See, see, we are nearing them now; the first wild thundering hoof-beats
Have ridden them down, 'mid the shriekings and groanings of anguish,
Blotting them out with their loves and their hates into blackness.
Ha! Ha! ride, ride, my beauties, my terrible tramplers!
Pound, pound into dust the mother, the child, and the husband!
Pound, pound to the pulse of my hate that exults in your thunders!
Ha! Over the little ones nestled to suckle the bosom,
Over the man that I loved, we thunder, we thunder!
Over the woman I hate with the flame of her hair on his bosom;
Trampling, treading them down out into silence and blackness,
Like the swirl of a merciless storm we sweep on to darkness forever!
And now, when the moon is in heaven, and under the night
Is heard on the winds the thunder of shadowy horses,
Then out of the dark I arise, and again am a woman;
And leap to the back of an ebon steed that knows me,
And hound him on in the wake of hoofs that thunder;
While under the mirk and the moon, out into the blackness,
Round the world's edge with an eerie, mad, echoing laughter,
Leaps the long cry of the hate of the wild snake-woman.
Ha! Ha! it is joy for the hearts that we crush as we thunder!
Ho! Ho! for the hate of the winds that laugh to my laughter!
Ha! Ha! it is well for the shriekings that pass into silence,
As under the night, out into the blackness forever,
Rides the wild hate of Saki, the mad snake-woman!
Love
Love came at dawn when all the world was fair,
When crimson glories, bloom, and song were rife;
Love came at dawn when hope's wings fanned the air,
And murmured, "I am life."
Love came at even when the day was done,
When heart and brain were tired, and slumber pressed;
Love came at eve, shut out the sinking sun,
And whispered, "I am rest."
Victoria
JUBILEE ODE, A. D. 1897
With thunder of cannon and far-off roll of drum,
And martial music blaring forth her glory,
'Mid miles of thronging millions down each street
Where all the earth is bound in one heart-beat
The world's great Empire's greatest Queen doth come,
Borne on one mighty, rocking earthquake voice
Wherein all peoples of wide earth rejoice--
She comes, she comes, to beat of martial drums,
And pageants blazoning England's ancient story;
The good, gray Queen, whose majesty and worth
Have lent their radiance to remotest earth;
While the splendor and might and power of her mighty empire bound her;
And the serried millions, mad with joy, are near her,
All to love her, none to fear her,
But nearer far than power, than splendor dearer,
The surging love of her loved people round her.
She comes, she comes, encircled by her people,
While praise to Heaven peals out from tower and steeple,
Into the great cathedral, hushed and dim,
With thankful heart and humble queenly head
Over the sleep of England's mighty dead,
To render up her heart's best thoughts to Him
The King of Kings--'mid hush of priestly tread,
And gloried anthem's solemn pealing hymn.
The mighty millions, awed, now bow the head,
Thank Heaven for her simple, noble life,
Earth's queenliest empress, mother, daughter, wife!
Thank Heaven for all she held her dearest own!
Forgiveness for the weakness she hath known!
Blessings on her wise old widowed head,
For what her life is now, and what her life hath been,
Noble mother, wife and Queen!
Let the mighty organs roll, and the mighty throng disperse!
She is ours, and we are hers,
And both are Britain's. Both to Britain's God
Lift up the heart-felt praise for the might of splendid days,
For the glory that hath been.
Let the cannon thunder out, and the miles of voices shout--Victoria!
Let the bells peal out afar, till the rocket tells the star,
And the ocean shouts its pæan to the thunder-answering bar;
England's glory, Britain's pride,
Revered of half a world beside,
O good gray Queen, Victoria!
Daughter of monarchs, mother of kings;
All her sorrows we have shared,
All her triumphs they are ours.
Kind Heaven, that virtue still endowers,
Be with her, may her path be flowers;
Be with her, may her days be spared,
Death aloof with shadowing wings,
Unto nature's latest hours!
Daughter of monarchs, mother of kings,
O good gray Queen, Victoria!
Let all feuds of faction die,
Let the blaring party bugles cease to blow,
Let insincere and base detraction lie,
With sore defeat and bitterness, her carping sisters, low,
In this one supremest hour,
Day of Britain's ancient power,
Day of all her golden dower,
Of victory-towering centuries, tower on tower.
Let all our hatreds be forgot,
All bitterness be swept away,
Remembering only the glory of our lot
In this century-honoring day!
Celt and Scot and Saxon, let us only know,
A mighty Queen comes to her own at last,
Her people's love and reverence--as the glow
Of some splendid western heaven,
Deepening into richer even,
Ere it purples to the vast.
Past the mailèd gates of fears,
The hooded menace of the years,
Where rang the iron voices rolling on her ears,
Of royal dreams the requiem and pall,
And awful fates of thrones foredoomed to fall;
Our aged Queen, on this glad day she stands
Amid the throbbings of her land's great love,
Firm in her rule, her faith in God above,
Earth's golden keys of happiness in her hands.
O splendid life of Britain's splendid days!
O noble soul, above all blame or praise!
O fame that will outlast our little fame!
O long-enduring honor greater than time or death!
O name that will outlive even that immortal name,
England's more ancient glory, the great Elizabeth!
And we, thy loyal subjects far away,
In these new lands that own thy sceptre's sway,
Betwixt thy Royal Isle and far Cathay--
Across the thunder of the western foam,
O good gray Queen, our hearts go home, go home,
To thine and thee!
We are thine own while empires rise and wane,
We are thine own for blessing or for bane,
And, come the shock of thundering war again,
For death or victory!
Not that we hate our brothers to the south,
They are our fellows in the speech of mouth,
They are our wedded kindred, our own blood,
The same world-evils we and they withstood,
Our aims are theirs, one common future good--
Not that we hate them, but that there doth lie
Within our hearts a golden fealty
To Britain, Britain, Britain, till the world doth die.
And him we send thee as our greatest son,
The people's choice, to whose firm hand is given
The welfare of our country under heaven;
No truer son hast thou in all thy coasts,
No wiser, kindlier, stronger, Britain boasts;
Our knightly leader, Norman in his blood,
But truest Briton in heart and speech and mind,
Belovèd well of all his fellow-kind,
In statesmanship our nation's highest mood,
Our silver-tongued and golden-hearted one,
In every inch and every thought a man,
Our noblest type, ideal Canadian!
Receive him 'mid those, greatest, thou dost own,
Thy mighty empire-builders, bastioning round thy throne.
O England's latest, greatest Queen,
Greatness more great than all her greatness that hath been,
Under thy sceptre the outmost continents hang,
And trackless oceans thunder out their surges.
These are thy realms. Never in earth's old story
Hath queen of earthly realm owned such resplendent glory.
Not golden Homer such wondrous kingdoms sang.
Round earth's wide girdle thy mighty empire verges,
Out-splendoring all prophecy of olden days;
Thou, latest and greatest on that throne whose base
Withstood the shock of centuries, still withstands
The lowering hate of Europe's iron bands;
In thy true keeping shall that sceptre be
A golden wand of happiness to the free
Who call thee Queen from outmost sea to sea.
That throne to them a mighty lighthouse tower,
A truth-compelling majesty of light,
Blinding the mists of ignorance and night,
Where round its base throughout the centuries' flight,
Thunder in vain earth's hosts upon its iron power.
England
England, England, England,
Girdled by ocean and skies,
And the power of a world and the heart of a race,
And a hope that never dies.
England, England, England,
Wherever a true heart beats,
Wherever the rivers of commerce flow,
Wherever the bugles of conquest blow,
Wherever the glories of liberty grow,
'Tis the name that the world repeats.
And ye who dwell in the shadow
Of the century's sculptured piles,
Where sleep our century-honored dead
While the great world thunders overhead,
And far out miles on miles,
Beyond the smoke of the mighty town,
The blue Thames dimples and smiles;
Not yours alone the glory of old,
Of the splendid thousand years,
Of Britain's might and Britain's right
And the brunt of British spears.
Not yours alone, for the great world round
Ready to dare and do,
Scot and Celt and Norman and Dane,
With the Northman's sinew and heart and brain,
And the Northman's courage for blessing or bane
Are England's heroes too.
North and South and East and West,
Wherever their triumphs be,
Their glory goes home to the ocean-girt isle
Where the heather blooms and the roses smile
With the green isle under her lee;
And if ever the smoke of an alien gun
Should threaten her iron repose,
Shoulder to shoulder against the world,
Face to face with her foes,
Scot and Celt and Saxon are one
Where the glory of England goes.
And we of the newer and vaster West,
Where the great war banners are furled,
And commerce hurries her teeming hosts,
And the cannon are silent along our coasts,
Saxon and Gaul, Canadians claim
A part in the glory and pride and aim
Of the Empire that girdles the world.
England, England, England,
Wherever the daring heart
By Arctic floe or torrid strand
Thy heroes play their part;
For as long as conquest holds the earth,
Or commerce sweeps the sea,
By Orient jungle or Western plain,
Will the Saxon spirit be.
And whatever the people that dwell beneath,
Or whatever the alien tongue,
Over the freedom and peace of the world
Is the flag of England flung.
Till the last great freedom is found,
And the last great truth be taught,
Till the last great deed be done
And the last great battle is fought;
Till the last great fighter is slain in the last great fight
And the war-wolf is dead in his den,
England, breeder of hope and valor and might,
Iron mother of men.
Yea, England, England, England,
Till honor and valor are dead,
Till the world's great cannons rust,
Till the world's great hopes are dust,
Till faith and freedom be fled,
Till wisdom and justice have passed
To sleep with those who sleep in the many-chambered vast,
Till glory and knowledge are charnelled dust in dust,
To all that is best in the world's unrest,
In heart and mind you are wed.
While out from the Indian jungle
To the far Canadian snows,
Over the east and over the west,
Over the worst and over the best,
The flag of the world to its winds unfurled,
The blood-red ensign blows.
Sebastian Cabot
I
New startled from her sensual dreams,
Europa half-expectant lay,
Revolving dimly broken gleams
Of some far-off unrisen day,
As one sees through dim mists of night
Some far, majestic, moon-paved mountain way.
On grim and barbarous couch reclined,
Groped blindly toward her ultimate goal,
When she through midnight of the mind
Would wake to knowledge of her soul.
So with a prescience all divine,
She left her bestial gods behind,
And turned her toward the western stars,
When this old rugged, princely tar-of-tars
Beat bravely out, where heaving leagues on leagues
Billowed the western brine.
II
Greater than power or splendor,
Or birth, or might of gold,
Is the noble life of a noble man
Of a heart both brave and bold--
All honor to the spirit
That knows not earth's defeat,
That meets with courage true and strong
What brave souls have to meet--
And honor to the hero,
Who centuries ago
Sailed out from old Bristowe
Into the trackless waters of the west;
Who bravely beat and beat
Where sky and waters meet,
Till he saw his white cliffs vanish
Under ocean's heaving breast;
Nor cowardly turned him back,
But held straight on his track,
Though old ocean rose up ravening in gray and angry wrack,
And bravely beat and bore up to the west;
All honor to his spirit,
For the glories we inherit,
And peace of mighty slumber
Breathe calmly round his rest!
Where'er his earthy bed,
About his pillowed head
Forever beats old Ocean's monotone:--
For even from a child he loved its voices wild,
Its splendid throb that made his heart its own.
III
I dream his name, and there doth come to me,
A vision of league-long breakers landward hurled;
Of olden ships far-beating out to sea;
Of splendid shining wastes of heaving green
Far-stretching round the world;
Of many voices heard from many lands,
Torrid and Arctic, Orient, and the Line;
Of heaving of vast anchors, vanishing strands;
And over all the wonder and thunder and wash
Of the loud, world-conquering brine.
Of sky-rimmed waste, or fog-enshrouded reef,
Where some mad siren ever sings the grief
Of all the mighty wrecks in that weird span
Since ocean and time began.
IV
Venice and England cradled!
Could this seaman be
Other than ocean's child,
With heart less restless than that vast and wild
Great heart of the thrilling sea?
Wakened to her long thunders,
Cradled in her soft voice,
Could other voice of all earth's voices sweet
Make his stern heart rejoice?
Yea, this was better than all, greater than all to him,
Truer than youth's mad whim,
The only love of his youth, the only lore of his age,
To gaze on her vast tumultuous scroll,
To pore on her wrinkled page:--
For he was very soul of her soul,
And she meet mother for him.
V
Over the hazy distance,
Beyond the sunset's rim,
Forever and forever
Those voices called to him.
Westward! westward! westward!
The sea sang in his head,
At morn in the busy harbor,
At nightfall on his bed--
Westward! westward! westward!
Over the line of breakers,
Out of the distance dim;
Forever the foam-white fingers
Beckoning, beckoning him.
VI
This was no common spirit,
This sailor of old Bristowe;
Not one of the mart-made helots
Such as the world doth know;
But a bronzed and rugged veteran,
Adrift in the vanguard's flow;
A son of the world's great highway
Where the mighty storm winds blow.
VII
All honor to this grand old Pilot,
Whose flag is struck, whose sails are furled,
Whose ship is beached, whose voyage ended;
Who sleeps somewhere in sod unknown,
Without a slab, without a stone,
In that great Island, sea-impearled.
Yea, reverence with honor blended,
For this old seaman of the past,
Who braved the leagues of ocean hurled,
Who out of danger knowledge rended,
And built the bastions, sure and fast,
Of that great bridgeway grand and vast
Of golden commerce round the world.
All honor! yea, a day shall come,
If glory lives in human rhyme,
When our poor faltering lips are dumb;
A greater and more splendid time,
When larger men of mightier aim
Shall do meet honor to his name.
Yea, honor! only greatness keeps
Its sanctuary where this seaman sleeps;
This old Venetian, Briton-born,
Who held of fear a hero's scorn,
Who nailed his colors to the mast,
Who sought in reverence for the true,
And found it in the rifting blue
Of those broad furrows of the vast:--
Who knew no honors, held no state,
But in his ruggedness was great.
Who like some sea-shell, in him felt
The universe of ocean dwelt,
Whose whole true being nature cast
Like his own ocean-spaces, vast!
VIII
Yea, he is dead; this mighty seaman!
Four long centuries ago.
Beating westward, ever westward,
Beating out from old Bristowe,
Saw he far in visions lifted,
Down the golden sunset's glow,
Through the bars of twilight rifted,
All the glories that we know.
Beating westward, ever westward,
Over heaving leagues of brine,
Buffeted by arctic scurries,
Languid trade-winds from the line;
With a courage heaven-gifted,
And a fortitude divine.
Yea, he is dead; but who shall say
That all the splendid deeds he wrought,
That all the lofty truths he taught
(If truth be knowledge nobly sought),
Are dead and vanished quite away?
Nay nay, he lives; and such as he,
In every lofty human dream,
In every true sublimity
That splendors earth and makes it teem
With inward might and majesty;
This grand old Pilot of Bristowe,
Incarnate, comes to earth again,
As when, four hundred years ago,
He swept in storm and shine and snow,
Athwart the thunders of the main.
IX
Greater far than shaft or storied fane,
Than bronze and marble blent,
Greater than all the honors he could gain
From a nation's high intent,
He sleeps alone, in his great isle, unknown,
With the chalk-cliffs all around him for his mighty grave-yard stone,
And the league-long sounding roar
Of old ocean, forevermore
Beating, beating, about his rest,
For fane and monument.
The World-Mother
(SCOTLAND)
By crag and lonely moor she stands,
This mother of half a world's great men,
And kens them far by sea-wracked lands,
Or orient jungle or western fen.
And far out mid the mad turmoil,
Or where the desert places keep
Their lonely hush, her children toil,
Or wrapt in wide-world honor sleep.
By Egypt's sands or western wave,
She kens her latest heroes rest,
With Scotland's honor o'er each grave,
And Britain's flag above each breast.
And some at home.--Her mother love
Keeps crooning wind-songs o'er their graves,
Where Arthur's castle looms above,
Or Strathy storms or Solway raves.
Or Lomond unto Nevis bends
In olden love of clouds and dew;
Where Trosach unto Stirling sends
Greetings that build the years anew.
Out where her miles of heather sweep,
Her dust of legend in his breast,
'Neath agèd Dryburgh's aisle and keep,
Her Wizard Walter takes his rest.
And her loved ploughman, he of Ayr,
More loved than any singer loved
By heart of man amid those rare,
High souls the world hath tried and proved;
Whose songs are first to heart and tongue,
Wherever Scotsmen greet together,
And, far-out alien scenes among,
Go mad at the glint of a sprig of heather.
And he her latest wayward child,
Her Louis of the magic pen,
Who sleeps by tropic crater piled,
Far, far, alas, from misted glen;
Who loved her, knew her, drew her so,
Beyond all common poet's whim;--
In dreams the whaups are calling low,
In sooth her heart is woe for him.
And they, her warriors, greater none
E'er drew the blade of daring forth,
Her Colin[2] under Indian sun,
Her Donald[3] of the fighting North.
Or he, her greatest hero, he,
Who sleeps somewhere by Nilus' sands,
Grave Gordon, mightiest of those free,
Great captains of her fighting bands.
Yea, these and myriad myriads more,
Who stormed the fort or ploughed the main,
To free the wave or win the shore,
She calls in vain, she calls in vain.
Brave sons of her, far severed wide
By purpling peak or reeling foam;
From western ridge or orient side,
She calls them home, she calls them home.
And far, from east to western sea,
The answering word comes back to her,
"Our hands were slack, our hopes were free,
We answered to the blood astir;
"The life by Kelpie loch was dull,
The homeward slothful work was done,
We followed where the world was full,
To dree the weird our fates had spun.
"We built the brigg, we reared the town,
We spanned the earth with lightning gleam,
We ploughed, we fought, mid smile and frown,
Where all the world's four corners teem.
"But under all the surge of life,
The mad race-fight for mastery,
Though foremost in the surgent strife,
Our hearts went back, went back to thee."
For the Scotsman's speech is wise and slow,
And the Scotsman's thought it is hard to ken,
But through all the yearnings of men that go,
His heart is the heart of the northern glen.
His song is the song of the windy moor,
And the humming pipes of the squirling din;
And his love is the love of the shieling door,
And the smell of the smoking peat within.
And nohap how much of the alien blood
Is crossed with the strain that holds him fast,
Mid the world's great ill and the world's great good,
He yearns to the Mother of men at last.
For there's something strong and something true
In the wind where the sprig of heather is blown;
And something great in the blood so blue,
That makes him stand like a man alone.
Yea, give him the road and loose him free,
He sets his teeth to the fiercest blast,
For there's never a toil in a far countrie,
But a Scotsman tackles it hard and fast.
He builds their commerce, he sings their songs,
He weaves their creeds with an iron twist,
And making of laws or righting of wrongs,
He grinds it all as the Scotsman's grist.
* * * * *
Yea, there by crag and moor she stands,
This mother of half a world's great men,
And out of the heart of her haunted lands
She calls her children home again.
And over the glens and the wild sea floors
She peers so still as she counts her cost,
With the whaups low calling over the moors,
"Woe, woe, for the great ones she hath lost."
[2] Colin Campbell, Hero of Lucknow.
[3] Sir Donald Mackay, first Lord Reay, whose Mackay Dutch regiment was
famous in the thirty years war.
The Lazarus of Empire
The Celt, he is proud in his protest,
The Scot, he is calm in his place,
For each has a word in the ruling and doom
Of the Empire that honors his race;
And the Englishman, doggèd and grim,
Looks the world in the face as he goes,
And he holds a proud lip, for he sails his own ship,
And he cares not for rivals nor foes:--
But lowest and last, with his areas vast,
And horizon so servile and tame,
Sits the poor beggar Colonial
Who feeds on the crumbs of her fame.
He knows no place in her councils,
He holds no part in the word
That girdles the world with its thunders
When the fiat of Britain is heard:--
He beats no drums to her battles,
He gives no triumphs her name,
But lowest and last, with his areas vast,
He feeds on the crumbs of her fame.
How long, O how long, the dishonor,
The servile and suppliant place?
Are we Britons who batten upon her,
Or degenerate sons of the race?
It is souls that make nations, not numbers,
As our forefathers proved in the past.
Let us take up the burden of empire,
Or nail our own flag to the mast.
Doth she care for us, value us, want us,
Or are we but pawns in the game;
Where lowest and last, with our areas vast,
We feed on the crumbs of her fame?
In Holyrood
1897
I stand in Edinburgh, in Holyrood,
Where Scotland's Mary flaunted; iron Knox came,
With cavernous eyes and words of prophet-flame,
And broke her soul as bonds of brittle wood:--
And all stern Scotland's evil and her good,
Her austere ghosts, her souls of fiery shame,
Her adamantine passions none could tame,
Arise anew and drip in Rizzio's blood.
Here in these walls, these guilty corridors,
Beside[4] that bed where Elizabeth's eyes look down;--
Across the centuries with their fading band
Of angry years of Presbyterian frown,--
I only know these tears[5] of weird remorse;
The woman rules. All else is shifting sand.
[4] In Queen Mary's bedroom in Holyrood, a portrait of Queen Elizabeth
hangs on the wall above the bed.
[5] It is said that Knox, during this memorable interview, made the
Queen weep.
Unabsolved
A DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
(This poem is founded on the confession of a man who went with one of
the expeditions to save Sir John Franklin's party, and who, being sent
ahead, saw signs of them, but, through cowardice, was afraid to tell.)
O Father, hear my tale, then pity me,
For even God his pity hath withdrawn.
O death was dread and awful in those days!
You prate of hell and punishment to come,
And endless torments made for those who sin.
Stern priest, put down your cross and hearken me;--
I see forever a white glinting plain,
From night to night across the twinkling dark,
A world of cold and fear and dread and death,
And poor lost ones who starve and pinch and die;--
I could have saved them--I--yea, even I.
You talk of hell! Is hell to see poor frames,
Wan, leathery cheeks, and dull, despairing eyes,
From whence a low-flamed madness ebbing out,
Goes slowly deathward through the eerie hours,
To hear forever pitiless, icy winds
Feel in the shivering canvas of the tent,
With idle, brute curiosity nature hath,
While out around, one universe of death,
Stretches the loveless, hearthless arctic night?