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Susan
Frances Harrison
by
Wanda Campbell
Susan
Frances Harrison
1859-1935
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| Susan
Frances (Riley) Harrison was born in Toronto
on February 24, 1859, and was educated in Montreal.
Though she published under the pseudonyms Medusa
and Gilbert King, her favourite pen name was “Seranus”
based upon a misreading of S. Frances, a name
that was once “a household word in the homes
of literary Canadians,” according to the
Week (836). Recently her prose, particularly
her novels about Quebec and the short fiction
in Crowded Out! and Other Sketches, has
received attention from critics such as Carole
Gerson and Carrie MacMillan. MacMillan’s
essay on Harrison in Silenced Sextet
is a revealing and sympathetic study of the woman
and her work.
At
the age of twenty, she married John Harrison,
an organist and choirmaster from Britain, and
they lived in Ottawa for seven years before moving
to Toronto. In an article on Harrison in the Week,
Ethelwyn Wetherald notes that musical composition,
“were it not for the great difficulties
attending it, would be her preferred and ideal
profession” (267). Her skills as composer
and recitalist are apparent in her attraction
to complex lyrical forms such as the villanelle.
In 1888, the Dominion Illustrated Monthly
published one of her villanelles followed by a
snippet of conversation between “two gentlemen”:
“Have
you seen the last two Villanelles of Seranus,”
said one, “both pitched in Lower Canada?”
“Pshaw! don’t mention Seranus. She’s
too knowing.”
“You mean?”
“She is too clever by half.”
(1[14
July 1888]:22)
Harrison
had reason, it would seem, to feel her work was
not fully appreciated. Though active in promoting
the work of Canadian writers through [Page
181] projects such as her Canadian
Birthday Book (1887), and as literary editor
of the Week during which time she met Crawford,
she herself experienced a decline in reputation.
In 1916, John Garvin wrote, “S. Frances
Harrison is one of our greater poets whose work
has not yet had the recognition in Canada it merits”
(124). By 1926, Garvin describes her merely as
“one of our distinctive poets” (118).
In 1990, Gerson writes in the Dictionary of
Literary Biography: “Her best poetry,
scattered among her various publications (most
of them pamphlets), is light in texture, often
in the form of the villanelle or the sonnet and
usually about French Canadian or proletarian life.”
Marjory Willison argued in 1932 that Harrison’s
villanelles are not as “light” as
they first appear: “This gay polite French
form of verse, light as a bird’s feather,
in Mrs. Harrison’s hand is held and turned
like a flashing blade” (80). In some of
her poems of habitant life, and in her tribute
to the French writer George Sand, Harrison reveals
that women in particular are “self-scathed
with mortal scars” (“Villanelle”
185).
Quebeçois
life is a frequent theme of her poetry as well
as her fiction, but as the title of her first
and most popular collection of poems, Pine,
Rose, and Fleur De Lis, reveals, her attention
to French Canada was only one strand of her attempt
to forge a Canadian identity from indigenous and
imported materials. Though some of her poems speak
of her passion for England, in “A Canadian
Anthology” and other poems she speaks of
Canadian flora with great knowledge and affection.
Like Canadian poets before and after, she wrestled
with finding a poetic language for a landscape
which contains “No Goddesses at all, / No
Gods, or hardly any, / No shapes that might recall
/ The classic miscellany” (“Parenthese”
194-95). Instead, Harrison accepts the loon, the
lichen, and the breath-taking spectacle of Niagara
Falls in winter. Canadian life as she describes
it is often beautiful but rarely gentle.
Harrison’s
declining role in the Canadian literary sphere
is revealed by the fact that, after her first
book of poetry, she was forced to self-publish.
Only Later Poems and Villanelles, according
to MacMillan, was published by Ryerson after Harrison
explained to Lorne Pierce that financial difficulties
made it impossible for her to pay for the publication
(134). Though she continued to write in fixed
forms while others moved to free verse, her recognition
that “art changes” was expressed in
a pair of sonnets entitled “To the New Art”
that appeared in Verse and Reverse (Toronto
Women’s Press Club, 1922) along with her
elegy for Tom Thomson. Though lured by nature’s
spell and the vagabond life enjoyed by some of
her male contemporaries [Page 182],
like Leprohon and Machar before her, she reluctantly
returns to duty and love convinced that “dreaming
is not doing” (“April” 194).
Selected
Bibliography
Canadian
Birthday Book (Toronto: Robinson, 1887)
Pine, Rose, and Fleur de Lis (Toronto:
Hart, 1891)
In Northern Skies and Other Poems (Toronto:
Author, 1912)
Songs of Love and Labor (Toronto: Author,
1925)
Later Poems and New Villanelles (Toronto:
Ryerson, 1928)
Four Ballads and a Play (Toronto: Author,
1933)
Penelope, and Other Poems (Toronto: Author,
1934)
Ethelwyn
Wetherald, “Some Canadian Literary Women—I.
Seranus” Week 5 (22 March 1888):
267-68; Anonymous. “Our Library Table,”
Week (27 November 1891): 836; John Garvin,
ed. “S. Frances Harrison (Seranus),”
Canadian Poets (Toronto: McClelland,
1916): 123-132; Marjory Willison, “Mrs.
J.W.F. Harrison—‘Seranus’,”
Canadian Bookman 14 (July-August 1932):
80-81; R.G. Moyles, English-Canadian Literature
to 1900 (Detroit: Gale, 1976):141-42; Margaret
Whitridge, “The Distaff Side of the Confederation
Group: Women’s Contribution to Early Nationalist
Canadian Literature,” Atlantis
4 (1978): 30-39; Silvia Leigh, “Susie Frances
Harrison: an Approach to Her Life and Work”
(M.A. Thesis. U of Western Ontario, 1980); Carole
Gerson, “Susan Frances Harrison,”
Dictionary of Literary Biography 99 (1990):
145-47; Carrie MacMillan, “Susan Frances
Harrison (“Seranus”): Paths through
the Ancient Forest,” The Silenced Sextet:
Six Nineteenth-Century Canadian Women Novelists
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1992):
107-136. [Page 183] |
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Nor
similes nor metaphors avail!
All imagery vanishes, device
Dies in thy presence, wondrous dream of ice!
Ice-bound I stand, my face is pinched and pale,
Before such awful majesty I fail, |
5 |
Sink
low in this snow-lichened slab of gneiss,
Shut out the gleaming mass that can entice,
Enchain, enchant, but in whose light I quail.
While I from under frozen lashes peer,
My thoughts fly back and take a homeward course.
|
10 |
How
dear to dwell in sweet placidity,
Instead of these colossal crystals, see
The slender icicles of some fairy “force,”
And break the film upon an English mere! |
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Week
Pine,
Rose and
18 February 1886 (3:188) Fleur
de Lis 1891 |
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“J’ai Trop Bu la Vie”
(George Sand.)
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Ah!
what a wonderful draught!
Now, was it ruby red,
With
heart of flame in the glass,
A passionate crimson shed
By the loves on which she
fed? |
5 |
Or with a golden hue
Caught from the grapes that
grow
High
in the sunshine of Fame—
Thus with an amber glow
Did her life’s elixir
flow? |
10 |
Or was it colourless, clear,
White to her mortal eye,
[Page 184]
Pure
from a mountain stream,
Fresh from a fountain high,
Losing itself in the sky?
|
15 |
Or was it none of these,
Ripe and rare to the taste,
Rose
or gold to the eye,
Brought in a beaker chased,
Bearing a rim flower-graced?
|
20 |
But was it muddy and black?
Bending over the brink
Of
a foul and stagnant pool,
Loathing the draught, did
she drink?
Draining the cup, did she
shrink? |
25 |
What were its dregs to her?
Ah! what a wonderful draught!
Perhaps,
as the dregs she drained,
Perhaps, as the cup she
quaffed,
Her tempting angel laughed.
|
30 |
Week
9 September 1886 (3:695) |
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Sprung
from a sword-sheath fit for Mars,
Straight and sharp, of a
gay glad green,
My jonquil lifts its yellow stars.
Barter, would I, for the dross of the Czars,
These golden flowers and
buds fifteen,
|
5 |
Sprung
from a sword-sheath fit for Mars?
Barter, would you, these scimitars,
Among which lit by their
light so keen
My jonquil lifts its yellow stars? [Page
185]
No, for the breast may burst its bars,
|
10 |
The
heart its shell, at sight of sheen
Sprung from a sword-sheath fit for Mars:
Miles away from the mad earth’s jars,
Beneath a leafy and shining
screen,
My jonquil lifts its yellow stars.
|
15 |
And I—self-scathed with mortal scars,
I weep, when I see, in its
radiant mien,
Sprung from a sword-sheath fit for Mars
My jonquil lift its yellow stars. |
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Week
Pine,
Rose and
14 June 1888 (5:458) Fleur
de Lis 1891 |
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Here
on the wide waste lands,
Take—child—these trembling hands,
Though my life be as blank and waste,
My days as surely ungraced
By glimmer of green on the rim |
5 |
Of a
sunless wilderness dim,
As the wet fields barren and brown,
As the fork of each sterile limb
Shorn of its lustrous crown.
See—how vacant and flat
|
10 |
The
landscape—empty and dull,
Scared by an ominous lull
Into a trance—we have sat
This hour on the edge of a broken, a gray snake-fence,
And nothing that lives has flown, |
15 |
Or
crept, or leapt, or been blown
To our feet or past our faces—
So desolate, child—the place is! [Page
186]
It strikes, does it not, a chill,
Like that other upon the hill, |
20 |
We felt
one bleak October?
See—the gray wood still sober
‘Ere it be wild with glee,
With growth, with an ecstacy
Of fruition born of desire. |
25 |
The
marigold’s yellow fire
Doth not yet in the sun burn to leap, to aspire;
Its myriad spotted spears
No erythronium rears;
We cannot see
|
30 |
Anemone,
Or heart-lobed brown hepatica;
There doth not fly,
Low under sky,
One kingfisher—dipping and darting |
35 |
From
reedy shallows where reds are starting,
Pale pink tips that shall burst into bloom,
Not in one night’s mid-April gloom,
But inch by inch, till ripening tint,
And feathery plume and emerald glint |
40 |
| Proclaim
the waters are open.
All this will come,
The panting hum
Of life that will stir,
Glance and glide, and whistle and whir,
|
45 |
Chatter
and crow, and perch and pry,
Crawl and leap and dart and fly,
Things of feather and things of fur,
Under the blue of an April sky.
Shall speak, the dumb |
50 |
Shall
leap, the numb,
All this will come,
It never misses,
Failure, yet— [Page 187]
Never was set
|
55 |
In the
sure spring’s calendar,
Wherefore—Pet—
Give me one of your springtime kisses!
While you plant some hope in my cold man’s
breast—
Ah! How welcome the strange flower-guest—
|
60 |
Water
it softly with maiden tears,
Go to it early—and late—with fears;
Guard it, and watch it, and give it time
For the holy dews to moisten the rime—
Make of it some green gracious thing, |
65 |
| Such
as the Heavens shall make of the Spring!
The trees and the houses are darkling,
No lamps yet are sparkling
Along the ravine;
A wild wind rises, the waters are fretting,
|
70 |
| No
moon nor star in the sky can be seen.
But if I can bring her with thinking
The thoughts that are linking
Her life unto mine:
Then blow, wild wind! And chafe, proud river!
|
75 |
| At
least a Star in my heart shall shine.
Had I not met her, great had been my loss,
Had I not loved her, pain
I had been spared.
So this life goes, and lovers bear the cross,
Burden borne willingly,
if only it be shared.
|
80 |
Had I not met her, Song had passed me by,
Had I not loved her, Fame
had been more sure.
So this life goes, we laugh, and then we sigh,
While we believe ’tis
blessed to endure. [Page 188] |
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Week
In
Northern Skies
17 May 1889 (6:378) 1912 |
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The
Lark at dawn, the Nightingale at eve
Conspire to make it beautiful. I had dreamed
Of some such Beauty—lo! it rose around me
More exquisite than any dream, more fair,
Than even the favourite dreams of cherished children,
|
5 |
And
what those are—how strange, how sweet, how
rare,
We all remember—when a touch, a sound,
Startles us, and we look
Backwards—ten, twenty, thirty, forty years.
Yet fairer even than those
|
10 |
Cloud-visions
capped with rose,
My England—with her abbeys framed in green;
Gray Tintern set not too far from the sea
By subtle monks, safe in its rim of hills,
And gayer Furness, clad in mellow reds |
15 |
That
glimmer warm through many an ivy-mat,
And tall cathedrals tipped with shimmering spires,
That hang over hut and hall,
And satin poppies, scarlet,
wild,
Clasped in the hands of the labourer’s child,
|
20 |
And
tangled cottage gardens gaily drest
In all their rustic Sunday summer best.
O blame them not who evermore
Upon a cold colonial shore
Feel their hearts burn within them at the thought
|
25 |
Of all
that Beauty! Let it be said of such—
Not that they loved their Canada the less
But only—England—the more. Let it be
said
Of them, that nature did so feed their souls
With all that was grand, illimitable, potent, fresh,
|
30 |
That
poesy failed them. Nature was all in all;
Too self-sufficing, strong, relentless, masterful,
To aid the human spirit. Then there stole
From English valleys, leafy lanes, high hills,
From sloping uplands, farms and lichened towers,
|
35 |
From
roofless ruins gracious in decay— [Page
189]
Something—a sentiment, aspiration, wish—
That soothed, inspired at once, that gave for wild
Dissatisfaction, peace. Dear England! I—
I have not—yet I fain had been—thy child!
|
40 |
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Week
Pine,
Rose and
16 August 1889 (6:583) Fleur
de Lis 1891 |
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To wear
its image—seal’d—fix’d mentally,
Pinn’d to my heart’s eyes—old,
smooth-worn, gray stone,
Green-lichen’d, ivy-curtain’d, blossom-blown
In stray sweet crevices—this is fealty!
O, I could never look enough, but see |
5 |
Some
new divinity each second, grown
By the potent centuries—guardians. There,
alone,
Girdled by hills it rested, and to me
The great rose window form’d a glorious fane,
Mightier than other I had ever seen, |
10 |
And
when I lifted awed eyes, finite brain
To the open blue, where once a roof had been,
I knew from innumerable, awful winnowings
There was more room for our great God’s wide
wings. |
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Week
Pine, Rose and
25 October 1889 (6: 745) Fleur
de Lis 1891 |
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I long
for a noble mood. I long to rise,
Like those large rolling clouds of ashen pink
That deepen into purple, over strife
And small mechanic doings. How superb
That landscape in the sky to which I walk, |
5 |
And
gain at will a spacious colour-world,
In which my finer self may feel no fear!
The distance far between that goal and me
Seems lightly bridged; breathless, I win that goal—
The shores of purple and the seas of gold. [Page
190] |
10 |
Below,
how flat the still small earth—a sphere
That only the leaden soul takes solace in!
The long stretches, barred in sombre black,
Cross at right-angles fields that are gray with
snow—
Not white, but gray, for all the colours is here,
|
15 |
Colour—a
new sacrament—melted gems,
The hearts of all water-lilies, the tips of their
wings—
Young angels’, plumed in topaz, garnet, rose—
The dazzling diamond white, the white pearl.
How poor a place the little dark world appears,
|
20 |
Seen
from this gold-cloud region, basoned in fire!
Only a step away, and nothing is seen
Of the homes, huts, churches, palaces it bears
Upon its dry brown bosom. There remains
But the masterful violet sea, that angrily |
25 |
This
moment somewhere gnashes its yellow teeth
Against a lonely reef. What’s most like God
In the universe, if not this same strong sea,
Encircling, clasping, bearing up the world,
Blessing it with soft caresses, then, for faults,
|
30 |
Chiding
in God-like surges of wrath and storm?
But the ocean of cloud is placid, and the shores,
Rolled up in their amethyst bulk towards the stars,
Fade noiselessly from pearl to purple dark.
The shades fall even here. Here—not exempt
|
35 |
From
death and darkness even these shining airs—
The night comes swifter on than when on earth,
The fringes of faintest azure, where the bars
Of paler cloud are fading into gray,
Are dulled and blotted out. Opaque has grown |
40 |
The
molten in one moment; fleecy pale
And ghastly all the purple—lonely then,
And awed to horror of those glacial peaks,
I bridge the vaporous barrier once again,
And tread the despisèd earth. Then how too
dear |
45 |
Doth
the rude, common light of earth appear—
That of a street lamp, burning far, but clear!
The sign of human life, of human love, [Page
191]
Of habitation sweet, of common joys
And common plans, though precious, yet not prized,
|
50 |
| Till
in a moment’s fancy I had lost them. |
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Week
Pine, Rose and
25 October 1889 (6:6)
Fleur de Lis 1891 |
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While
others hug the fire, I gladly go,
Blown along beneath April skies to one broad path
That winds away from the town and drops below
A rude plank bridge, to glades that soon shall glow
With violets velvet sheathèd, op’d
full rath. |
5 |
April—the opal month of all the year,
With pearly skies, and blue, and sudden snows—
The opal April of my thought is here,
And I am happy when a star doth peer
From the brown bed of leaves wherein it grows. |
10 |
I would not touch one downy drooping bud!
The fingers of the wind, alone hath power
To give such life, and soon its peers shall stud
The greening bank that now is caking mud.
I go, return, and wait that magic hour. |
15 |
The eager children throng about the glade,
They do not know the signs, they falter—doubt
There will be flowers, mistrust the cooling shade
That meets them on the wood’s edge, not the
fray’d,
Crisp curl’d last winter’s leaves the
winds still route. |
20 |
Indeed, it asks for faith, when all the road
Is furrowed deep in slowly drying ruts,
And farmers gently urge with sparing goad
Their morning teams, conscious of pressing load,
And squirrels count their yet full store of nuts,
[Page 192] |
25 |
And frosty films on tree and sward are cast,
And rivulets run cold, nor yet too free,
And the old grass is sodden, lump’d and mass’d
On either side the fence, while a March blast,
Blows April’s trumpeter in triumphant key.
|
30 |
Afar stretch fields exceeding grey and wan,
Of sterile stubble; here are flying leaves,
And clouds of dust the wide highway upon.
It seems some mid-October morn; all gone
The splendour of the gay autumnal sheaves, |
35 |
And only left, the longing for the snow
To veil defect and compensate for loss.
But not a blossom ever seeks to blow
Until the time be ripe. Let rains but flow,
And stumps shall cushion’d be, with emerald
moss, |
40 |
And every bank shall wear a coronet
Of azure stars and yellow bells; pale plumes
Of slow uncurling green be rootwise set,
And higher, where the forest parapet
Its fringe of faint new foilage assumes. |
45 |
O! I have felt the high poetic mood
While lingering there, far from the troubled ways
Of duty and desire; have lov’d to brood
For hours in the open air—my faith, my food,
Until there clung around my brow the bays! |
50 |
And I have felt, too, like the vagabond,
Who knows no duty, has but one desire—
To keep within the pale of Nature’s bond;
Who sleeps beside the edge of some clear pond,
And sees each morn the scarlet sunrise fire |
55 |
Bleak hill and budding forest—I would give
[Page 193]
Much, in such moods, to drop the life I lead,
All ties, all dear expectancies, and live
As carelessly as that poor fugitive
Of all demands which now I daily heed.
|
60 |
Must heed—for dreaming is not doing. Base,
Base should I be to dream my days to death
In this sequester’d glade, where shadows chase
The chequered phantom. To each man his place—
He who neglects his, curses with latest breath |
65 |
The trend and disposition of his life.
Yet spells, dew-laden, odorous, warm and soft,
Like these sweet April omens, purely rife
With soothing promise of an end to strife,
Are dangerous. No more then, high aloft, |
70 |
I lift ecstatic eyes to sheer bright blue,
Or seek the curlèd cup beneath my foot.
I wander homeward, longed for by the few
Who love me, loving, too, the work I do—
See—I have brought them one arbutus root!
|
75 |
Week
Pine, Rose and
25 April 1890 (7:328)
Fleur de
Lis 1891 |
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No Dryad
in the oak,
No Nymph within the valley,
No fairy little folk
To frolic, dance and dally;
No Pan along the shore,
|
5 |
No
Nereid in the water,
No savage shape of boar,
No fair Demeter’s
daughter; [Page 194]
No Satyr in the vine,
No Faun anear the fountain,
|
10 |
No magic
in the mine,
No myth upon the mountain;
No honey amber clear,
No gleam of waxen laurel,
No stags beside the mere,
|
15 |
No
high Olympic quarrel;
No breath of lowing herds,
No pastoral sweet singing,
No dish of snow-white curds,
No mellow milk-bells ringing;
|
20 |
No Goddesses at all,
No Gods, or hardly any,
No shapes that might recall,
The classic miscellany;
Dramatis personæ,
|
25 |
Theocritus,
were wanting,
Save that perchance to thee,
Would prove as surely haunting,
The sumach fringèd cliff,
The oriole low flying,
|
30 |
The
open yellow skiff,
The languid loon’s
far crying,
The resinous keen breeze,
The water’s lazy lapping,
The silver coated trees,
|
35 |
| The
eagle’s idle flapping. [Page 195] |
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Pine,
Rose and
Fleur de Lis 1891 |
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Ring’d
round with the dark green St. Laurent our isle as
a jewel is set,
Moss’d agate in emerald rimm’d with
an amethyst rare,
One link in the leafy green chain, one star in the
stone coronet,
That crowns and encircles the brow of the peerless
and proud rivulet,
A diadem Deity-plac’d—and a mortal’s
despair!
|
5 |
Ring’d
round with the dark green St. Laurent our isle as
a jewel is set,
While glowing with feverish garnet, its sands sparkle
bright in the wet,
And clear as Brazilian topaz its summits declare
One link in the leafy green chain, one star in the
stone coronet.
The lichen upon it is writing in God’s orange
own alphabet,
|
10 |
And
dimly we measure its message, while past all compare
Ring’d round with the dark green St. Laurent
our isle as a jewel is set.
And here as we stand on its summit, glad warders
on grey parapet,
A thousand such jewels are sparkling in midsummer
air;
One link in the leafy green chain, one star in the
stone coronet,
|
15 |
One
gem, and but one—of a thousand—is this
whereon rest has been
met,
And dimly we worship its beauty, while shining and
fair,
Ring’d round with the dark green St. Laurent
our isle as a jewel is set,
One link in the leafy green chain, one star in the
stone coronet. |
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Pine,
Rose and
Fleur de Lis
1891 |
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We are
tired of the tumult and turmoil of water around
us,
Our boat would we bear to a bright and blossoming
shore,
The Islands appear and as longing for land they
have found us. [Page 196]
And their beauty of birch and their selvedge of
shadow hath bound
us
In bonds that bewitch as we blindly approach and
adore—
|
5 |
We are
tired of the tumult and turmoil around us,
And are fain to forget all the winds that have sear’d
and embrown’d
us,
All we pray for—to land, but to enter, escape,
we implore,
The Islands appear and as longing for land they
have found us.
Like Odysseus the deep that for days upon days darkly
wound us
|
10 |
Becomes
but a bane and a blight in its breadth evermore,
We are tired of the tumult and turmoil of water
around us.
Bid farewell to the Lake for its fetterless floods
have nigh drown’d us,
Like the sea can it smite, like the ocean can rage
and can roar,
The Islands appear and as longing for land they
have found us.
|
15 |
Like
Odysseus again do we dream of delights that once
crown’d us,
We would slip sheer to the grass and give over the
oar,
We are tired of the tumult and turmoil of water
around us,
The Islands appear and as longing for land they
have found us. |
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Pine,
Rose and
Fleur de Lis 1891 |
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|
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Combien
des enfans? Why, twenty-five!
Now, by all the Gods and
every Saint,
I wonder the woman is left alive
To tell the tale! How many survive?
She answers me, calm and
without constraint,
|
5 |
“Combien?
Mossieu? Why, twenty-five.”
Not one ever lost? Not one; they thrive,
Do little ones in this parish
quaint.
I wonder the woman is left alive, [Page
197]
Who has less than twelve. The bigger the hive,
|
10 |
The
greater the honour, no sign of complaint—
Combien des enfans? Why, twenty-five.
The men don’t care and the priests contrive
At mass the duty of parents
to paint,
I wonder the women are left alive.
|
15 |
Here come Antoine, Josephe, Mac, who drive
The rest—fifteen.
At the sight you faint.
Combien des enfans? Why, twenty-five!
I wonder the woman is left alive. |
|
Pine,
Rose and
Fleur de Lis 1891 |
|
|
|
These
are the days that try us; these the hours
That find, or leave us, cowards—doubters of
Heaven,
Sceptics of self, and riddled through with vain
Blind questionings as to Deity. Mute, we scan
The sky, the barren, wan, the drab, dull sky, |
5 |
And
mark it utterly blank. Whereas, a fool,
The flippant fungoid growth of modern mode,
Uncapped, unbelled, unshorn, but still a fool,
Fate at his fingers’ ends, and Cause in tow,
Or, wiser, say, the Yorick of his age, |
10 |
The
Touchstone of his period, would forecast
Better than us, the film and foam of rose
That yet may float upon the eastern grays
At dawn to-morrow.
Still,
and if we could, |
15 |
We would
not change our gloom for glibness, lose
Our wonder in our faith. We are not worse
Than those in whom the myth was strongest, those
In whom first awe lived longest, those who found
—Dear Pagans—gods in fountain, flood
and flower. [Page 198] |
20 |
Sometimes
the old Hellenic base stirs, lives
Within us, and we thrill to branch and beam
When walking where the aureoled autumn sun
Looms golden through the chestnut. But to-day–
When sodden leaves are merged in melting mire, |
25 |
And
garden-plots lie pilfered, and the vines
Are strings of tangled rigging reft of green,
Crude harps whereon the winter wind shall play
His bitter music—on a day like this,
We, harbouring no Hellenic images, stand |
30 |
In apathy
mute before our window pane,
And muse upon the blankness. Then, O, then,
If ever, should we thank our God for those
Rare spirits who have testified in faith
Of such a world as this, and straight we pray |
35 |
For
such an eye as Wordsworth’s, he who saw
System in anarchy, progress in ruin, peace
In devastation. Duty was his star—
May it be ours—this Star the Preacher missed. |
|
Pine,
Rose and
Fleur de Lis 1891 |
|
|
|
Shadows
of the distant pines outlined aloft
Against the blue of some bright summer sky;
Veins in a delicate eyelid, or the eye
Itself, an Irish eye, of violet soft;
Tips of proud thistles, purple after raining; |
5 |
Throat
of the pigeon, the harebell’s timid spire;
Edges of sunset cloud when skies are waning
To a pale brightness from a field of fire—
All these caught up, commingled, reappear
In one deep lake of Amethyst unpriced. |
10 |
Jewel
auspicious, worn in winter sere,
For thy dear sake are gladly sacrificed [Page
199]
The richer emblems of a season tender,
The gayer gems that wait on Summer’s splendour.
|
|
Verse
and Reverse 1921 Later
Poems and
New
Villanelles 1928 |
|
|
|
You
sought to paint your country’s savage side,
Grim, lonely, naked—in
hues that should not fade,
Red Sumach blazed a path for you, a braid
Of tangled fires reflected
in the tide
Of northern waters beneath whose waves you died—
|
5 |
Wild
suns awestering witched you; stars full-rayed
Burnt low while lone you watched, near where there
swayed
Those black-fringed trees
you painted in your pride.
I too have felt the power of some dark shore
To draw and lift the spirit
hermit-wise,
|
10 |
Not,
not for us the City with its roar,
Its languorous shapes silk-clad
in Orient guise,
But ours to face the silences, the sweep
Of that grey Wilderness
as yet asleep.
And then, it is not always Winter there,
|
15 |
Not
always Autumn; Spring too casts her spell
With pale green flags, a waxen star, a bell
Of delicate blue; Linnaea
everywhere
A rosy carpet spreads on stony stair.
The sheen of yellowing willows
in the dell, |
20 |
The
stir of sap in root and stem and cell,
The glories of a northern
Spring declare.
All this you knew. The little hidden things
Of fur and feather found
in you a friend,
The muskrat made the slower scamperings, [Page
200]
|
25 |
The
heron from his high nest deigned to descend.
Knowing it all and by its
soul possessed,
Your heart was in the North and there you rest. |
|
*
Lamented Canadian Artist, 1875-1917. [back] |
|
Verse
and Reverse 1922 |
|
To a Garden Thistle (8 Feet High)
|
|
Thistle!
I charge thee, fling away ambition!
Grow not so quickly, neither grow so tall,
The higher pinnacle, the greater fall,
So meet thy end with dumb if fierce submission
Thy barbed leaves of downy green will shrink, |
5 |
Thy
Tyrian purple pale to withered grey,
Thy form will dwindle as thy limbs decay,
Till drooping wanly on the ground they sink.
Strive how thou wilt, thou canst not conquer Fate,
For doomed art thou to lie in common cart, |
10 |
Thy
crown dishevelled, overthrown thy state,
Trampled, forgot, like any poor upstart.
Yet, Thistle, hearken. Think also thou sharest
The final lot of many, the noblest, fairest.
If Death must come, why were things made so fair?
|
15 |
A little
less—and grace had not diminished,
Nor had it mattered were there left unfinished
A million stars, a yard of sky left bare;
Three strands to rainbow, a hundred leaves to tree,
The underwings of a butterfly greyly netted, |
20 |
The
horse’s flowing mane less richly jetted,
A harsher note in some loved melody,
Music, that lifts the spirit, less enthralling,
Beauty, a courtesan, bold and badly painted,
Art, but a generous impulse foiled and tainted,
|
25 |
Nature,
both cold and cruel to appalling;
Thus Life with turmoil, strife and pain impending,
Breaks down and off, Death’s near approach
commending. [Page 201] |
|
Songs
of Love
and Labour 1925 |
|
|
|
What
colour lurks in Lac Labelle,
As summer comes and summer goes,
Young Philemon can easily tell.
His home is near, at La Chapelle,
He cannot read or write, but knows
|
5 |
| What
colour lurks in Lac Labelle.
Pink, in the sunset, like a shell,
From emerald, back to jade, it flows—
Young Philemon can easily tell
By purplish black of angry swell
|
10 |
The
coming storm that hourly grows.
What colour lurks in Lac Labelle?
All colours that on earth do dwell,
Peacock, and turquoise! Lovely rose?
Young Philemon can easily tell.
|
15 |
A “Lumberjack,” in whom the spell
Of Poetry has conquered Prose,
What colour lurks in Lac Labelle
Young Philemon can easily tell. |
|
Later
Poems and
New Villanelles 1928 |
|
A Canadian Anthology
(Of
Flowers)
|
|
As once
the Greek Meleager wove in verse
A chaplet for the bards of his own land,
Theocritus, and Simmias, Plato too,
All, all of flowers, with ivy, cypress, grape,
Roses of Sappho, crocus, cyclamen— [Page
202] |
5 |
So,
for the dear Unknown across the seas,
And under Afric stars, and where the smoke
Of pulsing geysers rises in Maori-land,
And even where Ganges rolls its lamp-lit flood,
For all who make the Empire (and all are friends),
|
10 |
I make
a song in Canada to-day,
The song of her own flowers, not England’s,
nor
Another’s, but her own. See—I have plucked
In fancy, some of the ivory blood-root buds
And twined with them the yellow violet, |
15 |
No shrinking
blossom this, but strong and erect
From sturdy clumps, encompassed by its leaves
Of fearless mien, protectress too of one
Like to itself, but timid, scented, white—
Viola blanda is her gentle name; |
20 |
And
further in the forest paths I sought
And found (for you) the ruby-tinted bells
Of sweet Linnæa, with perchance a stalk
Grey-curved and curious, of Indian Pipe,
Pale Monotropa, loving not the sun |
25 |
Yet
nurtured near the Trillium, all in threes,
Bravest of blossoms born in moist mid-May,
The children’s choice, the nation’s
favourite,
Giving its light to darkest interlace
Of fallen log and fern. Still other prize |
30 |
I have
for you—in windy open fields
Blow saffron lilies and Asclepias
The orange Butterfly-Weed, Lupinus blue;
Calypso, Arethusa, Orchids twain,
I’ll find, be sure, with Kypris’ Moccasin-Flower,
|
35 |
The
Painted Cup, all redolent of Spain,
Gay Castilleia, Sarracenia
Or Pitcher-Plant in hooded vesture drest,
Weird marvel of the marsh and irised pools;
Rhodora’s clusters purple-rose in hue, |
40 |
Andromeda,
and Kalmia, Wintergreen;
Mitchella’s scarlet berries, and the odorous
Arbutus, I must have, and the wild Calla [Page
203]
Gleaming in streamlets like a patch of snow,
And where the clearing slides along the rail
|
45 |
Pink
Epilobium spires I’ll gather in
With blackberry and vivid Golden-Rod,
Still on the prairie waves the fair Wind-Flower,
Anemone, but so unlike the frail
Anemone nemorosa of the wood! |
50 |
And
these are not all. Our Northern Rivers yield
Tall spikes of Cardinal flower and sumach bright,
And on the mountain slopes, corollas rare
(Celestial azure, crystal-cinctured) grow,
With gentian and azaleas. Maiden-hair |
55 |
From
dripping cliffs, and birch bark satin-smooth,
I must not miss, nor Nuphar’s lovely cup;
Waxen Nymphæa and the Dragon-Root,
Wild rice, and Indian hemp, and plumed beach-grass,
Polygala’s fringes and the fairy star |
60 |
Of Trientalis
whorled in emerald—
Must I not wait for these, Dicentra too,
And pearly “everlastings” and the spoils
Of fruited moss and cinnamon fungi, mats
Of hemlock twigs and tassels of the larch? |
65 |
Yet
are there more. What of the radiant lanes
Where warm peach-petals colour the fragrant air
For miles and miles of old Niagara’s strand—
Not only for the rich, not glassed nor walled
But full in sight for all. What of the bloom |
70 |
Where
eastern orchards burst their bonds in spring,
(And apples grow more rosy toward the sea);
And then—the misty berries of the North,
Blue as an infant’s eye and kindly spread
O’er leagues Laurentian, plateau, stone, and
dyke! |
75 |
These
will I add, and many a marvel more,
And I will dream that he, Meleager, came
And saw these wonders, and, working in his mind
Came Envy, Malice, and all Uncharitableness,
Fears, lest his own Anthology be found |
80 |
Wanting,
till later, better feelings filled [Page
204]
His heart; at last he spake—I hear the names
Of Græcia’s Nymphs and Goddesses given
to flowers
Growing in this far land, new land, of snows
And boundless waters—I marvel much at this.
|
85 |
—And
I, divining, answered—It is true,
And true of other things, for, like the Greek,
We love all waters. Mariners all are we,
Each one a proud Odysseus sailing thro’
The island channels or on craggy shores |
90 |
Building
the beacons that shall lead us home
Across the many-rivered, rocky plain,
Spangled with lakes and foaming waterfalls.
Mirth-merry at the thought I gave him roots
Of Aquilegia, gallant, spurred and gay— |
95 |
Of Erythronium,
saying—“Go and plant
These (if you have them not) in Ithaca
And watch if they flourish.” But for all the
rest
They are for all the friends in distant climes,
For all who make the Empire (plucked by one, |
100 |
A lover
of her country, coast to coast)
For whom this floral wreath I weave to-day
Bound with a branch of crimson Maple Leaf,
And may my loving Coronal of Song
“Be for all such as love these holy things.”
[Page 205] |
105 |
Canadian
Bookman Later
Poems and
December 1928 New
Villanelles 1928 |
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