The truly loyal throe
That gives heroic impulse to the Man--
The passion and the fire,
The chivalrous desire:
Our Fathers all were heroes--in the van.
And we, their ardent sons,
Through whom, triumphant, runs
The old intrepid attribute serene,
Would leave our chosen land,
Our homes, our forests grand,
To strike for England's honour and her Queen.
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No soulless welcome we
Dare give to such as thee:
Be thou a bright example to the world;
Great in thy well-earned fame,
Beloved in heart and name,
Wherever Britain's banner is unfurled.
Through all our leafy glades,
Through all our green arcades,
The living torrents, sweeping in, evince
That from their manly hearts
The Yeoman chorus starts:
'Honour to England's Heir!--long live the Prince!'
Oh, England! in this hour
We own thy sov'reign pow'r;
To thee and thine our best affections cling,
And when thy crown is laid
On Royal Albert's head,
With heart and soul we'll shout--GOD SAVE THE KING!
{61}
MALCOLM.
Boy! this world has ever been
A bright, glad world to me;
Through each dark and checkered scene
God's sun shone lovingly.
But Content I've never known;
Hoping, trusting that the years,
With their April smiles and tears,
Would yet bring me one like thee
That I could call my own.
With thy soft and heavenly eyes
In deep and pensive calm,
I seem looking at the skies,
And wonder where I am!
Something more than princely blood
Courses in thy tranquil face:
When she lent thee such a grace,
Nature lit life's earnest flame
In her most queenly mood.
Such a sweet intelligence
Is stamped on every line,
Banqueting our craving sense
With minist'rings divine.
If thy Boyhood be so great,
What will be the coming Man,
Could we overleap the span?
Are there treasures in the mine,
To pay us, if we wait?
{62}
Doth the voice of Music live
In that majestic brain,
Waiting for the Hand to give
Expression to the strain?
Are there wells of Truth--pure, deep,
Where the patient diver, Thought,
Finds the pearl that has been sought
Many a weary age in vain,
Entrusted to thy keep.
Doth the fire of Genius burn
Within that ample brow?
Or some patient spirit yearn
For things that are not now?
Hidden in the over-soul
Of the Future, to be born
When the world has ceased its scorn,
When the sceptic's heart will bow
To the divine control.
Patiently we'll watch and hope,
And wait, alternately;
Trusting that, when time shall ope
The casket's mystery,
We will be made rich indeed
With the wonders it contains;
Rich beyond all previous gains;
Richer for thy thought and thee,
Beyond our greatest meed.
{63}
THE COMET--OCTOBER, 1858.
Erratic Soul of some great Purpose, doomed
To track the wild illimitable space,
Till sure propitiation has been made
For the divine commission unperformed!
What was thy crime? Ahasuerus' curse
Were not more stern on earth than thine in Heaven!
Art thou the Spirit of some Angel World,
For grave rebellion banished from thy peers,
Compelled to watch the calm, immortal stars,
Circling in rapture the celestial void,
While the avenger follows in thy train
To spur thee on to wretchedness eterne?
Or one of nature's wildest fantasies,
From which she flies in terror so profound,
And with such whirl of torment in her breast,
That mighty earthquakes yearn where'er she treads;
While War makes red its terrible right hand,
And Famine stalks abroad all lean and wan?
To us thou art as exquisitely fair
As the ideal visions of the seer,
Or gentlest fancy that e'er floated down
Imagination's bright, unruffled stream,
Wedding the thought that was too deep for words
To the low breathings of inspirèd song.
{64}
When the stars sang together o'er the birth
Of the poor Babe at Bethlehem, that lay
In the coarse manger at the crowded Inn,
Didst thou, perhaps a bright exalted star,
Refuse to swell the grand, harmonious lay,
Jealous as Herod of the birth divine?
Or when the crown of thorns on Calvary
Pierced the Redeemer's brow, didst thou disdain
To weep, when all the planetary worlds
Were blinded by the fulness of their tears?
E'en to the flaming sun, that hid his face
At the loud cry, "Lama Sabachthani!"
No rest! No rest! the very damned have that
In the dark councils of remotest Hell,
Where the dread scheme was perfected that sealed
Thy disobedience and accruing doom.
Like Adam's sons, hast thou, too, forfeited
The blest repose that never pillowed Sin?
No! none can tell thy fate, thou wandering Sphinx!
Pale Science, searching by the midnight lamp
Through the vexed mazes of the human brain,
Still fails to read the secret of its soul
As the superb enigma flashes by,
A loosed Prometheus burning with disdain.
{65}
AUTUMN.
If seasons, like the human race, had souls,
Then two artistic spirits live within
The Chameleon mind of Autumn--these,
The Poet's mentor and the Painter's guide.
The myriad-thoughted phases of the mind
Are truly represented by the hues
That thrill the forests with prophetic fire.
And what could painter's skill compared to these?
What palette ever held the flaming tints
That on these leafy hieroglyphs foretell
How set the ebbing currents of the year?
What poet's page was ever like to this,
Or told the lesson of life's waning days
More forcibly, with more of natural truth,
Than yon red maples, or these poplars, white
As the pale shroud that wraps some human corse?
And then, again, the spirit of a King,
Clothed with that majesty most monarchs lack,
Might fit old Autumn for his royal rule:
For here is kingly ermine, cloth of gold,
And purple robes well worthy to be worn
By the best monarch that e'er donned a crown.
Proclaim him Royal Autumn! Poet King!
The Laureate of the Seasons, whose rare songs
Are such as lyrist never hoped to fling
On the fine ear of an admiring world.
Autumn, the Poet, Painter, and true King!
His gorgeous Ideality speaks forth
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From the rare colors of the changing leaves;
And the ripe blood that swells his purple veins
Is as the glowing of a sacred fire.
He walks with Shelley's spirit on the cliffs
Of the Ethereal Caucasus, and o'er
The summits of the Euganean hills;
And meets the soul of Wordsworth, in profound
And philosophic meditation, rapt
In some great dream of love towards
The human race. The cheery Spring may come,
And touch the dreaming flowers into life,
Summer expand her leafy sea of green,
And wake the joyful wilderness to song,
As a fair hand strikes music from a lyre:
But Autumn, from its daybreak to its close,
Setting in florid beauty, like the sun,
Robed with rare brightness and ethereal flame,
Holds all the year's ripe fruitage in its hands,
And dies with songs of praise upon its lips.
And then, the Indian Summer, bland as June:
Some Tuscarora King, Algonquin Seer,
Or Huron Chief, returned to smoke the Pipe
Of Peace upon the ancient hunting grounds;
The mighty shade in spirit walking forth
To feel the beauty of his native woods,
Flashing in Autumn vestures, or to mark
The scanty remnants of the scattered tribes
Wending towards their graves. Few Braves are left;
Few mighty Hunters; fewer stately Chiefs,
Like great Tecumseth fit to take the field,
And lead the tribes to certain victory,
{67}
Choosing annihilation to defeat:
But having run thy gauntlet of their days,
This Autumn remnant of some unknown race,
Nearing the Winter of their sad decay,
Fall like dry leaves into the lap of Time;
Their old trunks sapless, their tough branches bare,
And Fate's shrill war-whoop thund'ring at their heels.
{68}
COLIN.
Who'll dive for the dead men now,
Since Colin is gone?
Who'll feel for the anguished brow,
Since Colin is gone?
True Feeling is not confined
To the learned or lordly mind;
Nor can it be bought and sold
In exchange for an Alp of gold;
For Nature, that never lies,
Flings back with indignant scorn
The counterfeit deed, still-born,
In the face of the seeming wise,
In the Janus face of the huckster race
Who barter her truths for lies.
Who'll wrestle with dangers dire,
Since Colin is gone?
Who'll fearlessly brave the maniac wave,
Thoughtless of self, human life to save,
Unmoved by the storm-fiend's ire?
Who, Shadrach-like, will walk through fire,
Since Colin is gone?
Or hang his life on so frail a breath
That there's but a step 'twixt life and death?
For Courage is not the heritage
Of the nobly born; and many a sage
Has climbed to the temple of fame,
And written his deathless name
In letters of golden flame,
Who, on glancing down
{69}
From his high renown,
Saw his unlettered sire
Still by the old log fire,
Saw the unpolished dame--
And the dunghill from which he came.
Ah, ye who judge the dead
By the outward lives they led,
And not by the hidden worth
Which none but God can see;
Ye who would spurn the earth
That covers such as he;
Would ye but bare your hearts,
Cease to play borrowed parts,
And come down from your self-built throne:
How few from their house of glass,
As the gibbering secrets pass,
Would dare to fling, whether serf or king,
The first accusing stone!
Peace, peace to his harmless dust!
Since Colin is gone;
We can but hope and trust;
Man judgeth, but God is just;
Poor Colin is gone!
Had he faults? His heart was true,
And warm as the summer's sun.
Had he failings? Ay, but few;
'Twas an honest race he run.
Let him rest in the poor man's grave,
Ye who grant him no higher goal;
There may be a curse on the hands that gave,
But not on his simple soul!
{70}
MARGERY.
"Truth lights our minds as sunrise lights the world.
The heart that shuts out truth, excludes the light
That wakes the love of beauty in the soul;
And being foe to these, despises God,
The sole Dispenser of the gracious bliss
That brings us nearer the celestial gate.
They who might feed on rose-leaves of the True,
And grow in loveliness of heart and soul,
Catch at Deception's airy gossamers,
As children clutch at stars. To some, the world
Is a bleak desert, parched with blinding sand,
With here and there a mirage, fair to view,
But insubstantial as the visions born
Of Folly and Despair. Could we but know
How nigh we are to the true light of heaven;
In what a world of love we live and breathe;
On what a tide of truth our souls are borne!
Yet we're but bubbles in the whirl of life,
Mere flecks upon its ever-restless sea,
Meteors in its ever-changing sky.
Eternity alone is worth the thought
That we expend upon the passing hour,
Chasing the gaudy butterflies that lure
Our footsteps from the path that leads us home.
We will not see the beacon on the rock;
The prompter is unheeded; and the spark
Of the true spirit quenched in utter night,
As we rush headlong, wrecked on Error's shoals.
Some hearts will never open; all their wards
{71}
Have grown so rusty, that the golden key
Of Love Divine must fail to move the bolt
That Self has drawn to keep God's angels out."
So spake the merry Margery, the while
Her fingers lengthened out a filigree,
That seemed to me so many golden threads
Of thought between her fingers and her brain,
Bestrung with priceless pearls; her lightsome mood,
Worn as occasion might necessitate,
Replaced to-night by sober-sided Sense,
That made her beauty like an eve in June,
Just as the moon is risen. I, to mark
My approbation of her present mood,
Rehearsed a rambling lyric of my own,
That seemed prophetic of her thoughts to-night:
Within my mind there ever lives
A yearning for the True,
The Beautiful and Good. God gives
These, as He gives the dew
That falls upon the flowers at night,
The grass, the thirsty trees,
Because 'tis needful; and the light
That suns my mind from these--
Truth--Beauty--Goodness, doth but fill
A void within my soul;
And I fall prone before the Will
Of Him who gave the whole--
{72}
The wondrous life--the power to think,
And love, and act, and speak.
Standing, half-poised, upon the brink
Of being--strong, yet weak--
Strong in vast hopes, but weak in deeds,
I lift my heart and pray,
That where the tangled skein of creeds
Excludes the light of day
From human minds, God's purposes
May be made plain, that all
May walk in truth's and wisdom's ways,
And lay aside the thrall
Of enmity, whose clouds have kept
Their souls as dark as night;
That they whose love and hope have slept,
May come into the light,
And live as men, with minds to grasp
Within the sphere of thought
The boundless universe, and clasp
The good the wise have sought,
As if it were a long-lost dove,
Or a stray soul returned
To worship in the fane of love,
That it so long had spurned.
Where'er I gaze, my eyes behold
Nought but the beautiful.
The world is grand as it is old;
The only fitting school
{73}
For man, where he may learn to live,
And live to learn that what
He needs heaven will in mercy give.
Whatever be his lot,
He shapes it for himself; his mind
Is his own heaven or hell:
Just as he peoples it, he'll find
Himself compelled to dwell
With good or evil. Good abounds
In this delightful sphere;
But man will walk his daily rounds,
And evermore give ear
To the false promptings that waylay
His steps at every turn;
Flinging the true and good away
For joys that he should spurn,
As being all unworthy of
His greatness as a man.
Why, man!--why tremble at the scoff
Of fools and bigots? Scan
The mental firmament, and see
How men in every age,
Who strove for immortality--
Whose errand was to wage
Not War, but Peace--men of pure minds,
Who sought and found the truth,
And treasured it, as one who finds
The secret of lost Youth
{74}
Restored and made immortal--see
How they were scorned, because
Their Sphinx-lives spake of mystery
To those to whom the laws
Of nature are as claspèd books!--
Poets, who ruled the world
Of Thought; in whose prophetic looks
And minds there lay impearled,
But hidden from the vulgar sight,
Such universal truths,
That many, blinded by the light--
Gray-haired, green-gosling youths,
With whips of satire, looks of scorn,
And finger of disdain,
Have crushed these harbingers of morn,
But could not kill the strain
That was a part of nature's mind,
And therefore can not die.
That which men spurned, angels have shrined
Among God's truths on high.
And so 't will ever be, till man
Knows more of Goodness, Truth,
And Beauty--more of nature's plan,
And Love that brings back youth
To hearts that have grown frail and old
By groping in the dark
With blinded eyes; their idol, Gold,
And Gain, their Pleasure-bark!
{75}
"'Tis well that nature hath her ministers,"
She said, her voice and looks so passing sweet;
"Great-hearts that let in love, and keep it there,
Like the true flame within the diamond's heart,
Informing, blessing, chastening their lives.
Man has but one great love--his love for God;
All other loves are lesser and more less
As they recede from Him, as are the streams
The farthest from the fountain. God is Love.
Who loves God most, loves most his fellow-men;
Sees the Creator in the creature's form
Where others see but man--and he, so frail
The very devils are akin to him!
There is no light that is not born of love;
No truth where love is not its guiding star;
Faith without love is noonday without sun,
For love begetteth works both good and true,
And these give faith its immortality."
We parted at the outer door. The stars
Seemed never half so bright or numberless
As they appeared to-night. Margery's laugh
Tripped after me in merry cadences,
Like the quick steps of fairies in the air
United to the chorus of their hearts
Breathed into silvery music. Happy soul!
Nature's epitome in all her moods.
{76}
EVA.
"God bless the darling Eva!" was my prayer.
A pure, unconscious depth of earnestness
Was in her eyes, so indescribable
You might as well the color of the air
Seek to daguerreotype, or to impress
A stain upon the river, whose first swell
Would swirl it to the deep. A calm, sweet soul,
Where Love's celestial saints and ministers
Did hold the earthly under such control
Virtue sprung up like daisies from the sod.
Oh, for one hour's sweet excellence like hers!
One hour of sinlessness, that never more
Can visit me this side the Silent Shore,
To stand, like her, serene, unblushing before God!
{77}
THE POET'S RECOMPENSE.
His heart's a burning censer, filled with spice
From fairer vales than those of Araby,
Breathing such prayers to heaven, that the nice
Discriminating ear of Deity
Can cull sweet praises from the rare perfume.
Man cannot know what starry lights illume
The soaring spirit of his brother man!
He judges harshly with his mind's eyes closed;
His loftiest understanding cannot scan
The heights where Poet-souls have oft reposed;
He cannot feel the chastened influence
Divine, that lights the Ideal atmosphere,
And never to his uninspirèd sense
Rolls the majestic hymn that inspirates the Seer.
{78}
THE WINE OF SONG.
Within Fancy's Halls I sit, and quaff
Rich draughts of the Wine of Song,
And I drink, and drink,
To the very brink
Of delirium wild and strong,
Till I lose all sense of the outer world,
And see not the human throng.
The lyral chords of each rising thought
Are swept by a hand unseen;
And I glide, and glide,
With my music bride,
Where few spiritless souls have been;
And I soar afar on wings of sound,
With my fair AEolian Queen.
Deep, deeper still, from the springs of Thought
I quaff, till the fount is dry;
And I climb, and climb,
To a height sublime,
Up the stars of some lyric sky,
Where I seem to rise upon airs that melt
Into song as they pass by.
Millennial rounds of bliss I live,
Withdrawn from my cumbrous clay,
As I sweep, and sweep,
Through infinite deep
On deep of that starry spray;
Myself a sound on its world-wide round,
A tone on its spheral way.
{79}
And wheresoe'er through the wondrous space
My soul wings its noiseless flight,
On their astral rounds
Float divinest sounds,
Unseen, save by spirit-sight,
Obeying some wise, eternal law,
As fixed as the law of light.
But, oh, when my cup of dainty bliss
Is drained of the Wine of Song,
How I fall, and fall,
At the sober call
Of the body, that waiteth long
To hurry me back to its cares terrene,
And earth's spiritless human throng.
{80}
THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM.
I stood upon the Plain,
That had trembled when the slain,
Hurled their proud, defiant curses at the battle-heated foe,
When the steed dashed right and left,
Through the bloody gaps he cleft,
When the bridle-rein was broken, and the rider was laid low.
What busy feet had trod
Upon the very sod
Where I marshalled the battalions of my fancy to my aid!
And I saw the combat dire,
Heard the quick, incessant fire,
And the cannons' echoes startling the reverberating glade.
I saw them, one and all,
The banners of the Gaul
In the thickest of the contest, round the resolute Montcalm;
The well-attended Wolfe,
Emerging from the gulf
Of the battle's fiery furnace, like the swelling of a psalm.
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I heard the chorus dire,
That jarred along the lyre
On which the hymn of battle rung, like surgings of the wave
When the storm, at blackest night,
Wakes the ocean in affright,
As it shouts its mighty pibroch o'er some shipwrecked vessel's grave.
I saw the broad claymore
Flash from its scabbard, o'er
The ranks that quailed and shuddered at the close and fierce attack;
When Victory gave the word,
Then Scotland drew the sword,
And with arm that never faltered drove the brave defenders back.
I saw two great chiefs die,
Their last breaths like the sigh
Of the zephyr-sprite that wantons on the rosy lips of morn;
No envy-poisoned darts,
No rancour, in their hearts,
To unfit them for their triumph over death's impending scorn.
And as I thought and gazed,
My soul, exultant, praised
The Power to whom each mighty act and victory are due,
{82}
For the saint-like Peace that smiled
Like a heaven-gifted child,
And for the air of quietude that steeped the distant view.
The sun looked down with pride,
And scattered far and wide
His beams of whitest glory till they flooded all the Plain;
The hills their veils withdrew,
Of white, and purplish blue,
And reposed all green and smiling 'neath the shower of golden rain.
Oh, rare, divinest life
Of Peace, compared with Strife!
Yours is the truest splendour, and the most enduring fame;
All the glory ever reaped
Where the fiends of battle leaped,
Is harsh discord to the music of your undertoned acclaim.
{83}
DEATH OF WOLFE.
"They run! they run!"--"Who run?" Not they
Who faced that decimating fire
As coolly as if human ire
Were rooted from their hearts;
_They_ run, while he who led the way
So bravely on that glorious day,
Burns for one word with keen desire
Ere waning life departs!
"They run! they run!"--"_Who_ run?" he cried,
As swiftly to his pallid brow,
Like crimson sunlight upon snow,
The anxious blood returned;
"The French! the French!" a voice replied,
When quickly paled life's ebbing tide,
And though his words were weak and low
His eye with valour burned.
"Thank God! I die in peace," he said;
And calmly yielding up his breath,
There trod the shadowy realms of death
A good man and a brave;
Through all the regions of the dead,
Behold his spirit, spectre-led,
Crowned with the amaranthine wreath
That blooms not for the slave.
{84}
BROCK.
OCTOBER 13TH, 1859.*
One voice, one people, one in heart
And soul, and feeling, and desire!
Re-light the smouldering martial fire,
Sound the mute trumpet, strike the lyre,
The hero deed can not expire,
The dead still play their part.
Raise high the monumental stone!
A nation's fealty is theirs,
And we are the rejoicing heirs,
The honored sons of sires whose cares
We take upon us unawares,
As freely as our own.
We boast not of the victory,
But render homage, deep and just,
To his--to their--immortal dust,
Who proved so worthy of their trust
No lofty pile nor sculptured bust
Can herald their degree.
No tongue need blazon forth their fame--
The cheers that stir the sacred hill
Are but mere promptings of the will
That conquered then, that conquers still;
And generations yet shall thrill
At Brock's remembered name.
{85}
Some souls are the Hesperides
Heaven sends to guard the golden age,
Illuming the historic page
With records of their pilgrimage;
True Martyr, Hero, Poet, Sage;
And he was one of these.
Each in his lofty sphere sublime
Sits crowned above the common throng,
Wrestling with some Pythonic wrong,
In prayer, in thunder, thought, or song;
Briarcus-limbed, they sweep along,
The Typhons of the time.
* The day of the inauguration of the new Monument on Queenston Heights.
{86}
SONG FOR CANADA.
Sons of the race whose sires
Aroused the martial flame
That filled with smiles
The triune Isles,
Through all their heights of fame!
With hearts as brave as theirs,
With hopes as strong and high,
We'll ne'er disgrace
The honoured race
Whose deeds can never die.,
Let but the rash intruder dare
To touch our darling strand,
The martial fires
That thrilled our sires
Would flame throughout the land.
Our lakes are deep and wide,
Our fields and forests broad;
With cheerful air
We'll speed the share,
And break the fruitful sod;
Till blest with rural peace,
Proud of our rustic toil,
On hill and plain
True kings we'll reign,
The victors of the soil.
But let the rash intruder dare
{87}
To touch our darling strand,
The martial fires
That thrilled our sires
Would light him from the land.
Health smiles with rosy face
Amid our sunny dales,
And torrents strong
Fling hymn and song
Through all the mossy vales;
Our sons are living men,
Our daughters fond and fair;
A thousand isles
Where Plenty smiles,
Make glad the brow of Care.
But let the rash intruder dare
To touch our darling strand,
The martial fires
That thrilled our sires
Would flame throughout the land.
And if in future years
One wretch should turn and fly,
Let weeping Fame
Blot out his name
From Freedom's hallowed sky;
Or should our sons e'er prove
A coward, traitor race,--
Just heaven! frown
In thunder down,
T' avenge the foul disgrace!
{88}
But let the rash intruder dare
To touch our darling strand,
The martial fires
That thrilled our sires
Would light him from the land.
{89}
SONG--I'D BE A FAIRY KING.
Oh, I'd be a Fairy King,
With my vassals brave and bold;
We'd hunt all day,
Through the wildwood gay,
In our guise of green and gold;
And we'd lead such a merry, merry life,
That the silly, toiling bee,
Would have no sweet
In its dull retreat,
So rich as our frolic glee.
I'd be a Fairy King,
With my vassals brave and bold;
We'd hunt all day,
Through the wildwood gay,
In our guise of green and gold.