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Jenny O’Hara Pincock

Copyright Canada, 1950

All rights reserved

DEDICATED to NEWTON

FOREWORD

This brief Foreword is in affectionate remembrance of Newton and Jenny Pincock. Newton’s father and my father were Newfoundland clergymen, sometimes occupying adjoining circuits, so I had every opportunity to know the son in a companionship, which continued to ripen after he came to Canada and right through to the time of his passing. Following his marriage to Jenny O’Hara of Madoc, Ontario, I was very frequently a guest at their home in St. Catharines. They had worked out for themselves a philosophy of life which brought serenity in the midst of unabated illness. They spent many hours relating to me their spiritual experiences, and I could not but admire the way they bulwarked themselves against suffering by the steadfastness of their faith.

These poems, written by Jenny in the years following Newton’s departure, are songs and exultations deeply transcendental, somewhat in the manner of George Russell with the recurrent motif of the Oversoul in Nature and Life. Newton became as real to her as in physical existence, and, when she joined him a year or so ago, the journey was like going from one room to another in the same family dwelling.

Hidden Springs is a story told with tenderness and simplicity. The reader must assume a belief in psychic manifestations to overcome any sense of incredibility. With that assumption the tale becomes not just an account of a dream, but a description as natural as that of a search in daytime told by a friend in whose sincerity and truthfulness one absolutely believes. This effect is deepened by the absence of any laboured attempt to prove a point. It is like hearing the voice of your friend when you are certain that he is within hail for an answer.

E. J. Pratt

CONTENTS

HIDDEN SPRINGS

Canada West it was called, Ontario province - - -

Candle-light and oxen, flint-spark flashing,

Hemp and wool homespun, and the hum of the spinning,

The crack of the musket’s aim, and the hardy heaving

Of hand against the mighty stump and stone.

Dim against the forest gloom the starlight

Cross-stitched a rail fence, the clearing

A quilt, cut from out the wilderness

Whom time had wedded down unbroken ages.

Forests there partook of bosoms flowing

With rivers, of hills that paced the sky in vastness,

High filled with glory where the hardwood flamed.

Against the darkening hemlock, spruce and pine-tree

Prophetic lay the clearing. An infant cycle - - -

The coming of the white man and the dooming

Of forest folk and the wilderness - - -

Bore heavy down, and little low-filled moanings

Of frightened things were echoing mother-cries

Deep in the primal heart of Canada.

                   . . . . .

Upon a leathern hinge the door flung to

And let the starlight in. “I think me, James

The frost is growing fast upon the air.

’Tis well the corn is harvested, and grain

Fills the new log shelter in yon gloom

To overflowing. Shall we draw the chair

And pile the corn husks high - - of other year - -

Upon the stone? ^[1]Saleratus is low

Within the box. I deem it well we’ll need

Corn bread before the coming of the cold.”

Gently the door closed out the stars but held

Within the warm reflections of the hearth;

Shadows with arms outstretched caressed the walls

Of log, and drew both James and Mary close.

And when the cobs upon the stone burned low,

Piled criss-cross at their feet, and turned to ash,

She caught the raising up and stored it dry

Within a wooden box, for cake and bread.

“Perhaps”, she said aloud—though it was her wont

More often to impart her thought to James

Unspoken - - “Perhaps some news will come to bear

Of all our children. Harriet, you know,

Loved the corn bread. You remember, James?”

For long the squire - - for so was he appointed

By government a justice of the peace,

His court within the four walls of his cabin

Revered by wandering white and Indian,

By redmen deeply loved, for justice there

Upheld them equal to the white intruder - -

For long the squire held fast his gaze within

The great log’s burning. “Mary wife”, he said

At last, so low the very shadows ceased

To play their sunset game upon his hair,

Silver against the fire light’s ruddy glow,

“Mary my wife, the wilderness we know

Is like the restless ocean, calling, calling - -

Yet locks like death the continents apart

Until, like death, men learn the laws of God;

Thought-principles both hold and loose the chain!

Far Vermont was my home, yet save by skiff

And horse when I returned to link the years

(And birch canoe between the forest portage),

And save by visions in the night, vouchsafed

By gifts such as St. Paul described, I heard

No news. Hold fast to dreams and symbols given

To men by angels since the dawn of time

When dire distressed. Our God He changeth not,

To Him a thousand years are but a day!

Four falls of leaf have passed since Harriet

Loved bride, our daughter, westward rode away

With Thomas Wood, her man. The wilderness

Is vast between Wisconsin where they dwell

And our low door. To-day - - -”

He paused and strove to blow to warmer gleam

The embers. Dark, too dark, the room; as if

His mood already boded ill and caused

The fire to numb the flame before it flicked

The air.

The air.“Today were signs as truly given

As were to Samuel before anointing Saul,

Or to Ezekiel, Daniel or Job,

Elijah or Elisha. The seers of Pharaoh

Interpreted such signs as heaven sent,

Even to common folk like you and me,

To whom a sign from the Invisible

Is as a violet in the Spring’s first blushing,

Beautiful! a thought of God revealing.

And so my faith holds firm.

And so my faith holds firm.Thrice today

A phantom stood where no man ever trod,

Upon the marsh’s trailing treachery,

A lure of blooming! One would never dream

Death lurked beneath the bog! The oxen started

And would to run had I not held the yoke.

Thrice a raven circled like a sign

About the moon when veils portend the storm,

And thrice it croaked its vulgar omenings

Until its passing in the afterglow.”

Then Mary took his hand and held it firm

Where gnarled the knots of muscle and of vein,

“James, my James, let us once more to rest

Between the homespuns. Deep the feather bed

And grateful are we to partake of these;

Our God hath given angels charge of us

You know, in all our ways. Let faith be strong

And He will make His willing clear in time.”

The sand upon the mantle dropped the hours

That breathed beneath the banking of the fire,

And tired oblivion held in deep repose

The cabin . . . .

The cabin . . . .“Mary!” Soft it fell from James,

Soft as petal falling on the frond tip

Of fern, or snowflakes on dried meadow grasses

When breath of morning stirs. Then her eyelids

Broke their trance-like slumber. James was upright

Off his pillow, gazing in the gloaming,

No further signal passed between them, save

The press of hands beneath the counterpane

To hold awareness close . . . . . . .

To hold awareness close . . . . . . .There before them

Swayed a form gently, like white birches

Against the cedars when the moon goes out,

Building by its will and silent longing

Pregnant with necessity. Then

Within its arms a child lay cradled, lifted

Toward them now, beseeching as it faded.

James had risen, donning heavy clothing;

“Lo! a summons, Mary, sent by heaven,

Harriet has child and needs us sorely,

I cannot sleep me longer. Let us rise

For I must go and seek her in Wisconsin!”

Soon the hearth was blazing. Mary’s fingers

Flew to grasp the things of James’ needing,

All the winter lay ahead in journey,

Many months of travel through the forest,

Who would know when once he trod ^[2]Wisconsin

The time of search and waiting ere he found her?

Indians said as vast a wilderness

Stretched unbroken as in Canada West,

Untrodden save by trails the redmen knew!

Dried venison and cakes of maple sugar,

Herb for flavouring heated broth, and plants

Medicinal, their uses gleaned from Indians;

Corn just dried above on hearth stone rack,

Homespun blankets, powder-horn and flint-stone,

All were placed within the basket woven

By Blacksnake’s squaw when she attended Mary

In her first travail, never realizing

Posterity would mark the date and naming

Of James’ namesake, the first white male-child born

In all the country north of Moira’s waters

Lapping in the shadows of her ledges,

Where Indian wigwams sentinelled the approaches.

When the time had come for parting, Mary

Smiled up at him leaning from the saddle,

Smiled up at him peering down upon her

To search her face intently; then the candle-light

Touched the tears that glistened through her lashes

Softly, gleaming like twin stars of Gemini.

“Be not concerned about me, James, this winter,

Blacksnake will provide meat from the forest

When he returns before the winter’s storming;

James and Jane dwell but a few miles northward,

Wheat and corn are ready ground for baking,

Wool in plenty carded for the spinning,

Wood is cut and piled high for the fireside,

What need I but your thoughts winging toward me?

Night and day I shall be praying for thee!”

Upon her head he pressed a hand in blessing,

“Naught shall harm thee. He hath given His angels

Charge to keep thee safe in all thy ways.”

Then his horse led outward through the clearing

Toward Orion fading in the gloaming,

Leaving morning crimson on the ledges.

                    . . . . .

Many moons of travel heading westward

The squire was guided by the dials of heaven

And by his knowledge of the moods of storm

And sunlight, wind and frozen crevices,

Of animals and birds.

Of animals and birds.The towering heads

Of hemlock pointed always toward the east,

And moss grew on the north-west side of pine,

And when the beaver builded high his house

It proved fore-knowledge of the degrees of cold

To come, lest frost should fasten firm the latch

Of his front door beneath the ice’s clamping.

An open winter was not presaged for

The nuts hung heavy on the hickory.

These signs to him were chartings of the pulse

Of Universal Life, its rugged heart-beats

Upon the records of the wilderness,

Leavening subconsciously his thought

Throughout the years, as much himself a part

As sight or sinew; senses by necessity

Developed and by observation strong,

And truly welded

And truly weldedSo was he at last

Guided to an Indian encampment,

The stars foretelling at the time the nearness

Of the Christ Child’s anniversary.

There it was he told the white man’s tale

Of Bethlehem, and of three medicine-men

Who followed a star until they found, within

A bed of dried grass, a papoose who grew

Both kind and fearless, blazing straight a trail

To the Great Spirit’s tepee.

To the Great Spirit’s tepee.Solemnly before

The camp-fire’s glowing rose a Chippewa chief

And nodded gravely. Upon his beaded forehead

Pointed his white prayer-feather, to the Manitou

High in supplication, for prophecy

To be proclaimed must prove its power and fill

The white man’s heart with peace - much peace - for so

He sensed the stranger’s need upon his way.

Then in Chippewa tongue the chieftain spoke,

Dulcet was its tones as mourning dove

And to the squire familiar, for its music

He learned to love when often redmen frequented

His cabin home within the wilderness.

“Always the mighty Manitou guides the mocassin

Of the white father. Blazed are his tortuous trails

And led by ministrations of the spirits;

As waters seek their home within the hillsides

So shall his white papoose, like Bethlehem’s,

At last be found.” Slowly intoning he pointed

The feather down, in faith of the fulfilment.

Then the night wind played upon the pine trees

A song of murmuring and slumber crept

Upon the fading twilight, and they slept.

PART 2

September held wild festival with fields silver at sunrise

And molten gold at setting in the clearings of Wisconsin.

Flocks of Canada-geese high, too high, winged southward,

Honking their fluid flights through funnels spilling over;

Skyways were blotted out with blankets of passenger pigeons

Painting monastic shadows on purple forests trailing

Beneath them. Many a pioneer rested with anxious gaze

Upward, forecasting a winter clamped desperate in arctic fastness.

Clumps of low log-cabins lay cluttered within a valley

In the midst of stumps and rampikes charred and stark of foliage

And feeling. Fluttering wings avoided the desolation

Of cross-saw and canthook, pike-pole and jamdog,

Broad-axe and jackscrew, knock-downs and boomchain - - -

Save the owl, and the croaking of the northern vulture and shrike - - -

As if the harrowing life had tempered a hardness there

In the hearts of the inhabitants, who measured their own morals

Like their great-grandsires in Salem, by hide-bound creeds and dogmas

Reeking of righteous virtue.

Reeking of righteous virtue.Apart in the fading forest

With Herodian zeal and a clergyman - - to give it the sign of the Cross

And lay the ghost for the living - - a group of men were filling

A harlot’s grave. Much care must needs be taken for sign,

Sight or vestige of the vampire must be harrowed and raked to oblivion.

“The child be a nuisance, no respectin’ person would house it with youngsters,”

And another; “Let the settlement give it for its keep to a wandering redman!”

Swift was their duty performed, and fitting to the faithful,

While yet the child clung close to the coatsleeve of a stranger

Inviting himself and his wife to partake of the meagre refreshments

Within the deserted hut. “And whose child can this be?”

He asked his wife. Then she drew her skirts about her, rudely

Pushing the clinging hand from its grasp upon her husband,

“ ’Tis the nameless child of the woman, what say you will become of it?

How old are ye, brat?” she asked, and the child made answer, “Mary.”

“I said how old are ye? You have no name with no father!

Don’t ye know your age?” And the child replied, “I’m three.”

“Three? Ha! Now listen ye, brat of a harlot, you’re five

If you’re a day, with them knowing eyes, too knowing like your mother!”

Frightened the child held her kitten more firmly, hiding her face

In its fur. A parley was held in the hut and her fate decided,

The stranger would keep her (and later, if he wished, give her to Indians)

For the heifer that once was the harlot’s.

                            Then high on a horse and away

They rode. The world was most wonderful up where the wind caught the clouds

And chased them, waving the grasses as if they too were on horseback

Gallop - - ing, gallop - - ing, gallop - - ing!

                     . . . . .

It was after the yule log’s burning. Above in the loft frost fingers

Crept across the floor, a plank each day toward the heat-hole

Above the kitchen fireplace. Annie, the hired girl, below

Was clearing the trenchers of leavings of the wild turkey and stuffing

Of butternuts. Little ribbons of maple still were shining

On top of the snow in the noggin, crinkled and temptingly

Clinking to the stab of the mistress, curling about her fork,

The colour of the copper kettle that hung on the crane in the firelight.

Now that the dinner was over Annie warily lifted

Her eyes toward the hole in the ceiling, a warning finger poised

Mid-air. Then the mistress’ footsteps were heard approaching the fireplace,

And Annie started to sing the beautiful words, pretending

She never tip-toed up the ladder toward the trap-door

With a crust beneath her apron, nor slyly stuck her head

In the loft with a laugh, and a wave of her hardened hands, perhaps

Just in time to exchange a whisper before disappearing below.

            “Yes, we’ll gather at the river,

            The beautiful, the beautiful river;

            Gather with the saints at the river

            That flows from the throne of God”.

Once Annie said the kitten was with mother Over the River,

Why couldn’t one go visiting close to the throne of God?

It sounded comfortable. The tick in the loft was straw-filled

And hard, and every night the wolves howled in the wilderness

Just beyond the logs. Annie was lifting the trap-door

Now, “Ye poor little foundlin’, eat! Ye have eyes like an owlet

And ye grab each morsel of food like a vixen without manners!

See! I’ll pull the straw-tick nearer the hole, but I warn ye -

Sleep! No more whimpering or the mistress will come and whale ye!”

Annie disappeared and locked the trap from the outside;

How then did grandfather, without disturbing the hinges

Stand at the foot of the tick? He was smiling, white hair all over

His face, as mother described him. “I knew you would come for me grandpa!”

Down below the mistress heard the cry from the darkness

And thrust a stick through the hole and rattled it horribly,

But it wasn’t so lonesome now. Grandfather was coming.

              . . . . . . . . .

Still another two moons moved across the twilights

Of winter in Wisconsin before the squire had woven

Meagre information. From settlement to settlement

He wandered always asking, “Have you heard of a woman and child,

Perchance a motherless child, of my daughter from Canada West?”

At last he was led to the cabin wherein above there was shrieking;

A woman answered his knocking excusing the noise by declaring

The child was taking molasses and sulphur distasteful to her.

Bending, the squire crossed the threshold. Then above him a cry rent the cabin

Loosing within him emotions from hidden springs deep and primordial,

Welling unbidden. “I knew! I knew you would come for me, grandpa!

It’s Mary!” He leapt to the ladder, and the child through the open trap-door

Sprang to his waiting arms, and he knelt with them closed round about her.

PART 3

Fourteen summers now was Mary, mirroring

All the thoughts of life that coursed about her,

Love of night and starlit silences

Laving her in mystic radiance,

Child of soul and soil was she, and calm

As Moira’s waters imaging deep the moods

Of cloud and sky. Like the forest foxglove

Stately, yet withal a twinkling laughter

Born from song of birds and rhythm of trees.

Sometimes when the night had wrapped the westwind

All about in purple dusk and dreamings,

She would stand alone beneath the starless

Canopy and sense the urge of wings

Above her, pulsing errless in migration,

Following the thoughts of the Great Spirit

Flowering on the unblazed trails of air;

Why had not her father thus been guided?

Why the tears of Harriet, her mother?

Sometimes, too, she pondered on the possible

Coming of her father; if returning

Would he claim her as his own, and she

Be to him a daughter, forced to leave

The loved abode, the lapping of the waters

And Moira’s meadows? Then would the squire reply,

“Child directed to me by the angels,

Fasten always faith upon the future - - -

Faith in the fulfilment of their planning!”

              . . . . . . . . .

The Fall had garnered well with flaming wings

The children of all the trees deciduous,

And carpeted the far-flung wilderness

With tapestries of gold and bronze and blazing

Crimsons, sun-flecked where the shadows dance

Among the temples of the evergreens.

When one night a frost hung in the gloaming,

The gate in Squire O’Hara’s garden opened

(Fragrant-filled before the falling leaf

With apple and wild plum trees hanging laden)

To a stranger’s faltering footsteps, heavy

With fatigue and limping nigh to fainting.

Seeing his distress the squire ran to him;

“In God’s name, Thomas, where in all the years

Have you lingered? Mary! Haste! The Spring!”

Flashing on her errand like a fawn

Affrighted, knowing only that a turmoil

Trembled within her at the name of “Thomas”,

Mary soon returned, the dropping dipper

Overflowing as the surge within her.

Then the stranger caught her mother’s likeness

And sank upon a stone to fortify

His failing strength.

                        For long a silence fell,

The elder Mary directing all their labours,

Bathing hands and face and stimulating

Circulation as the Indians taught them

Long ago.

                        When the wanderer woke

From exhaustion and partook of food,

He told of how he joined a company

Faring onward for new fields to furrow,

Planning to return first fall of snow,

And in the spring with Harriet trek westward.

But a fever fell upon him, leaving

(After many weeks in Indian encampment)

Blank his mind of all the past, his memory

Numbed and gone. Years of wandering followed,

Goldfields in the south, and Mexico,

One night in a dream a face appeared,

The face of Harriet. Like a trap

Recoiling from a tautness terrifying

His memory returned, the tenseness falling

Full away, but leaving an awareness

Of agony for Harriet, his bride.

Not one day he lingered after the vision,

Often failing strength would hold him prisoner

Until his faith revived the flickering spark

Of life. In all Wisconsin he could find

No trace of Harriet, and so had turned

Eastward into Canada West, praying

God would blaze the trails of his wandering.

James and Mary then, before the firelight

Took his hands, worn with weariness,

“Thomas, bide ye here with us and welcome,

Harriet would have it so - - - at last.”

              . . . . . . . . .

The sands had dropped a century of years,

Lacking but seven, upon the shores of time,

When Mary the child told the tale of Harriet,

Her mother. Stately still was she and calm,

Though on occasions in the telling, impassioned,

A light as of a shekinah playing upon

Her face, perhaps for only eyes to see

With gift of comprehension. Then she said:

“For many years I sought my mother’s grave

In vain, that I might mark it with a stone.”

Rather let this story be your heritage

From Harriet. Write thee well the words

Within and at its close. “He shall give

His angels charge to keep thee to the end.”

PHILOSOPHY

You broke the trail when deep the forest hung

In matted boughs, through gnarled, untrodden ways,

You always broke the trail. Those summer days

The blazer that you wore flashed bright, and flung

A deeper blue than bird of indigo

Through wilderness of green. It often lost

Itself in winding maze. Then I would call

And pause to catch the cadence that would fall

In stillness only northern forests know.

Far ahead would come your answer, tossed

As if the forest folk were listening too,

But nearer to the cove where waiting lay

The cabin low, and little birch canoe,

“This way to home, love - - can you hear? - - - this way!”

Now you have left to break the Greater Trail

And vast the blue that wraps you round. The night

Can hold no fear nor faltering footsteps fail.

Sometimes I hear, O soft! though out of sight,

Your loved voice calling, gentle as on sail

A breeze might blow to tint a tender light,

“This way to home! this way - - the trail is bright!”

The valleys of all the new and yester-years

Stretched endless toward the foothills of the dawn,

Onward and up. Beyond, each minute and hour

That pulsed between the Infinite and Now,

Was spaced by seconds ten thousand years apart;

Our span of earth spread low, a vale of fears,

Though over life, even bird and tree and fawn,

Flamed love, unfolding fragrance as a flower.

Time’s varied trails led on beyond our ken,

Numberless as stars that strewed the greater vast,

And each trail’s length a living soul’s progress

From worlds that were to all the worlds to be;

Each willed his way, a self-determined path,

But where love was denied, there trails of men

Grew dark to eternal plan, and lurid cast

Lowering clouds of sorrow and duress.

Law undenied - - relentless Cause and Effect - -

Flowed freely down from deeds men willed to be,

And frequent flung its fruits to men unborn

Who in their day the fevered course must break.

“Does Infinite Love the innocent life take?”

High rose the cry above the ancient storm,

Not knowing men progress when men are free

To recreate the world that men have wrecked.

Then veils that hid the future’s secret awe

Rolled back their portals’ purple tapestries,

As if by silent yielding to a thought

From some Arch-angel’s concentrated peace;

There moved mankind, both saint and criminal,

In splendid robes of ecstasy self-bought,

And in that gloried breath I grew to see

The plan sublime of life and love and law.

A voice from the unseen sang low,

And stilled in ecstasy, I heard

Sweet fragrant tones, as of a bird

Singing, hidden, drawing high

My winged thoughts unto its sky.

A beloved voice that bade me know

Of light, of majesty and gain,

Of life not lost, in soft refrain

Calling across the veil, of peace

And hope, of heaven and blest release;

Of soldier souls that smiling go,

And how immortal minds take wing,

On transcendental thoughts and fling

Aside the low, of love between

Two worlds spanning the unseen;

Of sacrificial mounds we know

That hold no soul, our fancied time

A second sounding out a chime

Celestial, our fortunes free

And glorious immortality!

O souls that sink low-winged in woe,

O hearts that hold no hallowed light,

Who hunger, craving clearer sight

Attainable yet self-denied,

O World! our warrior loved draw near,

They live and laugh, unconquerable - - - here,

They are not gone, they have not died!

Consciousness is space and time no empire has,

Within eternal frequencies we move

Self-sentient slaves to waves of sight and sound,

Clay-cumbered, manacled, and call it ‘time’,

Sleeping within life’s womb and knowing not.

There is a birth that blossoms on the wind,

That frees as fancies flung from deep desire,

And souls that tremble in time’s womb shall find

A larger sun-lit way for goal and mind,

Shall leap to catch its warmth, as flame to fire.

Time, a cocoon, is for our passing woven,

A dream whose waking plumbs a deeper vast,

We thought before mortality was chosen,

Back of a pre-born past.

Though sense and time cry, “Why the Hun and hate,

Why the agony, and where the goal?”

I cannot doubt my mastership of fate,

Nor bind my boundless soul.

I will not start nor stumble ’neath the wrong,

Nor drink the draughts that lurk in mud and mire,

Fingering with faltering touch a broken lyre,

Forgetting heights majestic, mind and song.

I hold it true free-will is God’s revealing,

Arch-angelship the goal, our bodies dust

(But for our time the mystery concealing),

That God is love, that love is law - - and just.

For I am Will, and I the master; time

Craves no empire save by thought winged free,

I ride victorious winds of day and hour,

And claim the triumph of eternity!

This was tomorrow once and tomorrow is always,

All yesterdays are today and will be forever,

Though the sun rise only in Egypt or Alaska

Or backwards circle through the cosmic blue.

Life like a mosaic glows, infinity

Breathed in beauty. We view only in part

Our earth, nor circumscribe its radiance,

Nor call complete its planning. How can birth

Begin that which always has been? How death end

That which always shall be?

Fools we are!

Remembering not our decision at conception

To circumvolve our souls with laws called physical,

To beat against still another dimension - -

The earth - - our souls for nobler mellowing!

Remembering not the smiling farewells flooding

Our departure upon the magnetic streams

Of love’s desiring!

Even as we swirled in vortex

We called back: “Angels be to me

Until as victor I return! My mission

Fortify, that fear of death be shattered

With the accursed creed of sleep until a future

Resurrection, and the creed of hateful hell,

Though mercy endureth forever and forever!”

This I called back, and more I feel I called,

“Let light break the mysteries through ages accumulated

By dogmas preached in error, with ignorance wed

By false loyalty to a written word.

Man has no language even untranslated

That can express the subtleties of all

Of spirit and of truth, though inspiration

Flows directly from the throne of God.

I shall return though life on earth be called

A span of three score years, I shall return,

I shall return - - - Today.”

                              January 1945

                      Written after Myrtle’s passing.

Like the bittersweet some women are beautiful,

Sparkle and nod,

Swing free in the sun

Certain of admiration,

While the arms they choke and twine about

Bend to lift,

Heavy with weariness,

Their prayers etched in rhythmic monotones

Across the sky.

“Strength! Strength! The burden!”

And the wind blows,

While the bittersweet lolls

Languidly.

Some women are like the bittersweet,

Parasite with red blood,

Certain of admiration,

Though roots deep down

Hidden, abiding,

Suck for sap

To support them.

I’d rather be

A thorn tree,

Alone - - -

On a hill,

Stark and warped,

Chiselled in silver moonlight

Like frozen wind

Against the night.

NATURE

Laughter across sunlit waters,

The fragrance of song in the moonlight,

Thoughts, unrevealed, of red roses full blown

And wafted on dreams of the west wind;

Such tune our souls to the Infinite,

Sharpen to subtle awareness

The senses of spirit within us.

Lo, in the twilight about us

Pulsates an exquisite presence,

Down through the dream-laden, hushed filled darkness

Voices melodious are vibrating,

Majestic, eternal, triumphant,

Bridging the inexorable silence,

Calling in tones loved and loving,

Caressing souls shadowed in sorrow.

Listen who faint by the wayside,

Listen to song and to laughter!

Limitless life flames symphonic about us

Fashioned by love never ending,

Lyrics of law sway about us,

Living, etheric, enduring,

Fear not, nor falter, beloved,

Listen! - - - God’s Angels are near us.

I long to drift in the lea of land

Where the strong hills left the sky,

To will my canoe over mirrored tips

With my paddle idling by.

But the Lord of the water, the Lord of the hills,

The Lord of the air and the deep,

The Over-Soul Lord of the great Everywhere

Has willed me a storm tryst to keep.

So I laugh at the wind when it beats and it breaks,

And the green waves snarl and snap

At my little canoe as it dips and it banks

Each cavernous green-frothed gap.

I laugh at the echoing cries of the loon,

At the storm’s craven cadence ascending

To souls long lost on the last portage

(Mountains and moons without ending).

I laugh - - for beyond the last turn there’s a trail

That keeps tryst with the shore and the sea,

Where the Over-Soul Lord of the great Everywhere

With my Love will keep tryst with me.

Millbrook Meadows

SONGS

I stand in a dreamland of God,

In the tumbling heart of a town,

Where rumbling roar and restless feet

Surge ceaselessly up and down - - -

Surge ceaselessly up and down

A mile or so, at my feet,

And a window’d world of a million fires

Fling their labyrinth lights to a million stars,

Like quivering codes of a million prayers,

Where Heaven and earth - - - - meet.

I move in a thoughtland of God,

Monuments molten by mind,

Materialized visions, swung through the blue,

Vitalized, vivid, recaptured anew!

Skyscrapers, they call them, man-made alone,

But to me they are dreams, jewelled in stone,

Symphonies, dramas, flashed from God’s thoughtlands - - -

Magically sown.

FOR CHILDREN OF THE SUNRISE

AND SUNSET

Story Hour With Jenny O’Hara Pincock
and her Story Book Children

A little angel in the realms of light

Had been very good, so God said,

“I shall find you a teacher all shining and bright

Who will take you down to earth to play

A radio game with your little sister - - -

All day.”

Now, this little angel slipped from sight

On earth one night,

Before she had heard a singing bird,

Or the soft rain patter, like laughter and chatter,

On a shingle roof.

But very soon she learned to dial

Her little earth-sister, the sweetest thoughts

Tuned to a smile,

Like a radio game of hide and seek,

Though not quite the same

In heaven.

Sometimes the little earth-sister would cry

To her chum, Margaret, “O my!

I’ve the grandest idea! Let’s play heaven!

You be an angel and I’ll be me,

And we’ll go sailing, trailing, sailing,

Trailing, sailing over a sea - - - - -

A blue, blue sea - - - - - to a far, far shore

That veils the sky from our front door,

And never get wet, not even the tip

Of the top of our toes - - - -

One bit!”

On the tippiest, tippiest top of a Tamarac tree

I spied a little elf, and he spied me,

For the moon was riding low, and the summer night afar

Was filled with northern lights, and a great white star.

I tip-toed to the Tamarac and I tapped the trunk of tan,

And whispered to its shadow, just before it jumped and ran,

“It’s only me, dear shadow, can you tell me, please, just why

I cannot reach that elf that swings against the midnight sky?”

The shadow dipped and curtsied, so I melted close beside,

Its arms so soft about me that I just leaned hard - - - and cried,

Then I felt the Tamarac tremble and I heard a voice cry, “Hop!”

And there was I beside the elf, on the tippiest tip top!

The world up there was crystal bathed, and sparkling like a sea

Of dancing, flashing rainbows, and I felt all hushed and wee,

“Shall I forget, O little elf, this magic spell was spun?

I’m sure ’twill seem quite silly when the world is bright with sun!”

The elfin voice was tingly as he tripped an elfin lay,

And he turned ten elfin somersaults before he paused to say,

“We never war in elfland, we’ve no money here, you see,

Your world looks just plain crazy from my tippiest Tamarac tree!”

There was a little fairy, little fairy of Glengorra,

Fashioned in a glowing gown of webs and diamond dew,

That sparkled with a thousand thoughts of laughing, dancing lily-bells,

And tinkled as she tripped beneath the tree-tops where they grew.

I’ve never been to fairyland, Glengorra’s smiling fairyland,

Except in dreams when drowsy elves delight a fairy dell,

They sprinkle you with a star-mist and purple lights of flower-glow,

So you can learn their language, if you promise not to tell!

One night the little fairy, little fairy of Glengorra

Brought twenty million moonbeam sprites to lighten up my way,

They led me down a portage of forgotten songs and poetry,

And tied them fast with dream-bows in my hair, so they would stay!

And then we sang them over, all Glengorra’s lovely poetry

Of dreams forgotten, danced them on a waving moonlit sea,

And when I woke to find the sun was peeping through the branches

The fairies and the songs had fled - - - and left just only me!

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

[The end of Hidden Springs by Jenny O'Hara Pincock]