Madame de Courament excels at Bridge.
Hers is a clever hand,
Coloured with age and wrinkled,
But beautiful and tapering too,
Quite in accord with this old, stately room,

With crystal chandeliers,
And flowers and the warm tapestry of books.
Silent the cards fall.
Down the long avenue a dog howls at the moon,
A far, frost-sharpened sound.

The wind swirls up a little storm of snow
That blows against the casement.
A skilled opponent, Madame makes few mistakes
Like that a moment since,
When suddenly the dog howled—and we lost a trick.

She has a flashing wit,
Without her dinners at Rideau Hall are incomplete.
As someone said the other day,
‘These elderly, elaborate folk
Are like a passing pageantry,

Gorgeous and of another day,”
Silent the cards fall.
Again the far-off dog howls at the moon.

An hour later, “Chateau Laurier’ she told the chauffeur.
And, alert and gay,

Wrapped in her sables,
She was motoring me the long white way to town
And gossiping of little this and that.
But just as we were nearing city lights
She said, ‘I saw you noticed that dog’s bark.

It sounded almost like a wolf’s;
It took me back to the Red River days. [page 43]
Oh, it was fifty years ago, my dear;
I was as young as you . . . It seems like yesterday.
Hardships! I loved it all!

Even the wolves, baying far out of sight,
Failed to disturb our rest
When we were safe at home.
The Indians were quite friendly—
And the eternal glamour of the snow!

And yet to-night, just when I heard that sound,
Sharpened by frost,
I felt an old pain strike me,
The knife-like thrust, before a child is born.
I was alone that night,

My husband had been called to Edmonton,
My Indian maid had let her family in
Looking for whisky.
I dared not call to her.
For hours the Indians danced and sang and yelled.

I watched them from my icy-cold bedroom
Through great cracks in the floor.
Before they slept they sat crouched by the fire,
As I crouched up above in fright and pain.
And all night long I heard the wolves;

They kept a sort of savage company
With my own stifled cries.
To-night, my mind went back a moment strangely—
I always thought he had the sweetest face
Of any of my seven . . . But then he was the first!’

She raised her glittering hand
And found the speaking tube, to modify her chauffeur’s pace.
‘And that, my dear, was fifty years ago,’ she said.
‘The prairie was a very different place—
I never thought, then, I should come to Bridge!’ [page 44]

A TRAMP

TO CHARLES CHAPLIN

Strange and eternally forlorn,
Attended by high laughter,
Where was your ancient theatre
Before this masque was born?

Who . . . who are you,

In whom rebirth has moulded
Such long-remembered tragedy
Behind a comic masque?

What sent you tramping oddly,
A small buffooning pilgrim,

Followed by roars of laughter
Like wind along your way?

Is it a fabled staff,
The little English cane
Tap-tapping so mysteriously

Like pity in the heart?

Strange and eternally forlorn,
Attended by high laughter—
What of your ancient theatre
Before this masque was born? [page 45]

’CELLIST

Against curved ’cello
Almost breast to breast,
Curve linked to curve
Her ardent body pressed

In a strange marriage,

Through whose deep embrace
Moments of rapture
Seemed to interlace.

As in joy’s arrowed swiftness
So creation there

Final, immaculate,
In tragic brevity arose in air. [page 46]

REMEMBERING PAVLOWA

Footsteps of youth through the springtime playing,
Footfalls of snow in a blue mist straying,
The rose of Russia in a bright wind swaying,
     A rose of fire and snow.

Voices chanting everywhere, but no word said,

Fairy bells from ancient towers signaling the dead,
Light love tuning viols while the dance runs red,
     A flaming dance of death.

White barbaric winters and a sky star-strung,
All the hidden pathways, all the songs unsung,

Caught in flying footsteps over wild music hung—
     She dances, and the Czar lies dead.

Oh, the cries, and martyrdoms, and fatal morns,
Scarlet nights and fiery wine and bitter scorns,
Dancing in a rose of joy from a field of thorns—

     Rapture from a land of thorns! [page 47]

AN INDIAN

It might have been two hundred years ago,
For all the difference in her way or mine,
That her canoe, with paddle dipping slow,
Just as the sunset ran to embers low,
Stopped at my rocky door.

With fish and basketwork she plied her trade,
And I, to help a little money last,
Answered her barter with a coat I made
Of coloured wool—oh, many seasons past!
We were both satisfied! [page 48]

A FARMER

To a young farmer plowing in the sun
An April morning fifty years ago,
Turning the soft brown earth of this old field
Which skirts the highway that was once a wood,
What if strange news had run:

Your daughter, yet unborn,
Often, on such a gleaming April day,
Shall flash you by,
Your ghost still plowing in the field,
Swifter than wind, in a great horseless car

That takes no count of distance, near or far,
Just to convey your wife, now seventy-five,
Back twenty miles or so from midday lunch
With little Sarah Brown, old, too, and grey.

If you could know that voices from the air,

Picked up by magic wires from here and there,
A hundred thousand miles of here and there,
Might rant and sing about the lonely farm
Just as you chose to call or shut them off;
And that no neighbour ever, unaware,

Need walk ten dreary miles to find you in!

What of our world to you, old-fashioned ghost
Of this sweet field! Your field, all so unchanged;
The same small village lingers on its edge,
There is your planting still in that green hedge.

I think from what I hear of your long past—
An ardent, red-head youth—
That you might lean upon your little plow,
Hearing this unborn world,
Letting daft magic pass unheeded by, [page 49]

But holding one thing fast:
‘So, I’ve a girl,
In some mad place like Mother Shipton’s dream!
She’s thinking of me yet;
Well then, by George, I’ve won a heavy bet,

And Kitty Stevens married me at last!’

Ghost of a farmer, plowing in the sun
An April morning, fifty years ago! [page 50]

AT EIGHTY

One sees her brougham still,
As she goes calling with her silver case,
Something about her like a rare old lace
Woven of metallic thread.

She recalls candlelight,

Harpstrings, and backgrounds of a rich brocade
Where Dresden figures, delicate yet staid,
Were wont to dance.

Ghosts are her only partners,
Rakish young gentlemen of years ago,

Whose solemn looks and wigs of powdered snow
Belie their worldly ways.

It is precise music;
A little arrogant, and sweet and thin,
It does not let one wailing measure in—

Not even the last bar! [page 51]

STOUT LADY IN SLIPPERS

I never wore slippers
On sweet April evenings,
But boots made for roads that we traveled in woe,
For morning and evening
Meant rough wayside places

And feet that were slow.

But now silver slippers,
Light-mannered, bright slippers,
Great mirror-like floors and a green velvet lawn,
Where we beckon with laughter,

With music, with dancing,
Sad youth—that is gone. [page 52]

[back to Contents]