in lilacs, whence the perfume stirred
     The tremulous eyelids of the dewy morn. [Page 52]

Thy sisters of the early summer-time
     Were masquers in this carnival of pleasure;

     Each in her turn unrolled her golden treasure,
And thou has but the ashes of the prime;
     ’Tis life’s own malice
That brings the peasant of a race sublime
     To feed her flock around her ruined palace.

Yet for withstanding thus the autumn’s dart
     Some deeper pansy-insight will atone;
     It comes to souls neglected and alone,
Something that prodigals in pleasure’s mart
     Lose in the whirl;

The peasant child will have a purer heart
     Than the vain favourite of the vanished earl.

And far above this tragic world of ours
     There is a world of a diviner fashion,
     A mystic world, a world of dreams and passion

That each aspiring thing creates and dowers
     With its own light;
Where even the frail spirits of trees and flowers
     Pause, and reach out, and pass from height to height.

Here will we claim for thee another fief,

     An upland where a glamour haunts the meadows,
     Snow peaks arise enrobed in rosy shadows,
Fairer the under slopes with vine and sheaf
     And shimmering lea;
The paradise of a simple old belief,

     That flourished in the Islands of the Sea. [Page 53]

A snow-cool cistern in the fairy hills
     Shall feed thy roots with moisture clear as dew;
     A ferny shield to temper the warm blue
That heaven is; a thrush that thrills

     To answer his mate,
And when above the ferns the shadow fills,
     Fireflies to render darkness consulate.

Here muse and brood, moulding thy seed and die
     And re-create thy form a thousand fold,

     Mellowing thy petals to more lucent gold,
Till they expand, tissues of amber sky;
     Till the full hour,
And the full light and the fulfilling eye
     Shall find amid the ferns the perfect flower.

IN WINTER

THE snow with never a flickering
     Burns in a dead white,
Above like flame a-bickering
     There plays a flutter light.

What is there flashing, blowing,

     Above the frosted glow?
The unseen wind is throwing
     The Snow-birds in the Snow. [Page 54]

THE HALF-BREED GIRL

SHE is free of the trap and the paddle,
     The portage and the trail,
But something behind her savage life
     Shines like a fragile veil.

Her dreams are undiscovered,

     Shadows trouble her breast,
When the time for resting cometh
     Then least is she at rest.

Oft in the morns of winter,
     When she visits the rabbit snares,

An appearance floats in the crystal air
     Beyond the balsam firs.

Oft in the summer mornings
     When she strips the nets of fish,
The smell of the dripping net-twine

     Gives to her heart a wish.

But she cannot learn the meaning
     Of the shadows in her soul,
The lights that break and gather,
     The clouds that part and roll,

The reek of rock-built cities,
     Where her fathers dwelt of yore,
The gleam of lock and shealing,
     The mist on the moor, [Page 55]

Frail traces of kindred kindness,

     Of feud by hill and strand,
The heritage of an age-long life
     In a legendary land.

She wakes in the stifling wigwam,
     Where the air is heavy and wild,

She fears for something or nothing
     With the heart of a frightened child.

She sees the stars turn slowly
     Past the tangle of the poles,
Through the smoke of the dying embers,

     Like the eyes of dead souls.

Her heart is shaken with longing
     For the strange, still years,
For what she knows and knows not,
     For the wells of ancient tears.

A voice calls from the rapids,
     Deep, careless and free,
A voice that is larger than her life
     Or than her death shall be.

She covers her face with her blanket,

     Her fierce soul hates her breath,
As it cries with a sudden passion
     For life or death. [Page 56]

NIGHT BURIAL IN THE FOREST

LAY him down where the fern is thick and fair.
Fain was he for life, here lies he low:
With the blood washed clean from his brow and his beautiful hair,
Lay him here in the dell where the orchids grow.

Let the birch-bark torches roar in the gloom,

And the trees crowd up in a quiet startled ring
So lone is the land that in this lonely room
Never before has breathed a human thing.

Cover him well in his canvas shroud, and the moss
Part and heap again on his quiet breast,

What recks he now of gain, or love, or loss
Who for love gained rest?

While she who caused it all hides her insolent eyes
Or braids her hair with the ribbons of lust and lies,
And he who did the deed fares out like a hunted beast

To lurk where the musk-ox tramples the barren ground
Where the stroke of his coward heart is the only sound.

Haunting the tamarack shade,
Hear them up-thronging
Memories foredoomed

Of strife and of longing:
Haggard or bright
By the tamaracs and birches, [Page 57]
Where the red torch light
Trembles and searches,

The wilderness teems
With inscrutable eyes
Of ghosts that are dreams
Commingled with memories.

Leave him here in his secret ferny tomb,

Withdraw the little light from the ocean of gloom,
He who feared nought will fear aught never,
Left alone in the forest forever and ever.

Then, as we fare on our way to the shore
Sudden the torches cease to roar:

For cleaving the darkness remote and still
Comes a wind with a rushing, harp-like thrill,
The sound of wings hurled and furled and unfurled,
The wings of the Angel who gathers the souls from the wastes of           the world. [Page 58]

POWASSAN’S DRUM

THROB—throb—throb—throb;—
Is this throbbing a sound
Or an ache in the air?
Pervasive as light,
Measured and inevitable,

It seems to float from no distance,
But to live in the listening world—
Throb—throb—throb—throb—throbbing
The sound of Powassan’s Drum.

He crouches in his dwarf wigwam

Wizened with fasting,
Fierce with thirst,
Making great medicine
In memory of hated things dead
Or in menace of hated things to come,

And the universe listens
To the throb—throb—throb—throb—
Throbbing of Powassan’s Drum.

The world seems lost and shallow,
Seems sunken and filled with water,

With shores lightly moving
Of marish grass and slender reeds.
Through it all goes
The throbbing of Powassan’s Drum. [Page 59]

Has it gone on forever,

As the pulse of Being?
Will it last till the world’s end
As the pulse of Being?
He crouches under the poles
Covered with strips of birchbark

And branches of poplar and pine,
Piled for shade and dying
In dense perfume,
With closed eyelids
With eyes so fierce,

Burning under and through
The ancient worn eyelids,
He crouches and beats his drum.

The morning star formed
Like a pearl in the shell of darkness;

Light welled like water from the springs of morning;
The stars in the earth shadow
Caught like whitefish in a net;
The sun, the fisherman,
Pulling the net to the shore of night,

Flashing with the fins of the caught stars;—
All to the throbbing of Powassan’s Drum.

The live things in the world
Hear it and are silent.
They hide silent and charmed

As if guarding a secret;
Charmed and silent hiding a rich secret,
Throbbing all to the
Throb—throb—throbbing of Powassan’s Drum. [Page 60]

Stealthy as death the water

Wanders in the long grass,
And spangs of sunlight
Slide on the slender reeds
Like beads of bright oil.
The sky is a bubble blown so tense

The blue has gone gray
Stretched to the throb—throb—throb—throb—
Throbbing of Powassan’s Drum.

Is it a memory of hated things dead
That he beats—famished—

Or a menace of hated things to come
That he beats—parched with anger
And famished with hatred—?

The sun waited all day.
There was no answer.

He hauled his net
And the glint of the star-fins
Flashed in the water of twilight;
There was no answer.
But in the northeast

A storm cloud reaches like a hand
Out of the half darkness.
The spectral fingers of cloud
Grope in the heavens,
And at moments, sharp as pain,

A bracelet of bright fire
Plays on the wrist of the cloud.
Thunder from the hollow of the hand
Comes almost soundless, like an air pressure, [Page 61]
And the cloud rears up

To the throbbing of Powassan’s Drum.
An infusion of bitter darkness
Stains the sweet water of twilight.

Then from the reeds stealing,
A shadow noiseless,

A canoe moves noiseless as sleep,
Noiseless as the trance of deep sleep
And an Indian still as a statue,
Molded out of deep sleep,
Headless, still as a headless statue

Molded out of deep sleep,
Sits modeled in full power,
Haughty in manful power,
Headless and impotent in power.
The canoe stealthy as death

Drifts to the throbbing of Powassan’s Drum.
The Indian fixed like bronze
Trails his severed head
Through the dead water
Holding it by the hair,

By the plaits of hair,
Wound with sweet grass and tags of silver.
The face looks through the water
Up to its throne on the shoulders of power,
Unquenched eyes burning in the water,

Piercing beyond the shoulders of power
Up to the fingers of the storm cloud. [Page 62]

Is this the meaning of the magic—
The translation into sight
Of the viewless hate?

Is this what the world waited for
As it listened to the throb—throb—throb—throb—
Throbbing of Powassan’s Drum?

The sun could not answer.
The tense sky burst and went dark

And could not answer.
But the storm answers.
The murdered shadow sinks in the water.
Uprises the storm
And crushes the dark world;

At the core of the rushing fury
Bursting hail, tangled lightning
Wind in a wild vortex
Lives the triumphant throb—throb—throb—throb—
Throbbing of Powassan’s Drum. [Page 63]

VARIATIONS ON A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY THEME

          IT WAS HIGH SPRING, AND ALL THE WAY
          PRIMROSED, AND HUNG WITH SHADE.

Henry Vaughan, 1622-1695.          

O YOUNGE and freschë was the lovely Eve
Who was our mother, and of fayre visage
When sche her house in Eden-bower must leave
With Adam whom God made in His image,
As the good bookë saith; in youth and age

Study it close and con the gospel well,
For it will save your seely soul from Hell.

A Poete telleth in an olde romaunt
Of our foreparents and their first distress.
They were all naked sauf for the kinde plaunt,

Where Eve had gathered leaves for them for to dress.
They were adrad at the broode wilderness,
Shivering bothe, although they knew ne cold,
For the high sonne was shining bright and bold.

When the wing-schuldered aungel there did stonde,

And shake his sword in flame of gold and red,
Adam espied that in her little honde
Eve covered something that it cherishèd.
What was it Eva from the aungel hid?
Sche without ever askin Goddis pardon

Had a small primrose taken from His garden. [Page 64]

And there sche guarded it all faithfully,
Like as a youngë priest sholde guard the Host,
Then looking on its beauty, sodenly
Her timid mind with payne was rudely crost,

Sche thought on all the blossoms sche had lost,
And the first tear of all the teares sche shed,
Fell down upon the litel yalow head.

But when our fader Adam saw her payne,
His hert was all aswownying with her grief,

For he of gentle Eva was full fayne
And tender at the hert beyond belief.
He went away as he had been a thief,
And where he went the Poete did not know,
But all that day Eve never saw him mo.

All in the high May-time,
The only merry play-time,
A pedlar comes clad all in yellow;
Down the lane as he passes,
The lads and the lasses

Crowd after the impudent fellow.

He sells ballads and snatches
Of glees and of catches,
That go with a wonderful jingle;
He teaches a dance

That is perfect romance,
And sets all your blood in a tingle.

He has treasures untold
Of things made in gold, [Page 65]
Of jewels and carvings and laces;

But the moment you try
A thought for to buy
He makes a few frowns and grimaces.

If you mention a hope
Off he goes in a mope,

He is wrath if you ask an ideal;
He cries with a sneer
“You can’t buy them here!
I only engage in the real.”

“Dreams are a stuff

All well enough
For those who love shadows to cherish,
They’re nothing but bubbles;
I have my own troubles
To gather up things that don’t perish.”

“Come then, my boon lad,
All thinkers are mad,
For your strength I will give you good measure;
Come, don’t be afraid,
My pretty wild maid

To barter your beauty for pleasure.”

“For this is high May-time,
The only merry play-time,
When the primrose has lighted her wan-fire,
Come, stroll down the lane,

You’ll not bargain in vain,
At the end of the path is a bonfire!” [Page 66]

I dreamed a dream once in the long ago,
A tranquil angel spoke beside my bed,
Two figures stood beside him in the glow

Cast from his vesture and his glorious head,
One held a crystal globe all primrose-rayed,
The other held a temple hung with shade.
“O man, these symbols are the whole of life,
Here is the round of pleasure dashed with light,

Here is the shade of sorrow and of strife,
Temple and sphere—the sombre and the bright,
Make thou thy choice, thy mighty will is free,
In this election is thy destiny.”
I thought to choose the crystal, ’twas so fair.

Eyes of serene enchantment seemed to peer,
Shadows of filmy beauty floated there,
But as I closed my hand upon the sphere,
I saw a flash of something in the gold
That made my very heart turn grey and cold.

And so I grasped the temple hung with shade,
The angel and the figures vanished away,
I put aside the shadows undismayed,
And felt my heart turn weary and old and grey,
The very thing that I had hoped to shun

Sat on a throne, it was the All Powerful One.
“Make thou thy choice, thy mighty will is free,”
The mocking words were ever in my ears,
Through all my days I strove with destiny,
With teen and sorrow harvested the years.

I lie through æons as all mortals must,
A little heap of ashes and of dust. [Page 67]

The moon glows with a primrose light
To-night!
A happy vesper sparrow sings,

His wings
Are moist with dew, a wraith of mist,
Grey amethyst,
Deepens the purple in the fields,
Slow yields

Twilight to the vast shade that listlessly
Moves landward from the sea.

A playwright’s room all hung about with masks,
Three candles burning and a fire half dying,
Points of high-light on shadowed foils and flasks,

A tragic form on a grey sofa lying:
Enter a youth too out of breath for speech—he
Was ancient clad like one of the Medici.

Piero:
     Why are you here, Paolo, after a first night
     Like that?  Flaming!  Everyone crying “Paolo”!

     Crowding onto the stage, crowning Giovanna with flowers.
     Then when they cleared, and we set out the supper
     On the stage, you know—as we planned—and everyone
     Came from the dressing-rooms in Florentine
     Costume, you know—as we planned—then we missed you.

     I rushed here—never thinking! [Page 68]

Paolo:
                                                        And you found me.
     After failure a little realm of quiet.

Piero:
     Failure!

Paolo:
     After the end a pause before the end!

Piero:
     Failure!  The most absolute success!

Paolo:
     I will tell you, Piero, inner secrets—
     A play within a play—in the second act
     Giovanna was to give my love an answer—
     It was not so arranged—too subtle for that,
     When she handed Antonio the flowers

     I was to divine it by a certain gesture
     Imagined long by me,—it was to come
     Instinctive to her, like a revelation:
     There she failed, wanting in noble insight!

Piero:
     Fancy, morbid fancy—tortured, over-wrought!

     We all know that Giovanna loves you!
     She knows it now herself, no one could act
     Like that, unless she loved!

Paolo:
                                                  And yet, and yet,
     It is the end! [Page 69]

Piero:
     I’ll rush back and bring the restless players

     With torches and music and tear you out of this
     And set you with your triumph.

Paolo:
                                Give her these flowers!

Piero:
     Primroses! those flowers in the second act were primroses!

Paolo:
     They were false—tell her—

Piero:
                                                                  What?

Paolo:
     Well, nothing, Piero, the flowers will tell her.

The place was still when music danced about,
Dark when the torches played upon the gloom,
The jest and clamour of a merry rout
Was heard by no one in the upper room;
Then there was breathless running on the stair,

Confusion at the door, and frantic groping there.

Piero:
     One moment!  Wait!

Giovanna:
     Is there no more haste in the world?

Piero:
     All dark, there’s something terribly wrong here,
     Go back! [Page 70]

Giovanna:
     What the flowers told me!  Jesu have pity!
     But if there be no pity give me strength!

Youth is a blossom yellow at the edge,
All full of honeyed pleasantness,
If you leave it, it will wither in the hedge,

If you pluck it, it will wither none the less,
Then pluck it—that were better after all,
But pluck it with a sort of wistfulness,
Yea, pluck it if you must, and let it fall
Regretfully, with a last touch of tenderness,

Before the colour and the honey all
Are flown away,
And you are holding but a withered tress
Of passion and of loveliness.
Now let it fall—

Yet hold it—hold it—’tis thy youth!
Nay, let it fall—fall—fall—
Caress it ere it fall,
Then let it fall and die.

What we bury here is nought,

Hardly dreaming, hardly thought.

For dead fairies go nowhere,
Leaving nothing in the air.

Their clear bodies are all through
Made of shadow, mixed with dew. [Page 71]

When they change their fairy state,
They, like dew, evaporate.

But we fairies that remain,
The dead fairy’s funeral feign.

Place within a shepherd’s purse

Primrose pollen; for a hearse,

Lady-birds we harness up
To an empty acorn cup.

This we bury, deep in moss;—
Then we mourn our grievous loss,

Mourn with music, piercing thin,
Cricket with his mandolin,

Many a hautboy, many a flute,
Played by them you fancy mute.

Then a solemn epigraph

Grave we on the cenotaph:—

“Once a fairy of the best,
Here lies nothing,—Stranger, rest,—

“Ponder,—when you change your state,
You may thus evaporate,

“Follow where the fairy goes,
Into nothing, no one knows.”

Bleak Spring in a north city overseas,
In the moist window of a florist’s shop,
Pots of primroses, [Page 72]

Labelled ‘Only a quarter.’
The drizzle begins to freeze,
Daylight closes:
The passers-by loiter or stop,
And one old body

Broken with child-bearing and woe
And work and toddy
Looks once and lo!
An English lane below the thorns
Was gilded with the glow

Of a myriad lemon-coloured horns,—
Primroses—primroses!
All her girlish days came with a rush
Back from her shire home where the wild thrush
Sprinkled the primrose buds with music,

And the young morning light
Soared up to meet the skylark on his height.
She fingered in the knotted corner of a rag
A coin, the very price!
Her faded blue-bell eyes

Were moistened with remembrance;
She dreamed a little—murmured in her dream.
“The same old bloomin’ colour!
But I keeps my quarter,
Though—perhaps I’d orter;

Would it please old Jerry
If I was to blow it?
But the merry stuff—the merry,—
Tcht! is London Dry!
P’rhaps I’d orter!

But he’ll never know it, [Page 73]
And anyhow he wouldn’t give a damn;
This darling little quarter,
(Feeling it fondly in the filthy rag)
Oh my eye!

(Giving her head a roguish wag)
Will buy a proper dram,
Then we’ll be merry,
One drink for me and two for dear old Jerry.”

My Love is like the primrose light

      That springs up with the morn,
My love is like the early night
      Before the stars are born.

My Love is like the shine and shade
      That ripple on the wood,

(The shadow is her dark green plaid,
      The light her silver snood).

They never meet with eager lips,
      And mingle in their mirth,
They only touch their finger-tips,

      And circle round the earth.

My Love’s so pure, so winsome-sweet,
      So dancing with delight,
That I shall love her till they meet,
      And all the world is night.

A few chords now for a brimming close,
No climax, but a fading away [Page 74]
Into something either grave or gay
As the line wanders and falters.  The rose
Must fade and the tone must lessen and die,

But the sweetest note of a melody
Is the last note, and who can tell
That the last note in the long tune
Of life on the earth will not be fraught
With all the joy of each perished day.

The earth will pass in frost, they say,
And be all senseless like the moon.
Well, as the earth grows stark and cold,
Let us imagine it will hold
To the very end, the things worth while.

The last of all the race, a youth
And a maid with a shy triumphant smile,
Adam and Eve—beyond all ruth—
Above the need of trial or pardon,
Happy alone in their frozen garden,

And a Primrose hid in the withered foliage
Fallen down from the Tree of Knowledge,
To glow with clarid light and lend
A touch of beauty to the end.
They will recall a wild strange myth,—

Once the earth was warm to the very pith
With noble fire and the sun cast light,
And the heart of man was burning bright;
They will love in a final fashion,
The quintessential human passion,

The summation of all vanished love
With beauty as the breath thereof,
Love their last word, and human bliss [Page 75]
Rounded upon a marble kiss.
For cold will stop their breathing there,

And they will never know nor care
How, long ago in the blithe air,
The old earth really looked in May,
When over every lane and glade
IT WAS HIGH SPRING AND ALL THE WAY

PRIMROSED, AND HUNG WITH SHADE.

LILACS AND HUMMING BIRDS

LACE-LIKE in the moonlight,
The white lilac tree was quiet,
A little form of dream delight
Within a dreaming scene,
Like a little bride of shadow

In a dim secluded eyot,
With perfume for an element
Around the white and green.

The secret of this dream delight,
The core of this bride-quiet,

Hid even from the moonlight
By the heart-leaved screen,
Was the dew encrusted jewel
Of a ruby-throat, and nigh it
A nest of sleeping humming-birds

Amid the white and green. [Page 76]

SPIRIT AND FLESH

A HOUSE stands clear on a mellow rise,
          With meadows in a ring,
An orchard blossoms white with surprise
          At the urgency of spring.

The meadows fall to the winnowed sand

          Where a cove breaks free,
Like the curve of a fragile ivory hand
          Trembling full of the sea.

(He speaks.)
    Here is your pantry, love,

    Full of useful dishes,
    All the glass and napery
    The heart of woman wishes.

    Here is your parlour,
    Hung with rose and mauve,

    All its lacquer cabinets
    Filled with treasure trove.

    Here is your chamber, love,
    With its smooth bed,
    With the pretty chintz flowered

    Canopy overhead.

    We shall sit beneath the tree,
    When our work is done,
    Watch the colour in the orchard
    From the setting sun. [Page 77]

(She speaks.)
    O life what do you hold
    So mysterious, so alluring,
    That I have no rest?
    The sea’s breast

    Tells me the whole round earth
    Is flaming with haunts of pleasure,
    Glades where deathless dancers
    Weave and swerve
    To music that maddens the nerve,

    Scents that pierce like sounds,
    Vision without bounds,
    Colour that changes as fire
    Changes, and deeps of desire
    Whose margins are ferned with dreams.

    Take me, O Life,
    Drive me like a shuttle
    Through the warp of pleasure,
    The woof shall I give without measure
    To the last hour,

    But stint me no longer
    Of passion and power!

It was a painted evening at the fall
       Of leaf and apple and frost-withered grape,
A form was flitting through the hall

       Of changeful colour and shape.

It paced the floor, it climbed the narrow stair,
       It wreathed the chamber door with quick desire,
The only bride that entered there
       Was the swift bride of fire; [Page 78]

She lived her sudden life so wild, so feared,
       Of all the petty wealth she left alone
A pit of rubble scarred and seared,
       A broken threshold stone.

Yet over the ruin hovers a ghostly house,

       The walls, and roof, and chambers all inwove
With unquiet memories, tremulous,
       And phantom treasure trove.

(He speaks from the world.)
    The turn of a throat,

    A glint of hair,
    It might be—!
    I rush in the tides of men
    Following a shadow;
    She might be here or there;

    Rescue her from splendour,
    Rescue her faint, tender
    Feet from disaster;
    O Master of Life,
    Lay her gleaming head

    Radiant or broken
    Here on my breast!

But never a thought for the ghost of the house on the hill
      That he burned with fire, or the crescent of winnowed sand,
That holds the sea as the new moon holds the still,

      Gray wraith of a perished moon in her ivory hand. [Page 79]

(She speaks from the world.)
    I have conquered all life with its glory and passion,
              Its beauty and danger;
    There is nothing of chance or of folly or fashion

              To which I am stranger.
    My insatiable heart is yet bounding and eager
              For potent new flashes;
    The body of bye-gone delights is as meager
              And arid as ashes.

    But the ghost on the hill
              Hovers not alone,
    A fond spirit flits as will
              To the threshold stone;

    Enters on the vacant air,

              Counts the pantry store,
    Climbs the visionary stair
              To the upper floor;

    Sets her little room to rights,
              When the work is done,

    In the orchard sees the lights
              From the setting sun;

    Turns her vision to the sand,
              Watches wistfully,
    The cove like the curve of an ivory hand

              Trembling full of the sea. [Page 80]

THE FLIGHT

She:
                                     Not one step farther:——
    What yawns below is Death,—the lightning showed me.

He:
                    I was too careful for the path, our feet
    Cannot tread air.

She:
                                    My heart lives in the dark
    Before your face; you are advanced too far,—

    To feel safe I should have the beating of your heart
    Next mine; then, if we slip and live a moment
    Till the air drowns us, we live together
    The last moment.

He:
                                     The precipice curves upward here
    And outward; press to the wall for shelter.

    That was a stab!  Nimble lightning to avoid
    The imminent thunder-crash!  Did your heart stop?

She:
    Death dogs us!  Lures us on a perilous mountain
    Full of traps and then casts storm upon us.

He:
    Death’s full of fraud, but we have a light

    For his deception.

She:
                                              A light? [Page 81]

He:
                                                             Why, Love!

She:
    Alas!  Death is so envious of Love!
    Thunder is not more envious of lightning
    That flies before and is not when he calls.

He:
    True!—  So Death can never overtake Love!

She:
                        But think of all those piteous lovers

    Deluded that they were shut in with God,
    Yet Death struck them;—  Tristan and Isolde,
    Launcelot and Guinevere, and the whirling pair,
    Paolo and that other, transfixed forever
    By the bitter-lipped Florentine.  Their sobs

    Fill all the world; then how shall we escape?

He:
    These models of agony the mad world
    Cherishes, but the greatest lovers go
    Unrecorded, the line of the profoundest poet
    Finds tides under his deepest lead; resources

    Of passion are hid in simple lives like ours
    Would swamp his boat to lift them from the deeps.

She:
    But Death’s the point, and if he falls
    On such high peers of pure romance
    He’ll crush us with the wind of a frown. [Page 82]

He:
    Death’s full of fraud, he’s but negation,
    We know of him by breathing.  The cunning fellow
    Has a mask he wears to look like Life.

She:
    He’s dropped it now and I fear his glare
    That lit those older passions; and no pity

    Showed from his naked countenance then.

He:
    Careless Death, who has lost his precious mask
    Found by two mortals fearless made through Love!—
    Here in the hollow of the ample cheek
    Above the awful oval of the mouth

    We’ll hide, and when Death calls us, sharp, once,
    We will not answer;—and when Death, testy,
    Calls us twice, we’ll be oblivious,
    And when Death calls us thrice—for the last time,
    Mark you,—we’ll be asleep.  Then Death will say

    “I’ve lost those lovers, so they’re lost, they’re lost,
    They were to die to-day,—but now they’re lost.”
    So the old dotard fumbling in the mist
    About his throat—will stumble here and there
    And cry,—“My Mask, my Mask! how can these mortals

    Look upon Death unless he looks like Life,
    My Mask!”  And then he’ll find it lying here
    And raise us clear until your sparkling beauty
    Catch in his eye and then he’ll startle up
    With—“Ha!  I have them now these tricksy

    Bemused and vagrant lovers fast asleep [Page 83]
    In the precinct and appurtenance of Death.”
    He’ll peer upon us like a wildered pearl-fisher
    That finds two priceless pearls in a single shell;
    He’ll say—“She minds me of another face

    Some dim complaint in the ages gone
    That cried out on me, and so agonized
    In simple words that poison memory still.
    Not of the famous lovers of the world,
    Arthur’s tall queen, or she that drank Love’s potion

    On the wild sea, or the bewitched Egyptian,
    But one of those whose passion is pure tragic,—
    The unknown lovers ever are the greatest,—
    They that build the scaffold up for these
    Brave puppets to pine and pose as Love’s exemplars.

    Well, for her sake sleep on but for an hour;
    Your time shall come; pity is but postponement.
    Some kingliness too hovers about the youth,
    He shelters her with nobleness; an echo
    Of something haunts my ear, of deeds with swords

    For lighting, coupled somehow in covenant
    With her whose beauty pierced me long ago.
    Let him hold her close, for their brief fluttering hour
    Is but a moth-wing in the wind of time.
    Pity is but—what—pity!”  So, wandering,

    He’ll drowse and start, and doze and start—and sleep,
    And then we’ll spring and take him in a net
    And show him in the markets of the world,
    Confuting all the skeptics of renown,
    Here’s the pure proof that Love can conquer Death. [Page 84]

She:
    The storm dwindles: the lightning hangs like signals
    In the rear-guard of retreat, a cool wind
    Blows backward from the vortex of the cloud;
    There’s a starved moon at the tip of the crag
    That hunts like a silver hound for starlight;

    She’ll pass, and next in progress comes the dawn.

He:
    We’ll wait secure and hear the crushed thunder
    Recoil, and the water-voices of the gorge
    Fill in the pauses, and then the faint first light
    Will point the peaks and we’ll go down to safety.

SEPTEMBER

THE morns are grey with haze and faintly cold,
     The early sunsets arc the west with red;
     The stars are misty silver overhead,
Above the dawn Orion lies outrolled.
Now all the slopes are slowly growing gold,

     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

        The birds are following in the pathless dark
        The footsteps of the pilgrim summer.  Hark!
     Was that the redstart or the bobolink?
That lonely cry the summer-hearted bird? [Page 85]

A MYSTERY PLAY

CHARACTERS

The Father.   The Child.   Death.   Angels.   Two Travellers.

THE even settles still and deep,
In the cold sky the last gold burns,
Across the colour snowflakes creep.
Each one from grey to glory turns
Then flutters into nothingness;

The frost down falls with mighty stress
Through the swift cloud that parts on high;
The great stars shrivel into less
In the hard depth of the iron sky.

THE CHILD:
    What is that light, dear father,

        That light in the dark, dark sky?

THE FATHER:
    Those are the lights of the city
        And the villages thereby.

THE CHILD:
    There must be fire in the city
        To throw that yellow glare;

    And fire in the little villages
        On all the hearthstones there. [Page 86]

THE FATHER, musing:
    Yea, flames are on the hearthstones;
        The ovens are full of bread,
    But here the coals are dying

        And the flames are dead.

THE CHILD:
    What is the cold, dear father?
        It stings like an angry bee.
    Wherever it stings my hand turns white,
        See!

THE FATHER:
    The cold is a beast, my dear one,
        With his paws he tears at the thatch,
    His breath is a curse and a warning,
        You can see it creep on the latch.

THE CHILD:
    If ’tis a wolf, dear father,

        That lies with his paw on the floor,
    Let us heat the spade in the embers
        And drive him away from the door.

ANGELS:
God is the power of growth,
In the snail and the tree,

God is the power of growth
In the heart of the man.

THE CHILD:
    Did you not hear the singing,
        Voices overhead?
    Mother’s voice and Ruth’s voice,

        Voices of the dead. [Page 87]

THE FATHER, musing:
    Our Ruth died in the springtime,
        With the spade I turned the sod,
    We buried her by the brier rose,
        Her life is hid with God.

THE CHILD:
    All summer long in the garden
        No roses came to the tree.
    Father, was it for sorrow,
        Sorrow for thee and me?

THE FATHER:
    Roses grew in the garden,

        I saw them at morning and even,
    Shadows of earthly roses
        They bloomed for fingers in heaven.

•        •        •        •        •

    The air is very clear and still,
    The moonlight falls from half the sphere;

    The shadow from the silver hill
    Fills half the vale, and half is clear
    As the moon’s self with cloudless snow;
    By the dead stream the alders throw
    Their shadows, shot with tingling spars;

    On the sheer height the elm trees glow:
    Their tops are tangled with the stars.

THE CHILD:
    Father, the coals are dying,
        See!  I have heated the spade,
    Let me throw the door wide open,

        I will not be afraid. [Page 88]

THE FATHER:
    Let me kiss you once on the forehead,
        And once on your darling eyes;
    We may see them both at the dawning,
        In the dales of Paradise.

THE CHILD:
    And if I only see them,
        I will tell them how you smiled;
    For the wolf, you know, is angry,
        And I am a little child.

DEATH:
    Undaunted spirits,

    I give thee peace,
    For a world of dread—
    Calm.
    For desperate toil—
    Rest.

    Thou who didst say,
    When the waters of poverty
    Waxed deep, deep,
    What we bear is best;
    Just ones,

    I give thee sleep.

FIRST TRAVELLER:
    Keep up your spirits, I know
    There’s a cabin under the hill,
    The fellow will make a roaring fire;
    We’ll heat our hands and drink our fill

    And go warm to our heart’s desire! [Page 89]

SECOND TRAVELLER:
    The door is open,—Heigho!
    This pair will claim neither crown nor groat,
    The man has gripped his garden spade
    As if he would dig his grave in the snow;

    The boy has the face of a saint, I trow;
    His brow says, “I was not afraid!”

FIRST TRAVELLER:
    Ah, well, these things must be, you know!
    Gather your sables around your throat;
    Give us that story about the monk,

    His niece, and the wandering conjurer,
    Just to keep our blood astir.

THE ANGELS:
    The heart of God,
    The worlds and man,
    Are fashioned and molded,

    In a subtle plan;
    Passion outsurges,
    Sweeps far but converges;
    Nothing is lost,
    Sod or stone,

    But comes to its own;
    Bear well thy joy,
    ’Tis mixed with alloy,
    Bear well thy grief,
    ’Tis a rich full sheaf:

    Gather the souls that have passed in the night,
    Theirs is the peace and the light. [Page 90]

•        •        •        •        •

    The moon is gone, the dawning brings
    A deeper dark with silver blent,
    Above the wells where, myriad, springs

    Light from the crimson orient;
    The elms are born, the shadows creep,
    Tremble and melt away—one sweep
    The great soft colour floods and flows,
    Where under snow the roses sleep;

    The morn has turned the snow to rose.

EQUATION

WHEN we grow old, and time looks like thief,
That was the spendthrift of our dearest days;
When colour mingles merged in silvered grays;
When joys are ever memoried to be brief;
When beauty fades; when hope is under feof;

When all our moods are mantled in a haze;
When sprightly pleasure for a penance plays
The part of prudence in the weeds of grief;
It will suffice if unto memory
Visit the voices and the eager grace

Of days that promised never to forget;
If they will flow like rumors of the sea,
Heard under honied lindens in the place,
Where the marguerite and the mignonette. [Page 91]

SENZA FINE

THAT is the rain
Sobbing, sobbing
Against the window pane.
And the wind comes robbing
The rain of its voice

And leaves me no choice,
In the dead room,
But to hear the noise
Of my heart throbbing, throbbing.

But before the storm

The evening was warm
I remember, and calm,
And by the mill dam
The martins were flashing,
If she had not said—!

But then say it she did—
I should be rid
Of the throbbing, throbbing,
At the heart of the shadow
That stands by the window

Sobbing, sobbing,
And breathes the dark
And sucks at the noise
Like a vampire—hark!
Robbing, robbing

The storm of its voice.

The miller’s children at play,
I remember, called to each other,
And I tried to smother
The sound of her words, [Page 92]

But then—what she showed me!
’Tis between her vest,
The one I gave on her birthday,
Crimson, with silver pomegranates,
And her breast:

They will find it there,
But what can they say?
They cannot find
What it did to my mind,
Or what she said

When she threw back her head
And smiled,
So maddening, so wild.
To the left of the trail
Through the beaver meadow,

An arm of the swale
Is bordered with iris,
And the ferns grow rank,
But nothing is dank,
Crisp, pungent, dry:

The wind lingers by,
And stops.
There may have been a few drops.
Throbbing, throbbing,
And there is the rain

Robbing, robbing
The wind of its voice,
And it beats again
On the window pane,
Sobbing, sobbing.

                            (Senza fine) [Page 93]

THE SAILOR’S SWEETHEART

O IF love were had for asking,
     In the markets of the town,
Hardly a lass would think to wear
     A fine silken gown:
But love is had by grieving

By choosing and by leaving,
And there’s no one now to ask me
If heavy lies my heart.

O if love were had for a deep wish
     In the deadness of the night,

There’d be a truce to longing
     Between the dusk and the light:
But love is had for sighing,
For living and for dying,
And there’s no one now to ask me

If heavy lies my heart.

O if love were had for taking
     Like honey from the hive,
The bees that made the tender stuff
     Could hardly keep alive:

But love it is a wounded thing,
A tremor and a smart,
And there’s no one left to kiss me now
Over my heavy heart. [Page 94]

PROLOGUE

     (Enter the Spirit of the Drama, before the curtain, clad in an old cloak with worn sandals on her feet, and holding a wrinkled mask to her face, but hidden is a beautiful dress.)

THE SPIRIT OF THE DRAMA:

AH, I am weary and cold—
This is a harsh dominion, full of snow,
Sleet and other kinds of rude weather.
Where are the flowers they promised, and the grain
That made gold ripples in acres of sunlight.

They are not, and the ruthless wind has wrenched
The last leaf from the naked tree.
I am the Spirit of Drama; there is no home for me here.
I went up and down the streets, seeking a shelter,
And found none.  There were lights enough,

Throngs under the lights and laughter—but no wish
To house an old dull crone with an ancient face.
Pictures were dancing along like the visions of a madman.
In palaces with dark warm spaces,
With music in the warm dark spaces.

For here our art is foisted on a screen,
Mechanic, flat and soundless; the sense
Comes after the picture, like a brickbat thrown at a dog,
Or in advance, like a tramp’s grace before a meal of cold victuals,
But where is the palace for the living drama,

Vivid with colour and music and movement?
Nowhere;—The tender beauty of human speech, [Page 95]
The cadence of the voice, the moving charm
That lends to life its fragrance and its force,
Are lost in the confusion and hurry of a peep-show—

A great inheritance sold for a mess of pottage.

THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE (clad in Motley) enters through the curtain:

Dear beggar woman, I say Goodeven to you.

THE SPIRIT OF THE DRAMA:

Dear Maid, Goodeven to you, and why
Are you dressed in motley?

THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE:

O, I am the spirit of this House.

THE SPIRIT OF THE DRAMA:

And what House may this be?

THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE:

O, The House of Make-believe;—
But you are cold and your cloak is wretched
And your sandals are broken, and your face—your face—

THE SPIRIT OF THE DRAMA:

Yes, sweet maid, you would say my face is ugly and wrinkled—

But you are compassionate.  Once I was fair,
And wore garments that matched my fairness.
I had maids that tended me, men that gave their souls for me,
Women that bartered their beauty for me—

THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE:

Dear beggar woman, you must have been a queen. [Page 96]

THE SPIRIT OF THE DRAMA:

Yes, and to queens the present “must have been”
Is bitter, and ill paid for by the most splendid retrospect.

THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE:

Dear beggar woman, I would serve you if I might,
For to be maid to a fallen queen
Is better than to be housekeeper to a rich upstart.

THE SPIRIT OF THE DRAMA:

Yes, but I have nothing to pay you withal.
I have none of my jewels left,—
They were scattered in a far country,—
Only these poor garments you see,
And this face full of care and wrinkles,

You cannot serve even a fallen queen,
Unless she has a tiring-room and a bread-trough,
And I have no home and nowhere to rest.

THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE:

You have no home?

THE SPIRIT OF THE DRAMA:

I had a home beside the purple sea,

When Greek was music round the murmuring shores,
I had a home in that sweet island,
Our Shakespeare in the homeliness of his love
Called “a swan’s nest in a great pool.”
I have a home wherever men desire

To tell the passions of the human heart
In swift clear speech; to probe the mind
And lay the motive plain as a pathway on a map;
To show how the heart may be merry when ’tis sad,
And often sad when merry. [Page 97]

THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE:

O then your home is here,
And you may live with us,
This is no palace—
This is a humble house—
A very little humble house of Make-believe.

But we mean to mouth and strut it with the best;
What we do falls short of our desire,
But we use our deeds to measure our desire,
And that’s immeasurable!

THE SPIRIT OF THE DRAMA:

Dear Maid, your promise sounds

Like a sweet flute in tempest,
Or like a kindred voice that after many wanderings
Calls back the wanderer.

THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE:

Then come and you shall sometime see
Many a grave spirit and many a merry one.

You shall perhaps meet Imogen and Portia,
And that sweet maid that gave the flowers to the shepherds.
You shall meet myriads of the Moderns.
But here to-night we have two homespun plays,
Two native things of our rude climate.—

One is sad and one is merry,
And the merry one’s the best, at least
The author of the sad one says so.
We have the Seasons dancing and the Year watching them.
If you dread our winter, you will find

That we have spring here always in our hearts. [Page 98]

THE SPIRIT OF THE DRAMA:

So that will warm me,
I will go in and sojourn with you,
For what the Spirit of Drama craves
Is light and housing and that cheerful wit

That loves the doing for the sake of the deed.

(She throws off her disguise, the Spirit of the House assisting).

I give my sandals to the uneasy person
Who leaves before the play is ended;
May they lend him noiseless speed
To an entertainment that will please him better.

I leave my old cloak for our friends the critics
With my earnest desire for their comfort;
May it let into their hearts as much forbearance
As it did chilliness into my shoulders.
My mask, I leave to the lover who needs

To wear it to better his features,
Wishing that his mistress may take it for the face of Adonis;
And my very heartfelt entreaties
I leave for you all.

THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUSE (leading her through the curtain):

Come Splendour. [Page 99]

LABOUR AND THE ANGEL

THE wind plunges—then stops;
And a column of leaves in a whirl,
Like a dervish that spins—drops,
With a delicate rustle,
Falls into a circle that thins;

The leaves creep away one by one,
Hiding in hollows and ruts;
Silence comes down on the lane:
The light wheels slow from the sun,
And glints where the corn stood,

And strays over the plain,
Touching with patches of gold,
The knolls and the hollows,
Crosses the lane,
And slips into the wood;

Then flashes a mile away on the farm,
A moment of brightness fine;
Then the gold glimmers and wanes,
And is swept by a clouding of gray,
For cheek by jowl, arm in arm,

The shadow’s afoot with the shine.
The wind roars out from the elm,
Then leaps tiger-sudden;—the leaves
Shudder up into heaps and are caught
High as the branch where they hung

Over the oriole’s nest.
Down in the sodden field,
A blind man is gathering his roots,
Guided and led by a girl; [Page 100]
Her gold hair blows in the wind,

Her garments with flutter and furl
Leap like a flag in the sun;
And whenever he stoops, she stoops,
And they heap the dark coloured beets
In the barrow, row upon row.

When it is full to the brim,
He wheels it patiently, slow,
Something oppressive and grim
Clothing his figure, but she
Beautifully light at his side,

Touches his arm with her hand,
Ready to help or to guide:
Power and comfort at need
In the flex of her figure lurk,
The fire at the heart of the deed

The angel that watches o’er work.

This is her visible form,
Heartening the labour she loves,
Keeping the breath of it warm,
Warm as a nestling of doves.

Humble or high or sublime,
Hers no reward of degrees,
Ditching as precious as rhyme,
If only the spirit be true.
“Effort and effort,” she cries,

“This is the heart-beat of life,
Up with the lark and the dew,
Still with the dew and the stars,
Feel it athrob in the earth.” [Page 101]

When labour is counselled by love,

You may see her splendid, serene,
Bending and brooding above,
With the justice and power of her mien;
Where thought has its passionate birth,
Her smile is the sweetest renown,

For the stroke and the derring-do
Her crown in the starriest crown.
When tears at the fountain are dry,
Bares she the round of her breast,
Soft to the cicatrized cheek,

Lulls this avatar of rest;
Strength is her arm for the weak;
Courage the wells of her eyes;
What is the power of their deeps,
Only the baffled can guess;

Nothing can daunt the emprise
When she sets hand to the hilt;
Victory is she—not less.
And oh! in the cages and dens
Where women work down to the bone,

Where men never laugh but they curse,
Think you she leaves them alone?
She the twin-sister of Love!
There, where the pressure is worst,
Of this hell-palace built to the skies

Upon hearts too crushed down to burst,
There, she is wiser than wise,
Giving no vistas sublime
Of towers in the murmurous air,
With gardens of pleasuance and pride [Page 102]

Lulling the fleetness of time,
With doves alight by the side
Of a fountain that veils and drips;
She offers no tantalus-cup
To the shrunken, the desperate lips;

But she calms them with lethe and love,
And deadens the throb and the pain,
And evens the heart-beat wild,
Whispering again and again,
“Work on, work on, work on,

My broken, my agonized child,”
With her tremulous, dew-cool lips,
At the whorl of the tortured ear,
Till the cry is the presage of hope,
The trample of succour near.

And for those whose desperate day
Breeds night with a leaguer of fears,
(Night, that on earth brings the dew,
With stars at the window, and wind
In the maples, and rushes of balm,)

She pours from their limitless stores
Her sacred, ineffable tears.
When a soul too weary of life
Sets to its madness an end,
Then for a moment her eyes

Lighten, and thunder broods dark,
Heavy and strong at her heart;
But for a moment, and then
All her imperious wrath
Breaks in a passion of tears, [Page 103]

With the surge of her grief outpoured,
She sinks on the bosom of Love,
Her sister of infinite years,
And is wrapped, and enclosed, and restored.

So we have come with the breeze,

Up to the height of the hill,
Lost in the valley trees,
The old blind man and the girl;
But deep in the heart is the thrill
Of the image of counseling love;

The shape of the soul in the gloom,
And the power of the figure above,
Stand for the whole world’s need:
For labour is always blind,
Unless as the light of the deed

The angel is smiling behind.

Now on the height of the hill,
The wind is fallen to a breath;
But down in the valley still,
It stalks in the shadowy wood,

And angers the river’s breast;
The fields turn into the dark
That plays on the round of the sphere;
A star leaps sharp in the clear
Line of the sky, clear and cold;

But a cloud in the warmer west
Holds for a little its gold;
Like the wing of a seraph who sinks
Into antres afar from the earth,
Reluctant he flames on the brinks [Page 104]

Of the circles of nebulous stars,
Reluctant he turns to the rest,
From the planet whose ideal is love,
And then as he sweeps to the void
Vivid with tremulous light,

He gives it his translucent wing,
An emblem of pity unfurled,
Then falls to the uttermost ring,
And is lost to the world.

OFF THE ISLE AUX COUDRES

THE moon, Capella, and the Pleiades
     Silver the river’s grey uncertain floor;
     Only a heron haunts the grassy shore;
A fox barks sharply in the cedar trees;
Then comes the lift and lull of plangent seas,

     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,

Of all the mighty empires thou has had
     Dreaming of power beneath thy palace dome,
Of how thou art untouched by their distress,
     Supreme above this dreaming land, my home. [Page 105]

THE HARVEST

SUN on the mountain,
Shade in the valley,
Ripple and lightness
Leaping along the world,
Sun, like a gold sword

Plucked from the scabbard,
Striking the wheat-fields,
Splendid and lusty,
Close-standing, full-headed,
Toppling with plenty;

Shade, like a buckler
Kindly and ample,
Sweeping the wheat-fields
Darkening and tossing;
There on the world-rim

Winds break and gather
Heaping the mist
For the pyre of the sunset;
And still as a shadow,
In the dim westward,

A cloud sloop of amethyst
Moored to the world
With cables of rain.

Acres of gold wheat
Stir in the sunshine,

Rounding the hilltop,
Crested with plenty,
Filling the valley,
Brimmed with abundance; [Page 106]
Wind in the wheat-field

Eddying and settling,
Swaying it, sweeping it,
Lifting the rich heads,
Tossing them soothingly;
Twinkle and shimmer

The lights and the shadowings,
Nimble as moonlight
Astir in the mere.
Laden with odors
Of peace and of plenty,

Soft comes the wind
From the ranks of the wheat-field,
Bearing a promise
Of harvest and sickle-time,
Opulent threshing floors

Dusty and dim
With the whirl of the flail,
And wagons of bread,
Down-laden and lumbering
Through the gateways of cities.

When will the reapers
Strike in their sickles,
Bending and grasping,
Shearing and spreading;
When will the gleaners

Searching the stubble
Take the last wheat-heads
Home in their arms? [Page 107]

Ask not the question!—
Something tremendous

Moves to the answer.

Hunger and poverty
Heaped like the ocean
Welters and mutters,
Hold back the sickles!

Millions of children
Born to their terrible
Ancestral hunger,
Starved in their mothers’ womb,
Starved at the nipple, cry—

Ours is the harvest!

Millions of women
Learned in the tragical
Secrets of poverty,
Sweated and beaten, cry,—

Hold back the sickles!

Millions of men
With a vestige of manhood,
Wild-eyed and gaunt-throated,
Shout with a leonine

Accent of anger,
Leave us the wheat-fields!

When will the reapers
Strike in their sickles?
Ask not the question;

Something tremendous
Moves to the answer. [Page 108]

Long have they sharpened
Their fiery, impetuous
Sickles of carnage,

Welded them æons
Ago in the mountains
Of suffering and anguish;
Hearts were their hammers
Blood was their fire,

Sorrow their anvil,
(Trusty the sickles
Tempered with tears;)
Time they had plenty—
Harvests and harvests

Passed them in agony,
Only a half-filled
Ear for their lot;
Man that had taken
God for a master

Made him a law,
Mocked him and cursed him,
Set up this hunger,
Called it necessity,
Put in the blameless mouth

Judas’s language:
The poor ye have with you
Alway, unending.

But up from the impotent
Anguish of children,

Up from the labour
Fruitless, unmeaning, [Page 109]
Of millions of mothers,
Hugely necessitous,
Grew by a just law

Stern and implacable,
Art born of poverty,
The making of sickles
Meet for the harvest.

And now to the wheat-fields

Come the weird reapers
Armed with their sickles,
Whipping them keenly
In the fresh-air fields,
Wild with the joy of them,

Finding them trusty,
Hilted with teen.
Swarming like ants,
The Idea for captain,
No banners, no bugles,

Only a terrible
Ground-bass of gathering
Tempest and fury,
Only a tossing
Of arms and of garments;

Sexless and featureless,
(Only the children
Different among them,
Crawling between their feet,
Borne on their shoulders;)

Rolling their shaggy heads
Wild with the unheard-of [Page 110]
Drug of the sunshine;
Tears that had eaten
The half of their eyelids

Dry on their cheeks;
Blood in their stiffened hair
Clouted and darkened;
Down in their cavern hearts
Hunger the tiger,

Leaping, exulting;
Sighs that had choked them
Burst into triumphing;
On they come, Victory!
Up to the wheat-fields,

Dreamed of in visions
Bred by the hunger,
Seen for the first time
Splendid and golden;
On they come fluctuant,

Seething and breaking,
Weltering like fire
In the pit of the earthquake,
Bursting in heaps
With the sudden intractable

Lust of the hunger:
Then when they see them—
The miles of the harvest
White in the sunshine,
Rushing and stumbling,

With the mighty and clamorous
Cry of the people
Starved for creation, [Page 111]
Hurl themselves onward,
Deep in the wheat-fields,

Weeping like children,
After ages and ages,
Back at the breasts
Of their mother the earth.

Night in the valley,

Gloom on the mountain,
Wind in the wheat,
Far to the southward
The flutter of lightning,
The shudder of thunder;

But high at the zenith,
A cluster of stars
Glimmers and throbs
In the grasp of the midnight,
Steady and absolute,

Ancient and sure. [Page 112]

THE DAME REGNANT

AH! Dame Gossip fabulous!
You have worn the quiet smile,
Till your mouth is drawn as trim
As a Quaker’s beaver brim;
And when a rumour runs a mile,

You don’t know the soles he wears,
Never heard the rascal’s name;
If the neighbours bring the shoe,
Tug and tug it won’t fit you;
If it does, ah! shifty Dame,

Rumour’s last must be the same!
Hey! this comedy began
When the earth was blithe and young,
When the less fair of the fair
Daughters of the world of men,

Whispered in their errant hair,
How their sisters of the glance,
Clear and deep of star in blue,
Met the eager sons of God,
In the valley, in the dew,

On the myrtle-scented sod:
And the truants from the spheres
Heard like donging of herd-bells,
In the flow of harp and flute,
How those others in eclipse,

Withered up in jealousies,
Crowning malice in the eyes,
Over malice on the lips,
Hissed their word of hate and lies. [Page 113]
Ah! these truants from the spheres

Learnt the human in the note
Of the goddess, and were ware
How of all the torrent gold
Snakes were half and half was hair.

Yet the ages were as one

Heap of burnt and calcined stars,
Ere her popular crown was run
In the mould of human fears,
Ere her sceptre had been cast,
Tempered steel with foolish tears.

Now they view her at the last,
Personed like a regnant queen,
Cold as pole-ice, hard as quartz,
Loathly as the livid, lean
Adder of the triple tongue,

Basilisk eyes that reap and glean,
And a mind alert, elate,
With the splendour of her wit,
Springing through a smoky fate,
With a gleam of hell-fire lit.

And she wanders from her throne
(So these cringing lieges state),
While her shape still glooms it there;
And but give the wizard crone
Two small juttings in the air,

Spiderlike she weaves her web,
From her ancient ventral store,
Till the whole great house is meshed
With her legends, grim and hoar. [Page 114]
Or she starts a quiet mouse,

Feeding in the native cheese,
And a wolf springs from the rind,
Bloated out to what you please.
What she does not say she thinks;
Crafty, with a few dry winks,

Drops her poison in the eye,
Watching while it works and sinks;
When the eye is diamond clear,
Comes she with a slimy sigh,
Bred to catch the dullard ear,

Opening with the formula,
Stereoed to the devil’s phrase
In the human words, “They say;”
Then the burden of the tale
Crawls in after like a snail.

And if the dear vassal’s wild,
Why, her countenance is blank,
And her eye is dull as dulse;
But the finger dwells awhile
Calming on the plunging pulse,

Just for, say, a nunnery smile,
Till with magic overmuch,
All the story is conveyed,
Through the nerves intensive played,
Innuendo of the touch.

Once afoot the quarry flies,
From the hunter in the mind;
With a prudent, vacant smile,
Dull Saint Virgin drops her eyes, [Page 115]
Give the word with quiet guile,

Guarding with her sainted wish,
For the error of the tale,
The dear souls from blast and bale.
And the fighter to his trull
Tells his version of the yarn;

With his bull-brain all afire,
Charges down the ruddy rag
Of the world above his ire,
Tramps the tale in slag and mire.
And the comments run from “Pish,”

To the most convenient curse,
In the beggar’s damning purse.
So the story rolls and grows
Crescive as a cloudy head,
Budding silver in the blue,

From black root of thunder bred,
With the lightning splitting through.
Every subject stricken blind
With black fearing of the Dame,
Strained of nerve and lean of loin,

Passes on the strangest talk,
Like a counterfeited coin;
And the fear of her is wild,
Works like acid in the blood,
And the man is worse than child,

Saved by innocent hardihood.
How he supplicates and whines,
When he knows his fame is out,
And sees springing into lines
All the fables, shout on shout. [Page 116]

Thinks to run the talk to earth,
Talk that carries rumour’s lease;
Cloudy talk of vapor birth,
Chases on the plains of peace,
Or where tides of trade convulse;

Something mantled like a shape
Grasps at last with pounding pulse—
Mist he holds; while mocking rings
All the riot sprung anew,
With the flap and clap of wings.

Nay, my craven, you who fear
All this cackle of the crew,
Carping at your coward ear!
We who know the Dame so well,
Whence she sprang and how she grew,

Do not crown her deep with hell;
She is but an earthly shape
Springing from the parent ape,
Nothing wild with power or eld,
Nothing older than the race;

And this skull-face that you dread,
Is the image of your head.
Here where Comedy is held
Deep in honour as the star,
Spreading sparkle over sea,

You may see the Dame at will,
Nothing formed for dread or dree,
Contemplate her and be still:

She has worn the quiet smile,
Till her mouth is drawn as trim

As a Quaker’s beaver brim: [Page 117]
Her light eyes seem clear of guile,
And her smile is half demure,
Half malicious.  Let her play
One of her protean pranks,

Show her fangs and start her prey.
Now she dares the comic sprite,
Laughter only comes to light;
Ripples outward like a flag
Over towers inviolate,

Sparkles April as a brook,
Breaks where sun and shadow flit;
Laughter silver and secure,
From the crystal wells of wit,
Springing sanely, springing pure.

Mark your Dame of many crowns,
How she hardens into sphinx,
When she hears the airy ring
Of the master that she owns,
How, amorphous bulk, she shrinks,

How she trails and leers and winks,
Just a moment of gray rags,
Ere the wind has pounced and packed
All her baggage and her bags
Into limbo, and the dust

Rises in a smoke, and wracked
Drives the cloud in shreds and shags.
Laughter falling coolly clear,
Widens air and broaches sun,
Comes as healing to a fear

But of self and shadow spun:
Self, a lantern-candle, throws [Page 118]
Hugeous spottings on the wall;
Dance the tragic giant Oes,
Rayed from pin-points punctured small,