On the fountains' murmuring brims;
To the bronzed vine Hermos clung--
Silver-like his naked limbs
Flashed and flushed: rich coppered leaves,
Whitened by his ruddy hair;
Pallid as the marble eaves,
Awed he met the Helot's stare.
Clanged the brazen goblet down;
Marble-bred loud echoes stirred:
With fixed fingers, knotted, brown,
Dumb, the Helot grasped his beard.
Heard the far pipes mad and sweet,
All the ruddy hazes thrill:
Heard the loud beam crash and beat
In the red vat on the hill.
Wide his nostrils as a stag's
Drew the hot wind's fiery bliss:
Red his lips as river flags
From the strong Cæcuban kiss.
On his swarthy temples grew
Purple veins like clustered grapes;
Past his rolling pupils blew
Wine-born, fierce, lascivious shapes.
Cold the haughty Spartan smiled--
His the power to knit that day
Bacchic fires, insensate, wild,
To the grand Achean clay.
His the might--hence his the right!
Who should bid him pause? nor Fate
Warning passed before his sight,
Dark-robed and articulate....
"Lo," he said, "he maddens now!
Flames divine do scathe the clod:
Round his reeling Helot brow
Stings the garland of the god."
THE SWORD
At the forging of the sword--
The mountain roots were stirred
Like the heart-beats of a bird;
Like flax the tall trees waved,
So fiercely struck the Forgers of the Sword.
At the forging of the Sword--
So loud the hammers fell,
The thrice-sealed gates of Hell
Burst wide their glowing jaws;
Deep roaring, at the forging of the Sword.
At the forging of the Sword--
Kind mother Earth was rent
Like an Arab's dusky tent,
And monster-like she fed
On her children, at the forging of the Sword.
At the forging of the Sword--
The startled air swift whirled
The red flames round the world,
From the anvil where was smitten
The steel the Forgers wrought into the Sword.
At the forging of the Sword--
The maid and matron fled,
And hid them with the dead;
Fierce prophets sang their doom,
More deadly than the wounding of the Sword.
At the forging of the Sword--
Swift leaped the quiet hearts
In the meadows and the marts;
The tides of men were drawn
By the gleaming sickle-planet of the Sword!
Thus wert thou forged, O lissome Sword;
On such dusk anvil wert thou wrought;
In such red flames thy metal fused;
From such deep hells that metal brought;
O Sword, dread lord, thou speak'st no word,
But dumbly rul'st, king and lord!
"THESE THREE"
A star leant down and laid a silver hand
On the pale brow of death;
Before it roll'd black shadows from the land--
That star was Faith!
Across fierce storms that hid the mountains far
In funeral cope,
Piercing the black there sailed a throbbing star--
The star was Hope!
From God's vast palm a large sun grandly rolled,
O'er land and sea;
Its core of fire, its stretching hands of gold--
Large Charity!
FRANCIS BLAKE CROFTON
THE BATTLE-CALL OF ANTI-CHRIST
Aforethought of the fated reign of peace
Fell on the soul of Anti-Christ, I dreamed;
And his brow darkened, and his hate-lit eyes
Aloft glared lurid through the mist of space.
Then vast and shadowy rose the Lord of War,
And shook his right hand at a far White Throne,
Brooding unutterable blasphemies.
Anon he gazed upon our shuddering world,
The while, with voice that fires or freezes souls,
He spake his message to the circling winds
And roused to battle all his myrmidons:
"Up, despot, trembling for a blood-bought crown!
The smouldering flame that threatens thine own house
Hurl at another's; lead thy people on
By glory's flaring torches to their doom.
(Ever the spear
Pierces the spirit of the Prince of Peace!)
"Yoke Victory to thy chariot and ride on,
Trampling the pride of nations, Conqueror!
Let thy maimed warriors writhe alone; for thou
Art scorn of God for His vile images.
(And scorn of mine
For Him who pleads for them at God's right hand.)
"Pause not to reck the ruin thou hast made:
Is not the comet's course foredoomed, and thine?
A deathless name outweighs a million deaths,
And orphans' sighs are mute 'mid the acclaim
Of multitudes.
(What is the grief of Jesus unto thee?)
"Statesman, behold, thy trustful neighbors sleep,
And rust is on their swords, your blades are sharp!
Swift and relentless press thy specious claim;
Not thine the toil or risk, thine the fame to win
With others' blood.
(That human blood that filled the veins of Christ!)
"Flushed with a spotless triumph, patriots,
From brave defence advance to stern revenge,
And urge a war of conquest and bequeath
A heritage of hatred to your sons.
(For freedom's sake
Stabbing His soul who 'came not to destroy'!)
"Wake, silent trump of holy discord! Sword
Of God and Gideon, hew the Gentiles down!
Slay, in your ruth for graceless babes unborn!
Clash, rival crosses, mock the Crucified!
Blaze, lethal fires!
(_I_ will accept the incense that _He_ loathes.)
"Poets sublime who sway the souls of men!
Sing still of arms and human hecatombs,
And wrath and glory and the pride of race;
Let rhymesters mumble of love, pity, peace.
(Sing ye the spear
That glances from its victims to Christ's heart.)
"And thou, enthusiast, whose genius caught
The soul of Revolution and enchained
The fiery spirit in a song, thy strains
Again shall stir rapt throngs to fratricide:
'To arms! to arms!'
(Christ mocks me with His pity from His throne!)
"Sound trump and drum and fife and clarion,
Sound, to the rhythmic march of warriors,
With priestly benedictions on their pride
And beauty's smiles upon their waving plumes.
(Marching in pomp
To wound the wearied spirit of their Christ!)
* * * * *
"Oh, pygmy pomp and blazon of man's war!
When Michael strove with Satan 'mid the stars,
_There_ were seraphic deeds and agonies
And not this earthly death! Nathless I crave
Unnumbered slain--
The sin of His own slayers tortured Him!
"Hail to thy memory, war of wars, that jarred
Awhile the calm of heaven, when Pride and Hate,
Stung by the still rebuke of Love supreme,
Rose, fought and fell! And to thy memory hail,
Symbolic spear,
That wounded the dead Christ on Calvary!
"Dear is the murderer's dagger; dear the rack
That strains the frame of one who testifies
With his last breath to Christ; dearest the spear
That stabbed Him on the Cross and stabs Him still,
Each thrust a balm
To soothe my sleepless memory in hell!"
JOHN ALLISTER CURRIE
MY MOTHER
There are no colors in God's heaven-bent bow,
Nor is there music in the quiring spheres,
Can paint thy smile from out these youthful years,
Recall the music of thy voice so low
And sweet, dear mother, in the long ago.
But gone art thou. Ah! how the bitter tears
Burned deep into my heart! How memory sears,
But cannot heal those wounds, while tears still flow.
Back from those bright and happy days gone by,
Echoes of childish mirth and cradle song!
Thy guiding hand and presence then were nigh,
And I am weary, and life's road seems wrong.
I miss thy smiling face, thy watchful eye.
Life's heaven was short. Eternity's is long.
MARGARET GILL CURRIE
BY THE ST. JOHN
The broad round-shouldered giant Earth
Upbears no land more sweet
Than that whereon in heedless mirth
Went free my childish feet;
No fairer river furroweth,
With its strong steel-blue share,
The hill-sides and the vales of earth,
Than that which floweth there.
For rigid fasting hermit John
They named the glorious stream,
As seamen on his holy morn
Beheld its harbor's gleam.
It was like rigid hermit John,
A voice amid the wild,
Its honey and its fatness drawn
From forests undefiled.
Now that the green is on the plain,
The azure in the sky,
Wherewith clear sunshine after rain
Decketh the rich July,
Broad is the leaf and bright the flower;
Close to the pale gray sands
Coarse alder grows, and virgin's bower
Grasps it with slender hands.
With honeysuckles, meadow-sweets,
And rue the banks are lined;
O'er wide fields dance gay marguerites
To pipe of merry wind.
By the tall tiger-lily's side
Stands the rich golden-rod,
A king's son wooing for his bride,
The daughter of a god.
When fresh and bright were all green things,
And June was in the sky,
The dandelions made them wings,
And did as riches fly;
Now the bright buttercups with gold
Empave a toil-trod road--
Can wayfarers their sheen behold
Nor sigh for streets of God?
The birds are homed amid the boughs
Of oak and elm trees grand;
As for the snipe, her lowly house
She maketh in the sand;
The robin loves the dawning's hush,
The eve's the chickadee,
The thistle-bird the garden bush,
The bobolink the lea.
From intervale and swampy dale
Are wafts of fragrance blown,
Of fern and mint and calamus,
And wild hay newly mown.
God's fiery touch hath reached the earth,
And lo! its odors rise
Like incense pure of priceless worth
Offered in sacrifice.
SARAH ANNE CURZON
VISIT OF THE PRINCE OF WALES TO LAURA SECORD
Now wherefore trembles still the string
By lyric fingers crossed,
To Laura Secord's praise and fame,
When forty years are lost?
Nay, five and forty, one by one,
Have borne her from the day
When, fired by patriotic zeal,
She trod her lonely way.
Her hair is white, her step is slow,
Why kindles then her eye,
And rings her voice with music sweet
Of many a year gone by?
O know ye not proud Canada,
With joyful heart, enfolds
In fond embrace the royal boy
Whose line her fealty holds?
For him she spreads her choicest cheer,
And tells her happiest tale,
And leads him to her loveliest haunts,
That naught to please may fail.
And great art thou, O Chippewa,
Though small in neighbours' eyes,
When out Niagara's haze thou seest
A cavalcade arise;
And in its midst the royal boy
Who, smiling, comes to see
An ancient dame whose ancient fame
Shines in our history.
He takes the thin and faded hand,
He seats him at her side,
Of all that gay and noble band
That moment well the pride.
To him the aged Secord tells,
With many a fervid glow,
How, by her means, FitzGibbon struck
His great historic blow.
Nor deem it ye, as many do,
A weak and idle thing
That at that moment Laura loved
The praises of a king;
And dwelt on his approving smile,
And kissed his royal hand,
Who represented, and should wield,
The sceptre of our land;
For where should greatness fire her torch
If not at greatness' shrine?
And whence should approbation come
Did not the gods incline?
INVOCATION TO RAIN
O blessed angel of the All-bounteous King,
Where dost thou stay so long? our sad hearts pine,
Our spirits faint for thee. Our weary eyes
Scan all the blue expanse, where not a cloud
Floats low to rest our vision. In vain we turn
Or east or west, no vaporous haze, nor view
Of distant panorama, wins our souls
To other worlds. All, all is hard and scant.
Thy brother Spring is come.
His favourite haunts the sheltering woods betray--
The woods that, dark and cheerless yet, call thee.
Tender hepaticas peep forth, and mottled leaves
Of yellow dog's tooth vie with curly fronds
Of feathery ferns, in strewing o'er his path;
The dielytra puts her necklace on,
Of pearly pendants, topaz-tipped or rose.
Gray buds are on the orchard trees, and grass
Grows up in single blades and braves the sun.
But thou!--O, where art thou, sweet early Rain,
That with thy free libations fill'st our cup?
The contemplative blue-bird pipes his note
From off the ridge-cap, but can find no spot
Fit for his nest. The red-breast on the fence
Explores the pasture with his piercing eye,
And visits oft the bushes by the stream,
But takes no mate. For why? No leaves or tufts
Are there to hide a house....
A-missing thee
The husbandman goes forth with faltering step
And dull sad eye; his sweltering team pulls hard
The labouring plough, but the dry earth falls back
As dead, and gives nor fragrant fume, nor clogs
The plough-boy's feet with rich encumbering mould.
The willows have a little tender green,
And swallows cross the creek--the gurgling creek
Now fallen to pools--but, disappointed,
Dash away so swift, and fly so high
We scarce can follow them. Thus all the land
Doth mourn for thee.--
Ah! here thou comest, sweet Rain.
Soft, tender Rain! benison of the skies!
See now, what transformation in thy touch!
Straight all the land is green. The blossoming trees
Put on their bridal wreaths, and veil their charms
From the too ardent sun, beneath thy gift
Of soft diaphanous tissue, pure and white
As angels' raiment. Little wood children
Deck all the path with flowers. The teeming earth
Offers rich gifts. The little choristers
Sing ceaseless hymns, and the glad husbandman
Adds his diapason. Bright fountains wake
And mingle with the swift roulade of streams.
The earth is full of music! Thou dost swing
Thy fragrant censer high, and dwellers in
The dusty city raise their toil-worn heads
From desk and bench, and cry "Summer is here!"
And straight they smell new hay and clover blooms,
And see the trout swift-darting in the brooks,
And the plover whistling in the fields.
The little children dream of daisy chains,
And pent-up youth thinks of a holiday,--
A holiday with romps, and cream, and flowers.
O, Rain! O, soft, sweet Rain! O liberal Rain!
Touch our hard hearts, that we may more become
Like that Great Heart whose almoner art thou.
NICHOLAS FLOOD DAVIN
_From_ "EOS"
Now the Fraser gleamed
Below, its benches white with apple trees
In bloom. 'Neath one an Indian stood, in hand
A tom-tom rude, on which he beat, the while
He sang in sad tones looking towards the sea.
The children of his tribe impassive sat
And smoked their deep-bowled long-stemmed pipes:
With spread wings forever
Time's eagle careers,
His quarry old nations,
His prey the young years;
Into monuments brazen
He strikes his fierce claw,
And races are only
A sop for his maw.
The red sun is rising
Behind the dark pines,
And the mountains are marked out
In saffron lines,
The pale moon still lingers,
But past is her hour
Over mountain and river
Her silver to shower.
As yon moon disappeareth,
We pass and are past;
The Paleface o'er all things
Is potent at last.
He bores through the mountains,
He bridges the ford,
He bridles steam horses
Where Bruin was lord,
He summons the river
Her wealth to unfold,
From flint and from granite
He crushes the gold.
Those valleys of silence
Will soon be alive
With huxters who chaffer,
Prospectors who strive,
And the house of the Paleface
Will peer from the crest
Of the cliff, where the eagle
To-day builds his nest.
The Redskin he marred not
White fall on wild rill,
But to-morrow those waters
Will turn a mill;
And the streamlet which flashes
Like a young squaw's dark eye,
Will be black with foul refuse,
Or may be run dry.
From the sea where the Father
Of waters is lost,
To the sea where all summer
The iceberg is tost,
The white hordes will swarm
And the white man will sway,
And the smoke of his engine
Make swarthy the day.
Round the mound of a brother
In sadness we pace,
How much sadder to stand
At the grave of a race!
But the good Spirit knows
What for all is the best,
And which should be chosen,
The strife or the rest.
As for me, I'm time-weary,
I await my release;
Give to others the struggle,
Grant me but the peace,--
And what peace like the peace
Which death offers the brave?
What rest like the rest
That we find in the grave?
For the doom of the hunter
There is no reprieve;
And for me, 'mid strange customs,
'Tis bitter to live.
Our part has been played
Let the white man play his;
Then he too disappears,
And goes down the abyss.
Yes! Time's eagle will prey
On the Paleface at last,
And his doom like our own
Is to pass and be past.
A. B. DE MILLE
THE ICE KING
Where the world is gray and lone
Sits the Ice King on his throne--
Passionless, austere, afar,
Underneath the Polar Star.
Over all his splendid plains
An eternal stillness reigns.
Silent creatures of the North,
White and strange and fierce, steal forth:
Soft-foot beasts from frozen lair,
Noiseless birds that wing the air,
Souls of seamen dead, who lie
Stark beneath the pale north sky;
Shapes to living eye unknown,
Wild and shy, come round the throne
Where the Ice King sits in view
To receive their homage due.
But the Ice King's quiet eyes,
Calm, implacable, and wise,
Gaze beyond the silent throng,
With a steadfast look and long,
Down to where the summer streams
Murmur in their golden dreams;
Where the sky is rich and deep,
Where warm stars bring down warm sleep,
Where the days are, every one,
Clad with warmth and crowned with sun.
And the longing gods may feel
Stirs within his heart of steel,
And he yearns far forth to go
From his land of ice and snow.
But forever, gray and lone,
Sits the Ice King on his throne--
Passionless, austere, afar,
Underneath the Polar Star.
BALLAD
Good Christmas bells, I pray you
Ring him back to me;
For I am in the village,
And he is on the sea.
And out beyond the harbor
The surf is playing white;
Good Christmas bells, I pray you
Ring him home to-night!
The reef beyond the harbor
Is girt with hungry foam;
Good Christmas bells, I pray you
Ring my sailor home!
The lighthouse in the harbor
Burns clear, and keen, and still;
But a sound is in the village,
A voice is on the hill:
The voice of distant surges,
And he is on the sea--
Good Christmas bells, I pray you
Ring him back to me!
JAMES DE MILLE
_From_ "BEHIND THE VEIL"
"Son of Light,"--I murmured lowly--
"All my heart is known to thee--
Known unto thy vision holy--
All my longing and my yearning for the Loved One lost to me--
May these eyes again behold her?"--and the Shape said, "Come and
see."
'Twas a voice whose intonation
Through my feeble being thrilled
With a solemn, sweet vibration,
And at once a holy calmness all my wakeful senses stilled,
And my heart beat faint and fainter, with a dying languor filled.
Then a sudden sharp convulsion
Seized me with resistless might,
Till before that fierce compulsion
All mortality departed; like a Thought, a thing of Light,
All my spirit darted up to an immeasurable height.
I beheld bright visions darting
Past, in long and quick review,
Quick arriving, quick departing;
Mortal sense had grown immortal, and I saw not, but I knew,
And that spiritual sense was Knowledge, Absolute and True.
And there came amazement o'er me
In that infinite career,
For the scenes that rushed before me,
Long removed, but long remembered, brought me memories old and
dear,
Bearing sweet familiar faces from that far terrestrial sphere.
For the spell of earth had bound me,
And each quickly gliding scene
Brought the shapes of earth around me;--
Vales of bright unclouded verdure; hills arrayed in living green;
Limpid lakes in dim recesses overarched by skies serene;
Cooling rill and sparkling fountain,
Purple peak and headland bold,
Precipice and snow-clad mountain--
Lofty summits rising grandly into regions clear and cold,
And innumerable rivers that majestically rolled.
* * * * *
By such wondrous scenes surrounded,
O'er them all mine eyes I ran,
All bewildered and confounded;
Yet I sought amid that wonder all its mystery to scan,
Till amid the forms of Nature I beheld the face of Man.
I beheld fair cities gleaming
White on many a distant shore,
And the battle banners streaming,
And the pomp of mighty armies in the panoply of War,
And the navies of the nations speeding all the Ocean o'er.
But the human form and faces
Older still and older grew;
Races followed fast on races,
Vanished peoples seemed to rise again and robe themselves anew,
And the life and acts of all the ages passed in swift review.
Olden populations swarming
In an outward rushing tide,
Scattering o'er the earth and forming
Lines of march o'er lofty mountains, over deserts wild and wide,
Seeking evermore a country where they might in peace abide.
Then there came unpeopled spaces
Which no human token bore,
And the pathway of the races
Lessened slowly and diminished on the plain and on the shore,
Till at last amid the Vision came the form of Man no more.
And bereaved of man and lonely
Nature showed her aspect fair,
And the brute creation only
Peopled all her wilds and woodlands--lurked the tiger in his lair,
Coiled the serpent, sprang the lion, sped the bird athwart the
air.
Myriad scenes in swift succession
Still with earnest gaze I viewed;
But in rapid retrogression
Nature faded;--forms of beauty followed fast by figures rude,
Ending in the dismal prospect of a world-wide solitude.
But my soul the vast procession
Of those countless vistas bore
With a marvellous impression,
Like the picture on the tablet by the sunbeam painted o'er
Instantaneous; all-embracing; with a power unknown before.
Then my Heavenly Guide addressing--
For a wondrous power had birth
In my nature, all expressing--
"What are these, and where belong they?"--and my Guide
responded--"Earth--
For thy spirit turns spontaneous to its own domestic hearth."
"Where am I, O Radiant Spirit?
Where amid the realms of space?
Distant from the Earth, or near it?"--
"Where the rays projected from it at the birth-time of thy race
Have not yet attained;--a distance more than mortal thought may
trace."
"Whence these shapes of things terrestrial?"--
"Shadows from the Earth that fall,
Gliding into space celestial"--
"Does the Earth thus tell her story;--thus are all things
imaged?"--"All--
Forms and actions all are imaged; naught is hidden, great or
small."
--"They at last are dissipated,"--
I exclaimed in sorrow sore,
--"At the brink of things created?"--
--"Things created know no limit; infinite space they traverse
o'er;
Still the starry vistas open and recede for evermore."--
Then a mighty woe came o'er me,
Deep despair arose within,
And a thought stood black before me--
Shall Infinity forever write the records of my sin?
Is it thus that space shall treasure proofs of all that I have
been?
EDWARD HARTLEY DEWART
SHADOWS ON THE CURTAIN
I awoke from the dreams of the night,
From restful and tranquil repose,
And looked where the sunbeams lay bright,
To see what the morn might disclose.
My window looked out on the east,
And opened to welcome the sun,
As he rose, from the darkness released,
All girded, his journey to run.
I watched, as I lay,
The leaf-shadows play--
For the trees were still mantled in green--
As they silently danced,
Curvetted and pranced,
On the curtain suspended between.
Then I said to my soul: Here's some thought
For thee to decipher and read;
Every form, that in nature is wrought,
Bears some lesson to those who give heed.
Between our weak eyes and the light
A thick-woven curtain is spread;
All the future it screens from our sight,
And the home and the fate of the dead.
The phantoms which still
With perplexity chill,
Which doubting despondency brings,
Are cast, as they shine,
By the sunbeams divine,
And are shadows of beautiful things.
Then I drew the broad curtain aside,
And looked out on the beautiful world;
The dewdrops were flashing, and wide
Were the banners of beauty unfurled.
The leaves that had silently flung
Their shadows to darken my room,
Each answered with musical tongue
To the zephyrs that played with its bloom.--
And thus it may be
At life's ending with me,
When death rends the curtain away;
I may rise to behold
In beauty unrolled
The morn of a shadowless day.
ON THE OTTAWA
The sun has gone down in liquid gold
On the Ottawa's gleaming breast;
And the silent night has softly rolled
The clouds from her starry vest;
Not a sound is heard--
Every warbling bird
Has silenced its tuneful lay,
As with calm delight,
In the moon's weird light,
I noiselessly float away.
As down the river I dreamily glide--
The sparkling and moonlit river--
Not a ripple disturbs the glassy tide,
Not a leaf is heard to quiver;
The lamps of night
Shed their trembling light,
With a tranquil and silvery glory,
Over river and dell,
Where the zephyrs tell
To the night their plaintive story.
I gently time my gleaming oar
To music of joy-laden strains,
Which the silent woods and listening shore
Re-echo in soft refrains:--
Let holy thought
From this tranquil spot
Float up through the slumbering air;
For who would profane
With fancies vain
A scene so ineffably fair!
FREDERICK AUGUSTUS DIXON
A FEATHER'S MESSAGE
At the close of the day, when the year was a-dying,
From the chilly north to the southern sun,
High in the sky came the wild swans flying--
(Great white wings had each glorious one),--
And a snowy feather fluttered down
On the muddy street of a dirty town.
Poverty passed, and wealth came speeding;
Business and pleasure turned their wheels;
But the feather lay, as men trod, unheeding,
Stamped and crushed by a thousand heels.
And the message it brought remained untold,
Save to a child with a head of gold.