And fire of poet and seer,
The breath of man's goodwill,
The Father near;
Am end of the way men grope,
Core of the ceaseless strife,
I am man's bread of hope,
Water of life.
I am the root of faith,
Substance of vision, too,
The spirit shadowed in wraith,
Urim in dew.
I am the soul's white Sun,
Love's slain, enthronëd Lamb,
I am the Holy One,
I am I AM!
THE GLAD GOLDEN YEAR.
The glad golden year
Wheels slow in its coming.
Wild labor commotions
And murmurings for bread
While besotted with beer
Is the day's up-summing,--
Insurgent emotions
To beauty stone-dead!
What help, do you say,
For these sons of men?
In God's image they're made--
Cleanse their eyes to His light,
Tune their ears to His lay,
Give His bread once again
Whose price the Christ paid,--
Heaven's bread is their right!
Earth's means of achieving
(Herds, field-food, and river,
Rain-cisterns in sky,
And sunshine elysian)
Forever are weaving,
And fain would deliver,
Web of God's beauty nigh--
Sense-ravishing vision!
Sow bread in the field:
Warm rain will transfigure
The humble grey furrow
With a million pearl suns
On the lanceolate shield
Of emerald and ligure,
And the moon o'er each burrow
Of the low-buried ones
Turn silver the spear-tips
In the dusk, with her lips;
And when breezy morn's told,
All ripples in gold.
With envious repining
Or solace of delight--
As emotion is pure
Or turbid with ill--
Man views the outshining
From the heavenly height,
Feels the sweet picture's lure,
Hears the bird-copse athrill,
Makes him lord, or does not,
Of the park, house, or cot.
Who holds the sure key
To this largesse of treasure
Is a king among men,
Though a workman in blue,--
Of a strain yet to be
Who with God taketh pleasure
In the young earth again,
And feeleth it new.
Slow speeds the glad year
Told by poet and seer,
Yet I catch the far hum--
It will come, it will come!
TETRAPLA.
LOVE.
The blooming flowers, the galaxies of space,
Lie pictured in a sheeny drop of even;
And globed in one round word, on lips of grace,
Shine out the best of earth and all of heaven.
SACRIFICE.
Green-haloed cup of the gods, cool from the deeps,
Fountain of life, whence comes thy wave that blesses?
"The burdened cloud attempts the mountain steeps,
To perish 'mid the rugged wildernesses."
LIBERTY.
Thou rugged Gaian of man's free behests,
Belted and helmed 'neath God's red thunder-flails;
World climes upon thy many-cloven crests,
And ordered kingdoms in thy fertile vales!
BEAUTY.
The grace of strength the shaggy hills attest,
And cresting billows in their power serene;
Beauty was suckled at no weakling's breast,
She sits the manëd lion like a queen.
FAIRY GLEN.
Hid in the virgin wilderness,
The fretted Conway's Fairy Glen
This summer day reveals its charms
For painter's brush or poet's pen.
The air is flecked with night and day,
The ground is tiger-dusk and -gold,
The rocks and trees, empearled in haze,
A soft and far enchantment hold.
The place is peopled with shy winds
Whose fitful plumes waft dewy balm
From all the wildwood, and let fall
An incommunicable calm.
Through cleft rocks green with spray-wet moss,
Deep in the sweet wood's golden glooms,
The amber waters pulsing go,
With foam like creamy lily blooms.
Shuttles of shadow and of light
In-gleam and -gloom the watery woof
As rolls the endless stream away
Beneath the wind-swayed leafy roof.
(So life's swift shuttles dart and play,
As ceaseless speeds its flashing loom;
Our day is woven of sun and cloud,
A figured web of gold and gloom.)
God's arbor, this enchanted Glen!
The air is sentient with His name;
Put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
The trees are bursting into flame!
IN CITY STREETS.
The city's ways were crowded thick,--
I bent my steps athrough its mass
Of men and women, stone and brick,
Its whirring wheels and piping brass.
And all day long, with hurrying feet,
I trod the surging marts of trade;
Yet in the rush and roar of street
A calm within my breast was made.
For visions came of fair things wrought
By beauty's witching hand and grace
Upon my spirit when I caught
Life's spring-time image of her face:--
Blue violets in mossy bed,
Flashing with jewels on their breast;
The sky-stained eggs of robin red
Laid in her lined adobe nest;
The shy lone brook, crept soft upon
Lest I should fright its brattling play;
The woods ahark for something gone,
Or whispering of elf and fay;
The silver lake with lilies in bloom,
Their cups half-full of heaven's gold,--
The circling shore all prankt with plume
Of ferns, whose fronds the waters told;
And up the hill the whitethroat's song--
A crystal bell that shakes the dew!
While floats in dream the cloud along,
And veils the palpitating blue;
The musical and dream-like rain
Falling on roof o'er fragrant hay;
The blood-red spear, unflushed of pain,
Of sunbeam thrust 'tween battens grey;
And in a trice, the sculptured shore
Where halcyon tides with wonder-wings
Redden their plumes in toil to soar
To where Evangeline's memory clings,--
Such sights and sounds swift came and went,--
Glad sunshafts of an April day!
And to impetuous traffic lent
The restful sweetness of the may.
Imprisoned close in city marts,
O childhood, so divinely fair,
For thee, deep in my heart of hearts,
Sweet pity beats her wings all bare!
BAY OF FUNDY.
I.
Deep Bay, broad-breasted and brave!
Oft rocked in thy swaying arms
Beneath the hidden sun,
As foam-bell tost on thy wave
I drift again 'mid thy charms
To sphinx-like Blomidon.
Why are thy glories untold?
Thy cliffs of purple and red
And crystal-veinëd rocks,
Thy hasting waters deep-rolled
'Neath skies whose colors are spread
With art that all art mocks;
Thy faltering ranks of white mist
Flanking vast floods and vast ebbs--
A mimicry of war,--
Oriflammes of dew-sprent list,
Banners of gossamer webs,
Soft blown as lights of Thor!
II.
The smooth shining flats all bare
To the heavens' nakedest ken,
Mirror the hills, like lakes.
The drowsy lull of the air
Will stir anew to life when
The tidal note awakes.
From lang'rous south seas that creep,
These odors dank issue forth,
Odors of sun-steeped brine--
It comes! a breeze from a deep,
Full-fed from seas of the North,
A waft of Vikings' wine!
Now beats the pulse of the flood,
The throbbings deep of a heart
Felt all around the world;
Now smites its rhythm with a thud,--
With ictus sure of its art
That mountains huge has hurled.
The unsouled rivers and creeks
Have being, have life to the full,
Into their mouths rebreathed,
As heaves the broad breast that seeks
T' embosom each leaning hull,
Bare on red banks tide-seethed.
The iron gride of the flow
Powders the rocks in its path,
And bears the dust afar
To build their urns, where may grow
Sweet grasses and "primrose rathe,"--
Fair Grand Pré, Tantramar!
III.
Builder, unbuilder of shores,
Thresher of cliffs vapor-stoled,
God's masterworkman strong!
Yet on thy bosom the oars
Of sailor lads ply and fold
To sweet refrains of song.
And glad in thy twinkling smiles,
Awing, like sea-gulls, the ships
Are breasting stout the breeze,--
Ah me, thy treacherous wiles!
Witching fog-wraiths draping rips!
Currents of iron seas!
IV.
O Fundy, deep-breathing sea,
Regal in power and rimmed
In hollow of His hand,
Captive to beauty, yet free,
Sleep now, thy Basin is brimmed
In fair Acadian land!
Haloed with pearl-raying rings
The moon, at her utmost poised,
Looks on her silver shield;
And the tide wakens and swings--
Ebbs with a clangor far noised
And wheeling wings afield.
AT THE LOOK-OFF.
(PARTRIDGE ISLAND.)
I.
What more can world-worn spirit ask
Than here in nature's arms to bask
And see the plangent tide at task?
The zest is swift as lusty youth,
(Touched with an undertone of ruth,)
Invincible as ageless truth,--
The wonder of all wondrous things!
How coy the birds! they lift their wings;
The wary ship to her anchor swings.
II.
Sun, moon and stars of ancient prime,
And of to-day, in confluence chime
The universal One sublime;
Pouring these floods of deep surcease,--
In universal pain, release;
In universal travail, peace.
The strong right arm is here laid bare
In strife, by which He doth declare
Another shall not with Him share.
Forces of universal law
Which hither these vast waters draw
Send through my soul His tides of awe;
While universal radiance charms
And beckons to His winsome arms
To soothe my timid soul's alarms.
Of joy, of grief He does not rob,--
The light with intermittent throb
Falls on the waters glad--a-sob.
III.
Here He and I are conscious each
Of each--a Deep, a waiting beach!
A shell, a Sea that doth beseech!
How all unswift my eyes to see
The universal God in Thee,
Who walked the waves of Galilee!
Give, freely give--Thou dost not dole!
Pour chrismal balm upon my soul!
Anoint me from Thy golden bowl!
IV.
In travail, pain, grief, joy, the wave
Slumbers nor sleeps the earth to save--
This word the blissful God He gave,
Ere yesterday in Palestine
Love's flagon poured the ruddy wine,
Life of the universal Vine.
V.
The tameless tides, unresting, seethe;
I rest me, for He works beneath;
Peace! peace! the toiling waters breathe.
Peace, healing peace, in murmuring main,
In brooding sky fanned by lone crane!
The sunbeams bicker in the Lane--
Peace on the lighter's falling sail!
Peace on the ships that breast the gale!
And peace in human hearts that fail!
THE STORMY PETREL.
Fair hero, brave hero of sea--
The sea in its darkness of wrath!
I run down the breaker with thee,
I mount the next in its path.
Our hearts beat together, charmed one,
Lift their wings as fearless as free,
Ride the gloom as if 'twere the sun
Gold-bridled for you and for me.
Summer rain, the cold drifting sleet
That whistles as spiteful as hail!
A roadstead, the billows that fleet
Under the black lash of the gale!
We laugh at their seething, their roar,
Draw our breath full in their face;
We have wings, we know we can soar,--
Your secret and mine in embrace!
(Wings, wings, the soul of our life!
Outspread they victory tell,--
Upliftings amid gulfs of strife,
Wafts of heaven that keep us from hell!)
Brave hero, winged hero of sea--
The sea with black tempest in breast,
Here we mount on the breakers, free,
Soon to soar into calm, into rest!
OBLIVION.
I.
The all-devouring sea! I said,--
While looking on the green- and red-
Ribbed rocks a-tilt that flank Sharp's Head:
The diary of the rain cloud driven
To yield again its spoil by heaven,
The west wind serving the replevin--
Notes of the ocean's teeming floor,
The carven shell, the seaweed's spore,
And ripple-marks of tidal shore--
Vast tablets of the world of eld,
A mighty Bodleian unspelled,
By ravine into dust compelled!
The hills are fated to their fall.
Upon the great, upon the small,
Oblivion drops her raven pall.
II.
And then I thought: The form and mass
May baffle ken of eye and glass,
And yet the record may not pass.
Tittle and jot, where all seems nil,
A finer form in form may still
Wait touch of that which doth fulfil.
III.
The liquid air, unseen, unheard,
Writes in an everlasting word
The wing-beats of the hasting bird.
The sweet light leaves, and bears abroad,
A picture of the wide realms trod
With wingëd feet gold sandal-shod;
Etching in truth and beauty's grace,
Beyond compare of antique vase,
On fronting hills the other's face.
Nor shoreless deeps of space debar
Blazon on earth of records far,
In greening orb or burning star.
IV.
I said: Coined for exchange in mart
Of purblind men with leaden heart,
This word Oblivion on life's chart!
Deft science' balance now prevails--
This simulacrum in the scales,
The verdict to the counter nails.
V.
And then, distraught by onward sweep
Of meditation long and deep,
I sought me out a place to weep--
O soul, may not thy leaves, I mused,
Stirred by death's shock through all diffused,
Reveal thy story unconfused,
Clear traced by thought's all-subtle beam--
A quickened palimpsest agleam,
Re-orient out of dusk and dream!
SEA MUSIC.
(_For dramatic orchestration._)
I.
Fleecy white waters,
Shorn by the tempest,
Wrathful and doomful
Rolling to land!
Naked and lustrous,
Fiercest of smiters,
Straight for the stern cliffs,
Iron to steel!
Shock unto shock calls,
Boom answers boom,
Roars the huge tide-loom,
Thunder and storm!
Torn are the vast webs
Woven of tumult,
Flung to the cloud-rack,
Tatters of sound!
II.
The glistening waters again
Are marching loyal and true
Under the hollow sky,--
A hundred million of men
Throbbing as fiery dew
Under the morning's eye!
List to the repetend note,
Multiplex tone of the sea,
Refrain of grief, of mirth,
On violet air afloat
Far borne to mountain and lea,
To the home of its birth.
List as its music unbraids:--
_Rivulets pour from the hill,
Winds wash the lips o' the trees,
The brook by the rocky glades
Brattles its way to the mill
Through fields adream with bees._
_Forests of pine and of fir
Plain as their dark plumes are fret
By the free-coursing winds;
Alder and golden birch stir
To notes too sweet to forget,
Sung by brook as it winds._
Hark! _The lone laugh of the auk
As 'twere a disprisoned soul come
From out the shining foams!
And the loon's "ha! ha!" and mock
'Mid the torn surf's booming drum,
Or hushed tide's star-sprent domes!_
_The ringdove coos in the grove,
The cataract's thunders jar,
Rapids swirl white and hiss;
Peoples in temples of love
Echo their anthems afar,
Diapasons of bliss._
Great flux of the world, O sea,
Blood of earth's wild pulsing veins
Beating to orbs afar,
Your life and mine cannot be
Unlinked with God's joys and pains
Here or in throbbing star!
List as its music unbraids,
List to the much-sounding sea,
List to the repetend note,
Multiplex tone of the sea,--
Refrain of grief, of mirth,
On violet air afloat
Far borne to mountain and lea,
To the home of its birth.
SUMMER FOG.
I.
Waft of beaten brine of the Bay,
Tonic keen as steel in strife,
Blowing wet and cool in my face,
Tang of bitter savor of life!
II.
Billows calm of whitest fog,
Over ships and homes now roll,--
Breath of seas in quest of heaven,
Groping blind as human soul,
Blearing, hiding, muffling all,--
Life itself laid under the shroud!
III.
Breath-blown veils of faltering mist,
Filmy dreams of luminous cloud,
Shifting curtains fret with air,
Noiseless sped as northern lights;
Opening, shutting gaps of blue,
Gleams and glories, glooms and nights!
Torn by winds and riven in spray,
Borne afar o'er pine trees tall,
Clinging round the mountain crests,
Melt in azure roofing all!
IV.
Mystic phantom, mime of life:
Witching visions, vanishing play,
Belts of shadow, rending veils,
Cloudless dome of perfect day!
V.
Come again, white vapor of seas,
Blow thy pungent balm in my face,
Soft illusions weave o'er earth,
Charm me up to heaven's embrace!
THE ARETHUSA.
A pearly boat am I,
From Silver Crag I hail,
Wrought of the sea and sky,
Freighted with moonbeams pale.
I hoist my purple sails
To catch the starbeam's gold,
And furl them in the gales
The sun blows overbold.
Rainbows and flying tints,
The sunset's crimson glow,
A thousand gleams and glints
All day do come and go.
But as the silver moon
Rolls up the breathless blue,
And all the stars in swoon
Are hidden from my view,
I ope my hatches wide
And lade with pearl and sheen,
To deck my home-bound bride,
The Basin's peerless queen.
DIAN AND FUNDY.
(DESIGNS FOR A TIME-PIECE.)
I.
_The Enchantress._
In silver shoon, on sapphire pavement clear,
Fair Dian walks the overarching night;
Her spell she lays--great Fundy leaps with cheer!
She breaks--he flees in elemental might!
II.
_The Lovers._
Dian, pale Dian, sailing the upper sea,
Searching for lover lost on earth's lone beach;
And Fundy, forward, backward, ceaselessly,
By love's impulsions borne to utmost reach.
III.
_Art and Science._
Dian, with silver robe from her shoulders flung,
And Fundy, with his tidal arc and gauge,
Beating as a great pendulum forth-swung,
The seconds of the geologic age.
THE OLD FISHER'S SONG.
From the broad-shouldered Cobequids we saw
Prone Blomidon in lotos-eyed repose,
The immemorial vigil lapst to dream.
The Basin lay as if in calm of swoon.
Upon the bosom of the breathing tide
The drifting ships, wide-winged in air, in sea,
Sailed double on a single keel--a ship
In either stilly heaven, above, beneath.
The day was warm, and as we lay beside
The woodland brook and watched the pinfish play,
We saw the sky within a silver pool,
Like a great vase of lapis lazuli
Veined with the feathery spray of cirrus cloud,
While cumuli in spotless beauty bloomed
Therein--a garden of the gods! And all
The pool seemed fragrant with a myriad sweets.
"There's promise of fair morrow," Harold said,
"The witness of the sea and wood is one:
The hissing brine, moonstruck, comes vengeful up
Its iron gateways with remorseless flood--
This little brook in rage and foam tears through
A hundred hills--each sets a mirror at
Our feet of beauty's self. And so, I ween,
The fury of the age will end as full
Of calm as are this sea and pool of heaven."
And breasting an old path to the carved shore
Where fell at ebb the sea-green billows clear,--
A path o'ertangled thick with alder hung
With tags that take the rich brown Vandyke loved,
And cool with dusky air in which, all still,
Eye-bright and fronded fern and lichened spruce
Swam deep in voiceless sea of wildwood balm--
My eye had sight of emerald moss and bells
That wreathed the bearded rocks that once were fire.
"Ho! here is where the fisher lives who sings
All day while fingering nets, and chants the tide
To sleep," cried Harold, "as he tends his seines
At night. Some three-score souls like his would make
A state, and one such state the golden age.
This old man never knows when spring is past,
But pipes a robin song from May to May,
A fresh-blown breezy song of coming good--
He's piping now!"
_Heirs of the century,
Sons of the next,
Hearten your spirits,
Your souls keep unvext.
There's an ebb in the tide,
There's an open sea wide,
But where sun and star dart,
You've a trustworthy chart._
Beside the wave-worn cliffs,
Painted with rainbows of a thousand storms,
We sat us down, and took on grateful cheek
And brow the waking winds that yestermorn,
Far out Atlantic's grey unresting wastes,
In awful tempest smote the full-winged ship
And pluckt it naked to the hungry deep.
"Peace is of conflict born," I said, "and good
Seems rooted oft in ill. Man gropes in fog,
And is a child tost in a cockle-shell.
The stars wink over him and then are gone,
The sun is not, and when he deems he's lost,
The shore breaks forth in silver welcome sweet."
_Care for the coming man,
Heirs of the race,
Hearten your spirits,
Gird! quicken your pace!
There's a sound in the air,
There are trumpets ablare,
But there's nothing to dread,
You've God overhead._
"The Sirens once were symbol of chief fears
That met the hardy mariner on life's main,"
Said Harold, musingly, "but now the coast
Is set with sirens groaning lest he touch
The isles mist-veiled and hooded white with fog,
But cruel as the Sisters twain of death.
Science, to-day, the witchery of the past
Turns into truth to guide the course of man,
Tracks to its lair disease, and bolt and flame
Subdues to service of the struggling race;
While breeze of health begins to fan alike
The cheeks of rich and poor in city ways,
And wisdom cries aloud in every street."
_You of the world-ages,
Saviors of man,
Hearten your spirits,
Lay open God's plan.
Labor hungers and wastes
While love tarries nor hastes,
Yet the note's round and clear,
The full time draweth near._
"But what of man's grim lust and greed?" said I.
"The comradeship of stars and night is not
More awful than is that of man with sin,
Nor shows more steadfast purpose 'gainst the light.
The sky and air fresh-washed with summer rain
Forthwith begin to cloud with haze and smoke
Till smit again with lightning's wrath, and torn
By buffet of the thunder's pealing voice.
So hath it been with man, till judgment-ire
Reddens in vain to purge his murky sky
And flash the light of God upon his soul.
The beastly lure of drunkenness that cloaks
Itself in the white mantle of the Christ;
Delusion's wand that prints mirage for sight
On eyes of civic crowds, and nations, too,
Or, unclean, faith assoils in simple hearts;
The simpering guile that toys with capital
And robs the workman of his honest wage,
While like the surgy murmurs of the sea
Sounds out the moan of willing labor's voice
For bread to fill its famished children's mouths;
The lust of power to sit in place of God
And turn for selfish ends the wheels of fate
Of fellowman,--these wait a day of doom!"
_Heirs of the century,
Sons of renown,
Lift up humanity's
Broad kingdom and crown.
There's a purpose replete,
To put all 'neath man's feet,
And we see it begun
In the Virgin's crowned Son._
"Injustice," Harold said, with eye that burned
Like a star, "_is_ the devil's own trade-mark,
And hottest comes from hell through saintly hands!
The race of man is in the making yet.
Hypocrisy still deftly apes true worth--
Thus prophesying universal good.
Nature is non-committal of her end,
But God is hiding not man's destiny.
Yon fitful beacon flares the dark night through,
And then the kindling clouds, day's heralds, burn
In golden dawn. Earth's skyward crags, which thirst
For news from God, are bathed in heavenly light,
And from their sunrise shoulders the full morn
Shoots far the splendors of its coming noon.
The shadows of a fleeing night yet dim
The age and mask a hundred ills as good,
More eager graspt at since they haste away;
But from the slopes there pours a clear new light,
Divinely aired, above that of the sun.
Philosophy of schools, nor science wise,
Nor labor, of itself, life's secret finds,
That fills the promise of man's vermeil bloom.
'Tis love alone can sheathe the alien sword,
And crown mankind in his own kingdom lord."
_Heirs of the coming age,
Makers of man,
The Christ be your pattern,
Ay, choose with elan.
There's a presence at hand,
There's a voice of command--
It is Love, King of men,
Alleluia, Amen!_
And as we turned toward home by open beach,
The waves were loud in clamor on the shore;
But over all, and far away, we caught
The drifting chant of the old Christian seer:
_It is Love, King of men,
Alleluia, Amen!_
NORA LEE.
I.
Away from Howth into the south
A stanch brave ship left harbor-mouth.
The _Easter Bell_, all sails a-swell,
Gallantly swept to sea they tell,
And Nora flamed like one ashamed,
When her fair sailor-man they named.
II.
Three moons did heap the cresting deep
Since Nora Lee was wed at Dreep.
Up from the dim grey ocean's rim
No tidings came of ship, or him.
A sea-gull's wing would make her sing,
And eye with smiles her wedding-ring.
If signal high flew in the sky,
She knew the _Easter Bell_ was nigh,
And pulled a rose, as wife that knows
Her good man cometh at the close.
The white ship came--'twas not the name!
And Nora Lee was not the same.
III.
The kraken grim, in dream, did swim
Beside the _Easter Bell_, and him.
The ocean swell and harbor bell
Chimed in an endless passing knell.
In gleaming green of breaker's sheen,
The pallid light of death was seen.
The shaping clouds, the mist, like shrouds,
Floated in ever-thickening crowds,--
Till piping wind her blood did bind,
Froze by the phantoms of the mind.
IV.
"Cheer up, good wife," the neighbors rife
Said all, "the _Bell_ has charmëd life.
"Brave Captain Head, no dawn a-red
In vain e'er signaled him, 'tis said.
"Of all this town, from foot to crown
No sailor has so just renown.
"The winds that blow, the reefs that grow,
Each one by heart he'd know, he'd know.
"Some night full soon, or morn, or noon,
The _Bell_ will fly her home gossoon!"
V.
The days they came and went the same,
The moons, the tides, the mists, the flame.
And Nora said: "Since I was wed
Six moons the heaping tides have led.
"In gloom I pine--(love makes him mine,
Alive or dead)--I'll throw the line!"
VI.
She pulled a rose, as wife that knows
Her good man cometh at the close.
Three neighbors true with her she drew
To the grey shore, and, calling, threw,
With passionate leap, far to the deep,
The life-line good wives always keep--
"O Mike, my man, my dear good man!
The line, the line, my dear good man!"
(Calling so sore adown the shore,
As fell the wintry surge's roar.)
Across the line of foaming brine,
Low answer came that lit her eyne.
* * * * * * *
The neighbors three with Nora Lee
All heard the words from out the sea,
Yet none e'er said what past the wed,--
A fearsome awe o'er them was spread.
VII.