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Louise
Morey Bowman
1882-1944
Louise
Morey Bowman was born on January 17, 1882,
in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Her father was chief inspector
for the Eastern Townships Bank, and Bowman was
educated by private tutors and at Dana Hall in
Wellsley, Massachusetts, where she specialized
in literature and violin. In 1909, she married
an electrical engineer by the name of Archibald
Abercromby Bowman and moved with him to Toronto.
It was there, in 1922, that she published her
first book of poetry, Moonlight and Common
Day, dedicated to her mother who died when
Bowman was fifteen. Her poems had already appeared
in prestigious American magazines including Poetry
(Chicago), whose founder Harriet Monroe wrote
a positive review of Bowman’s first book,
drawing attention to her “modern and individual
imagination” (43). The title poem appears
to argue for an alternative feminine voice to
expand the Canadian poetic scene then ruled by
the “masculine” verse of Charles G.D.
Roberts who had published Songs of the Common
Day in 1893. Ever conscious of the “limitations
of her power in a patriarchal literary structure”
(Cimon 28), Bowman suggests that the story of
“the sweet, wet earth” and the moonlight
lies “written / Between the lines.”
Two
years later, Bowman published Dream Tapestries,
which won the 1924 Prix David from the Quebec
government and included the poem “Oranges,”
which had won honourable mention in a 1922 competition
judged by Amy Lowell. Reviews of this collection,
however, were fewer and more mixed. Like many
of the women in this anthology, she also wrote
fiction, and her stories appeared in magazines
such as Chatelaine and the Canadian
Mercury and were recognized by Best American
Short Stories.
In
1926, Bowman moved to Montreal, the city that
inspired the long poem “The Mountain that
Watched.” She became active in the Montreal
Branch of the Canadian Authors’ Association.
Her last collection, Characters in Cadence,
was published in 1938 and almost completely ignored.
[Page 339]
In
her Introduction to Poetry by Canadian Women,
Rosemary Sullivan asks “Where, for instance,
is the name of Louise Morey Bowman in the history
of Canadian modernism?” (xi). We know that
she was a close friend of fellow Eastern Townships
poet Frank Oliver Call whose 1915 collection Acanthus
and Wild Grape was a seminal investigation
of experimental forms. She was also a friend of
Florence Randal Livesay, the mother of Dorothy
Livesay who would go on to contribute significantly
to the development of the modern idiom in Canadian
poetry. As David Arnason points out in an article
on Livesay, Bowman’s series of poems entitled
“Waxworks,” published in Poetry
(Chicago) in 1927, were “based on jazz rhythms”
and marked a vast departure from traditional versification
(8). He also points out that many of the poems
in her last collection, Characters in Cadence
(1938), were originally published in the 1920s.
E.J. Pratt was then doing editorial work for Bowman’s
publisher, Macmillan, and his role in determining
the nature of her collections has yet to be explored.
Though
now completely ignored, Bowman is intriguing not
only for her subject matter, which touches on
a variety of feminist subjects including representations
of women in art, mythology, and modern society,
but also for her technique, which ranges from
the haiku to the long poem. Readers may be disconcerted,
as was one contemporary reviewer, by her frequent
use of ellipses, but these appear to result from
a sincere if awkward effort to find a formal equivalent
for that which lies between the lines, or as Anne
Cimon puts it, paraphrasing Emily Dickinson, “how
she chose to tell the truth but tell it slant”
(28). Whether or not one concurs with Donald Precosky
that her “struggle to break free of techniques
which she inherited from the nineteenth century
proved ultimately futile…,” (108)
one must consider her a pioneer of Modernism in
Canada. She died in Montreal on September 28,
1944, and was buried in Sherbrooke, Quebec.
As
an epigraph for her last collection, Bowman chose
a passage from Virginia Woolf’s Letter
to a Young Poet that describes the poet’s
task as one of finding “the relations between
things that seem incompatible yet have a mysterious
affinity…to rethink human life…not
spun out at length in the novelist’s way,
but condensed and synthesized in the poet’s
way.” In her poem “The Creators,”
Bowman equates those who prefer “the tired,
obvious, conventional thing” with those
who rejected Christ because they did not understand
him. The “new-born things” of the
world, she argues, are capable of “Illumining
/ Dim, darkened Beauty, / With new, blinding,
light.” As a transitional figure, Bowman
does not often achieve the clean, [Page
340] bold incandescence of those who
followed after her, but there is enough moonlight
in her work to illuminate the previously overshadowed
contribution of women to early Canadian Modernism.
Selected
Bibliography
Moonlight
and Common Day (Toronto: Macmillan, 1922)
Dream Tapestries (Toronto: Macmillan,
1924)
Characters in Cadence (Toronto: Macmillan,
1938)
A.L.P.,
“The Library Table: Moonlight and Common
Day,” Canadian Magazine 59 (July
1922): 254-56; Harriet Monroe, Rev. of Moonlight
and Common Day by Louise Morey Bowman, Poetry:
a Magazine of Verse 21 (1922-23): 43-45;
E. Ritchie, Rev. of Dream Tapestries,
by Bowman, Dalhousie Review 6 (April
1926): 130-31; John Garvin, ed. “Louise
Morey Bowman,” Canadian Poets (Toronto:
McClelland, 1926): 331-32; Donald Precosky, “Louise
Morey Bowman,” Canadian Literature
79 (Winter 1978): 108-11; Avrum Malus et al.,
“Frank Oliver Call, Eastern Townships Poetry,
and the Modernist Movement,” Canadian
Literature 107 (Winter 1985): 60-69; David
Arnason, “Dorothy Livesay and the Rise of
Modernism in Canada,” A Public and Private
Voice: Essays on the Life and Work of Dorothy
Livesay (Waterloo: U of Waterloo P, 1986):
5-18; Anne Cimon, “Louise Morey Bowman,”
Dictionary of Literary Biography 68 (1988):
27-29. [Page 341] |
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Listen—you
very very Few who will care to listen—
And I will tell you a story
Of moonlight.
Don’t imagine because I try to tell stories
of moonlight
That I am a poet—neurotic and mystic—
|
5 |
(Dearly
as I love the things that some poets—neurotic
and mystic—
Can write!)
As for me I love good food and beautiful clothing,
And well-ordered, punctual living
Behind tall, well-clipped hedges; |
10 |
And
practical, common-sense people.
But still——
Let us open my casement window, Beloved,
Where the dark leaves stir in the silence,
And the sweet, wet earth breathes softly
|
15 |
And
murmurs an exquisite word.
Any moment out into the moonlight may issue
White creatures, and elfin-formed things that we
know not,
Quaintly and solemnly marching and chaunting inaudibly.
Something stirs by the willows— |
20 |
Do you
know what that sound is, so lovely and shuddering?
It’s the owl’s cry.
The grave, small, gray owl that in purple dusk comes
sometimes
To sit on my window-sill, eyes open, dreaming,—
Hark how he is linking us in with the moonlight,
|
25 |
Like
a horn faintly blown in blue heaven.
(Do you remember, Beloved, a night,
Glad years ago in a pine-wood,
In the moon-lighted darkness—
How the rhythmical thunder of waves on the white
shore |
30 |
Blended
with us and our heart-beats, Beloved?)
Let us lean from the window
As if faintly-blown horns have called us to answer
three questions.
Is Life food and raiment and conquest? [Page
342]
Is Love conquest and intrigue and passion?
|
35 |
Is Death
a gaunt figure white-shrouded
Dealing blows out of blackness?
Let us fling back our eternal “No!”
as an answer—
To the listening Silence,
While the sweet, wet earth still breathes softly
|
40 |
| An exquisite
word.
But tomorrow
I shall go right on living
As unworthy as ever of the moonlight
Locked up in my soul.
|
45 |
• • •
|
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That
is my story of moonlight—
No story at all, now say you?
But it all lies written
Between the lines. |
|
Moonlight
and Common
Day 1922 |
|
|
|
It seems
to be a foregone conclusion;
That if I worship the new gods
Sincerely, in the sunshine—
I must not pray in the moonlight,
By the shrines of the old gods, |
5 |
Where
the cherry blossoms still shine.
But sometimes in the darkness
I mistake the shrines.
And I kneel and pray and the gods speak to me.
And until I breathe suddenly |
10 |
The
scent of cherry blossoms,
I do not know whether they are really
The old or the new shrines— [Page
343]
And by then I have wept, and prayed,
And been answered.
|
15 |
| So what
does it matter? |
|
Moonlight
and Common
Day 1922 |
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|
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Bring
to me then all passionate, crimson flowers
And lay them on my breast.
They shall be symbols of the love-lit hours—
And Love is best.
Folk who believe in Immortality, |
5 |
Why
should they pass in panoply of woe?
I would be linked with colour and ecstacy
That day I go.
Linked with glad dancers, their white limbs set
free,
And rhythmical through veils of filmy green,
|
10 |
With
children, rose-flushed with a mystic glee—
All these I mean
To leave as wishes for my funeral day.
But, lest I burden those I leave behind,
Let me add, hastily, that any way |
15 |
They
care to manage—
Will be to my mind! |
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• • •
|
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Yet
I crave mightily for that last hour
At least one dancer and one crimson flower. [Page
344] |
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Moonlight
and Common
Day 1922 |
|
|
|
| I
|
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There
are three wise clocks in the house.
In a winter night I heard them striking twelve…,
Answering each other,
Humanly.
The tall, ancient and beautiful clock in the hall,
|
5 |
In an
inlaid case with the Prince of Wales’ feathers,
And the quaint, painted posies in the corners of
the dial,
With the painted lady above the dial
Who sits on a green bank,
Holding a white cockatoo on her hand |
10 |
So gracefully.
The cold, silver notes of this Clock began.…
And then there broke in lustily
The hoarser, more human note of the other old Grandfather’s
Clock
On the upper landing.… |
15 |
In its
plain, massive case, with the little, old ship
With wee white sails,
That rocks backward and forward… .
Backward…forward…
Charming |
20 |
The
eyes of generations of small, wondering children
Climbing up to nursery tea in the twilight.
And last came the slow, ghostly striking
Of a very, very old Clock, on the library mantel….
A Clock who has always worked very hard |
25 |
And
who has to be wound every evening,
And who has never been sure of a steady, aristocratic
foundation
To stand on….
Like the others,
But who still strikes, feebly and truthfully, |
30 |
Proud
to give service.
Three old clocks very wise and human…. [Page
345]
And faithful,
Striking the hours on a winter night,
With the age-old Moon looking in at the windows.
|
35 |
II
|
|
In a
house that is suddenly left empty,
Unlighted, alone,
Through the long mystical hours of a night
An old eightday Clock strikes.….
Twelve…. |
40 |
One….
Two….
Three….
Is there anything so silent….lonely….vast…
As a Clock striking hours in a house…. |
45 |
With
no one to listen?
Is there no one to listen? |
|
III
|
|
The
Sundial is very, very old
To be counting the hours in my modern garden,
Where flowers bloom in wild riot of colour, |
50 |
And
modern poets read vers libre
Under the shade of a jolly young maple tree.
I think I shall plant tall, stately white phlox
All around the Sundial
Next summer.
|
55 |
And
try to have more spaces of green, velvet turf.…
And perhaps buy a peacock.
For we cannot read only Elizabethian lyrics and
sonnets
Beside the sundial,
And it is so aloof and so old for my modern garden,
|
60 |
Although,
in the sunshine, so faithful….
Yes, it should have a peacock! [Page 346] |
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IV
|
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The
winter moonlight is streaming down
Into the sunken garden.
Yesterday I laid a vivid spray of red Autumn berries
|
65 |
Upon
the sundial,
Over the calm old motto….
“Light and shade by turns but Love always.”
Now the first snow has fallen, and in the pale
moonlight
The Sundial stands as aloof as ever on its slender
pedestal….
|
70 |
Holding
quietly a white crown,
Dropped lightly upon it
From the mysterious sky that holds the Sun and the
Moon. |
|
V
|
|
I have
written these sketches of clocks and a sundial
Waiting in the power-house of a great factory.….
|
75 |
Where
a chair is courteously placed for me
In a bare, lofty room
Between two monstrous whirring engines
Apparently ceaseless.
At first their rush and their crashing roar |
80 |
Terrified
me.
I wanted to scream and to run.…gasping…
Now the noise has become rhythmical.…awesome…
And I think, queerly, of deep, green caverns
Far under the roar of the ocean. |
85 |
How
slow….slow….slow
The old clocks striking at midnight….
In comparison
With this hurrying, rhythmical beat of these mighty
engines,
Timed to the fraction of a second. |
90 |
High
over my head, on a brick wall
A shrill piercing gong strikes now and then rapidly….
[Page 347]
Cleaving the roar and the rhythm….
I understand nothing….
|
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• • •
|
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| Now
I shall simply write down, laboriously…. |
95 |
As a
child writes….
And very reverently.…
GOD
SUNDIALS
CLOCKS |
100 |
ENGINES
TIME AND ETERNITY. |
|
Moonlight
and Common
Day 1922 |
|
|
|
A small
New England village in the hills:…
The date?
Oh, many, many years ago…the season very late…
November!
The conquering colours that a year must always hold
|
5 |
Have
vanished.
Pale Northern Spring in tints of lilac, softest
green and rose;
The short hot Summer’s purple and dark green
and yellow gold;
The tawny richness of the harvest’s close…
All past and vanquished in this sullen cold, |
10 |
By sombre
grays and browns, dead white and black.
The tall-spired meeting-house, the school,
The stiff white houses built by rigid rule,
Even the village store,
With hospitable, easily-opened door; |
15 |
And
their human owners reared in godly fear,
Austere, repressed,
Severe…
How it all lies, before our modern eyes, [Page
348]
So grim.
|
20 |
Dressed
in that rigid livery of nature’s gloom that
suits it best.
Hear their stern hymn…
Dignified, slow,
Sung in proud, solemn majesty of menace and woe.
“Our days as grass…all earth is but
a tomb”… |
25 |
What unfathomed gloom…
Smouldering! |
|
(2)
|
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Keen
bitter winds have stripped the great elm trees,
And swept the one long street
Ruthlessly neat; |
30 |
Quite
bare of all the withered, dead, brown leaves,
Except for small dry heaps that meet,
Trembling and mournfully rustling,
Caught
In the corners of the neat, white, picket fences;
|
35 |
Or drifting
Behind the pillars in the porch of the white meeting-house,
Unused through the long week
Except for Death.
How the winds shriek about the meeting-house! |
40 |
(But
wait before you shudder and turn away!)
With the keen, icy breath of the New England hills
Sharp in your nostrils,
Step over the threshold of the village store,
With its easily-opened door. |
45 |
Breathe
this different air,
Heavy with curiously mingled odours
As if another wind had blown in there
Heaps of rare
Drifted salvage… |
50 |
Some
wild, rich wind from wild rich worlds beyond,
That folk cannot entirely withhold,
Even from a Puritan village long ago. [Page
349]
Beware…ye righteous folk of old…
Beware!
|
55 |
(3)
|
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Here
are the great foreign boxes, wisely and deftly made,
That hold teas from the Orient, compactly laid;
And coffee beans.
Here spices, pungent and hot;
Tall, blue-wrapped cones of sugar; fine and coarse
salt,
|
60 |
And
finest quality of figured delaine;
Dark, serviceable calico dotted and plain;
Sheer delicate muslin, white as milk,
And thick black silk;
And broadcloth heavy and black; |
65 |
And
much, much more…
Of quantity and quality no lack—
For this is the “general store,” of
a prosperous man
Old and wealthy and wise,
In the village eyes. |
70 |
Oh,
Puritan New England would be clothed fittingly;
And Puritan palates know,
Both high and low
The wholesome savour of good food
When in the mood; |
75 |
As well
as very fine
Flavours in sermons by some “great divine;”
Or savour of ethics proved and tried,
And flavours in doctrines never very wide…
But high and pure… |
80 |
(That
you’ll acknowledge!)
God…but they were sure…
Those grim fine people of ours!…another hymn…
“Only such things as are godly and pure,
Saved from consuming wrath they shall endure.”
|
85 |
Is that
the echo of the bell
From the tall-spired white meeting-house? [Page
350]
Its bell is silent through the week, except for
Death…
Hear the wind shriek about the meeting-house!
But this small bell
|
90 |
Fastened
above the door
Of the old village store,
Tinkles continually, where through the week,
They barter and buy and sell. |
|
(4)
|
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| (In
this short passing hour we shall see more…) |
95 |
He is
a man of vision and breadth of mind…
This storekeeper.
Back in the dusky depths of the old store
Are rows of books in sober black and brown;
Books for his town |
100 |
That
are not all volumes of sermons or hymns,
Or a “Garland of Sacred Poetry from Friend
to Friend.”
(Does not some stern voice ask “Where will
this end?”)
For here are books of perilous voyages, tales of
human ways,
And human lives, and of the great, historic, coloured
days |
105 |
| Of far-off
empires…Ah….here are William Shakespeare’s
mighty plays!
(But
we must not stop to read more titles now. . .the
hour is almost past)
Daylight is fading fast…
And heaped on the dark, well-rubbed old counter
lies his last
And latest venture on seas of commerce…
|
110 |
| Oranges! |
|
(5)
|
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Oranges…oranges…
Great balls of golden wonder…round, perishable
globes…
Here a ripe pyramid most carefully laid
Beside sad-toned materials for matrons’ robes,
|
115 |
And
piles of iron-gray wool for their men’s winter
stockings. . . [Page 351]
Plain comfortable sight…proof against sharp
frost bite
Of the Northern Winters.
See how the oranges have caught up all the light!
What joyous tones they hold
|
120 |
Of vivid,
bold,
Hot colour!
They glow like balls moulded of molten gold.
Above them from the rafters hang thin strings and
strings,
Innumerable strings |
125 |
Of dull,
dried apples!
Nothing is here akin to the oranges at all…
Nothing in all
This colourless, inanimate hoard…nothing’s
akin
Except that vague, enduring richness, so alluring,
|
130 |
That
we smell,
When the small bell,
Over the door tinkles…and we come in…
Out of the keen, pure coldness of the wind. |
|
(6)
|
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| So…the
scene is set…for good and ill. |
135 |
Over
the highest hill
New winds blow wild and shrill:
For “the old order changeth” still.
Who now is sure what shall endure?
The street is empty…in the dusky store, |
140 |
Holding
the eye with a voluptuous lure,
The oranges burn through the smouldering gloom. |
|
|
Canadian
Magazine Dream
Tapestries
March 1923 (60:442-44) 1924 |
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The
garden lies spattered with wet green moonlight
Spilled from the night’s dark goblet;
And the wraith in the garden huddles mournfully
[Page 352]
Silently watching,
Upon the broad marble seat,
|
5 |
Where
white lilies and roses bloom.
Wine of pale silver-green drenches the garden.
The little gray wraith huddles mournfully,
Silently watching. |
|
• • •
|
|
| On that
broad marble seat to-day |
10 |
Sat
a beautiful lady…
Through the hot golden hours of the long afternoon…
Oh a beautiful lady!
With a warm wicked beauty of white, and of rose,
And of ebony. |
15 |
Over
her white breasts a long green scarf falling…
Wet, bright, apple-green.
Out in the orchard, laughing
With clear, evil laughter…
Ice laughter… |
20 |
She
had gathered some little green apples
And bit them with strong white teeth.
“I am Eve! I am Eve in the garden…
Come! Adam!”
And he followed…poor, passionate lover…
|
25 |
To the
seat by the heavy white lilies and roses.
(Oh far far away lie the wise castle windows
Behind the rose gardens and lime trees!)
But after the lovers…after them, swiftly,
swiftly,
Like a fleeting gray shadow, |
30 |
Speeds
the little gray wraith…
With feeble weak fingers of dampness
Pulling with tremulous touch at his heart-strings…
Prickling like impotent tiny thorns;
Nipping, and pinching, and pricking |
35 |
The
shrivelled, black conscience of the rosy and beautiful
lady.
See! from the shrivelled black conscience
One drop of bright, red blood, [Page 353]
As from prick of a rose thorn…
And his heart-strings are drawn tight and knotted
|
40 |
With
tiny, weak, slipping knots
Tied by feeble, damp fingers…
Slipping…slipping…oh slipping!
But what does that matter?
For Time has come to the help of the gray wraith…
|
45 |
Grave,
gray Father Time with a handful of moments—
Dust? Ashes?…
He has set the rose-shrouded sundial in shadow. |
|
• • •
|
|
Now
the broad marble seat is empty
Except where gray wraith has sunk down in the moonlight
|
50 |
Victorious.
Ah!…the lady had dropped her bright, apple-green
scarf,
And it stirs like a sinuous, long snake.
Is it only that one pointed corner is lifted
By the stealthy, stealing, night wind? |
55 |
Slowly,
slowly…so feebly…
The snake lifts itself with the wind’s help,
Revealing
A little green apple,
With some black dents where strong white teeth |
60 |
Have
bitten it.
And the small, gray wraith noiselessly moans and
shudders.
But what matter?
For the long night passes.
Only the green scarf lies harmlessly, softly, |
65 |
On the
empty marble seat where the little gray wraith sits
And watches,
Victorious…
Though the green wine of moonlight is drenching
The perilous garden. [Page 354] |
70 |
Dream
Tapestries
1924 |
|
The Mountain that Watched
|
|
“In
the beginning”…“The heavens and
the earth”…
“Let there be light”…
After all we can’t improve on Genesis
For the condensed beginning of a tale!
But earth is much more earth, and heaven much more
heaven |
5 |
When
it’s our own old Mountain, touching sky
Like this, right up in the middle of the island,
Than when it’s a mountain range across the
oceans.
That’s to my way of thinking anyhow.
Mountain and city…Edinburgh now…but
that’s another’s story…
|
10 |
Sonnet
form!
And now…to mine, to-day.
To-day! To-day is written in curling smoke
Before the Mountain, dumb above the city.…
Our Mountain…trying to make us understand,
|
15 |
By secret
code, sign language…what you will.
Rustling
of leaves—
Pale
green, dark amber, scarlet, crimsoning brown—
Deep
coloured sighs and long deep breaths of earth—
Rustling
of leaves— |
20 |
“In the beginning”—
The river, the island, and the rustling leaves,
Arrows and mating and life and birth and death,
Silence and solitude;
But always the Mountain, touching cold blue sky
|
25 |
When
the white men landed in their little boats,
When holy dreaming men and women came,
And built their funny little forts and towers,
And sacred shrines,
And made a new-world city. |
30 |
And
all the while the Mountain watched and watched.
[Page 355]
Dirt?
Well you certainly can’t expect a city’s
docks,
or
a great station at an entrance port,
to
be like a Quaker meeting-house
on
a seventh-day noon. |
35 |
Docks! There’s a magical word! Not unpoetical
let me tell you, if you’ll only close your
eyes
and use that “inward eye” your Wordsworth
used
for daffodils. My God! you’d think he had
secured that “eye”
to be hereafter used for “daffodils,”
and “solitude” and “thrills”
|
40 |
exclusively!
Come now! Just try it on for once to-day
with river docks filled with the motley throng…
old world and new.
Deep searching eyes that seek the “golden
West”— |
45 |
wild
eyes that hold the primal hunger lure,
young eyes that hold the secrets of the dawn,
sad eyes that hold the fury of the night—
We’ll have to stand the dirty docks I think,
and the crowded station— |
50 |
holding
a daffodil to your nose to smell
you’ll soon forget the nose and the daffodil!
What’s that you’re murmuring?
“It’s all like a magic casement opening
out
on perilous seas…” Bless you for those
kind words! |
55 |
Though
that’s John Keats that sees our docks—not
you!
Wait just a moment—here is something now
that’s well worth watching! It’s the
Jewish New Year,
and those are orthodox Jews who have come down
to cast their sins away in running water. |
60 |
Mumbling
in their beards…from books, and some from
memory…
punctilious enough they are…
shaking their overcoats…(those two men, look!)
Into deep river…old Father St. Lawrence running
to the sea.
Old men, believers—and a few young ones too.
|
65 |
You
see? Turn round and look at the motor cars.
Look at that old old woman from the slums—
[Page 356]
Grandmother of Isaac and Jacob and Abraham—
Look at her! Carefully shake, shake, shake, old
Mother!
Strong, wrinkled, kindly face—those toil-worn
hands—
|
70 |
Come,
let us try the “inward eye” again…
Verily—see! Her sins do drop and float away
from her
on the dirty oily water—little sins
that float like tiny, bright-red maple leaves
cast from a lusty old tree in the Fall. |
75 |
She’s
known the life of the full ripe seasons through…
carefully and punctiliously shake, shake, shake!
Let us go too from the docks with lightened hearts,
groping our way on upward through the slums.
Listen to the lilt and whimsical chattering
|
80 |
of alien
tongues.
“And have not charity”—”Through
a glass darkly”…see?
We’ve dropped our classic daffodils and trod
upon them! But we’ve really seen—something.
To-day. |
85 |
What
else does the Mountain see?
Churches! Hotels! Domes, palaces and towers,
Steep hilly streets, shops, hovels, factories.
Limestone tradition!
Romance! Romance! Raw gold! |
90 |
Merry-men,
jesters, in a surging crowd
mingling with Holy Folk—
Miracles, shrines, and glorious, honest doubts—
raw gold, black, red,—
new thoughts breed sacraments— |
95 |
white
dreams and tawny sins—
the half-good, the half-bad—Humanity!
Groping humanity—
Who judges? How? Or why?
The Mountain watches. |
100 |
Snow-dusted silent streets. The midnight mass—
with quiet thronging worshippers that pass
from darkness into glimmering ecstasies.—
[Page 357]
Another mood…
The blizzard—
|
105 |
The
swirling wall-like drifts, while through the streets
the snow-ploughs move like huge primeval beasts
glutted with power;
wallowing through the mists of drifting powdery
particles,
ploughing the snow. |
110 |
The
Mountain watches and possesses now
a festival afternoon of sparkling white,
pierced by the thrilling flights of vivid glancing
skis—
pierced by the shooting downward in death-like dive,
of flat toboggans on the mountain slide. |
115 |
| Impertinence
the Mountain tolerates!
The flashing facets of an ice palace
reared in a square beside a towering church of
massive stone,
for half a continent to gaze upon if it so desires,
and feast between whiles.
|
120 |
(“H-mmm—Good
advertising this—
Hush! Watch your step! Deliver the goods!”)
Ah well—Mount Royal, graven on a “souvenir!”
The Mountain watches.
“Truly an ice palace is a beautiful thing—a
fairy tale!” |
125 |
“You
poets are so fantastic!” “You should
worry!”
“My word I’m nearly dead for tea!”
“Do hurry!”
“Ice plants for making artificial ice”—“Efficiency”—
“Gold seal—good jazz”
“The cafeterias are the thing to-day—
|
130 |
take
up your tray
and walk!”
“What blasphemy!”
“Ice plants for making artificial ice”
“Fine bargain furs there if you’ve got
the price” |
135 |
“Gods! what a day!”
Then much the same in French—the rapid glancing
tongue.
“Day uttereth speech” indeed.
“Night shewth knowledge.” [Page
358]
The Mountain watches.
|
140 |
Night!
Zero night—
like a dense black velvet skin
drawn tightly over the city;
and lights pricking, pricking, pricking—
like fiery pin-points in a million eyes |
145 |
behind
black skins, blazing with jungle light…
a gay old city is sinister at night.
Rustling
and creaking of black naked branches
On
the old Mountain—
Stark
twisted branches black against the snow |
150 |
Snapping
and cracking of frost-tortured trees—
Rustling—
Something has happened! The Mountain almost seems
to tremble.
Down its sides rush the melting snows in torrents;
|
155 |
tumbling,
tumultuous, most untidy rivers
through icy blackened parapets that still stand.
Washing day for the Mountain!
Ah but wait!—
Silver-green city in a rosy mist—Spring dawn!— |
160 |
As Life
has waked with a soft stirring
Of pouting leafy lips
And curling velvet finger-tips,
Through all the ages while the Mountain watched.
Rustling
of leaves— |
165 |
Silver-green,
rose-red, amber, scarlet, brown—
Deep
coloured sighs and long deep breaths of earth—
Rustling
of leaves—
Against my hand a little crumbling dust
Is softly blown— |
170 |
Before
my eyes a glory—sunset? Dawn?
And in my ears a great triumphant song—
Is it a song? [Page 359]
Or but the quiet breathing of a child
Who holds its coloured toys and drifts to sleep?
|
175 |
The
Mountain watches and is very still. |
|
Dream
Tapestries
1924 |
|
Twelve Hokku on a Canadian Theme
|
|
(1)
|
|
How
strangely they float,
Pale
gold and ivory cups,
On
wilderness lakes. |
|
(2)
|
|
The
loon’s weird laughter
Holds
Indian deviltry, |
5 |
| Long,
long forgotten. |
|
(3)
|
|
Indian
cradle
Swung
from bough, rocked by Four Winds:
Christ
lay in manger. |
|
(4)
|
|
| Silver-haired
Marquise! |
10 |
You
were transplanted, one Spring,
Into
wild New France. [Page 360] |
|
(5)
|
|
The
sugar maples…
Benevolent
goddesses
Who
offer honey. |
15 |
(6)
|
|
Snow-shoes:
like strong wings
Bound
on the feet of victors
Conquering
snow-fields. |
|
(7)
|
|
On
city pavements
Two
muffled, sombre nuns pace |
20 |
| Behind
laughing girls. |
|
(8)
|
|
You
set narcissus
Amidst
your silver birches
By
Northern lakeside. |
|
(9)
|
|
| Five
o’clock! You pause… |
25 |
Handle
frail, old cups, pour tea,
And
become grande dame. |
|
(10)
|
|
When
Loneliness stalked…
Black
panther through gold wheat-fields…
You
used Love’s arrows. [Page 361] |
30 |
(11)
|
|
Puissant
woman!…
Sheltering
tiny things like
English
primroses! |
|
(12)
|
|
Fast
the new trails lead
From
wilderness to city! |
35 |
| Years
pass…Canada! |
|
Dream
Tapestries
1924 |
|
Life Sequence
(In The Hokku Manner)
|
|
(Unready)
Close-folded fern…
So stiff; so coldly self-sustained:
But summer passes.
(Motherhood)
|
5 |
Puss watches the world,
Troubled: but knows she is linked
To a miracle.
(Home)
Empty room; fire dies;
|
10 |
Moon
shines in: chairs and tables converse;
Books croon songs. [Page 362]
(Awakening)
Gray old tree
Has breasted winter storms; but is vaguely
|
15 |
Worried
by March.
(Memorial Tablet)
Sunshine on storied bronze:
Love on the whirling earth:
And you on my heart.
|
20 |
Dream
Tapestries
1924 |
|
|
|
Fragrance
Of
Hot Cross Buns:
Pots
of white lilies: sunshine: magic eggs:
New
skipping-ropes—but old old winds
Of
Faith. |
5 |
Dream
Tapestries
1924 |
|
Prayer in Scarlet and White Paint
|
|
There
is a marvellous washing
creamy and snowy-white
hung high on lines
stretched from upper and lower balconies
in the back-yard, across the narrow lane |
5 |
behind
my rusty apple-tree
and dusty lilac hedge;
and a great splendid ‘woman-by-the-day’
comely and fat, with a bronzed skin
and tumbled blue black hair, [Page 363] |
10 |
and
an ugly and joyous scarlet gown,
is hanging out the clothes…
wet heavy clean white clothes…
soft liquid splashes of light amidst dull dusty
trees
and sombre dirty bricks. |
15 |
The
laden lines begin to ripple seductively
in the cool sour east wind.
There is no sun to-day,
but the great splashes of high-hung white,
the competent brown arms, |
20 |
the
comfortable strength in vivid scarlet…
they have given me the warmth and wonder
and the refreshment
of tumbling woodland waters
and blazing sun. |
25 |
I thank
you…Life!
I daub it in on a bit of canvas
(with a copy of a Botticelli madonna on the other
side!)
so I may remember……
the sordid back lane has become quite immaterial… |
30 |
| I thank
you…Life! |
|
Dream
Tapestries
1924 |
|
|
|
Cool-blossomed
English garden! What wide fate
Set you in burning breathless India?
Yet perhaps phantom wind from England came
To ring, in Agra, Canterbury-bells?—
To blow the hollyhocks to rose-red flame, |
5 |
| And
cool the tall white lilies by the gate?…
We know each flower. We gather pink sweet-peas,
And smile to think how small the world—how
sweet.
Outside the low wall, crouching at their ease,
The cobra charmers we have summoned, wait. [Page
364]
|
10 |
And
now with that veiled power we do not know
they twist the writhing cobras round dark feet,
And offer up for us their “passing show”…
While in the garden, with brown Ayah there,
Plays English Baby-boy, with flaxen hair
|
15 |
And
eyes like blue-bells when the woods are green,
And only that low stone wall lies between
The cobra charmers, with their age-old spells,
And chiming of the Canterbury-bells! |
|
Canadian
Author’s
Association Poetry Year
Book 1926-1927 |
|
|
|
(1)
|
|
Her
grave gray days
Were filled with starved monotony
Of pale and wan routine.
The increasing weirdness of her silent ways
Passed quite unnoticed by her grim gray mate. |
5 |
He was
absorbed, content, proud of his heritage,
Loving his fertile fields with all his heart;
While she had accepted, quite unquestioning,
The woman’s part.
She grappled with her stark, lack-lustre tasks |
10 |
Unshaken
by weak self-pity for her fate.
Within the weather-beaten time-stained walls
Of the old farm-house all the grave gray days
Passed and repassed
Through pallid placid years. |
15 |
But
when sometimes she suddenly realized
That she was whispering to herself all day
She would leave baking, ironing,
The butter, dishes or mending, and look out
Where close about the house the apple trees |
20 |
Saved
and redeemed,
And sanctified her world. [Page 365] |
|
(2)
|
|
But
what she thought of the orchard, none but kind gods
could know.
When buds unfolded in the glad green Spring
It seemed to her a throbbing melody |
25 |
Poured
from the trunks and branches twisted and brown—
A melody quite apart from the bubbling throats
Of golden orioles and bobolinks—
A melody that filled her weary eyes
And soaked her thirsty soul |
30 |
With
glory!
She loved the orchard in the winter-time—
The rich, dark-brown bark of the gnarled old trees
Holding their miracle bloom all deep and warm—
Strong, friendly, and sheltering through a drifting
storm—
|
35 |
| She
thanked God for the orchard on her knees. |
|
(3)
|
|
And
then at last when she was very old,
One April, the weird silver-green terror came.
A sinister shuddering spell over her fell:
To her it never, never had a name. |
40 |
“That
orchard should be sprayed” her nephew said.
She listened and shivered with queer nervous dread.
The men discussed old and new ways with zest
Deciding “copper solution—that’s
the best.”
One day she set her straining shrivelled face |
45 |
Against
the window pane, stood gazing there.
Gnarled trunks and twisted branches all had turned
To sinister writhing dragons! Her eyes burned
With horror in a fascinated glare.
Ghastly green dragons in their orchard lair |
50 |
Possessing
it wholly? In the cool damp air
They writhed with night-mare grace of silvered green,
[Page 366]
And passers-by grinned mockingly between
The unearthly shapes.
She clutched the window-ledge
|
55 |
She
shivered—
Then she fled
With one long shuddering cry,
Frantic and stumbling, up the steep narrow stair,
And fell upon her patchwork covered bed. |
60 |
(4)
|
|
Her
folk were kind to her. They tried and tried
To reassure and comfort—to explain.
“Now listen Auntie—now I’ve never
lied.
Those apple trees will all come brown again”…
“Your orchard’ll be much better than
before”…. |
65 |
“Your
apples—you’ll have ever so many more”….
“I don’t see why you feel so—all
the stains
Will be washed off with some good heavy rains”….
And then she lay and waited for the rain
While haunted days passed with bright cloudless
skies. |
70 |
• • •
|
|
At last
in a gray dawn she woke and heard
The rustling, rhythmical patter of the rain.
“Look! Look! The Orchard!—Is it—real
again?”—
Then quivering peace crept into her frightened eyes.
In the gray morning light she smiled—and died.
|
75 |
(5)
|
|
And
in the dragon orchard apple-bloom
Like rosy snow,
Drifted—
Then sifted
To the brown earth below. [Page 367] |
80 |
Dalhousie
Review
July 1927 (7:156-58) |
|
Waxworks
John Knox and Mary Queen
|
|
“Honeypot,”
he called her,
Hurling words like javelins—
Stern John Knox with the flame in his eyes.
Steeled against shocks
Was great John Knox! |
5 |
Target
for surprise
From those side-glancing eyes?
Nay, I trow not—
“Honeypot.”
How they’ve all rhymed her,
|
10 |
Storied
and chimed her,
Stern-eyed scholars on a primrose way!—
Tried to shut her cut-and-dried
In a history book—
Music of a galliard, |
15 |
Rhythm
of a sermon,
Sweet strange poison of that side-long glance!
That was a tribute
When the pastry-cooks of Edinboro’
Tried to make petits gateaux by recipe
from France. |
20 |
“Petticoat-tails,”
they call them still
In many a Scottish manse.
Hot tears dripping beside cold Lochleven,
Red heart breaking with the twist of a key!
Strange now how metres halt—
|
25 |
Tap—
tap-tap— tapping,
Dancing feet in Holyrood
Tap— tap— tapping!—
So those little ghostly feet
In Scottish hearts today… |
30 |
Interrupting
measured beat—
Tap— tap— tapping— [Page
368]
For stern-eyed scholars
On a primrose way.
Mary quite contrary—
|
35 |
Mary
Queen of Scots!
Poetry and history—
Plots, plots, plots.
Never better plot
For story short or long— |
40 |
Heart-beat
for a song—
“Honey-pot!” |
|
Poetry:
a Magazine of Characters
in Cadence
Verse 3:5 (August 1927) 1938
267-68 |
|
|
|
Fra
Lippo Lippi’s women had your breasts,
And your great curving forehead—but your ears
Are delicate crinkled shells God must have clapped
Upon a mermaid’s head on either side
When He created her in deep sea caves, |
5 |
Finishing
with a lovely sea-green tail,
But your white limbs are purely Eden made.
When your veined eyelids droop, then Lippi paints
Your portrait till you lift your gaze again.
Such eyes are far beyond Fra Lippi’s power,
|
10 |
For
Eve’s were not so simple and profound
I think, and Lilith’s not so darkly gray.
Yours are the eyes that, in those green sea-caves,
Reproachful, stared at God, and at your tail. [Page
369] |
|
Dalhousie
Review Characters
in Cadence
July 1931 (11:192) 1938 |
|
|
|
Once
I said:
“I will cast my saint and my devil out of
my head,
Or my heart, or whatever it is that may chance to
abide.
I will lay my saint and my devil,
Like little twin sons side by side, |
5 |
In a
dark clay bed.
And I will go forth as a virginal goddess
And walk pure and high,
With my feet in delicate sandals,
My eyes on the sky. |
10 |
I will
find white islands where never a tail nor a horn,
Nor the cruel pale hands of a saint
Have stirred in the corn
One silken white poppy, or gathered
One floating seed. |
15 |
Of a
far white island of purified ocean shell-dust—
That is my need!”
But the brown earth split at my feet with a crocus—
A purple cup
Filled to the brim with dew.
|
20 |
Then—the
Sun was up!
All the world was lordly and regal with purple and
gold,
And deep in red clover my saint and my devil rolled
With the glee of two rollicking, frolicking babes,
until I
Forgot my delicate sandals, pellucid sky |
25 |
Over
far white islands of purified shell-dust and unstirred
corn,
And I laughed in the face of my devil and patted
his horn.
And the other’s long fingers, all formed for
the hand of a saint—
I vowed that the good, brown earth should form them
and
bend
them
With work’s restraint. [Page 370] |
30 |
We battle barefooted through emerald thickets
All prickled with sharp blackthorn.
Oh, still I see dimly the silken white poppy,
Pure shell-dust and unstirred corn!—
I am glad because of my visions of far white islands
|
35 |
Where
one walks in delicate sandals
Untouched by strife—
But I could not put my little twin sons—
My saint and my devil—
Out of my life. |
40 |
Queen’s
Quarterly Characters
in Cadence
February 1932 (31:130-31) 1938 |
|
|
|
Loudly
we all discussed
Colour—within a modern studio.
A little mussed
Our thoughts—by frantic flitting to and fro
Of ego, and small green-winged jealousies, |
5 |
And
Black’s desires to prick Brown’s sophistries.
Discussion grew too hot.
The child upon the hearth-stool listened, too.
We quite forgot
That clear small personality with blue |
10 |
Sea-coloured
eyes. She huddled there intent,
Explorer of an unknown continent.
And all at once she said
With a decisive nodding of her head,
“But I like pink!”
|
15 |
The small voice floated there
Like a pure rosy butterfly
Upon the air,
Dank, heavy, charged with rancour and with doubt.
Then green-winged jealousies were put to rout. [Page
371]
|
20 |
“Pink!
the child-colour! Well—why not?”
Black smiled.
“Remember strange dull pinks Velasquez used?
His portrait of the Infanta—
Fine wise child!” |
25 |
And
silence fell. In vibrant peace we mused.
Pink seemed a new dimension, undefiled. |
|
Characters
in Cadence
1938 |
|
Portraits of Five Sinners
|
|
(1)
|
|
Her
one dynamic quality was Courage.
It saved her birthright from a mess of potage.
She failed Law but not Love.
Unfortunately one cannot lift one’s eyebrows
As one would wish to when she passes by. |
5 |
(2)
|
|
Her
little window-sills were all too narrow
To hold her pots of lilting daffodils. |
|
(3)
|
|
It shocked
them more than a little to discover
That wood of crucifix or the church pews
Were no more sacred to her than the poplar |
10 |
| Under
whose whispering leaves her lover had kissed her. |
|
(4)
|
|
She
said, “I only know Reality,
And Truth,
And Righteousness.” [Page 372]
Then three black shapes slipped in and guarded her.
|
15 |
But
three white, shining, smiling ghosts slipped out,
Sighing,
“Not so—not so.” |
|
(5)
|
|
They
said he blasphemed. I heard his words
And thought them over. |
20 |
In the
white dawn I woke and heard them again
Like running brooks
Set free all through the ice-locked woodlands
By keys of Spring.
It was as if great rivers rushed in wilderness exultation
to the sea.
|
25 |
But
they were only his wildly lovely words
That men called blasphemy! |
|
Characters
in Cadence
1938 |
|
|
|
She
touched the freesia in a jar
As
if she re-arranged
The
Milky Way to hold a star
And
left it subtly changed.
They
say of her, “Why bother?
|
5 |
To
fathom her you’ll need
A
microscope for monocle
And
victory in speed.” [Page 373] |
|
Characters
in Cadence
1938 |
|
