Ave!
An Ode for the Centenary of Shelley’s Birth

So might some lord of men, whom force and fate

  And his great heart’s unvanquishable power

Have thrust with storm to his supreme estate,

  Ascend by night his solitary tower

High o’er the city’s lights and cries uplift.

  Silent he ponders the scrolled heaven to read

And the keen stars’ conflicting message sift,

    Till the slow signs recede,

And ominously scarlet dawns afar

The day he leads his legions forth to war.

How merry sings the aftermath,

  With crickets fifing in the dew!

The home-sweet sounds, the scene, the hour,

  I consecrate to you.

All this you knew and loved with me;

  All this in our delight had part;

And now—though us earth sees no more

  As comrades, heart to heart—

This kindly strength of open fields,

  This faith of eve, this calm of air,

They lift my spirit close to you

  In memory and prayer.

  I am the strife that shapes

    The stature of a man,

  The pang no hero escapes,

    The blessing, the ban;

  I am the hammer that moulds

    The iron of our race,

The omen of God in our blood that a people beholds,

    The foreknowledge veiled in our face.

Back to the bewildering vision

  And the borderland of birth;

Back into the looming wonder,

  The companionship of earth;

Back unto the simple kindred—

  Childlike fingers, childlike eyes,

Working, waiting, comprehending,

  Now in patience, now surprise;

Back unto the faithful healing

  And the candour of the sod—

Scent of mould and moisture stirring

  At the secret touch of God;

Back into the ancient stillness

  Where the wise enchanter weaves,

To the twine of questing tree-root,

  The expectancy of leaves;

Back to hear the hushed consulting

  Over bud and blade and germ,

As the Mother’s mood apportions

  Each its pattern, each its term;

Back into the grave beginnings

  Where all wonder-tales are true,

Strong enchantments, strange successions,

  Mysteries of old and new;

Back to knowledge and renewal,

  Faith to fashion and reveal,

Take me, Mother,—in compassion

  All thy hurt ones fain to heal.

Back to wisdom take me, Mother;

  Comfort me with kindred hands;

Tell me tales the world’s forgetting,

  Till my spirit understands.

Tell me how some sightless impulse,

  Working out a hidden plan,

God for kin and clay for fellow,

  Wakes to find itself a man.

Tell me how the life of mortal,

  Wavering from breath to breath,

Like a web of scarlet pattern

  Hurtles from the loom of death.

How the caged bright bird, desire,

  Which the hands of God deliver,

Beats aloft to drop unheeded

  At the confines of forever:

Faints unheeded for a season,

  Then outwings the farthest star,

To the wisdom and the stillness

  Where thy consummations are.

Out of the dreams that heap

The hollow hand of sleep,—

Out of the dark sublime,

The echoing deeps of time,—

From the averted Face

Beyond the bournes of space,

Into the sudden sun

We journey, one by one.

Out of the hidden shade

Wherein desire is made,—

Out of the pregnant stir

Where death and life confer,—

The dark and mystic heat

Where soul and matter meet,—

The enigmatic Will,—

We start, and then are still.

    Inexorably decreed

By the ancestral deed,

The puppets of our sires,

We work out blind desires,

And for our sons ordain

The blessing or the bane.

In ignorance we stand

With fate on either hand,

And question stars and earth

Of life, and death, and birth.

With wonder in our eyes

We scan the kindred skies,

While through the common grass

Our atoms mix and pass.

We feel the sap go free

When spring comes to the tree;

And in our blood is stirred

What warms the brooding bird.

The vital fire we breathe

That bud and blade bequeath,

And strength of native clay

In our full veins hath sway.

    But in the urge intense

And fellowship of sense,

Suddenly comes a word

In other ages heard.

On a great wind our souls

Are borne to unknown goals,

And past the bournes of space

To the unaverted Face.

O Thou who bidd’st a million germs decay

That one white bloom may soar into the day,

Mine eyes unseal to see their souls in death

Borne back to Thee upon the lily’s breath.

Sang the sunrise on an amber morn—

“Earth, be glad! An April day is born.

“Winter’s done, and April’s in the skies.

Earth, look up with laughter in your eyes!”

Putting off her dumb dismay of snow,

Earth bade all her unseen children grow.

Then the sound of growing in the air

Rose to God a liturgy of prayer;

And the thronged succession of the days

Uttered up to God a psalm of praise.

Laughed the running sap in every vein,

Laughed the running flurries of warm rain,

Laughed the life in every wandering root,

Laughed the tingling cells of bud and shoot.

God in all the concord of their mirth

Heard the adoration-song of Earth.

Behind the fateful gleams

Of Life’s foretelling streams

    Sat the Artificer

Of souls and deeds and dreams.

Before him April came;

And on her mouth his name

    Breathed like a flower

And lightened like a flame.

She offered him a world

With showers of joy empearled;

    And a spring wind

With iris wings unfurled.

She offered him a flight

Of birds that fare by night,

    Voyaging northward

By the ancestral sight.

She offered him a star

From the blue fields afar,

    Where unforgotten

The ghosts of gladness are.

And every root and seed

Blind stirring in the mead

    Her hands held up,—

And still he gave no heed.

Then from a secret nook

Beside a pasture brook,—

    A place of leaves,—

A pink-lipped bloom she took.

Softly before his feet,

Oblation small and sweet,

    She laid the arbutus,

And found the offering meet.

Over the shadowy tide,

Where Birth and Death abide,

    He stretched his palm,

And strewed the petals wide;

And o’er the ebbing years,

Dark with the drift of tears,

    A sunbeam broke,

And summer filled the spheres.

Through its brown and withered bulb

  How the white germ felt the sun

In the dark mould gently stirring

  His spring children one by one!

Thrilled with heat, it split the husk,

  Shot a green blade up to light,

And unfurled its orange petals

  In the old enchanter’s sight.

One step more and it had floated

  On the palpitating noon

Winged and free, a butterfly

  Soaring from the rent cocoon.

But it could not leave its earth,

  And the May-dew’s tender tears,—

So it wavers there forever

  ’Twixt the green and azure spheres.

Daffodil, lily, and crocus,

  They stir, they break from the sod,

They are glad of the sun, and they open

  Their golden hearts to God.

They, and the wilding families,—

  Windflower, violet, may,—

They rise from the long, long dark

  To the ecstasy of day.

We, scattering troops and kindreds,

  From out of the stars wind-blown

To this wayside corner of space,

  This world that we call our own,—

We, of the hedgerows of Time,

  We, too, shall divide the sod,

Emerge to the light, and blossom,

  With our hearts held up to God.

Comes the lure of green things growing,

Comes the call of waters flowing,—

  And the wayfarer Desire

Moves and wakes and would be going.

Hark the migrant hosts of June

Marching nearer noon by noon!

  Hark the gossip of the grasses

Bivouacked beneath the moon!

Hark the leaves their mirth averring;

Hark the buds to blossom stirring;

  Hark the hushed, exultant haste

Of the wind and world conferring!

Hark the sharp, insistent cry

Where the hawk patrols the sky!

  Hark the flapping, as of banners,

Where the heron triumphs by!

Empire in the coasts of bloom

Humming cohorts now resume,—

  And desire is forth to follow

Many a vagabond perfume.

Long the quest and far the ending

Where my wayfarer is wending,—

  When Desire is once afoot,

Doom behind and dream attending!

Shuttle-cock of indecision,

Sport of chance’s blind derision,

  Yet he may not fail nor tire

Till his eyes shall win the Vision

In his ears the phantom chime

Of incommunicable rhyme,

  He shall chase the fleeting camp-fires

Of the Bedouins of Time.

Farer by uncharted ways,

Dumb as Death to plaint or praise,

  Unreturning he shall journey,

Fellow to the nights and days:

Till upon the outer bar

Stilled the moaning currents are,

  Till the flame achieves the zenith,

Till the moth attains the star,

Till, through laughter and through tears,

Fair the final peace appears,

  And about the watered pastures

Sink to sleep the nomad years!

For days the drench of noiseless rains,

Then sunshine on the vacant plains,

And April with her blind desire

A vagrant in my veins!

Because the tardy gods grew kind,

Unrest and care were cast behind;

I took a day, and found the world

Was fashioned to my mind.

The swelling sap that thrilled the wood

Was cousin to my eager blood;

I caught the stir of waking roots

And knew that life was good.

But something in the odors fleet,

And in the sap’s suggestion sweet,

Was lacking,—one thing everywhere

To make the spring complete.

At length within a leafy nest,

Where spring’s persuasions pleaded best,

I found a pale, reluctant flower,

The purpose of my quest.

And then the world’s expectancy

Grew clear: I knew its need to be

Not this dear flower, but one dear hand

To pluck the flower with me.

Ringed with the flocking of hills, within shepherding watch of Olympus,

Tempe, vale of the gods, lies in green quiet withdrawn;

Tempe, vale of the gods, deep-couched amid woodland and woodland,

Threaded with amber of brooks, mirrored in azure of pools,

All day drowsed with the sun, charm-drunken with moonlight at midnight,

Walled from the world forever under a vapor of dreams,—

Hid by the shadows of dreams, not found by the curious footstep,

Sacred and secret forever, Tempe, vale of the gods.

How, through the cleft of its bosom, goes sweetly the water Penëus!

How by Penëus the sward breaks into saffron and blue!

How the long slope-floored beech-glades mount to the wind-wakened uplands,

Where, through flame-berried ash, troop the hoofed Centaurs at morn!

Nowhere greens a copse but the eye-beams of Artemis pierce it.

Breathes no laurel her balm but Phœbus’ fingers caress.

Springs no bed of wild blossom but limbs of dryad have pressed it.

Sparkle the nymphs, and the brooks chime with shy laughter and calls.

Here is a nook. Two rivulets fall to mix with Penëus,

Loiter a space, and sleep, checked and choked by the reeds.

Long grass waves in the windless water, strown with the lote-leaf.

Twist thro’ dripping soil great alder roots; and the air

Glooms with the dripping tangle of leaf-thick branches, and stillness

Keeps in the strange-coiled stems, ferns, and wet-loving weeds.

Hither comes Pan, to this pregnant earthy spot, when his piping

Flags; and his pipes outworn breaking and casting away,

Fits new reeds to his mouth with the weird earth-melody in them,

Piercing, alive with a life able to mix with the god’s.

Then, as he blows, and the searching sequence delights him, the goat-feet

Furtive withdraw; and a bird stirs and flutes in the gloom

Answering. Float with the stream the outworn pipes, with a whisper,—

“What the god breathes on, the god never can wholly evade!”

God-breath lurks in each fragment forever. Dispersed by Penëus

Wandering, caught in the ripples, wind-blown hither and there,

Over the whole green earth and globe of sea they are scattered,

Coming to secret spots, where in a visible form

Comes not the god, though he come declared in his workings. And mortals

Straying in cool of morn, or bodeful hasting at eve,

Or in the depths of noonday plunged to shadiest coverts,

Spy them, and set to their lips; blow, and fling them away!

Ay, they fling them away,—but never wholly! Thereafter

Creeps strange fire in their veins, murmur strange tongues in their brain,

Sweetly evasive; a secret madness takes them,—a charm-struck

Passion for woods and wild life, the solitude of the hills.

Therefore they fly the heedless throngs and traffic of cities,

Haunt mossed caverns, and wells bubbling ice-cool; and their souls

Gather a magical gleam of the secret of life, and the god’s voice

Calls to them, not from afar, teaching them wonderful things.

O apple leaves, so cool and green

  Against the summer sky,

You stir, although the wind is still

  And not a bird goes by.

      You start,

  And softly move apart

    In hushed expectancy.

  Who is the gracious visitor

    Whose form I cannot see?

O apple leaves, the mystic light

  All down your dim arcade!

Why do your shadows tremble so,

  Half glad and half afraid?

      The air

  Is an unspoken prayer;

    Your eyes look all one way.

  Who is the secret visitor

    Your tremors would betray?

Dear blossom of the wayside kin,

  Whose homely, wholesome name

Tells of a potency within

  To win thee country fame!

The sterile hillocks are thy home,

  Beside the windy path;

The sky, a pale and lonely dome,

  Is all thy vision hath.

Thy unobtrusive purple face

  Amid the meagre grass

Greets me with long-remembered grace,

  And cheers me as I pass.

And I, outworn by petty care,

  And vexed with trivial wrong,

I heed thy brave and joyous air

  Until my heart grows strong.

A lesson from the Power I crave

  That moves in me and thee,

That makes thee modest, calm, and brave,

  Me restless as the sea.

Thy simple wisdom I would gain,—

  To heal the hurt Life brings,

With kindly cheer, and faith in pain,

  And joy of common things.

In the heart of a man

  Is a thought upfurled,

Reached its full span

  It shakes the world,

And to one high thought

Is a whole race wrought.

Not with vain noise

  The great work grows,

Nor with foolish voice,

  But in repose,—

Not in the rush

But in the hush.

From the cogent lash

  Of the cloud-herd wind

The low clouds dash,

  Blown headlong, blind;

But beyond, the great blue

Looks moveless through.

O’er the loud world sweep

  The scourge and the rod;

But in deep beyond deep

  Is the stillness of God,—

At the Fountains of Life

No cry, no strife.

Once in a garden, when the thrush’s song,

  Pealing at morn, made holy all the air,

Till earth was healed of many an ancient wrong,

  And life appeared another name for prayer,

Rose suddenly a swarm of butterflies,

  On wings of white and gold and azure fire;

And one said, “These are flowers that seek the skies

  Loosed by the spell of their supreme desire.”

To Beauty and to Truth I heaped

  My sacrificial fires.

I fed them hot with selfish thoughts

  And many proud desires.

I stripped my days of dear delights

  To cast them in the flame,

Till life seemed naked as a rock,

  And pleasure but a name.

And still I sorrowed patiently,

  And waited day and night,

Expecting Truth from very far

  And Beauty from her height.

Then laughter ran among the stars;

  And this I heard them tell:

“Beside his threshold is the shrine

    Where Truth and Beauty dwell!”

He who would start and rise

  Before the crowing cocks.—

No more he lifts his eyes,

  Whoever knocks.

He who before the stars

  Would call the cattle home,—

They wait about the bars

  For him to come.

Him at whose hearty calls

  The farmstead woke again

The horses in their stalls

  Expect in vain.

Busy, and blithe, and bold,

  He laboured for the morrow,—

The plough his hands would hold

  Rusts in the furrow.

His fields he had to leave,

  His orchards cool and dim;

The clods he used to cleave

  Now cover him.

But the green, growing things

  Lean kindly to his sleep,—

White roots and wandering strings,

  Closer they creep.

Because he loved them long

  And with them bore his part,

Tenderly now they throng

  About his heart.

He who but yesterday would roam

  Careless as clouds and currents range,

In homeless wandering most at home,

  Inhabiter of change;

Who wooed the west to win the east,

  And named the stars of North and South,

And felt the zest of Freedom’s feast

  Familiar in his mouth;

Who found a faith in stranger-speech,

  And fellowship in foreign hands,

And had within his eager reach

  The relish of all lands—

How circumscribed a plot of earth

  Keeps now his restless footsteps still,

Whose wish was wide as ocean’s girth,

  Whose will the water’s will!

By the long wash of his ancestral sea

He sleeps how quietly!

How quiet the unlifting eyelids lie

Under this tranquil sky!

The little busy hands and restless feet

Here find that rest is sweet;

For sweetly, from the hands grown tired of play,

The child-world slips away,

With its confusion of forgotten toys

And kind, familiar noise.

Not lonely does he lie in his last bed,

For love o’erbroods his head.

Kindly to him the comrade grasses lean

Their fellowship of green.

The wilding meadow companies give heed,—

Brave tansy, and the weed

That on the dyke-top lifts its dauntless stalk,—

Around his couch they talk.

The shadows of his oak-tree flit and play

Above his dreams all day.

The wind, that was his playmate on the hills,

His sleep with music fills.

Here in this tender acre by the tide

His vanished kin abide.

Ah! what compassionate care for him they keep,

Too soon returned to sleep!

They watch him in this little field of peace

Where they have found release.

Not as a stranger or alone he went

Unto his long content;

But kissed to sleep and comforted lies he

By his ancestral sea.

The red and yellow of the Autumn salt-grass,

  The grey flats, and the yellow-grey full tide,

The lonely stacks, the grave expanse of marshes,—

  O Land wherein my memories abide,

I have come back that you may make me tranquil,

  Resting a little at your heart of peace,

Remembering much amid your serious leisure,

  Forgetting more amid your large release.

For yours the wisdom of the night and morning,

  The word of the inevitable years,

The open Heaven’s unobscured communion,

  And the dim whisper of the wheeling spheres.

The great things and the terrible I bring you,

  To be illumined in your spacious breath,—

Love, and the ashes of desire, and anguish,

  Strange laughter, and the unhealing wound of death.

These in the world, all these, have come upon me,

  Leaving me mute and shaken with surprise.

Oh, turn them in your measureless contemplation,

  And in their mastery teach me to be wise.

Comrade of the whirling planets,

  Mother of the leaves and rain,

Make me joyous as thy birds are,

  Let me be thy child again.

Show me all the troops of heaven

  Tethered in a sphere of dew,—

All the dear familiar marvels

  Old, child-hearted singers knew.

Let me laugh with children’s laughter,

  Breathe with herb and blade and tree,

Learn again forgotten lessons

  Of thy grave simplicity.

Take me back to dream and vision

  From the prison-house of pain,

Back to fellowship with wonder—

  Mother, take me home again!

Here is a breathing time, and rest for a little season.

Here have I drained deep draughts out of the springs of life.

Here, as of old, while still unacquainted with toil and faintness,

Stretched are my veins with strength, fearless my heart and at peace.

I have come back from the crowd, the blinding strife and the tumult,

Pain, and the shadow of pain, sorrow in silence endured;

Fighting, at last I have fallen, and sought the breast of the Mother,—

Quite cast down I have crept close to the broad sweet earth.

Lo, out of failure triumph! Renewed the wavering courage,

Tense the unstrung nerves, steadfast the faltering knees!

Weary no more, nor faint, nor grieved at heart, nor despairing,

Hushed in the earth’s green lap, lulled to slumber and dreams!

I soothe to unimagined sleep

The sunless bases of the deep.

And then I stir the aching tide

That gropes in its reluctant side.

I heave aloft the smoking hill;

To silent peace its throes I still.

But ever at its heart of fire

I lurk, an unassuaged desire.

I wrap me in the sightless germ

An instant or an endless term;

And still its atoms are my care,

Dispersed in ashes or in air.

I hush the comets one by one

To sleep for ages in the sun;

The sun resumes before my face

His circuit of the shores of space.

The mount, the star, the germ, the deep,

They all shall wake, they all shall sleep.

Time, like a flurry of wild rain,

Shall drift across the darkened pane.

Space, in the dim predestined hour,

Shall crumble like a ruined tower.

I only, with unfaltering eye,

Shall watch the dreams of God go by.

Now along the solemn heights

Fade the Autumn’s altar-lights;

  Down the great earth’s glimmering chancel

Glide the days and nights.

Little kindred of the grass,

Like a shadow in a glass

  Falls the dark and falls the stillness;

We must rise and pass.

We must rise and follow, wending

Where the nights and days have ending,—

  Pass in order pale and slow

Unto sleep extending.

Little brothers of the clod,

Soul of fire and seed of sod,

  We must fare into the silence

At the knees of God.

Little comrades of the sky

Wing to wing we wander by,

  Going, going, going, going,

Softly as a sigh.

Hark, the moving shapes confer,

Globe of dew and gossamer,

  Fading and ephemeral spirits

In the dusk astir.

Moth and blossom, blade and bee,

Worlds must go as well as we,

  In the long procession joining

Mount, and star, and sea.

Toward the shadowy brink we climb

Where the round year rolls sublime,

  Rolls, and drops, and falls forever

In the vast of time;

Like a plummet plunging deep

Past the utmost reach of sleep,

  Till remembrance has no longer

Care to laugh or weep.

Before the feet of the dew

There came a call I knew,

  Luring me into the garden

Where the tall white lilies grew.

I stood in the dusk between

The companies of green,

  O’er whose aerial ranks

The lilies rose serene.

And the breathing air was stirred

By an unremembered word,

  Soft, incommunicable—

And wings not of a bird.

I heard the spent blooms sighing,

The expectant buds replying;

  I felt the life of the leaves,

Ephemeral, yet undying.

The spirits of earth were there,

Thronging the shadowed air,

  Serving among the lilies,

In an ecstasy of prayer.

Their speech I could not tell;

But the sap in each green cell,

  And the pure initiate petals,

They knew that language well.

I felt the soul of the trees—

Of the white, eternal seas—

  Of the flickering bats and night-moths

And my own soul kin to these.

And a spell came out of space

From the light of its starry place,

  And I saw in the deep of my heart

The image of God’s face.

When the grey lake-water rushes

Past the dripping alder-bushes,

  And the bodeful autumn wind

In the fir-tree weeps and hushes,—

When the air is sharply damp

Round the solitary camp,

  And the moose-bush in the thicket

Glimmers like a scarlet lamp,—

When the birches twinkle yellow,

And the cornel bunches mellow,

  And the owl across the twilight

Trumpets to his downy fellow,—

When the nut-fed chipmunks romp

Through the maples’ crimson pomp,

  And the slim viburnum flushes

In the darkness of the swamp,—

When the blueberries are dead,

When the rowan clusters red,

  And the shy bear, summer-sleekened,

In the bracken makes his bed,—

On a day there comes once more

To the latched and lonely door,

  Down the wood-road striding silent,

One who has been here before.

Green spruce branches for his head,

Here he makes his simple bed,

  Crouching with the sun, and rising

When the dawn is frosty red.

All day long he wanders wide

With the grey moss for his guide,

  And his lonely axe-stroke startles

The expectant forest-side.

Toward the quiet close of day

Back to camp he takes his way,

  And about his sober footsteps

Unafraid the squirrels play.

On his roof the red leaf falls,

At his door the bluejay calls,

  And he hears the wood-mice hurry

Up and down his rough log walls;

Hears the laughter of the loon

Thrill the dying afternoon,—

  Hears the calling of the moose

Echo to the early moon.

And he hears the partridge drumming,

The belated hornet humming,—

  All the faint, prophetic sounds

That foretell the winter’s coming.

And the wind about his eaves

Through the chilly night-wet grieves,

  And the earth’s dumb patience fills him,

Fellow to the falling leaves.

One night came Winter noiselessly, and leaned

  Against my window-pane.

In the deep stillness of his heart convened

  The ghosts of all his slain.

Leaves, and ephemera, and stars of earth,

  And fugitives of grass,—

White spirits loosed from bonds of mortal birth,

  He drew them on the glass.

My glad feet shod with the glittering steel

I was the god of the winged heel.

The hills in the far white sky were lost;

The world lay still in the wide white frost;

And the woods hung hushed in their long white dream

By the ghostly, glimmering, ice-blue stream.

Here was a pathway, smooth like glass,

Where I and the wandering wind might pass

To the far-off palaces, drifted deep,

Where Winter’s retinue rests in sleep.

I followed the lure, I fled like a bird,

Till the startled hollows awoke and heard

A spinning whisper, a sibilant twang,

As the stroke of the steel on the tense ice rang;

And the wandering wind was left behind

As faster, faster I followed my mind;

Till the blood sang high in my eager brain,

And the joy of my flight was almost pain.

Then I stayed the rush of my eager speed

And silently went as a drifting seed,—

Slowly, furtively, till my eyes

Grew big with the awe of a dim surmise,

And the hair of my neck began to creep

At hearing the wilderness talk in sleep.

Shapes in the fir-gloom drifted near.

In the deep of my heart I heard my fear;

And I turned and fled, like a soul pursued,

From the white, inviolate solitude.

While eager angels watched in awe,

  God fashioned with his hands

Two shining spheres to work his law,

  And carry his commands.

With patient art he shaped them true,

  With calm, untiring care;

And none of those bright watchers knew

  Which one to call most fair.

He dropped one lightly down to earth

  Amid the morning’s blue—

And on a gossamer had birth

  A bead of blinding dew.

It flamed across the hollow field,

  On tiptoe to depart,

Outvied Arcturus, and revealed

  All heaven in its heart.

He tossed the other into space

  (As children toss a ball)

To swing forever in its place

  With equal rise and fall;

To flame through the ethereal dark,

  Among its brother spheres,

An orbit too immense to mark

  The little tide of years.

Not only in the cataract and the thunder,

  Or in the deeps of man’s uncharted soul,

But in the dew-star dwells alike the wonder,

  And in the whirling dust-mote the Control.

O Thou who hast beneath Thy hand

The dark foundations of the land,—

The motion of whose ordered thought

An instant universe hath wrought,—

Who hast within Thine equal heed

The rolling sun, the ripening seed,

The azure of the speedwell’s eye,

The vast solemnities of sky,—

Who hear’st no less the feeble note

Of one small bird’s awakening throat,

Than that unnamed, tremendous chord

Arcturus sounds before his Lord,—

More sweet to Thee than all acclaim

Of storm and ocean, stars and flame,

In favour more before Thy face

Than pageantry of time and space,

The worship and the service be

Of him Thou madest most like Thee,—

Who in his nostrils hath Thy breath,

Whose spirit is the lord of death!

Father, who keepest

  The stars in Thy care,

Me, too, Thy little one,

  Childish in prayer,

Keep, as Thou keepest

  The soft night through,

Thy long, white lilies

  Asleep in Thy dew.

Across the fog the moon lies fair.

  Transfused with ghostly amethyst,

O white Night, charm to wonderment

  The cattle in the mist!

Thy touch, O grave Mysteriarch,

  Makes dull, familiar things divine.

O grant of thy revealing gift

  Be some small portion mine!

Make thou my vision sane and clear,

  That I may see what beauty clings

In common forms, and find the soul

  Of unregarded things!

How sombre slope these acres to the sea

  And to the breaking sun! The sun-rise deeps

  Of rose and crocus, whence the far dawn leaps,

Gild but with scorn their grey monotony.

The glebe rests patient for its joy to be.

  Past the salt field-foot many a dim wing sweeps;

  And down the field a first slow furrow creeps,

Pledge of near harvests to the unverdured lea.

With clank of harness tramps the serious team.

  The sea air thrills their nostrils. Some wise crows

  Feed confidently behind the ploughman’s feet.

In the early chill the clods fresh cloven steam,

  And down its griding path the keen share goes.

  So, from a scar, best flowers the future’s sweet.

A brown, sad-coloured hillside, where the soil

  Fresh from the frequent harrow, deep and fine,

  Lies bare; no break in the remote sky-line,

Save where a flock of pigeons streams aloft,

Startled from feed in some low-lying croft,

  Or far-off spires with yellow of sunset shine;

  And here the Sower, unwittingly divine,

Exerts the silent forethought of his toil.

Alone he treads the glebe, his measured stride

  Dumb in the yielding soil; and though small joy

  Dwell in his heavy face, as spreads the blind

Pale grain from his dispensing palm aside,

  This plodding churl grows great in his employ;—

  Godlike, he makes provision for mankind.

With shy bright clamour the live brooks sparkle and run.

  Freed flocks confer about the farmstead ways.

  The air’s a wine of dreams and shining haze,

Beaded with bird-notes thin,—for Spring’s begun!

The sap flies upward. Death is over and done.

  The glad earth wakes; the glad light breaks; the days

  Grow round, grow radiant. Praise for the new life! Praise

For bliss of breath and blood beneath the sun!

With potent wizardry the wise earth wields,

To conjure with a perfume! From bare fields

  The sense drinks in a breath of furrow and sod.

And lo, the bound of days and distance yields;

  And fetterless the soul is flown abroad,

  Lord of desire and beauty, like a God!

This morning, full of breezes and perfume,

  Brimful of promise of midsummer weather,

  When bees and birds and I are glad together,

Breathes of the full-leaved season, when soft gloom

Chequers thy streets, and thy close elms assume

  Round roof and spire the semblance of green billows;

  Yet now thy glory is the yellow willows,

The yellow willows, full of bees and bloom.

Under their dusty blossoms blackbirds meet,

  And robins pipe amid the cedars nigher;

Thro’ the still elms I hear the ferry’s beat;

  The swallows chirp about the towering spire;

The whole air pulses with its weight of sweet;

  Yet not quite satisfied is my desire!

I see the harsh, wind-ridden, eastward hill,

  By the red cattle pastured, blanched with dew;

  The small, mossed hillocks where the clay gets through:

The grey webs woven on milkweed tops at will.

The sparse, pale grasses flicker, and are still.

  The empty flats yearn seaward. All the view

  Is naked to the horizon’s utmost blue;

And the bleak spaces stir me with strange thrill.

Not in perfection dwells the subtler power

  To pierce our mean content, but rather works

  Through incompletion, and the need that irks,—

Not in the flower, but effort toward the flower.

  When the want stirs, when the soul’s cravings urge,

  The strong earth strengthens, and the clean heavens purge.

When milking-time is done, and over all

  This quiet Canadian inland forest home

  And wide rough pasture-lots the shadows come,

And dews, with peace and twilight voices, fall,

From moss-cooled watering-trough to foddered stall

  The tired plough-horses turn,—the barnyard loam

  Soft to their feet,—and in the sky’s pale dome

Like resonant chords the swooping night-jars call.

The frogs, cool-fluting ministers of dream,

  Make shrill the slow brook’s borders; pasture bars

  Down clatter, and the cattle wander through,—

Vague shapes amid the thickets; gleam by gleam

  Above the wet grey wilds emerge the stars,

  And through the dusk the farmstead fades from view.

Here in the red heart of the sunset lying,

  My rest an islet of brown weeds blown dry,

  I watch the wide bright heavens, hovering nigh,

My plain and pools in lucent splendour dyeing.

My view dreams over the rosy wastes, descrying

  The reed-tops fret the solitary sky;

  And all the air is tremulous to the cry

Of myriad frogs on mellow pipes replying.

For the unrest of passion here is peace,

  And eve’s cool drench for midday soil and taint.

To tired ears how sweetly brings release

  This limpid babble from life’s unstilled complaint;

  While under tired eyelids lapse and faint

The noon’s derisive visions—fade and cease.

Back to the green deeps of the outer bay

  The red and amber currents glide and cringe,

  Diminishing behind a luminous fringe

Of cream-white surf and wandering wraiths of spray.

Stealthily, in the old reluctant way,

  The red flats are uncovered, mile on mile,

  To glitter in the sun a golden while.

Far down the flats, a phantom sharply grey,

The herring weir emerges, quick with spoil.

  Slowly the tide forsakes it. Then draws near,

  Descending from the farm-house on the height,

A cart, with gaping tubs. The oxen toil

  Sombrely o’er the level to the weir,

  And drag a long black trail across the light.

Here clove the keels of centuries ago

  Where now unvisited the flats lie bare.

  Here seethed the sweep of journeying waters, where

No more the tumbling floods of Fundy flow,

And only in the samphire pipes creep slow

  The salty currents of the sap. The air

  Hums desolately with wings that seaward fare,

Over the lonely reaches beating low.

The wastes of hard and meagre weeds are thronged

With murmurs of a past that time has wronged;

  And ghosts of many an ancient memory

Dwell by the brackish pools and ditches blind,

In these low-lying pastures of the wind,

  These marshes pale and meadows by the sea.

The wash of endless waves is in their tops,

  Endlessly swaying, and the long winds stream

  Athwart them from the far-off shores of dream.

Through the stirred branches filtering, faintly drops

Mystic dream-dust of isle, and palm, and cave,

  Coral and sapphire, realms of rose, that seem

  More radiant than ever earthly gleam

Revealed of fairy mead or haunted wave.

A cloud of gold, a cleft of blue profound,—

  These are my gates of wonder, surged about

  By tumult of tossed bough and rocking crest:

The vision lures. The spirit spurns her bound,

  Spreads her unprisoned wing, and drifts from out

  This green and humming gloom that wraps my rest.

These are the fields of light, and laughing air,

  And yellow butterflies, and foraging bees,

  And whitish, wayward blossoms winged as these,

And pale green tangles like a seamaid’s hair.

Pale, pale the blue, but pure beyond compare.

  And pale the sparkle of the far-off seas,

  A-shimmer like these fluttering slopes of peas,

And pale the open landscape everywhere.

From fence to fence a perfumed breath exhales

  O’er the bright pallor of the well-loved fields,—

My fields of Tantramar in summer-time;

  And, scorning the poor feed their pasture yields,

Up from the bushy lots the cattle climb,

  To gaze with longing through the grey, mossed rails.

This is the voice of high midsummer’s heat.

  The rasping vibrant clamour soars and shrills

  O’er all the meadowy range of shadeless hills,

As if a host of giant cicadas beat

The cymbals of their wings with tireless feet,

  Or brazen grasshoppers with triumphing note

  From the long swath proclaimed the fate that smote

The clover and timothy-tops and meadowsweet.

The crying knives glide on; the green swath lies.

  And all noon long the sun, with chemic ray,

  Seals up each cordial essence in its cell,

That in the dusky stalls, some winter’s day,

  The spirit of June, here prisoned by his spell,

  May cheer the herds with pasture memories.

At evening, where the cattle come to drink,

  Cool are the long marsh-grasses, dewy cool

  The alder thickets, and the shallow pool,

And the brown clay about the trodden brink.

The pensive afterthoughts of sundown sink

  Over the patient acres given to peace;

  The homely cries and farmstead noises cease,

And the worn day relaxes, link by link.

A lesson that the open heart may read

  Breathes in this mild benignity of air,

  These dear, familiar savours of the soil,—

A lesson of the calm of humble creed,

  The simple dignity of common toil,

  And the plain wisdom of unspoken prayer.

On other fields and other scenes the morn

  Laughs from her blue,—but not such fields are these,

  Where comes no cheer of summer leaves and bees,

And no shade mitigates the day’s white scorn.

These serious acres vast no groves adorn;

  But giant trunks, bleak shapes that once were trees,

  Tower naked, unassuaged of rain or breeze,

Their stern grey isolation grimly borne.

The months roll over them, and mark no change.

  But when spring stirs, or autumn stills, the year,

  Perchance some phantom leafage rustles faint

Through their parched dreams,—some old-time notes ring strange,

  When in his slender treble, far and clear,

  Reiterates the rain-bird his complaint.

Stumps, and harsh rocks, and prostrate trunks all charred,

  And gnarled roots naked to the sun and rain,—

  They seem in their grim stillness to complain,

And by their plaint the evening peace is jarred.

These ragged acres fire and the axe have scarred,

  And many summers not assuaged their pain.

  In vain the pink and saffron light, in vain

The pale dew on the hillocks stripped and marred!

But here and there the waste is touched with cheer

  Where spreads the fire-weed like a crimson flood

And venturous plumes of goldenrod appear;

  And round the blackened fence the great boughs lean

With comfort; and across the solitude

  The hermit’s holy transport peals serene.

This is a wonder-cup in Summer’s hand.

  Sombre, impenetrable, round its rim

  The fir-trees bend and brood. The noons o’erbrim

The windless hollow of its iris’d strand

With mote-thick sun and water-breathings bland.

  Under a veil of lilies lurk and swim

  Strange shapes of presage in a twilight dim,

Unwitting heirs of light and life’s command.

Blind in their bondage, of no change they dream,

  But the trees watch in grave expectancy.

  The spell fulfils,—and swarms of radiant flame,

Live jewels, above the crystal dart and gleam,

  Nor guess the sheen beneath their wings to be

  The dark and narrow regions whence they came.

This smell of home and honey on the breeze,

  This shimmer of sunshine woven in white and pink

  That comes a dream from memory’s visioned brink,

Sweet, sweet and strange across the ancient trees,—

It is the buckwheat, boon of the later bees,

  Its breadths of heavy-headed bloom appearing

  Amid the blackened stumps of this high clearing,

Freighted with cheer of comforting auguries.

But when the blunt, brown grain and red-ripe sheaves,

Brimming the low log barn beyond the eaves,

  Crisped by the first frost, feel the thresher’s flail,

Then flock the blue wild-pigeons in shy haste

  All silently down Autumn’s amber trail,

To glean at dawn the chill and whitening waste.

Charm of the vibrant, white September sun—

  How tower the firs to take it, tranced and still!

  Their scant ranks crown the pale, round pasture-hill,

And watch, far down, the austere waters run

Their circuit thro’ the serious marshes dun.

  No bird-call stirs the blue; but strangely thrill

  The blunt-faced, brown cicada’s wing-notes shrill,

A web of silver o’er the silence spun.

O zithern-winged musician, whence it came

  I wonder, this insistent song of thine!

  Did once the highest string of Summer’s lyre,

Snapt on some tense chord slender as a flame,

  Take form again in these vibrations fine

  That o’er the tranquil spheres of noon aspire?

This windy, bright September afternoon

  My heart is wide awake, yet full of dreams.

  The air, alive with hushed confusion, teems

With scent of grain-fields, and a mystic rune,

Foreboding of the fall of Summer soon,

  Keeps swelling and subsiding; till there seems

  O’er all the world of valleys, hills, and streams,

Only the wind’s inexplicable tune.

My heart is full of dreams, yet wide awake.

  I lie and watch the topmost tossing boughs

  Of tall elms, pale against the vaulted blue;

But even now some yellowing branches shake,

  Some hue of death the living green endows:—

  If beauty flies, fain would I vanish too.

This violet eve is like a waveless stream

  Celestial, from the rapt horizon’s brink,

  Assuaging day with the diviner drink

Of temperate ecstasy, and dews, and dream.

The wine-warm dusks, that brim the valley, gleam

  With here and there a lonely casement. Cease

  The impetuous purples from the sky of peace,

Like God’s mood in tranquillity supreme.

The encircling uplands east and west lie clear

  In thin aërial amber, threaded fine,—

Where bush-fires gnaw the bramble-thickets sere,—

  With furtive scarlet. Through the hush benign

One white-throat voices, till the stars appear,

  The benediction of the Thought Divine.

A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne

  Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky

  Washing the ridge; a clamour of crows that fly

In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn

To yon their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn;

  A line of grey snake-fence, that zigzags by

  A pond, and cattle; from the homestead nigh

The long deep summonings of the supper horn.

Black on the ridge, against that lonely flush,

  A cart, and stoop-necked oxen; ranged beside

  Some barrels; and the day-worn harvest-folk,

Here emptying their baskets, jar the hush

  With hollow thunders. Down the dusk hillside

  Lumbers the wain; and day fades out like smoke.

A little brown old homestead, bowered in trees

  That o’er the autumn landscape shine afar,

  Burning with amber and with cinnabar.

A yellow hillside washed in airy seas

Of azure, where the swallow drops and flees.

  Midway the slope, clear in the beaming day,

  A barn by many seasons beaten grey,

Big with the gain of prospering husbandries.

In billows round the wide red welcoming doors

  High piles the golden straw; while from within,

  Where plods the team amid the chaffy din,

The loud pulsation of the thresher soars,

  Persistent as if earth could not let cease

  This happy proclamation of her peace.

The morning sky is white with mist, the earth

  White with the inspiration of the dew.

  The harvest light is on the hills anew,

And cheer in the grave acres’ fruitful girth.

Only in this high pasture is there dearth,

  Where the grey thistles crowd in ranks austere,

  As if the sod, close-cropt for many a year,

Brought only bane and bitterness to birth.

But in the crisp air’s amethystine wave

  How the harsh stalks are washed with radiance now,

  How gleams the harsh turf where the crickets lie

Dew-freshened in their burnished armour brave!

  Since earth could not endure nor heaven allow

  Aught of unlovely in the morn’s clear eye.

What touch hath set the breathing hills afire

  With amethyst, to quench them with a tear

  Of ecstasy? These common fields appear

The consecrated home of hopes past number.

So many visions, so entranced a slumber,

  Such dreams possess the noonday’s luminous sphere,

  That earth, content with knowing heaven so near,

Hath done with aspiration and desire.

In these unlooked-for hours of Truth’s clear reign

  Unjarring fitness hath surprised our strife.

This radiance, that might seem to cheat the view

With loveliness too perfect to be true,

  But shows this vexed and self-delusive life

Ideals whereto our Real must attain.

Amber and blue, the smoke behind the hill,

  Where in the glow fades out the morning star,

  Curtains the autumn cornfield, sloped afar,

And strikes an acrid savour on the chill.

The hilltop fence shines saffron o’er the still

  Unbending ranks of bunched and bleaching corn,

  And every pallid stalk is crisp with morn,

Crisp with the silver autumn morns distil.

Purple the narrowing alleys stretched between

  The spectral shooks, a purple harsh and cold,

  But spotted, where the gadding pumpkins run,

With bursts of blaze that startle the serene

  Like sudden voices,—globes of orange bold,

  Elate to mimic the unrisen sun.

Winds here, and sleet, and frost that bites like steel.

  The low bleak hill rounds under the low sky.

  Naked of flock and fold the fallows lie,

Thin streaked with meagre drift. The gusts reveal

By fits the dim grey snakes of fence, that steal

  Through the white dusk. The hill-foot poplars sigh,

  While storm and death with winter trample by,

And the iron fields ring sharp, and blind lights reel.

Yet in the lonely ridges, wrenched with pain,

  Harsh solitary hillocks, bound and dumb,

Grave glebes close-lipped beneath the scourge and chain,

  Lurks hid the germ of ecstasy—the sum

Of life that waits on summer, till the rain

  Whisper in April and the crocus come.

Tons upon tons the brown-green fragrant hay

  O’erbrims the mows beyond the time-warped eaves,

  Up to the rafters where the spider weaves,

Though few flies wander his secluded way.

Through a high chink one lonely golden ray,

  Wherein the dust is dancing, slants unstirred.

  In the dry hush some rustlings light are heard,

Of winter-hidden mice at furtive play.

Far down, the cattle in their shadowed stalls,

  Nose-deep in clover fodder’s meadowy scent,

  Forget the snows that whelm their pasture streams,

The frost that bites the world beyond their walls.

  Warm housed, they dream of summer, well content

  In day-long contemplation of their dreams.

Out of the frost-white wood comes winnowing through

  No wing; no homely call or cry is heard.

  Even the hope of life seems far deferred.

The hard hills ache beneath their spectral hue.

A dove-grey cloud, tender as tears or dew,

  From one lone hearth exhaling, hangs unstirred,

  Like the poised ghost of some unnamed great bird

In the ineffable pallor of the blue.

Such, I must think, even at the dawn of Time,

  Was thy white hush, O world, when thou lay’st cold,

  Unwaked to love, new from the Maker’s word,

And the spheres, watching, stilled their high accord,

  To marvel at perfection in thy mould,

  The grace of thine austerity sublime!

How shrink the snows upon this upland field,

  Under the dove-grey dome of brooding noon!

  They shrink with soft reluctant shocks, and soon

In sad brown ranks the furrows lie revealed.

From radiant cisterns of the frost unsealed

  Now wakes through all the air a watery rune—

  The babble of a million brooks atune,

In fairy conduits of blue ice concealed.

Noisy with crows, the wind-break on the hill

  Counts o’er its buds for summer. In the air

Some shy foreteller prophesies with skill—

  Some voyaging ghost of bird, some effluence rare;

And the stall-wearied cattle dream their fill

  Of deep June pastures where the pools are fair.

I hear the low wind wash the softening snow,

  The low tide loiter down the shore. The night,

  Full filled with April forecast, hath no light.

The salt wave on the sedge-flat pulses slow.

Through the hid furrows lisp in murmurous flow

  The thaw’s shy ministers; and hark! The height

  Of heaven grows weird and loud with unseen flight

Of strong hosts prophesying as they go!

High through the drenched and hollow night their wings

  Beat northward hard on winter’s trail. The sound

Of their confused and solemn voices, borne

Athwart the dark to their long Arctic morn,

  Comes with a sanction and an awe profound,

A boding of unknown, foreshadowed things.

Father of nations! Help of the feeble hand!

  Strength of the strong! to whom the nations kneel!

Stay and destroyer, at whose just command

  Earth’s kingdoms tremble and her empires reel!

Who dost the low uplift, the small make great,

  And dost abase the ignorantly proud,

Of our scant people mould a mighty state,

  To the strong, stern,—to Thee in meekness bowed

Father of unity, make this people one!

  Weld, interfuse them in the patriot’s flame,—

Whose forging on thine anvil was begun

  In blood late shed to purge the common shame;

That so our hearts, the fever of faction done,

  Banish old feud in our young nation’s name.

Shedding cool drops upon the sun-baked clay,

  The dripping jar, brimful, she rests a space

  On the well’s dry white brink, and leans her face,

Heavy with tears and many a heartsick day,

Down to the water’s lip, whence slips away

  A rivulet thro’ the hot, bright square apace,

  And lo! her brow casts off each servile trace—

The wave’s cool breath hath won her thoughts astray.

Ah desolate heart! Thy fate thou hast forgot

  One moment; the dull pain hath left those eyes

  Whose yearning pierces time, and space, and tears.

Thou seest what was once, but now is not,—

  By Niger thy bright home, thy Paradise,

  Unscathed of flame, and foe, and hostile spears.

Vast, unrevealed, in silence and the night

  Brooding, the ancient hills commune with sleep.

  Inviolate the solemn valleys keep

Their contemplation. Soon from height to height

Steals a red finger of mysterious light,

  And lion-footed through the forests creep

  Strange mutterings; till suddenly, with sweep

And shattering thunder of resistless flight

And crash of routed echoes, roars to view,

  Down the long mountain gorge the Night Express

  Freighted with fears and tears and happiness.

The dread form passes; silence falls anew.

  And lo! I have beheld the thronged, blind world

  To goals unseen from God’s hand onward hurled.

Sharp drives the rain, sharp drives the endless rain.

  The rain-winds wake and wander, lift and blow.

  The slow smoke-wreaths of vapour to and fro

Wave, and unweave, and gather and build again.

Over the far grey reaches of the plain,—

  Grey miles on miles my passionate thought must go,—

  I strain my sight, grown dim with gazing so,

Pressing my face against the streaming pane.

How the rain beats! Ah God, if love had power

  To voice its utmost yearning, even tho’

  Thro’ time and bitter distance, not in vain,

Surely Her heart would hear me at this hour,

  Look thro’ the years, and see! But would She know

  The white face pressed against the streaming pane?

Its hand compassionate guards our restless sight

  Against how many a harshness, many an ill!

  Tender as sleep, its shadowy palms distil

Strange vapours that ensnare our eyes with light.

Rash eyes, kept ignorant in their own despite,

  It lets not see the unsightliness they will,

  But paints each scanty fairness fairer still,

And still deludes us to our own delight.

It fades, regathers, never quite dissolves.

  And ah that life, ah that the heart and brain

  Might keep their mist and glamour, not to know

So soon the disenchantment and the pain!

  But one by one our dear illusions go,

  Stript and cast forth as time’s slow wheel revolves.

Through the still dusk how sighs the ebb-tide out,

  Reluctant for the reed-beds! Down the sands

  It washes. Hark! Beyond the wan grey strand’s

Low limits how the winding channels grieve,

Aware the evasive waters soon will leave

  Them void amid the waste of desolate lands,

  Where shadowless to the sky the marsh expands,

And the noon-heats must scar them, and the drought.

Yet soon for them the solacing tide returns

  To quench their thirst of longing. Ah, not so

  Works the stern law our tides of life obey!

Ebbing in the night-watches swift away,

  Scarce known ere fled forever is the flow;

  And in parched channel still the shrunk stream mourns.

Now, for the night is hushed and blind with rain,

  My soul desires communion, Dear, with thee.

  But hour by hour my spirit gets not free,—

Hour by still hour my longing strives in vain.

The thick dark hems me, ev’n to the restless brain.

  The wind’s confusion vague encumbers me.

  Ev’n passionate memory, grown too faint to see

Thy features, stirs not in her straitening chain.

And thou, dost thou too feel this strange divorce

  Of will from power? The spell of night and wind,

  Baffling desire and dream, dost thou too find?

Not distance parts us, Dear; but this dim force,

  Intangible, holds us helpless, hushed with pain.

  Dumb with the dark, blind with the gusts of rain!

The lifers of these amethystine fields,

  Whose far fine sound the night makes musical,

  Now while thou wak’st and longing would’st recall

Joys that no rapture of remembrance yields,

Voice to thy soul, lone-sitting deep within

  The still recesses of thine ecstasy,

  My love and my desire, that fain would fly

With this far-silvering moon and fold thee in.

But not for us the touch, the clasp, the kiss,

  And for our restlessness no rest. In vain

  These aching lips, these hungering hearts that strain

Toward the denied fruition of our bliss,

  Had love not learned of longing to devise

  Out of desire and dream our paradise.

There lies a little city leagues away

  Its wharves the green sea washes all day long.

  Its busy, sun-bright wharves with sailors’ song

And clamour of trade ring loud the livelong day.

Into the happy harbour hastening, gay

  With press of snowy canvas, tall ships throng.

  The peopled streets to blithe-eyed Peace belong,

Glad housed beneath these crowding roofs of grey.

’T was long ago this city prospered so,

  For yesterday a woman died therein.

Since when the wharves are idle fallen, I know,

  And in the streets is hushed the pleasant din;

  The thronging ships have been, the songs have been,—

Since yesterday it is so long ago.

Set in the fierce red desert for a sword,

  Drawn and deep-driven implacably! The tide

  Of scorching sand that chafes thy landward side

Storming thy palms; and past thy front outpoured

The Nile’s vast dread and wonder! Late there roared

  (While far off paused the long war, long defied)

  Mad tumult thro’ thy streets; and Gordon died,

Slaughtered amid the yelling rebel horde!

Yet, spite of shame and wrathful tears, Khartoum,

  We owe thee certain thanks, for thou hast shown

  How still the one a thousand crowds outweighs,—

Still one man’s moods sways millions,—one man’s doom

  Smites nations;—and our burning spirits own

  Not sordid these nor unheroic days!

This is that black rock bastion, based in surge,

  Pregnant with agate and with amethyst,

Whose foot the tides of storied Minas scourge,

  Whose top austere withdraws into its mist.

This is that ancient cape of tears and storm,

  Whose towering front inviolable frowns

O’er vales Evangeline and love keep warm—

  Whose fame thy song, O tender singer, crowns.

Yonder, across these reeling fields of foam,

  Came the sad threat of the avenging ships.

What profit now to know if just the doom,

  Though harsh! The streaming eyes, the praying lips,

The shadow of inextinguishable pain,

The poet’s deathless music—these remain!

O deep of Heaven, ’tis thou alone art boundless,

  ’Tis thou alone our balance shall not weigh,

’Tis thou alone our fathom-line finds soundless,—

  Whose infinite our finite must obey!

Through thy blue realms and down thy starry reaches

  Thought voyages forth beyond the furthest fire,

And, homing from no sighted shoreline, teaches

  Thee measureless as is the soul’s desire.

O deep of Heaven, no beam of Pleiad ranging

  Eternity may bridge thy gulf of spheres!

The ceaseless hum that fills thy sleep unchanging

  Is rain of the innumerable years.

Our worlds, our suns, our ages, these but stream

Through thine abiding like a dateless dream.

In the wide awe and wisdom of the night

  I saw the round world rolling on its way,

Beyond significance of depth or height,

  Beyond the interchange of dark and day.

I marked the march to which is set no pause,

  And that stupendous orbit, round whose rim

The great sphere sweeps, obedient unto laws

  That utter the eternal thought of Him.

I compassed time, outstripped the starry speed,

  And in my still Soul apprehended space,

Till weighing laws which these but blindly heed,

  At last I came before Him face to face,—

And knew the Universe of no such span

As the august infinitude of man.

O Solitary of the austere sky,

  Pale presence of the unextinguished star,

That from thy station where the spheres wheel by,

  And quietudes of infinite patience are,

Watchest this wet, grey-visaged world emerge,—

  Cold pinnacle on pinnacle, and deep

On deep of ancient wood and wandering surge,—

  Out of the silence and the mists of sleep;

How small am I in thine august regard!

  Invisible,—and yet I know my worth!

When comes the hour to break this prisoning shard,

  And reunite with Him that breathed me forth,

Then shall this atom of the Eternal Soul

Encompass thee in its benign control!

A wind blew up from Pernambuco.

  (Yeo heave ho! the Laughing Sally! Hi yeo, heave away!)

A wind blew out of the east-sou’-east

  And boomed at the break of day.

The Laughing Sally sped for her life,

  And a speedy craft was she.

The black flag flew at her top to tell

  How she took toll of the sea.

The wind blew up from Pernambuco;

  And in the breast of the blast

Came the King’s black ship, like a hound let slip

  On the trail of the Sally at last.

For a day and a night, a night and a day;

  Over the blue, blue round,

Went on the chase of the pirate quarry,

  The hunt of the tireless hound.

“Land on the port bow!” came the cry;

  And the Sally raced for shore,

Till she reached the bar at the river-mouth

  Where the shallow breakers roar.

She passed the bar by a secret channel

  With clear tide under her keel,—

For he knew the shoals like an open book,

  The captain at the wheel.

She passed the bar, she sped like a ghost,

  Till her sails were hid from view

By the tall, liana’d, unsunned boughs

  O’erbrooding the dark bayou.

At moonrise up to the river-mouth

  Came the King’s black ship of war.

The red cross flapped in wrath at her peak,

  But she could not cross the bar.

And while she lay in the run of the seas,

  By the grimmest whim of chance

Out of the bay to the north came forth

  Two battle-ships of France.

On the English ship the twain bore down

  Like wolves that range by night;

And the breakers’ roar was heard no more

  In the thunder of the fight.

The crash of the broadsides rolled and stormed

  To the “Sally,” hid from view

Under the tall, liana’d boughs

  Of the moonless, dark bayou.

A boat ran out for news of the fight,

  And this was the word she brought—

“The King’s ship fights the ships of France

  As the King’s ships all have fought!”

Then muttered the mate, “I’m a man of Devon!”

  And the captain thundered then—

“There’s English rope that bides for our necks,

  But we all be English men!”

The Sally glided out of the gloom

  And down the moon-white river.

She stole like a grey shark over the bar

  Where the long surf seethes forever.

She hove to under a high French hull,

  And the red cross rose to her peak.

The French were looking for fight that night,

  And they hadn’t far to seek.

Blood and fire on the streaming decks,

  And fire and blood below;

The heat of hell, and the reek of hell,

  And the dead men laid a-row!

And when the stars paled out of heaven

  And the red dawn-rays uprushed,

The oaths of battle, the crash of timbers,

  The roar of the guns were hushed.

With one foe beaten under his bow,

  The other afar in flight,

The English captain turned to look

  For his fellow in the fight.

A wind blew up from Pernambuco,—

  (Yeo heave ho! the Laughing Sally! Hi yeo, heave away!)

And boomed for the doom of the Laughing Sally,

  Gone down at the break of day.

The happy valley laughed with sun,

  The corn grew firm in stalk,

The lodges clustered safe where run

  The streams of Peniawk.

The washing-pools and shallows rang

  With shout of lads at play;

At corn-hoeing the women sang;

  The warriors were away.

The splashed white pebbles on the beach,

  The idling paddles, gleamed;

Before the lodge doors, spare of speech,

  The old men basked and dreamed.

And when the windless noon grew hot,

  And the white sun beat like steel,

In shade about the simmering pot

  They gathered to their meal.

Then from the hills, on flying feet,

  A desperate runner came,

With cry that smote the peaceful street,

  And slew the peace with shame.

“Trapped in the night, and snared in sleep,

  Our warriors wake no more!

Up from Wahloos the Mohawks creep—

  Their feet are at the door!”

The grey old sachems rose and mocked

  The ruin that drew near;

And down the beach the children flocked,

  And women wild with fear.

Launched were the red canoes; when, lo!

  Beside them Gluskâp stood,

Appearing with his giant bow

  From out his mystic wood.

With quiet voice he called them back,

  And comforted their fears;

He swore the lodges should not lack,

  He dried the children’s tears;

Till sorrowing mothers almost deemed

  The desperate runner lied,

And the tired children slept, and dreamed

  Their fathers had not died.

That night behind the mystic wood

  The Mohawk warriors crept;

A spell went through the solitude

  And stilled them, and they slept.

And when the round moon, rising late,

  The Hills of Kawlm had crossed,

She saw the camp of Mohawk hate

  Swathed in a great white frost.

At morn, behind the mystic wood

  Came Gluskâp, bow in hand,

And marked the ice-bound solitude,

  And that unwaking band.

But as he gazed his lips grew mild,

  For, safe among the dead,

There played a ruddy, laughing child

  By a captive mother’s head;

And child and mother, nestling warm,

  Scarce knew their foes had died,

As past their sleep the noiseless storm

  Of strange death turned aside.

Gluskâp, the friend and father of his race,

With help in need went journeying three days’ space.

His village slept, and took no thought of harm,

Secure beneath the shadow of his arm.

But wandering wizards watched his outward path,

And marked his fenceless dwelling for their wrath.

They came upon the tempest’s midnight wings,

With shock of thunder and the lightning’s slings,

And flame, and hail, and all disastrous things.

When home at length the hero turned again,

His huts were ashes and his servants slain;

And o’er the ruin wept a slow, great rain.

He wept not; but he cried a mighty word

Across the wandering sea, and the sea heard.

Then came great whales, obedient to his hand,

And bare him to the demon-haunted land,

Where, in malign morass and ghostly wood

And grim cliff-cavern, lurked the evil brood.

And scarce the avenger’s foot had touched their coast

Ere horror seized on all the wizard host,

And in their hiding-places hushed the boast.

He grew and gloomed before them like a cloud,

And his eye drew them till they cried aloud,

And withering like spent flame before his frown

They ran forth in a madness and fell down.

Rank upon rank they lay without a moan,—

His finger touched them, and their hearts grew stone.

All round the coasts he heaped their stiffened clay;

And the sea-mews wail o’er them to this day.

Stealthy and swift as a dream,

Crowding the breast of the stream,

In their paint and plumes of war

And their war-canoes four score,

Comes night to the quiet hills

Where the Madawaska spills,—

To his slumbering huts no warning,

Nor mirth of another morning!

No more shall the children wake

As the dawns through the hut-door break;

But the dogs, a trembling pack,

With wistful eyes steal back.

Where the shoaling waters froth,

Churned thick like devils’ broth,—

Where the rocky shark-jaw waits,

Never a bark that grates.

And the tearless captives’ skill

Contents them. Onward still!

And the low-voiced captives tell

The tidings that cheer them well:

The clear stream glimmers before them

The faint night falters o’er them;

Lashed lightly bark to bark,

They glide the windless dark.

In the town of the Melicite

The unjarred peace is sweet,

Green grows the corn and great,

And the hunt is fortunate.

This many a heedless year

The Mohawks come not near.

The lodge-gate stands unbarred;

Scarce even a dog keeps guard.

Gets forth those caverned walls

No roar from the giant Falls,

Whose mountainous foam treads under

The abyss of awful thunder.

But the river’s sudden speed!

How the ghost-grey shores recede!

And the tearless pilots hear

A muttering voice creep near.

A tremor! The blanched waves leap.

The warriors start from sleep.

Faints in the sudden blare

The cry of their swift despair,

And the captives’ death-chant shrills.

But afar, remote from ills,

Quiet under the quiet skies

The Melicite village lies.

Oh, it was a dainty maid that went a-Maying in the morn,

  A dainty, dainty maiden of degree.

The ways she took were merry and the ways she missed forlorn,

  And the laughing water tinkled to the sea.

The little leaves above her loved the dainty, dainty maid;

  The little winds they kissed her, every one;

At the nearing of her little feet the flowers were not afraid;

  And the water lay a-whimpling in the sun.

Oh, the dainty, dainty maid to the borders of the brook

  Lingered down as lightly as the breeze;

And the shy water-spiders quit their scurrying to look;

  And the happy water whispered to the trees.

She was fain to cross the brook, was the dainty, dainty maid;

  But first she lifted up her elfin eyes

To see if there were cavalier or clown a-near to aid,—

  And the water-bubbles blinked in surprise.

The brook bared its pebbles to persuade her dainty feet,

  But the dainty, dainty maid was not content.

She had spied a simple country lad (for dainty maid unmeet),

  And the shy water twinkled as it went.

As the simple lad drew nigh, then this dainty, dainty maid,

  (O maidens, well you know how it was done!)

Stood a-gazing at her feet until he saw she was afraid

  Of the water there a-whimpling in the sun.

Now that simple lad had in him all the makings of a man;

  And he stammered, “I had better lift you over!”

Said the dainty, dainty maid—“Do you really think you can?”

  And the water hid its laughter in the clover.

So he carried her across, with his eyes cast down,

  And his foolish heart a-quaking with delight.

And the maid she looked him over with her elfin eyes of brown;

  And the impish water giggled at his plight.

He reached the other side, he set down the dainty maid;

  But he trembled so he couldn’t speak a word.

Then the dainty, dainty maid—“Thank you, Sir! Good-day!” she said.

  And the water-bubbles chuckled as they heard.

Oh, she tripped away so lightly, a-Maying in the morn,

  That dainty, dainty maiden of degree.

She left the simple country lad a-sighing and forlorn

  Where the mocking water twinkled to the sea.

The morning star was bitter bright, the morning sky was grey;

And we hitched our teams and started for the woods at break of day.

  Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!

Along the white and winding road the sled-bells jangled keen

Between the buried fences, the billowy drifts between.

  Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!

So crisp sang the runners, and so swift the horses sped,

That the woods ere all about us were the sky grew red.

  Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!

The bark hung ragged on the birch, the lichen on the fir,

The lungwort fringed the maple, and grey moss the juniper.

  Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!

So still the air and chill the air the branches seemed asleep,

But we broke their ancient visions as the axe bit deep.

  Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!

With the shouts of the choppers and the barking of their blades

How rang the startled valleys and the rabbit-haunted glades!

  Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!

The hard wood and the soft wood, we felled them for our use;

And chiefly, for its scented gum, we loved the scaly spruce;

  Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!

And here and there, with solemn roar, some hoary tree came down,

And we heard the rolling of the years in the thunder of its crown.

  Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!

So, many a sled was loaded up above the stake-tops soon;

And many a load was at the farm before the horn of noon;

  Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!

And ere we saw the sundown all yellow through the trees,

The farmyard stood as thick with wood as a buckwheat patch with bees;

  Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!

And with the last-returning teams, and axes burnished bright,

We left the woods to slumber in the frosty shadowed night.

  Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!

And then the wide, warm kitchen, with beams across the ceiling,

Thick hung with red-skinned onions, and homely herbs of healing!

  Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!

The dishes on the dresser-shelves were shining blue and white,

And o’er the loaded table the lamps beamed bright.

  Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!

Then, how the ham and turkey and the apple-sauce did fly,

The heights of boiled potatoes and the flats of pumpkin-pie!

  Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!

With bread-and-cheese and doughnuts fit to feed a farm a year!

And we washed them down with tides of tea and oceans of spruce beer.

  Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!

At last the pipes were lighted and the chairs pushed back,

And Bill struck up a sea-song on a rather risky tack;

  Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!

And the girls all thought it funny—but they never knew ’twas worse,

For we gagged him with a doughnut at the famous second verse.

  Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!

Then someone fetched a fiddle, and we shoved away the table,

And ’twas jig and reel and polka just as long as we were able,

  Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!

Till at last the girls grew sleepy, and we got our coats to go.

We started off with racing-teams and moonlight on the snow;

  Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!

And soon again the winter world was voiceless as of old,

Alone with all the wheeling stars, and the great white cold.

  Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!

But not the gladness breathed of old

Thy bordering, blue hill-hollows hold;

Thy wind-blown leagues of green unrolled,

    Thy flats the red floods fret,

Thy steady-streaming winds—no more

These work the rapture wrought of yore,

When all thy wide bright strength outbore

    My soul from fleshly bar.

A little garden gay with phlox,

Blue corn-flowers, yellow hollyhocks,

Red poppies, pink and purple stocks,

    Looks over Tantramar.

Pale yellow drops the road before

The hospitable cottage-door,—

A yellow, upland road, and o’er

The green marsh seeks the low red shore

    And winding dykes afar.

Beyond the marsh, and miles away,

The great tides of the tumbling bay

Swing glittering in the golden day,

    Swing foaming to and fro;

And nearer, in a nest of green,

A little turbid port is seen,

Where pitch-black fishing-boats careen,

    Left when the tide runs low.

The little port is safe and fit.

About its wharf the plover flit,

The grey net-reels loom over it,

    With grass about their feet.

In wave and storm it hath no part,

This harbour in the marshes’ heart;

Behind its dykes, at peace, apart

    It hears the surges beat.

The garden hollyhocks are tall;

They tower above the garden wall,

And see, far down, the port, and all

    The creeks, and marshes wide;

But Margery, Margery,

’Tis something further thou wouldst see!

Bid all thy blooms keep watch with thee

    Across the outmost tide.

Bid them keep wide their starry eyes

To warn thee should a white sail rise,

Slow climbing up, from alien skies,

    The azure round of sea.

He sails beneath a stormy star;

The waves are wild, the Isles afar;

Summer is ripe on Tantramar,

    And yet returns not he.

Long, long thine eyes have watched in vain,

Waited in fear, and wept again.

Is it no more than lovers’ pain

    That makes thy heart so wild?

At dreams within the cottage door

The old man’s eyes are lingering o’er

The little port,—the far-off shore,—

    His dear and only child.

And at her spinning-wheel within

The mother’s hands forget to spin.

With loving voice she calls thee in,—

    Her dear and only child.

To leave the home-dear hearts to ache

Was not for thee, though thine should break.

For their dear sake, for their dear sake,

    Thou wouldst not go with him.

But always wise, and strong, and free,

Is given to which of us to be?

A gathering shadow, Margery,

    Makes all thy daylight dim!

To-night the wind roars in from sea;

The crow clings in the straining tree;

Curlew and crane and bittern flee

    The dykes of Tantramar.

To-night athwart an inky sky

A narrowing sun dropped angrily,

Scoring the gloom with dreadful dye,

    A bitter and flaming scar.

But ere night falls, across the tide

A close-reefed barque has been descried,

And word goes round the country-side—

    “The Belle is in the bay!”

And ere the loud night closes down

Upon that light’s terrific frown,

Along the dyke, with blowing gown,

    She takes her eager way.

Just where his boat will haste to land,

On the open wharf she takes her stand.

Her pale hair blows from out its band.

    She does not heed the storm.

Her blinding joy of heart they know

Who so have fared, and waited so.

She heeds not what the winds that blow.

    She does not feel the storm.

But fiercer roars the gale. The night

With cloud grows black, with foam gleams white.

The creek boils to its utmost height.

    The port is seething full.

The gale shouts in the outer waves

Amid a world of gaping graves;

Against the dyke each great surge raves,

    Blind battering like a bull.

The dyke! The dyke! The brute sea shakes

The sheltering wall. It breaks,—it breaks!

The sharp salt whips her face, and wakes

    The dreamer from her dream.

The great flood lifts. It thunders in.

The broad marsh foams, and sinks. The din

Of waves is where her world has been;—

    Is this—is this the dream?

One moment in that surging hell

The old wharf shook, then cringed and fell.

Then came a lonely hulk, the Belle,

    And drove athwart the waste.

    . . . . . . .

After the flood on Tantramar

The fisher-folk flocked in from far.

They stopped the breach; they healed the scar.

    Once more the marsh grew green.

But at the marsh’s inmost edge,

Where a tall fringe of flag and sedge

Catches a climbing hawthorn hedge,

    A lonely hulk is seen.

It lies forgotten of all tides.

The grass grows round its bleaching sides.

An endless inland peace abides

    About its mouldering age.

But in the cot-door on the height

An old man sits with fading sight,

And memories of one cruel night

    Are all his heritage.

And at her spinning-wheel within

The mother’s hands forget to spin,—

So weary all her days have been

    Since Margery went away.

Tantramar! Tantramar!

Until that sorrow fades afar,

Thy plains where birds and blossoms are

    Laugh not their ancient way!

Beside the wharf at Whitewaters

The loitering ebb with noon confers;

And o’er the amber flats there seems

A sleep to brood of sun and dreams.

The white and clustering cottages,

Thick shadowed by their windless trees,

Inhabit such a calm, that change

Goes by and lets her face grow strange.

And not far off, on tiptoe seen,

The brown dyke and the sky between,

A shifting field that heaves and slides,—

The blue breast of the Minas tides.

A-through the little harbour go

The currents of the scant Pereau,

Drawn slowly, drawn from springs unseen

Amid the marsh’s vasts of green.

Up from the wharf at Whitewaters,

Where scarce a slim sandpiper stirs,

A yellow roadway climbs, that feels

Few footsteps and infrequent wheels.

Down to the wharf at Whitewaters,

The children of the villagers

One drowsy, windless hour of noon

Deep in the green mid-heart of June,

Like swallows to a sunset pool

Came chattering, just let loose from school;

And with them one small lad of four,

Picked up as they flocked past his door.

His sea-blue, merry eyes, his hair

Curling and like the corn-silk fair,

His red, sweet mouth, made Hally Clive

Comely as any lad alive.

His father, master of The Foam,

Drave his tight craft afar from home.

His mother—peaceful life was hers

With Hally, safe in Whitewaters.

And in his sun-brown arms the boy

Carried his last, most cherished toy;

A small white kitten, free from fleck,

With a blue ribbon round its neck.

In the old timbers lapping cool,

About the wharf the tide hung full;

And at the wharf-side, just afloat,

Swung lazily an old grey boat.

About the froth-white water’s edge,

The weedy planks, the washing sedge,

And in and out the rocking craft,

The children clambered, splashed, and laughed,

Till presently, grown tired of play,

Up the bright road they raced away;

But in the boat, a drowsy heap,

Curled boy and kitten, sound asleep.

Warm in the sunny boat they slept.

Soon to its ebb the slow tide crept.

By stealthy fingers, soft as dream,

The boat was lured into the stream.

Out from the wharf it slipped and swung—

On the old rope one moment hung—

Then snapped its tether and away

For the storm-beaten outer bay.

In Whitewaters, in Whitewaters,

No watcher heeds, no rescuer stirs.

Out from the port the currents sweep

With Hally, smiling in his sleep.

An hour they drifted, till the boat

From the low shore one scarce might note.

The kitten climbed the prow, and mewed

Against the watery solitude.

Then Hally woke, and stared with eyes

Grown round and dark with grieved surprise.

Where were the children gone? And where

The grey old wharf, the weedy stair?

Bewildered, and but half awake,

He sobbed as if his heart would break;

Then, as his lonely terror grew,

Down in the boat himself he threw,

And passionately for comfort pressed

The kind white kitten to his breast.

Through the thin plank his hand could feel

The little eddies clutch the keel.

Lost and alone, lost and alone,

He heard the long wave hiss and moan,

He heard the wild ebb seethe and mourn

Along the outer shoals forlorn.

And now a wind that chafed the flood

Blew down from Noel’s haunted wood;

And now in the dread tides that run

Past the grim front of Blomidon,

That day in his good ship, The Foam,

Shipmaster Clive was speeding home;

His heart was light, his eyes elate;

His voyage had been fortunate.

“If the wind holds,” said he, “to-night

We’ll anchor under Kingsport Light;—

I’ll change the fogs of Fundy wild

For Whitewaters and wife and child.”

He marked the drifting boat, and laughed,

“What clumsy lubber’s lost his craft?”

“What’s that that walks the gunwale?” cried

A sailor leaning o’er the side.

The captain raised his glass. Said he:

“A kitten! Some one’s pet, maybe!

We’ll give it passage in The Foam”—

Soft is the heart that’s bound for home!

“Stop for a kitten?” growled the mate:

“Look to the sun; we’re getting late!

If we lose this tack we’ll lie to-night

A long ways off o’ Kingsport Light.”

The captain paused irresolute

“To leave the helpless little brute

To the wrecked seaman’s death accurst,

The slow, fierce hunger, the mad thirst.—

“I wish not my worst enemy

Such death as that! Lay to!” said he.

The ship came up into the wind;

The slackening canvas flapped and dinned;

And the ship’s boat with scant delay

Was swung and lowered and away,—

The captain at the helm, and four

Stout men of Avon at the oar.

And now with bellying sails The Foam

Up the tossed flood went straining home;

The wind blew fair; she lay that night

At anchor under Kingsport Light.

And late that night in gladness deep,

Sank father, mother, child, to sleep,—

Where no storm breaks, nor terror stirs

The peace of God in Whitewaters.

The night was grim and still with dread;

  No star shone down from heaven’s dome;

The ancient forest closed around

  The settler’s lonely home.

There came a glare that lit the north;

  There came a wind that roused the night;

But child and father slumbered on,

  Nor felt the growing light.

There came a noise of flying feet,

  With many a strange and dreadful cry;

And sharp flames crept and leapt along

  The red verge of the sky.

There came a deep and gathering roar.

  The father raised his anxious head;

He saw the light, like a dawn of blood,

  That streamed across his bed.

It lit the old clock on the wall,

  It lit the room with splendour wild,

It lit the fair and tumbled hair

  Of the still sleeping child;

And zigzag fence, and rude log barn,

  And chip-strewn yard, and cabin grey,

Glowed crimson in the shuddering glare

  Of that untimely day.

The boy was hurried from his sleep;

  The horse was hurried from his stall;

Up from the pasture clearing came

  The cattle’s frightened call.

The boy was snatched to the saddle-bow.

  Wildly, wildly, the father rode.

Behind them swooped the hordes of flame

  And harried their abode.

The scorching heat was at their heels;

  The huge roar hounded them in their flight;

Red smoke and many a flying brand

  Flew o’er them through the night.

And past them fled the wildwood forms—

  Far-striding moose, and leaping deer,

And bounding panther, and coursing wolf,

  Terrible-eyed with fear.

And closer drew the fiery death;

  Madly, madly, the father rode;

The horse began to heave and fail

  Beneath the double load.

The father’s mouth was white and stern,

  But his eyes grew tender with long farewell.

He said: “Hold fast to your seat, Sweetheart,

  And ride Old Jerry well!

“I must go back. Ride on to the river.

  Over the ford and the long marsh ride,

Straight on to the town. And I’ll meet you, Sweetheart,

  Somewhere on the other side.”

He slipped from the saddle. The boy rode on.

  His hand clung fast in the horse’s mane;

His hair blew over the horse’s neck;

  His small throat sobbed with pain.

“Father! Father!” he cried aloud.

  The howl of the fire-wind answered him

With the hiss of soaring flames, and crash

  Of shattering limb on limb.

And now with his kinsfolk, fenced from fear,

  At play in the heart of the city’s hum,

He stops in his play to wonder why

  His father does not come!

Spring, summer, autumn, winter,

  Over the wild world rolls the year.

Comes June to the rose-red tamarack buds,

  But Marjory comes not here.

The pastures miss her; the house without her

  Grows forgotten, and grey and old;

The wind, and the lonely light of the sun

  Are heavy with tears untold.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter,

  Morning, evening, over and o’er!

The swallow returns to the nested rafter,

  But Marjory comes no more.

The grey barn-doors in the long wind rattle

  Hour by hour of the long white day.

The horses fret by the well-filled manger

  Since Marjory went away.

The sheep she fed at the bars await her.

  The milch cows low for her down the lane.

They long for her light, light hand at the milking,—

  They long for her hand in vain.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter,

  Morning and evening, over and o’er!

The bees come back with the willow catkins,

  But Marjory comes no more.

The voice of the far-off city called to her.

  Was it long years or an hour ago?

She went away, with dear eyes weeping,

  To a world she did not know.

The berried pastures they could not keep her,

  The brook, nor the buttercup-golden hill,

Nor even the long, long love familiar,—

  The strange voice called her still.

She would not stay for the old home garden;—

  The scarlet poppy, the mignonette,

The fox-glove bell, and the kind-eyed pansy,

  Their hearts will not forget.

Oh, that her feet had not forgotten

  The woodland country, the homeward way!

Oh, to look out of the sad, bright window

  And see her come back, some day!

Spring, summer, autumn, winter,

  Over the wild world rolls the year.

Comes joy to the bird on the nested rafter;

  But Marjory comes not here.

Now heap the branchy barriers up.

  No more for us shall burn

The pine-logs on the happy hearth,

  For we shall not return.

We’ve come to our last camping-ground.

  Set axe to fir and tamarack.

The foe is here, the end is near,

  And we shall not turn back.

In vain for us the town shall wait,

  The home-dear faces yearn,

The watchers in the steeple watch,—

  For we shall not return.

For them we’re come to these hard straits,

  To save from flame and wrack

The little city built far off;

  And we shall not turn back.

Now beat the yelling butchers down.

  Let musket blaze, and axe-edge burn.

Set hand to hand, lay brand to brand,

  But we shall not return.

For every man of us that falls

  Their hordes a score shall lack.

Close in about the Lily Flag!

  No man of us goes back.

For us no morrow’s dawn shall break.

  Our sons and wives shall learn

Some day from lips of flying scout

  Why we might not return.

A dream of children’s laughter comes

  Across the battle’s slack,

A vision of familiar streets,—

  But we shall not go back.

Up roars the painted storm once more.

  Long rest we soon shall earn.

Henceforth the city safe may sleep,

  But we shall not return.

And when our last has fallen in blood

  Between these waters black,

Their tribe shall no more lust for war,—

  For we shall not turn back.

In vain for us the town shall wait,

  The home-dear faces yearn,

The watchers in the steeple watch,

  For we shall not return.

Your threats how vain, Corregidor;

Your rampired batteries, feared no more;

Your frowning guard at Manila gate,—

    When our Captain went before!

Lights out. Into the unknown gloom

From the windy, glimmering, wide sea-room.

Challenging fate in that dark strait

    We dared the hidden doom.

But the death in the deep awoke not then;

Mine and torpedo they spoke not then;

From the heights that loomed on our passing line

    The thunders broke not then.

Safe through the perilous dark we sped,

Quiet each ship as the quiet dead,

Till the guns of El Fraile roared—too late,

    And the steel prows forged ahead.

Mute each ship as the mute-mouth grave,

A ghost leviathan cleaving the wave;

But deep in its heart the great fires throb,

    The travailing engines rave,

The ponderous pistons urge like fate,

The red-throat furnaces roar elate,

And the sweating stokers stagger and swoon

    In a heat more fierce than hate.

So through the dark we stole our way

Past the grim warders and into the bay,

Past Kalibuyo, and past Salinas,—

    And came at the break of day.

Where strong Cavité stood to oppose,—

Where, from a sheen of silver and rose,

A thronging of masts, a soaring of towers,

    The beautiful city arose.

How fine and fair! But the shining air

With a thousand shattering thunders there

Flapped and reeled. For the fighting foe—

    We had caught him in his lair.

Surprised, unready, his proud ships lay

Idly at anchor in Bakor Bay;—

Unready, surprised, but proudly bold,

    Which was ever the Spaniard’s way.

Then soon on his pride the dread doom fell,

Red doom,—for the ruin of shot and shell

Lit every vomiting, bursting hulk

    With a crimson reek of hell.

Manila Bay! Manila Bay!

How proud the song on our lips to-day.

A brave old song of the true and strong

    And the will that has its way;

Of the blood that told in the days of Drake

When the fight was good for the fighting’s sake!

For the blood that fathered Farragut

    Is the blood that fathered Blake;

And the pride of the blood will not be undone

While war’s in the world and a fight to be won.

For the master now, as the master of old,

    Is “the man behind the gun.”

The dominant blood that daunts the foe,

That laughs at odds, and leaps to the blow,—

It is Dewey’s glory to-day, as Nelson’s

    A hundred years ago!

To Her, when life was little worth,

  When hope, a tide run low,

Between dim shores of emptiness

  Almost forgot to flow,—

Faint with the city’s fume and stress

  I came at night to Her.

Her cool white fingers on my face—

  How wonderful they were!

More dear they were to fevered lids

  Than lilies cooled in dew.

They touched my lips with tenderness,

  Till life was born anew.

The city’s clamour died in calm;

  And once again I heard

The moon-white woodland stillnesses

  Enchanted by a bird;

The wash of far, remembered waves;

  The sigh of lapsing streams;

And one old garden’s lilac leaves

  Conferring in their dreams.

A breath from childhood daisy fields

  Came back to me again,

Here in the city’s weary miles

  Of city-wearied men.

I walk the city square with thee.

  The night is loud; the pavements roar.

Their eddying mirth and misery

Encircle thee and me.

The street is full of lights and cries.

  The crowd but brings thee close to me.

I only hear thy low replies;

I only see thine eyes.

Not in the eyed, expectant gloom,

  Where soaring peaks repose

And incommunicable space

  Companions with the snows;

Not in the glimmering dusk that crawls

  Upon the clouded sea,

Where bourneless wave on bourneless wave

  Complains continually;

Not in the palpable dark of woods

  Where groping hands clutch fear,

Does Night her deeps of solitude

  Reveal unveiled as here.

The street is a grim cañon carved

  In the eternal stone,

That knows no more the rushing stream

  It anciently has known.

The emptying tide of life has drained

  The iron channel dry.

Strange winds from the forgotten day

  Draw down, and dream, and sigh.

The narrow heaven, the desolate moon

  Made wan with endless years,

Seem less immeasurably remote

  Than laughter, love, or tears.

Here the night is fierce with light,

  Here the great wheels come and go,

Here are partings, waitings, meetings,

  Mysteries of joy and woe.

Here is endless haste and change,

  Here the ache of streaming eyes,

Radiance of expectant faces,

  Breathless askings, brief replies.

Here the jarred, tumultuous air

  Throbs and pauses like a bell,

Gladdens with delight of greeting,

  Sighs and sorrows with farewell.

Here, ah, here with hungry eyes

  I explore the passing throng.

Restless I await your coming

  Whose least absence is so long.

Faces, faces pass me by,

  Meaningless, and blank, and dumb,

Till my heart grows faint and sickens

  Lest at last you should not come.

Then—I see you. And the blood

  Surges back to heart and brain.

Eyes meet mine,—and Heaven opens.

  You are at my side again.

Forever breathe the mystery of that hour

When her hand touched me, lightlier than a flower,—

And life became forever strange and sweet,

A gift to lay with worship at her feet.

Oh, flower of the honeysuckle,

  Tell me how often the long night through

She turns in her dream to the open window,

  She turns in her dream to you.

Oh, flower of the honeysuckle,

  Tell me how tenderly out of the dew

You breathe her a dream of that night of wonder

  When life was fashioned anew.

Oh, flower of the honeysuckle,

  Tell me how long ere, the sweet night through,

She will turn not to you but to me in the darkness

  And dream and desire come true.

I have a garden in the city’s grime

Where secretly my heart keeps summer-time;

Where blow such airs of rapture on my eyes

As those blest dreamers know in Paradise,

Who after lives of longing come at last

Where anguish of vain love is overpast.

When the broad noon lies shadeless on the street,

And traffic roars, and toilers faint with heat,

Where men forget that ever woods were green,

The wonders of my garden are not seen.

Only at night the magic doors disclose

Its labyrinths of lavender and rose;

And honeysuckle, white beneath its moon,

Whispers me softly thou art coming soon;

And led by Love’s white hand upon my wrist

Beside its glimmering fountains I keep tryst.

O Love, this moving fragrance on my hair,—

Is it thy breath, or some enchanted air

From far, uncharted realms of mystery

Which I have dreamed of but shall never see?

O Love, this low, wild music in my ears,

Is it the heart-beat of thy hopes and fears,

Or the faint cadence of some fairy song

On winds of boyhood memory blown along?

O Love, what poignant ecstasy is this

Upon my lips and eyes? Thy touch,—thy kiss.

Dawn like a lily lies upon the land

Since I have known the whiteness of your hand.

Dusk is more soft and more mysterious where

Breathes on my eyes the perfume of your hair.

Waves at your coming break in livelier blue;

And solemn woods are glad because of you.

Brooks of your laughter learn their liquid notes.

Birds to your voice attune their pleading throats.

Fields to your feet grow smoother and more green;

And happy blossoms tell where you have been.

Over the tops of the houses

  Twilight and sunset meet.

The green, diaphanous dusk

  Sinks to the eager street.

Astray in the tangle of roofs

  Wanders a wind of June.

The dial shines in the clock-tower

  Like the face of a strange-scrawled moon.

The narrowing lines of the houses

  Palely begin to gleam,

And the hurrying crowds fade softly

  Like an army in a dream.

Above the vanishing faces

  A phantom train flares on

With a voice that shakes the shadows,—

  Diminishes, and is gone.

And I walk with the journeying throng

  In such a solitude

As where a lonely ocean

  Washes a lonely wood.

              Eyes of the city,

Keeping your sleepless watch from sun to sun,

              Is it for pity

You tremble, seeing innocence undone;

  Or do you laugh, to think men thus should set

  Spies on the folly day would fain forget?

I have faced life with courage,—but not now!

  O Infinite, in this darkness draw thou near.

Wisdom alone I asked of thee, but thou

  Hast crushed me with the awful gift of fear.

Night; and the sound of voices in the street.

Night; and the happy laughter where they meet,

  The glad boy lover and the trysting girl.

But thou—but thou—I cannot find thee, Sweet!

Night; and far off the lighted pavements roar.

Night; and the dark of sorrow keeps my door.

  I reach my hand out trembling in the dark.

Thy hand comes not with comfort any more.

O Silent, Unresponding! If these fears

Lie not, nor other wisdom come with years,

  No day shall dawn for me without regret,

No night go uncompanioned by my tears.

Out of this night of lonely noise,

  The city’s crowded cries,

Home of my heart, to thee, to thee

  I turn my longing eyes.

Years, years, how many years I went

  In exile wearily,

Before I lifted up my face

  And saw my home in thee.

I had come home to thee at last.

  I saw thy warm lights gleam.

I entered thine abiding joy,—

  Oh, was it but a dream?

Ere I could reckon with my heart

  The sum of our delight,

I was an exile once again

  Here in the hasting night.

Thy doors were shut; thy lights were gone

  From my remembering eyes.

Only the city’s endless throng!

  Only the crowded cries!

Here is the street

Made holy by the passing of her feet,—

  The little, tender feet, more sweet than myrrh,

  Which I have washed with tears for love of her.

Here she has gone

Until the very stones have taken on

  A glory from her passing, and the place

  Is tremulous with memory of her face.

Here is the room

That holds the light to lighten my life’s gloom.

  Beyond that blank white window she is sleeping

  Who hath my hope, my health, my fame in keeping.

A little peace

Here for a little, ere my vigil cease

  And I turn homeward, shaken with the strife

  Of hope that struggles hopeless, sick for life.

Surely the power

That lifted me from darkness that one hour

  To a dear heaven whereof no word can tell

  Not wantonly will thrust me back to hell.

Since I have felt upon my face thy tears

  I have been consecrated, Dear, to thee.

Cleansed from the stain of hot and frivolous years

  By thy white passion, I have bowed the knee,

Worshiping thee as sovereign and as saint,

  While with desire all human thou wert leaning

To my long kiss, thy lips and eyes grown faint,

  Thy spirit eloquent with love’s new meaning.

Since I have seen within thy heart my heaven,

  Life has been changed and earth has grown divine.

Hope, health, and wisdom, these thy love hath given,

  And if my song have any worth, ’tis thine.

Thy hands are benediction, Dear. Thy feet

  Are flowers upon the altar of my soul,

Whereat my holiest aspirations meet,

  Humble and wondering in thy rapt control.

  Broods the hid glory in its sheath of gloom

  Till strikes the destined hour, and bursts the bloom,

  A rapture of white passion and perfume.

      So the long day is like a bud

        That aches with coming bliss,

      Till flowers in light the wondrous night

        That brings me to thy kiss.

Then, with a thousand sorrows forgotten in one hour,

  In thy pure eyes and at thy feet I find at last my goal;

And life and hope and joy seem but a faint prevision

  Of the flower that is thy body and the flame that is thy soul.

Sleep, sleep, imperious heart! Sleep, fair and undefiled!

    Sleep and be free.

Come in your dreams at last, comrade and queen and child,

    At last to me.

Come, for the honeysuckle calls you out of the night.

    Come, for the air

Calls with a tyrannous remembrance of delight,

    Passion, and prayer.

Sleep, sovereign heart! and now,—for dream and memory

    Endure no door,—

My spirit undenied goes where my feet, to thee,

    Have gone before.

A moonbeam or a breath, above thine eyes I bow,

    Silent, unseen,—

But not, ah, not unknown! thy spirit knows me now

    Where I have been.

Surely my long desire upon thy soul hath power.

    Surely for this

Thy sleep shall breathe thee forth, soul of the lily flower,

    Under my kiss.

Sleep, body wonderful. Wake, spirit wise and wild,

    White and divine.

Here is our heaven of dream, O dear and undefiled,

    All thine, all mine.

O city night of noises and alarms,

  Your lights may flare, your cables clang and rush,

But in the sanctuary of my love’s arms

  Your blinding tumult dies into a hush.

My doors are surged about with your unrest;

  Your plangent cares assail my realm of peace;

But when I come unto her quiet breast

  How suddenly your jar and clamour cease!

Then even remembrance of your strifes and pains

  Diminishes to a ghost of sorrows gone,

Remoter than a dream of last year’s rains

  Gusty against my window in the dawn.

Above the hollow deep where lies

  The city’s slumbering face,

Out, out across the night we swing,

  A meteor launched in space.

The dark above is sown with stars.

  The humming dark below

With sparkle of ten thousand lamps

  In endless row on row.

Tall shadow towers with glimmering lights

  Stand sinister and grim

Where upper deep and lower deep

  Come darkly rim to rim.

Our souls have known the midnight awe

  Of mount, and plain, and sea;

But here the city’s night enfolds

  A vaster mystery.

At thy voice my heart

  Wakes as a bird

Wakes in the night

  With sudden rapture stirred.

At thy look my soul

  Soars as a flame

Soars from the dark

  Toward heaven, whence it came.

At thy love my life

  Lifts from the clod

As a lily lifts

  From its dark sleep toward God.

Here mid the hasting and eddying faces,

  Here in the whirl of the crowd,

Where the car lights flame and the windows glare

  And the night is white and loud,

Here we two are together, we two

  Unheeded, content, unknown.

Not in the wilderness could we be

  More wonderfully alone.

No face of them all is a face we know.

  No too familiar eye

Will peer from the throng to vex our joy

  As we two wander by.

Yon towering walls with the lights that soar

  Are gnome-land palaces.

Yon airy train is a dragon rushing

  To carry us overseas.

I press you close to my side, secure

  In the solitude of the throng.

And the laughter of children comes to our lips

  For we know that love is long.

I talked about you, Dear, the other night,

Having myself alone with my delight.

Alone with dreams and memories of you,

All the divine-houred summer stillness through

I talked of life, of love the always new,

Of tears, and joy,—yet only talked of you.

To the sweet air

That breathed upon my face

The spirit of lilies in a leafy place,

Your breath’s caress, the lingering of your hair,

I said—“In all your wandering through the dusk,

Your waitings on the marriages of flowers

Through the long, intimate hours

When soul and sense, desire and love confer,

You must have known the best that God has made.

What do you know of her?”

Said the sweet air—

“Since I have touched her lips,

Bringing the consecration of her kiss,

Half passion and half prayer,

And all for you,

My various lore has suffered an eclipse.

I have forgot all else of sweet I knew.”

To the wise earth,

Kind, and companionable, and dewy cool,

Fair beyond words to tell, as you are fair,

And cunning past compare

To leash all heaven in a windless pool,

I said—“The mysteries of death and birth

Are in your care.

You love, and sleep; you drain life to the lees;

And wonderful things you know.

Angels have visited you, and at your knees

Learned what I learn forever at her eyes,

The pain that still enhances Paradise.

You in your breast felt her first pulses stir;

And you have thrilled to the light touch of her feet,

Blindingly sweet.

Now make me wise with some new word of her.”

Said the wise earth—

“She is not all my child.

But the wild spirit that rules her heart-beats wild

Is of diviner birth

And kin to the unknown light beyond my ken.

All I can give to her have I not given?

Strength to be glad, to suffer, and to know;

The sorcery that subdues the souls of men;

The beauty that is as the shadow of heaven;

The hunger of love

And unspeakable joy thereof.

And these are dear to her because of you.

You need no word of mine to make you wise

Who worship at her eyes

And find there life and love forever new!”

To the white stars,

Eternal and all-seeing,

In their wide home beyond the wells of being,

I said—“There is a little cloud that mars

The mystical perfection of her kiss.

Mine, mine, she is,

As far as lip to lip, and heart to heart,

And spirit to spirit when lips and hands must part,

Can make her mine. But there is more than this,—

More, more of her to know.

For still her soul escapes me unaware,

To dwell in secret where I may not go.

Take, and uplift me. Make me wholly hers.”

Said the white stars, the heavenly ministers,—

“This life is brief, but it is only one.

Before to-morrow’s sun

For one or both of you it may be done.

This love of yours is only just begun.

Will all the ecstasy that may be won

Before this life its little course has run

At all suffice

The love that agonises in your eyes?

Therefore be wise.

Content you with the wonder of love that lies

Between her lips and underneath her eyes.

If more you should surprise,

What would be left to hope from Paradise?

In other worlds expect another joy

Of her, which blundering fate shall not annoy,

Nor time nor change destroy.”

So, Dear, I talked the long, divine night through,

And felt you in the chrismal balms of dew.

The thing then learned

Has ever since within my bosom burned—

One life is not enough for love of you.

This is the song

Of kinsmen strong

Standing at guard

In the gates of earth:—

  “Side by side

  Our flags flung wide

  Proclaim the pride

  Of our kindred birth.

  “All ye of the brood

  Of an alien blood

  Take count of our folk

  No longer twain.

  Not twain, but one,

  By the tides that run

  With new warmth won

  In each kindred vein.

  “Take note all ye,

  Of the alien knee,

  Of the faith that fires

  Our hearts and thews.

  One in our creed

  And one in our need,

  In daring and deed

  We shall win, not lose.

  “Be counseled, each

  Of the alien speech,

  From polar barren,

  To isle empearled:

  This shout you hear

  So near and clear

  Is the marching cheer

  Of the lords of the world.

  “Stout heart by heart

  We work our part

  That light may broaden

  And law command.

  This is our place

  By right of race,

  By God’s good grace

  And the strength of our hand.

  “The strength of our hand

  On every land

  Till the master-work

  Of the world be done:

  For the slave’s release,

  For the bond of peace,

  That wars may cease

  From under the sun.”

Should Jonathan and John fall out

The world would stagger from that bout.

With John and Jonathan at one

The world’s great peace will have begun.

With Jonathan and John at war

The hour that havoc hungers for

Will strike, in ruin of blood and tears,—

The world set back a thousand years.

With John and Jonathan sworn to stand

Shoulder to shoulder, hand by hand,

Justice and peace shall build their throne

From tropic sea to frozen zone.

When Jonathan and John forget

The scar of an ancient wound to fret,

And smile to think of an ancient feud

Which the God of the nations turned to good;

When the bond of a common creed and speech

And kindred binds them each to each,

And each in the other’s victories

The pride of his own achievement sees,—

How paltry a thing they both will know

That grudge of a hundred years ago,—

How small that blemish of wrath and blame

In the blazonry of their common fame!

O Child of Nations, giant-limbed,

  Who stand’st among the nations now

Unheeded, unadored, unhymned,

  With unanointed brow,—

How long the ignoble sloth, how long

  The trust in greatness not thine own?

Surely the lion’s brood is strong

  To front the world alone!

How long the indolence, ere thou dare

  Achieve thy destiny, seize thy fame,—

Ere our proud eyes behold thee bear

  A nation’s franchise, nation’s name?

The Saxon force, the Celtic fire,

  These are thy manhood’s heritage!

Why rest with babes and slaves? Seek higher

  The place of race and age.

I see to every wind unfurled

  The flag that bears the Maple Wreath;

Thy swift keels furrow round the world

  Its blood-red folds beneath;

Thy swift keels cleave the furthest seas;

  Thy white sails swell with alien gales;

To stream on each remotest breeze

  The black smoke of thy pipes exhales.

O Falterer, let thy past convince

  Thy future,—all the growth, the gain,

The fame since Cartier knew thee, since

  Thy shores beheld Champlain!

Montcalm and Wolfe! Wolfe and Montcalm!

  Quebec, thy storied citadel

Attests in burning song and psalm

  How here thy heroes fell!

O Thou that bor’st the battle’s brunt

  At Queenston, and at Lundy’s Lane,—

On whose scant ranks but iron front

  The battle broke in vain!—

Whose was the danger, whose the day,

  From whose triumphant throats the cheers,

At Chrysler’s Farm, at Chateauguay,

  Storming like clarion-bursts our ears?

On soft Pacific slopes,—beside

  Strange floods that northward rave and fall,—

Where chafes Acadia’s chainless tide—

  Thy sons await thy call.

They wait; but some in exile, some

  With strangers housed, in stranger lands,—

And some Canadian lips are dumb

  Beneath Egyptian sands.

O mystic Nile! Thy secret yields

  Before us; thy most ancient dreams

Are mixed with far Canadian fields

  And murmur of Canadian streams.

But thou, my country, dream not thou!

  Wake, and behold how night is done,—

How on thy breast, and o’er thy brow,

  Bursts the uprising sun!

Awake, my country, the hour is great with change!

  Under this gloom which yet obscures the land,

From ice-blue strait and stern Laurentian range

  To where giant peaks our western bounds command,

A deep voice stirs, vibrating in men’s ears

  As if their own hearts throbbed that thunder forth,

A sound wherein who hearkens wisely hears

  The voice of the desire of this strong North,—

          This North whose heart of fire

          Yet knows not its desire

Clearly, but dreams, and murmurs in the dream.

The hour of dreams is done. Lo, on the hills the gleam!

Awake, my country, the hour of dreams is done!

  Doubt not, nor dread the greatness of thy fate.

Tho’ faint souls fear the keen confronting sun,

  And fain would bid the morn of splendour wait;

Tho’ dreamers, rapt in starry visions, cry

  “Lo, yon thy future, yon thy faith, thy fame!”

And stretch vain hands to stars, thy fame is nigh,

  Here in Canadian hearth, and home, and name,—

          This name which yet shall grow

          Till all the nations know

Us for a patriot people, heart and hand

Loyal to our native earth, our own Canadian land!

O strong hearts, guarding the birthright of our glory,

  Worth your best blood this heritage that ye guard!

These mighty streams resplendent with our story,

  These iron coasts by rage of seas unjarred,—

What fields of peace these bulwarks well secure!

  What vales of plenty those calm floods supply!

Shall not our love this rough, sweet land make sure,

  Her bounds preserve inviolate, though we die?

          O strong hearts of the North,

          Let flame your loyalty forth,

And put the craven and base to an open shame,

Till earth shall know the Child of Nations by her name!

O rivers rolling to the sea

From lands that bear the maple-tree,

  How swell your voices with the strain

Of loyalty and liberty!

A holy music, heard in vain

By coward heart and sordid brain,

  To whom this strenuous being seems

Naught but a greedy race for gain.

O unsung streams—not splendid themes

Ye lack to fire your patriot dreams!

  Annals of glory gild your waves,

Hope freights your tides, Canadian streams!

St. Lawrence, whose wide water laves

The shores that ne’er have nourished slaves!

  Swift Richelieu of lilied fame!

Niagara of glorious graves!

Thy rapids, Ottawa, proclaim

Where Daulac and his heroes came!

  Thy tides, St. John, declare La Tour,

And, later, many a loyal name!

Thou inland stream, whose vales, secure

From storm, Tecumseh’s death made poor!

  And thou small water, red with war,

’Twixt Beaubassin and Beauséjour!

Dread Saguenay, where eagles soar,

What voice shall from the bastioned shore

  The tale of Roberval reveal,

Or his mysterious fate deplore?

Annapolis, do thy floods yet feel

Faint memories of Champlain’s keel,

  Thy pulses yet the deeds repeat

Of Poutrincourt and D’Iberville?

And thou far tide, whose plains now beat

With march of myriad westering feet,

  Saskatchewan, whose virgin sod

So late Canadian blood made sweet?

Your bulwark hills, your valleys broad,

Streams where De Salaberry trod,

  Where Wolfe achieved, where Brock was slain,—

Their voices are the voice of God!

O sacred waters! not in vain,

Across Canadian height and plain,

  Ye sound us in triumphant tone

The summons of your high refrain.

List! list! The buds confer.

This noonday they’ve had news of her;

The south bank has had views of her;

The thorn shall exact his dues of her;

      The willows adream

      By the freshet stream

Shall ask what boon they choose of her.

Up! up! The world’s astir;

The would-be green has word of her;

Root and germ have heard of her,

      Coming to break

      Their sleep and wake

Their hearts with every bird of her.

See! see! How swift concur

Sun, wind, and rain at the name of her,

A-wondering what became of her;

The fields flower at the flame of her;

      The glad air sings

      With dancing wings

And the silvery shrill acclaim of her.

When winter is done, and April’s dawning

  Shatters the dark of the year,

And the rain-fed rivulet under the bridge

  Again runs clear,

And the shepherd sun comes over the hill

  To let out the flocks of Spring,

With laughter and light in the pastures of air

  The flocks take wing.

They scatter on every lingering wind,—

  The perfume, and the bee,

And the whispers of the jostling grass,

  Glad to be free,

The minstrelsy of the shining pools,

  The dancing troops of the hours;

And over the sod in a sudden rapture

  Flame the flowers.

Clearest pool, my wondering joy

When a fancy-haunted boy,

From the troubled world of men

I’ve come back to thee again.

Loosed by my imperious star

I’ve come back from very far,

Dusty from the clash of years,

Worn with life and love and tears.

When I came to thee of old

Treasures rare my hands would hold,—

Wondrous blooms, or glass of dye

To transfigure earth and sky.

Now the best that I can bring

Seems a very little thing.

Let me cast it all away

To win back one boyhood’s day.

O’er thy globe of crystal space,

Clearest pool, I lean my face.

What’s the happy mask I see

Wisely smiling back on me?

Surely those glad eyes were mine

When the earth looked all divine!—

Knowing less, remembering more,

How enchanted was their lore!

Surely mine, this weary while

Agone, was that unshadowed smile!

Clearest pool, thou showest me

All my boyhood used to be.

Keep thy waters, clearest pool,

Always tranquil, pure and cool.

I, alas, must turn again

To the troubled world of men!

The airs that blew from the brink of day

Were fresh and wet with the breath of May.

I heard the babble of brown brooks falling

And golden-wings in the woodside calling.

Big drops hung from the sparkling eaves;

And through the screen of the thin young leaves

A glint of ripples, a whirl of foam,

Lured and beckoned me out from home.

My feet grew eager, my eyes grew wide,

And I was off by the brown brook’s side.

Down in the swamp-bottom, cool and dim,

I cut me an alder sapling slim.

With nimble fingers I tied my line,

Clear as a sunbeam, strong and fine.

My fly was a tiny glittering thing,

With tinsel body and partridge wing.

With noiseless steps I threaded the wood,

Glad of the sun-pierced solitude.

Chattered the kingfisher, fierce and shy,

As like a shadow I drifted by.

Lurked in their watery lairs the trout,

But, silver and scarlet, I lured them out.

Wary were they, but warier still

My cunning wrist and my cast of skill.

I whipped the red pools under the beeches;

I whipped the yellow and dancing reaches.

The purple eddy, smooth like oil,

And the tail of the rapid yielded spoil.

So all day long, till the day was done,

I followed the stream, I followed the sun.

Then homeward over the ridge I went,

The wandering heart of me well content.

This giant nerve, at whose command

  The world’s great pulses throb or sleep,—

It threads the undiscerned repose

  Of the dark bases of the deep.

Around it settle in the calm

  Fine tissues that a breath might mar,

Nor dream what fiery tidings pass,

  What messages of storm and war.

Far over it, where filtered gleams

  Faintly illume the mid-sea day,

Strange, pallid forms of fish or weed

  In the obscure tide softly sway.

And higher, where the vagrant waves

  Frequent the white, indifferent sun,

Where ride the smoke-blue hordes of rain

  And the long vapours lift and run,

Passes perhaps some lonely ship

  With exile hearts that homeward ache,—

While far beneath is flashed a word

  That soon shall bid them bleed or break.

No lifeless thing of iron and stone,

  But sentient, as her children are,

Nature accepts you for her own,

  Kin to the cataract and the star.

She marks your vast, sufficing plan,

  Cable and girder, bolt and rod,

And takes you, from the hand of man,

  As some new handiwork of God.

You thrill through all your chords of steel

  Responsive to the living sun,

And quickening in your nerves you feel

  Life with its conscious currents run.

Your anchorage upbears the march

  Of time and the eternal powers.

The sky admits your perfect arch.

  The rock respects your stable towers.

Save what the night-wind woke of sweet

  And solemn sound, I heard alone

The sleepless ocean’s ceaseless beat,

  The surge’s monotone.

Low down the south a dreary gleam

  Of white light smote the sullen swells,

Evasive as a blissful dream,

  Or wind-borne notes of bells.

The water’s lapping whispers stole

  Into my brain, and there effaced

All human memories from my soul,—

  An atom in a shifting waste.

Weird fingers, groping, strove to raise

  Some numbing horror from my mind;

And ever, as it met my gaze,

  The sharp truth struck me blind.

The keen-edged breath of the salt sea

  Stung; but a faint, swift, sulphurous smell

Blew past, and I reeled dizzily

  As from the brink of hell,

One moment; then the swan-necked prow

  Sustained me, and once more I scanned

The unfenced flood, against my brow

  Arching my lifted hand.

O’er all the unstable vague expanse

  I towered the lord supreme, and smiled;

And marked the hard, white sparkles glance,

  The dark vault wide and wild.

Again that faint wind swept my face—

  With hideous menace swept my eyes.

I cowered back in my straitened place

  And groped with dim surmise,

Not knowing yet. Not knowing why,

  I turned, as one asleep might turn,

And noted with half curious eye

  The figure crouched astern.

On heaped-up leopard skins she crouched,

  Asleep, and soft skins covered her,

And scarlet stuffs where she was couched,

  Sodden with sea-water,

Burned lurid with black stains, and smote

  My thought with waking pangs; I saw

The white arm drooping from the boat,

  Round-moulded, pure from flaw;

The yellow sandals even-thonged;

  The fair face, wan with haunting pain,—

Then sudden, crowding memories thronged

  Like unpent sudden rain.

Clear-stamped, as by white lightning when

  The swift flame rends the night, wide-eyed

I saw dim streets, and fleeing men,

  And walls from side to side

Reeling, and great rocks fallen; a pall

  Above us, an encumbering shroud

About our feet, and over all

  The awful Form that bowed

Our hearts, the fiery scourge that smote

  The city,—the red Mount. Clear, clear

I saw it,—and this lonely boat,

  And us two drifting here!

With one sharp cry I sprang and hid

  My face among the skins beside

Her feet, and held her safe, and chid

  The tumult till it died.

And crouched thus at her rescued feet,

  Save her low breath, I heard alone

The sleepless ocean’s ceaseless beat,

  The surge’s monotone.

  Cithæron, mother mount, set steadfastly

Deep in Bœotia, past the utmost roar

Of seas, beyond Corinthian waves withdrawn,

Girt with green vales awake with brooks or still,

Towers up mid lesser-browed Bœotian hills—

These couched like herds secure beneath its ken—

And watches earth’s green corners. At mid-noon

We of Platæa mark the sun make pause

Right over it, and top its crest with pride.

Men of Eleusis look toward north at dawn

To see the long white fleeces upward roll,

Smitten aslant with saffron, fade like smoke,

And leave the grey-green dripping glens all bare,

The drenched slopes open sunward; slopes wherein

What gods, what godlike men to match with gods,

Have roamed, and grown up mighty, and waxed wise

Under the law of him whom gods and men

Reverence, and call Cheiron! He, made wise

With knowledge of all wisdom, had made wise

Actæon, till there moved none cunninger

To drive with might the javelin forth, or bend

The corded ebony, save Leto’s son.

  But him the Centaur shall behold no more

With long stride making down the beechy glade,

Clear-eyed, with firm lips laughing,—at his heels

The clamour of his fifty deep-tongued hounds.

Him the wise Centaur shall behold no more.

  I have lived long, and watched out many days,

And am well sick of watching. Three days since,

I had gone out upon the slopes for herbs,

Snake-root, and subtle gums; and when the light

Fell slantwise through the upper glens, and missed

The sunk ravines, I came where all the hills

Circle the valley of Gargaphian streams.

Reach beyond reach all down the valley gleamed,—

Thick branches ringed them. Scarce a bowshot past

My platan, thro’ the woven leaves low-hung,

Trembling in meshes of the woven sun,

A yellow-sanded pool, shallow and clear,

Lay sparkling, brown about the further bank

From scarlet-berried ash-trees hanging over.

But suddenly the shallows brake awake

With laughter and light voices, and I saw

Where Artemis, white goddess incorrupt.

Bane of swift beasts, and deadly for straight shaft

Unswerving, from a coppice not far off

Came to the pool from the hither bank to bathe.

Amid her maiden company she moved,

Their cross-thonged yellow buskins scattered off,

Unloosed their knotted hair; and thus the pool

Received them stepping, shrinking, down to it.

  Here they flocked white, and splashed the water-drops

On rounded breast and shoulder snowier

Than the washed clouds athwart the morning’s blue,—

Fresher than river grasses which the herds

Pluck from the river in the burning noons.

Their tresses on the summer wind they flung;

And some a shining yellow fleece let fall

For the sun’s envy; others with white hands

Lifted a glooming wealth of locks more dark

Than deepest wells, but purple in the sun.

And She, their mistress, of the heart unstormed,

Stood taller than they all, supreme, and still,

Perfectly fair like day, and crowned with hair

The colour of nipt beech-leaves: Ay, such hair

Was mine in years when I was such as these.

I let it fall to cover me, or coiled

Its soft, thick coils about my throat and arms;

Its colour like nipt beech-leaves, tawny brown,

But in the sun a fountain of live gold.

  Even as thus they played, and some lithe maids

Upreached white arms to grasp the berried ash,

And, plucking the bright bunches, shed them wide

By red ripe handfuls, not far off I saw

With long stride making down the beechy glade,

Clear-eyed, with firm lips laughing,—at his heels

The clamour of his fifty deep-tongued hounds,

Actæon. I beheld him not far off,

But unto bath and bathers hid from view,

Being beyond that mighty rock whereon

His wont was to lie stretched at dip of eve,

When frogs are loud amid the tail-plumed sedge

In marshy spots about Asopus’ bank,—

Deeming his life was very sweet, his day

A pleasant one, the peopled breadths of earth

Most fair, and fair the shining tracts of sea;

Green solitudes, and broad low-lying plains

Made brown with frequent labours of men’s hands,

And salt, blue, fruitless waters. But this mount,

Cithæron, bosomed deep in soundless hills,

Its fountained vales, its nights of starry calm,

Its high chill dawns, its long-drawn golden days,—

Was dearest to him. Here he dreamed high dreams,

And felt within his sinews strength to strive

Where strife was sorest, and to overcome,

And in his heart the thought to do great deeds,

With power in all ways to accomplish them.

For had not he done well to men, and done

Well to the gods? Therefore he stood secure.

  But him,—for him—Ah that these eyes should see!—

Approached a sudden stumbling in his ways!

Not yet, not yet he knew a god’s fierce wrath,

Nor wist of that swift vengeance lying in wait.

  And now he came upon a slope of sward

Against the pool. With startled cry the maids

Shrank clamouring round their mistress, or made flight

To covert in the hazel thickets. She

Stirred not; but pitiless anger paled her eyes,

Intent with deadly purpose. He, amazed,

Stood with his head thrust forward, while his curls,

Sun-lit, lay glorious on his mighty neck,—

Let fall his bow and clanging spear, and gazed

Dilate with ecstasy; nor marked the dogs

Hush their deep tongues, draw close, and ring him round,

And fix upon him strange, red, hungry eyes,

And crouch to spring. This for a moment. Then

It seemed his strong knees faltered, and he sank.

Then I cried out,—for straight a shuddering stag

Sprang one wild leap over the dogs; but they

Fastened upon his flanks with a long yell,

And reached his throat; and that proud head went down

Beneath their wet, red fangs and reeking jaws.

  I have lived long, and watched out many days,

Yet have not seen that aught is sweet save life,

Nor learned that life hath other end than death.

Thick horror like a cloud had veiled my sight,

That for a space I saw not, and my ears

Were shut from hearing; but when sense grew clear

Once more, I only saw the vacant pool

Unrippled,—only saw the dreadful sward,

Where dogs lay gorged, or moved in fretful search,

Questing uneasily; and some far up

The slope, and some at the low water’s edge,

With snouts set high in air and straining throats

Uttered keen howls that smote the echoing hills.

They missed their master’s form, nor understood

Where was the voice they loved, the hand that reared,—

And some lay watching by the spear and bow

Flung down.

          And now upon the homeless pack

And paling stream arose a noiseless wind

Out of the yellow west awhile, and stirred

The branches down the valley; then blew off

To eastward toward the long grey straits, and died

Into the dark, beyond the utmost verge.

A little grey hill-glade, close-turfed, withdrawn.

Beyond resort or heed of trafficking feet,

Ringed round with slim trunks of the mountain ash.

Through the slim trunks and scarlet bunches flash—

Beneath the clear chill glitterings of the dawn—

Far off, the crests, where down the rosy shore

The Pontic surges beat.

The plains lie dim below. The thin airs wash

The circuit of the autumn-coloured hills,

And this high glade, whereon

The satyr pipes, who soon shall pipe no more.

He sits against the beech-tree’s mighty bole,—

He leans, and with persuasive breathing fills

The happy shadows of the slant-set lawn.

The goat-feet fold beneath a gnarlèd root;

And sweet, and sweet the note that steals and thrills

From slender stops of that shy flute.

Then to the goat-feet comes the wide-eyed fawn

Hearkening; the rabbits fringe the glade, and lay

Their long ears to the sound;

In the pale boughs the partridge gather round,

And quaint hern from the sea-green river reeds;

The wild ram halts upon a rocky horn

O’erhanging; and, unmindful of his prey,

The leopard steals with narrowed lids to lay

His spotted length along the ground.

The thin airs wash, the thin clouds wander by,

And those hushed listeners move not. All the morn

He pipes, soft-swaying, and with half-shut eye,

In rapt content of utterance,—

                              nor heeds

The young God standing in his branchy place,

The languor on his lips, and in his face,

Divinely inaccessible, the scorn.

Wind of the summer afternoon,

Hush, for my heart is out of tune!

Hush, for thou movest restlessly

The too light sleeper, memory!

Whate’er thou hast to tell me, yet

’Twere something sweeter to forget,—

Sweeter than all thy breath of balm

An hour of unremembering calm.

Blowing over the roofs, and down

The bright streets of this inland town,

These busy crowds, these rocking trees—

What strange note hast thou caught from these?

A note of waves and rushing tides,

Where past the dykes the red flood glides,

To brim the shining channels far

Up the green plains of Tantramar.

Once more I snuff the salt, I stand

On the long dykes of Westmoreland;

I watch the narrowing flats, the strip

Of red clay at the water’s lip;

Far off the net-reels, brown and high,

And boat-masts slim against the sky;

Along the ridges of the dykes

Wind-beaten scant sea-grass, and spikes

Of last year’s mullein; down the slopes

To landward, in the sun, thick ropes

Of blue vetch, and convolvulus,

And matted roses glorious.

The liberal blooms o’erbrim my hands;

I walk the level, wide marsh-lands;

Waist-deep in dusty-blossomed grass

I watch the swooping breezes pass

In sudden, long, pale lines, that flee

Up the deep breast of this green sea.

I listen to the bird that stirs

The purple tops, and grasshoppers

Whose summer din, before my feet

Subsiding, wakes on my retreat.

Again the droning bees hum by;

Still-winged, the grey hawk wheels on high;

I drink again the wild perfumes,

And roll, and crush the grassy blooms.

Blown back to olden days, I fain

Would quaff the olden joys again;

But all the olden sweetness not

The old unmindful peace hath brought.

Wind of this summer afternoon,

Thou hast recalled my childhood’s June;

My heart—still is it satisfied

By all the golden summer-tide?

Hast thou one eager yearning filled,

Or any restless throbbing stilled,

Or hast thou any power to bear

Even a little of my care?—

Ever so little of this weight

Of weariness canst thou abate?

Ah, poor thy gift indeed, unless

Thou bring the old child-heartedness,—

And such a gift to bring is given,

Alas, to no wind under heaven!

Wind of the summer afternoon,

Be still; my heart is not in tune.

Sweet is thy voice; but yet, but yet—

Of all ’twere sweetest to forget!

Dear Heart, the noisy strife

  And bitter carpings cease.

Here is the lap of life,

  Here are the lips of peace.

Afar from stir of streets,

  The city’s dust and din,

What healing silence meets

  And greets us gliding in!

Our light birch silent floats;

  Soundless the paddle dips.

Yon sunbeam thick with motes

  Athro’ the leafage slips,

To light the iris wings

  Of dragon-flies alit

On lily-leaves, and things

  Of gauze that float and flit.

Above the water’s brink

  Hush’d winds make summer riot;

Our thirsty spirits drink

  Deep, deep, the summer quiet.

We slip the world’s grey husk,

  Emerge, and spread new plumes;

In sunbeam-fretted dusk,

  Thro’ populous golden glooms,

Like thistledown we slide,

  Two disembodied dreams,—

With spirits alert, wide-eyed,

  Explore the perfume-streams.

For scents of various grass

  Stream down the veering breeze;

Warm puffs of honey pass

  From flowering linden-trees;

And fragrant gusts of gum,

  Breath of the balm-tree buds,

With fern-brake odours, come

  From intricate solitudes.

The elm-tops are astir

  With flirt of idle wings.

Hark to the grackles’ chirr

  Whene’er an elm-bough swings!

From off yon ash-limb sere

  Out-thrust amid green branches,

Keen like an azure spear

  A kingfisher down launches.

Far up the creek his calls

  And lessening laugh retreat.

Again the silence falls,

  And soft the green hours fleet.

They fleet with drowsy hum

  Of insects on the wing.

We sigh—the end must come!

  We taste our pleasure’s sting.

No more, then, need we try

  The rapture to regain.

We feel our day slip by,

  And cling to it in vain.

But, Dear, keep thou in mind

  These moments swift and sweet!

Their memory thou shalt find

  Illume the common street;

And thro’ the dust and din,

  Smiling, thy heart shall hear

Quiet waters lapsing thin,

  And locusts shrilling clear.

Summers and summers have come, and gone with the flight of the swallow;

Sunshine and thunder have been, storm, and winter, and frost;

Many and many a sorrow has all but died from remembrance,

Many a dream of joy fall’n in the shadow of pain.

Hands of chance and change have marred, or moulded, or broken,

Busy with spirit or flesh, all I most have adored;

Even the bosom of Earth is strewn with heavier shadows,—

Only in these green hills, aslant to the sea, no change!

Here where the road that has climbed from the inland valleys and woodlands,

Dips from the hill-tops down, straight to the base of the hills,—

Here, from my vantage-ground, I can see the scattering houses,

Stained with time, set warm in orchards, meadows, and wheat,

Dotting the broad bright slopes outspread to southward and eastward,

Wind-swept all day long, blown by the south-east wind.

Skirting the sunbright uplands stretches a riband of meadow,

Shorn of the labouring grass, bulwarked well from the sea,

Fenced on its seaward border with long clay dykes from the turbid

Surge and flow of the tides vexing the Westmoreland shores.

Yonder, toward the left, lie broad the Westmoreland marshes,—

Miles on miles they extend, level, and grassy, and dim,

Clear from the long red sweep of flats to the sky in the distance,

Save for the outlying heights, green-rampired Cumberland Point;

Miles on miles outrolled, and the river-channels divide them,—

Miles on miles of green, barred by the hurtling gusts.

Miles on miles beyond the tawny bay is Minudie.

There are the low blue hills; villages gleam at their feet.

Nearer a white sail shines across the water, and nearer

Still are the slim, grey masts of fishing boats dry on the flats.

Ah, how well I remember those wide red flats, above tide-mark

Pale with scurf of the salt, seamed and baked in the sun!

Well I remember the piles of blocks and ropes, and the net-reels

Wound with the beaded nets, dripping and dark from the sea!

Now at this season the nets are unwound; they hang from the rafters

Over the fresh-stowed hay in upland barns, and the wind

Blows all day through the chinks, with the streaks of sunlight, and sways them

Softly at will; or they lie heaped in the gloom of a loft.

Now at this season the reels are empty and idle; I see them

Over the lines of the dykes, over the gossiping grass.

Now at this season they swing in the long strong wind, thro’ the lonesome

Golden afternoon, shunned by the foraging gulls.

Near about sunset the crane will journey homeward above them;

Round them, under the moon, all the calm night long,

Winnowing soft grey wings of marsh-owls wander and wander,

Now to the broad, lit marsh, now to the dusk of the dike.

Soon, thro’ their dew-wet frames, in the live keen freshness of morning,

Out of the teeth of the dawn blows back the awakening wind.

Then, as the blue day mounts, and the low-shot shafts of the sunlight

Glance from the tide to the shore, gossamers jewelled with dew

Sparkle and wave, where late sea-spoiling fathoms of driftnet

Myriad-meshed, uploomed sombrely over the land.

Well I remember it all. The salt, raw scent of the margin;

While, with men at the windlass, groaned each reel, and the net,

Surging in ponderous lengths, uprose and coiled in its station;

Then each man to his home,—well I remember it all!

Yet, as I sit and watch, this present peace of the landscape,—

Stranded boats, these reels empty and idle, the hush,

One grey hawk slow-wheeling above yon cluster of haystacks,—

More than the old-time stir this stillness welcomes me home.

Ah, the old-time stir, how once it stung me with rapture,—

Old-time sweetness, the winds freighted with honey and salt!

Yet will I stay my steps and not go down to the marshland,—

Muse and recall far off, rather remember than see,—

Lest on too close sight I miss the darling illusion,

Spy at their task even here the hands of chance and change.

O breath of wind and sea,

  Bitter and clear,

Now my faint soul springs free,

  Blown clean from fear!

O hard sweet strife, O sting

  Of buffeting salt!

Doubt and despair take wing,

  Failure, and fault.

I dread not wrath or wrong,—

  Smile, and am free;

Strong while the winds are strong,

  The rocks, the sea.

Heart of my heart, tho’ life

  Front us with storm,

Love will outlast the strife,

  More pure, more warm.

The tide falls, and the night falls,

  And the wind blows in from the sea

And the bell on the bar it calls and calls,

  And the wild hawk cries from his tree.

The late crane calls to his fellows gone

  In long flight over the sea,

And my heart with the crane flies on and on,

  Seeking its rest and thee.

O Love, the tide returns to the strand,

  And the crane flies back oversea,

But he brings not my heart from his far-off land

  For he brings not thee to me.

The valley of the winding water

  Wears the same light it wore of old.

Still o’er the purple peaks the portals

  Of distance and desire unfold.

Still break the fields of opening June

  To emerald in their ancient way.

The sapphire of the summer heaven

  Is infinite, as yesterday.

My eyes are on the greening earth,

  The exultant bobolinks wild awing;

And yet, of all this kindly gladness,

  My heart beholds not anything.

For in a still room far away,

  With mourners round her silent head,

Blind to the quenchless tears, the anguish—

  I see, to-day, a woman dead.

The tide goes out, the tide goes out; once more

The empty day goes down the empty shore.

The tide goes out; the wharves deserted lie

Under the empty solitude of sky.

The tide goes out; the dwindling channels ache

With the old hunger, with the old heartbreak.

The tide goes out; the lonely wastes of sand

Implore the benediction of thy hand.

The tide goes out, goes out; the stranded ships

Desire the sea,—and I desire thy lips.

The tide goes out, the tide goes out; the sun

Relumes the hills of longing one by one.

The tide goes out, goes out; and goes my heart

On the long quest that ends but where thou art.

    Dear! Dear!

As the night draws nigh draw near.

  The world’s forgotten;

    Work is done;

  The hour for loving

    Is begun.

    Sweet! Sweet!

It is love-time when we meet.

  The hush of desire

    Falls with the dew,

  And all the evening

    Turns to you.

    Child! Child!

With the warm heart wise and wild.

  My spirit trembles

    Under your hand;

  You look in my eyes

    And understand.

    Mine! Mine!

Mistress of mood divine.

  What lore of the ages

    Bids you know

  The heart of a man

    Can love you so?

When the white moon divides the mist,

  My longing eyes believe

’Tis the white arm my lips have kissed

  Flashing from thy sleeve.

And when the tall white lily sways

  Upon her queenly stalk,

Thy white form fills my dreaming gaze

  Down the garden walk.

When, rich with rose, a wandering air

  Breathes up the leafy place,

It seems to me thy perfumed hair

  Blown across my face.

And when the thrush’s golden note

  Across the gloom is heard,

I think ’tis thy impassioned throat

  Uttering one sweet word.

And when the scarlet poppy-bud

  Breaks, breathing of the south,

A sudden warmth awakes my blood

  Thinking of thy mouth.

And when that dove’s wing dips in flight

  Above the dreaming land,

I see some dear, remembered, white

  Gesture of thy hand.

Wonder and love upon me wait

  In service fair, when I

Into thy sweetness thus translate

  Earth and air and sky.

Grey rocks, and greyer sea,

  And surf along the shore—

And in my heart a name

  My lips shall speak no more.

The high and lonely hills

  Endure the darkening year—

And in my heart endure

  A memory and a tear.

Across the tide a sail

  That tosses, and is gone—

And in my heart the kiss

  That longing dreams upon.

Grey rocks, and greyer sea,

  And surf along the shore—

And in my heart the face

  That I shall see no more.

The winds are up with wakening day

  And tumult in the tree;

Across the cool and open sky

  White clouds are streaming free;

The new light breaks o’er flood and field

  Clear like an echoing horn,

While in loud flight the crows are blown

  Athwart the sapphire morn.

What tho’ the maple’s scarlet flame

  Declares the summer done,

Tho’ finch and starling voyage south

  To win a softer sun;

What tho’ the withered leaf whirls by

  To strew the purpling stream,—

Stretched are the world’s glad veins with strength,

  Despair is grown a dream!

The acres of the goldenrod

  Are glorious on the hills.

Tho’ storm and loss approach, the year’s

  High heart upleaps and thrills.

Dearest, the cheer, the brave delight,

  Are given to shame regret,

That when the long frost falls, our hearts

  Be glad, and not forget!

Love hath given the day for longing,

  And for joy the night.

Dearest, to thy distant chamber

  Wings my soul its flight.

Though unfathomed seas divide us,

  And the lingering year,

’Tis the hour when absence parts not,—

  Memory hath no tear.

O’er the charmed and silent river

  Drifts my lonely boat;

From the haunted shores and islands

  Tender murmurs float,

Tender breaths of glade and forest,

  Breezes of perfume;—

Surely, surely thou canst hear me

  In thy quiet room!

Unto shore, and sky, and silence,

  Low I pour my song.

All the spell, the summer sweetness,—

  These to thee belong.

Thou art love, the trance and rapture

  Of the midnight clear!

Sweet, tho’ world on world withhold thee,

  I can clasp thee here.

Friend, those delights of ours

Under the sun and showers,—

Athrough the noonday blue

Sliding our light canoe,

Or floating, hushed, at eve,

Where the dim pine-tops grieve!

What tonic days were they

Where shy streams dart and play,—

Where rivers brown and strong

As caribou bound along,

Break into angry parle

Where wildcat rapids snarl,

Subside, and like a snake

Wind to the quiet lake!

We’ve paddled furtively,

Where giant boughs hide the sky,—

Have stolen, and held our breath,

Thro’ coverts still as death,—

Have left with wing unstirred

The brooding phœbe-bird,

And hardly caused a care

In the water-spider’s lair.

For love of his clear pipe

We’ve flushed the zigzag snipe,—

Have chased in wilful mood

The wood-duck’s flapping brood,—

Have spied the antlered moose

Cropping the young green spruce,

And watched him till betrayed

By the kingfisher’s sharp tirade.

Quitting the bodeful shades

We’ve run thro’ sunnier glades,

And dropping craft and heed

Have bid our paddles speed.

Where the mad rapids chafe

We’ve shouted, steering safe,—

With sinew tense, nerve keen,

Shot thro’ the roar, and seen,

With spirit wild as theirs,

The white waves leap like hares.

And then, with souls grown clear

In that sweet atmosphere,

With influences serene

Our blood and brain washed clean,

We’ve idled down the breast

Of broadening tides at rest,

And marked the winds, the birds,

The bees, the far-off herds,

Into a drowsy tone

Transmute the afternoon.

So, Friend, with ears and eyes

Which shy divinities

Have opened with their kiss,

We need no balm but this,—

A little space for dreams

On care-unsullied streams,—

’Mid task and toil, a space

To dream on Nature’s face!

I am for the open meadows,

  Open meadows full of sun,

Where the hot bee hugs the clover,

  The hot breezes drop and run.

I am for the uncut hayfields

  Open to the cloudless blue,—

For the wide unshadowed acres

  Where the summer’s pomps renew;

Where the grass-tops gather purple,

  Where the oxeye daisies thrive,

And the mendicants of summer

  Laugh to feel themselves alive;

Where the hot scent steams and quivers,

  Where the hot saps thrill and stir,

Where in leaf-cells’ green pavilions

  Quaint artificers confer;