Led by the dryad of the fairy wood,
A daughter of the land, as bright and good
As spring's first daffodil, bade me survey
Wolfe's cove, the gleaming city with array
Of walls and pinnacles, each in a hood
Of sunset glory, while the shining flood
Swept through the mountains far and far away.
And then the nearer landscape she recalls,
The grove, the Grange, Belle Borne's romantic rill,
Which in a chain of silvery waterfalls
Ran down the cliff and vanished; but she still
Stands there to me. A memory will not fade--
Part of the glorious vision I surveyed.
_From_ "THE SPARROWS"
So sat I yesterday, with weary eyes
Looking at leafless trees and snow-swept plains,
And broad Ontario's ice-encumbered sea.
My thoughts had wandered in a waking dream
Across the deep abyss of vanished years,
To that dear land I never saw again--
When suddenly a fluttering of wings
Shook the soft snow--a twittering of birds
Chirping a strange old note, but heard before
In English hedges and on roofs red-tiled,
Of cottage homes that looked on village greens!
An old familiar note! Who says the ear
Forgets a voice once heard? the eye, a charm?
The heart, affection's touch, from man or woman?
Not mine at least! I knew my own birds' language,
And recognised their little forms with joy.
A flock of English sparrows at my door,
With feathers ruffled in the cold north wind,
Claimed kinship with me--hospitality!--
Brown-coated things! Not for uncounted gold
Would I have made denial of their claims!
Five! six! ten! twenty! But I lost all count
In my great joy. Whence come I knew not; glad
They came to me, who loved them for the sake
Of that dear land at once both theirs and mine.
I ran to get the food I knew they liked,
Remembering how--a child--in frost and snow--
I used to scatter crumbs before the door,
And wheat in harvest gleaned, to feed the birds
Which left us not in winter, but made gay
The bleak, inclement season of the year.
The sparrows chirped and pecked while eyeing me
With little diamond glances, like old friends,
As round my feet they fluttered, hopped and fed,
In perfect confidence and void of fear.
Their forms, their notes, their pretty ways so strange,
Yet so familiar--like a rustic word
Learned in my childhood and not spoken since--
All, all came back to me! and as I looked
And listened--a thousand memories rose up,
Like a vast audience at the nation's song!
Old England's hills and dales of matchless charm,
Sweeping in lines of beauty, stood revealed:
Her fragrant lanes where woodbine trailed the hedge,
And little feet with mine ran side by side
As we plucked primroses, or marked the spot
Where blackbird, thrush or linnet reared its young,
While sang the cuckoo on the branching tree.
Those meadows, too! Who can forget them ever?
So green! with buttercups and daisies set,
Where skylarks nested and sprang up at dawn
To heaven's top, singing their rapturous lay!
Those gentle rivers, not too large to grasp
By the strong swimmer of his native streams;
Those landward homes that breed the nation's strength;
Those beaconed cliffs that watch her stormy seas,
Covered with ships that search all oceans round:
Those havens, marts, and high-built cities, full
Of work and wealth and men who rule the world!
All rose before me in supernal light,
As when beheld with childhood's eyes of strength,
And stirred my soul with impulses divine.
My heart opened its depths--glad tears and sad
Mingled upon my cheek, which forty years'
Strange winds had fanned and heat and cold embrowned.
God's hand is nearer than we think--a touch
Suffices to restore the dead; a word
Becomes a wonder of creative power.
The little sparrows in their rustic speech
Talking a tongue I knew--this message brought
From Christ, who spake it, merciful to man:
"Are not two sparrows for a farthing sold,
And not one falls without the Father's leave?
Fear not, therefore! for of more value, ye,
Than many sparrows, yea, whose very hairs
Are numbered by the loving care of God."
I blessed the little messengers who brought
These words of comfort to my lonely heart,
To teach me resignation, hope and peace.
Like children in a darkened room we cry,
Despairing of the light when 'tis most nigh....
The callow bird must wait its wings to fly,
And so must thou! God's love is law in love,
Working in elements of moral strife
That will not yield obedience but with pain.
"Perfect through suffering." Comprehend'st thou that?
Upon the cross who was it, dying, cried,
In the last agony that rends the soul:
"Eli! Eli! lama sabacthani!"
No other way! Christ, too, must drink that cup
Before His human life was made divine
And our redemption possible from sin!
Or if a gentler lesson thou would'st learn,
Dismayed at those tremendous mysteries,
Think of the birds, the lilies, all things He
Takes care of to the end: why not of thee?
But while their round of life is here complete,
Thine but begins! The law of laws is love,
That needs two worlds to perfect all of man,
And an eternity to teach God's ways!...
MATTHEW RICHEY KNIGHT
JACQUES CARTIER
No flame of war was he, no flower of grace,
No star of wisdom; but a plain, bold man,
More careful of the end than of the plan.
No mystery was he afraid to face;
No savage strategy, no furious storm,
No stings of climate, no unthought disease:
His master purpose would not bend to these,
But saw, through all, achievement's towering form.
He first beheld the gloomy Saguenay,
And Stadacona's high, forbidding brow;
His venturous vision too did first survey
Fair Hochelaga, but not fair as now.
St. Malo holds his dust, the world his fame,
But his strong, dauntless soul 'tis ours to claim.
SOVEREIGN MOMENTS
Life has two sovereign moments;
One when we settle down
To some life-worthy purpose,--
One when we grasp the crown.
THE MERCY OF GOD
They have a saying in the East:--
Two angels note the deeds of men,
And one is first and one is least.
When men do right, one takes his pen
And magnifies the deed to ten.
This angel is at God's right hand,
And holds the other in command.
He says to him when men do wrong,
"The man was weak, temptation strong,--
"Write not the record down to-day;
"To-morrow he may grieve and pray."
It may be myth; but this is sooth--
No ruth is lasting as God's ruth;
The strongest is the tenderest;
He who best knows us loves us best.
ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN
THE RAILWAY STATION
The darkness brings no quiet here, the light
No waking: ever on my blinded brain
The flare of lights, the rush, and cry, and strain,
The engines' scream, the hiss and thunder smite:
I see the hurrying crowds, the clasp, the flight,
Faces that touch, eyes that are dim with pain:
I see the hoarse wheels turn, and the great train
Move laboring out into the bourneless night.
So many souls within its dim recesses,
So many bright, so many mournful eyes:
Mine eyes that watch grow fixed with dreams and guesses;
What threads of life, what hidden histories,
What sweet or passionate dreams and dark distresses,
What unknown thoughts, what various agonies!
OUTLOOK
Not to be conquered by these headlong days,
But to stand free: to keep the mind at brood
On life's deep meaning, nature's altitude
Of loveliness, and time's mysterious ways;
At every thought and deed to clear the haze
Out of our eyes, considering only this,
What man, what life, what love, what beauty is,
This is to live, and win the final praise.
Though strife, ill fortune, and harsh human need
Beat down the soul, at moments blind and dumb
With agony; yet, patience--there shall come
Many great voices from life's outer sea,
Hours of strange triumph, and, when few men heed,
Murmurs and glimpses of eternity.
AMONG THE MILLET
The dew is gleaming in the grass,
The morning hours are seven;
And I am fain to watch you pass,
Ye soft white clouds of heaven.
Ye stray and gather, part and fold;
The wind alone can tame you;
I think of what in time of old
The poets loved to name you.
They called you sheep, the sky your sward,
A field without a reaper;
They called the shining sun your lord,
The shepherd wind your keeper.
Your sweetest poets I will deem
The men of old for moulding,
In simple beauty, such a dream,--
And I could lie beholding,
Where daisies in the meadow toss,
The wind from morn till even
Forever shepherd you across
The shining field of heaven.
THE LOONS
Once ye were happy, once by many a shore,
Wherever Glooscap's gentle feet might stray,
Lulled by his presence like a dream, ye lay
Floating at rest; but that was long of yore.
He was too good for earthly men; he bore
Their bitter deeds for many a patient day,
And then at last he took his unseen way.
He was your friend, and ye might rest no more.
And now, though many hundred altering years
Have passed, among the desolate northern meres
Still must ye search and wander querulously,
Crying for Glooscap, still bemoan the light
With weird entreaties, and in agony
With awful laughter pierce the lonely night.
THE SUN CUP
The earth is the cup of the sun,
That he filleth at morning with wine,--
With the warm, strong wine of his might
From the vintage of gold and of light,
Fills it, and makes it divine.
And at night when his journey is done,
At the gate of his radiant hall,
He setteth his lips to the brim,
With a long last look of his eye,
And lifts it and draineth it dry,--
Drains till he leaveth it all
Empty and hollow and dim.
And then, as he passes to sleep,
Still full of the feats that he did
Long ago in Olympian wars,
He closes it down with the sweep
Of its slow-turning luminous lid,
Its cover of darkness and stars,
Wrought once by Hephaestus of old
With violet and vastness and gold.
AFTER RAIN
For three whole days across the sky,
In sullen packs that loomed and broke,
With flying fringes dim as smoke,
The columns of the rain went by;
At every hour the rain went by;
At every hour the wind awoke;
The darkness passed upon the plain;
The great drops rattled at the pane.
Now piped the wind, or far aloof
Fell to a sough remote and dull;
And all night long with rush and lull
The rain kept drumming on the roof:
I heard till ear and sense were full
The clash or silence of the leaves,
The gurgle in the creaking eaves.
But when the fourth day came--at noon,
The darkness and the rain were by;
The sunward roofs were steaming dry;
And all the world was flecked and strewn
With shadows from a fleecy sky.
The haymakers were forth and gone,
And every rillet laughed and shone.
Then, too, on me that loved so well
The world, despairing in her blight,
Uplifted with her least delight,
On me, as on the earth, there fell
New happiness of mirth and might;
I strode the valleys pied and still;
I climbed upon the breezy hill.
I watched the gray hawk wheel and drop,
Sole shadow on the shining world;
I saw the mountains clothed and curled,
With forest ruffling to the top;
I saw the river's length unfurled,
Pale silver down the fruited plain,
Grown great and stately with the rain.
Through miles of shadow and soft heat,
Where field and fallow, fence and tree,
Were all one world of greenery,
I heard the robin singing sweet,
The sparrow piping silverly,
The thrushes at the forest's hem;
And as I went I sang with them.
JUNE
Long, long ago, it seems, this summer morn,
That pale-browed April passed with pensive tread
Through the frore woods, and from its frost-bound bed
Woke the arbutus with her silver horn;
And now May, too, is fled,
The flower-crowned month, the merry laughing May,
With rosy feet and fingers dewy wet,
Leaving the woods and all cool gardens gay
With tulips and the scented violet.
Gone are the wind-flower and the adder-tongue,
And the sad drooping bellwort, and no more
The snowy trilliums crowd the forest floor;
The purpling grasses are no longer young,
And summer's wide-set door
O'er the thronged hills and the broad panting earth
Lets in the torrent of the later bloom,
Haytime, and harvest, and the after mirth,
The slow soft rain, the rushing thunder plume.
All day in garden alleys moist and dim,
The humid air is burdened with the rose;
In moss-deep woods the creamy orchid blows;
And now the vesper-sparrow's pealing hymn
From every orchard close
At eve comes flooding rich and silvery;
The daisies in great meadows swing and shine;
And with the wind a sound as of the sea
Roars in the maples and the topmost pine.
High in the hills the solitary thrush
Tunes magically his music of fine dreams,
In briary dells, by boulder-broken streams;
And wide and far on nebulous fields aflush
The mellow morning gleams.
The orange cone-flowers purple-bossed are there,
The meadow's bold-eyed gypsies deep of hue,
And slender hawkweed tall and softly fair,
And rosy tops of fleabane veiled with dew.
So with thronged voices and unhasting flight
The fervid hours with long return go by;
The far-heard bugles, piping shrill and high,
Tell the slow moments of the solemn night
With unremitting cry;
Lustrous and large out of the gathering drouth
The planets gleam; the baleful Scorpion
Trails his dim fires along the drousëd south;
The silent world-incrusted round moves on.
And all the dim night long the moon's white beams
Nestle deep down in every brooding tree,
And sleeping birds, touched with a silly glee,
Waken at midnight from their blissful dreams,
And carol brokenly.
Dim surging motions and uneasy dreads
Scare the light slumber from men's busy eyes,
And parted lovers on their restless beds
Toss and yearn out, and cannot sleep for sighs.
Oft have I striven, sweet month, to figure thee,
As dreamers of old time were wont to feign,
In living form of flesh, and striven in vain;
Yet when some sudden old-world mystery
Of passion fixed my brain,
Thy shape hath flashed upon me like no dream,
Wandering with scented curls that heaped the breeze,
Or by some hollow of some reeded stream
Sitting waist-deep in white anemones;
And even as I glimpsed thee thou wert gone,
A dream for mortal eyes too proudly coy,
Yet in thy place for subtle thoughts employ
The golden magic clung, a light that shone
And filled me with thy joy.
Before me like a mist that streamed and fell
All names and shapes of antique beauty passed
In garlanded procession, with the swell
Of flutes between the beechen stems; and, last,
I was the Arcadian valley, the loved wood,
Alpheus stream divine, the sighing shore,
And through the cool green glades, awake once more,
Psyche, the white-limbed goddess, still pursued,
Fleet-footed as of yore,
The noonday ringing with her frighted peals,
Down the bright sward and through the reeds she ran,
Urged by the mountain echoes, at her heels
The hot-blown cheeks and trampling feet of Pan.
SEPTEMBER
Now hath the summer reached her golden close,
And, lost amid her corn-fields, bright of soul,
Scarcely perceives from her divine repose
How near, how swift, the inevitable goal:
Still, still she smiles, though from her careless feet
The bounty and the fruitful strength are gone,
And through the soft long wandering days goes on
The silent sere decadence sad and sweet.
The kingbird and the pensive thrush are fled,
Children of light, too fearful of the gloom;
The sun falls low, the secret word is said,
The mouldering woods grow silent as the tomb;
Even the fields have lost their sovereign grace,
The corn-flower and the marguerite; and no more
Across the river's shadow-haunted floor
The paths of skimming swallows interlace.
Already in the outland wilderness
The forests echo with unwonted dins;
In clamorous gangs the gathering woodmen press
Northward, and the stern winter's toil begins.
Around the long low shanties, whose rough lines
Break the sealed dreams of many an unnamed lake,
Already in the frost-clear morns awake
The crash and thunder of the falling pines.
Where the tilled earth, with all its fields set free,
Naked and yellow from the harvest lies,
By many a loft and busy granary,
The hum and tumult of the threshers rise;
There the tanned farmers labor without slack,
Till twilight deepens round the spouting mill,
Feeding the loosened sheaves, or with fierce will
Pitching waist-deep upon the dusky stack.
Still a brief while, ere the old year quite pass,
Our wandering steps and wistful eyes shall greet
The leaf, the water, the beloved grass;
Still from these haunts and this accustomed seat
I see the wood-wrapt city, swept with light,
The blue, long-shadowed distance, and, between,
The dotted farm-lands with their parcelled green,
The dark pine forest and the watchful height.
I see the broad rough meadow stretched away
Into the crystal sunshine, wastes of sod,
Acres of withered vervain, purple-gray,
Branches of aster, groves of goldenrod;
And yonder, toward the sunlit summit, strewn
With shadowy boulders, crowned and swathed with weed,
Stand ranks of silken thistles, blown to seed,
Long silver fleeces shining like the moon.
In far-off russet corn-fields, where the dry
Gray shocks stand peaked and withering, half concealed
In the rough earth, the orange pumpkins lie,
Full-ribbed; and in the windless pasture-field
The sleek red horses o'er the sun-warmed ground
Stand pensively about in companies,
While all around them from the motionless trees
The long clean shadows sleep without a sound.
Under cool elm-trees floats the distant stream,
Moveless as air; and o'er the vast warm earth
The fathomless daylight seems to stand and dream,
A liquid cool elixir--all its girth
Bound with faint haze, a frail transparency,
Whose lucid purple barely veils and fills
The utmost valleys and the thin last hills,
Nor mars one whit their perfect clarity.
Thus without grief the golden days go by,
So soft we scarcely notice how they wend,
And like a smile half happy, or a sigh,
The summer passes to her quiet end;
And soon, too soon, around the cumbered eaves
Shy frosts shall take the creepers by surprise,
And through the wind-touched reddening woods shall rise
October with the rain of ruined leaves.
THE GOAL OF LIFE
There is a beauty at the goal of life,
A beauty growing since the world began,
Through every age and race, through lapse and strife,
Till the great human soul complete her span.
Beneath the waves of storm that lash and burn,
The currents of blind passion that appal,
To listen and keep watch till we discern
The tide of sovereign truth that guides it all;
So to address our spirits to the height,
And so attune them to the valiant whole,
That the great light be clearer for our light,
And the great soul the stronger for our soul:
To have done this is to have lived, though fame
Remember us with no familiar name.
MARY JANE KATZMANN LAWSON
THE FACE IN THE CATHEDRAL
It was one of those grand cathedrals,
"A poem in wood and stone,"
Fashioned by master-builders,
For the glory of God alone.
The sound of hammer and chisel
From morning till night was there,
As it rose in its Gothic grandeur,
A temple so vast and fair!
Workmen from every nation
With skill and craft had planned
Column and nave and chancel,
All wrought with cunning hand.
Strength was inlaid with beauty--
A goodly sight to see
The rainbow light through the mullioned panes
Of that glorious sanctuary!
One day past the crowd of watchers
Came a man with silver hair,
And asked of the master-builder
For leave to labor there.
The workmen stood in wonder,
For the stranger's eyes were dim,
And the hands so thin and nerveless
Ne'er told of work in him.
The master smiled as he answered,
"Our men must be strong and true,
Able, as well as willing,
For the work they have to do;
Your skill and your strength are over."
"Try me," the old man said,
"Let me but work in the windowed niche
Of the turret above my head."
And the master in pity yielded
To the pleading of voice and eye.
The old man climbed the minster stairs,
To the window aslant the sky;
And there where the sunrise glory
Fell first through the diamond pane,
And pillar and arch and chancel
Were bathed in golden rain,
Day after day on the panel
He had won from the builder's grace,
His trembling hands were busy,
Carving a single face;
Silent, and always keeping
From watchers and workers aloof,
There by the oriel window,
Under the fretted roof.
But once when the sun was setting,
And the minster's walls were dim,
The workmen waited and listened--
What had befallen him?
He stood not before the panel,
Nor came down the lofty stair,
Yet the light of the turret window
Was shining upon him there!
For he lay in the quiet shadow
That follows the setting sun;
His tired hands were folded,--
The old man's work was done!
And fresh from the shining panel,
Finished with perfect grace,
Looked down on the pale dead artist
A pure, young, tender face,
Fresh in its dewy softness,
As a rose in the light may glow,
The face that had made the sunshine
Of his life in the long ago;
And the love, through whose perfect fulness
Our nature becomes divine,
Had transferred from his faithful keeping
That face to this holy shrine.
There in its place of beauty,
Eyes turned to the rising sun,
He had made her face immortal,--
He died, for his work was done!
In that grand old English temple
There are marvels of wondrous skill,
Where the brain and hand of the craftsman
Have worked with a perfect will;
But naught has the grace and beauty
Of the face in the niche above;--
Their work was for gain or glory,
But his was done for Love!
SOPHIA V. GILBERT LEE
THE BROOK
Ripple, ripple, ripple,
Goes the little brook,
Ripple, ripple, ripple,
Backward casts no look;
On through vale and woodland,
And flowery meadows green,
Staying not its progress
To see or to be seen.
Ripple, ripple, ripple,
Bubbling on its way,
Ripple, ripple, ripple--
Hark! I hear it say:
O foolish man, why dwellest thou
On themes of long ago?
Pass by the old, take up the new,
Time's fleeting--let me go!
LILY ALICE LEFEVRE
IMPRISONED
Within, a panic stricken throng
That sudden fear appals,
In blindest fury crashing close
Wide doors to rigid walls--
A wild fierce struggle, life or death,
Each holding ground with gasping breath
Until the weaker falls,--
Each inch of room a battle-field
Where one exults and one must yield.
Without, the boundless earth and air,
The depths of starry space,
Vast oceans that the strong white moon
Uplifts to her embrace;
Free winds of heaven blowing light,
Far planets wheeling through the night
To their appointed place,--
Marvels unseen to captives there,
Imprisoned by their own despair.
Within the gloomy walls of Doubt
Fierce factions wage their war;
Fair Hope lies slain where they have set
Negation's iron bar.
Pent in their narrow bounds they cry,
"No stars, no sky,--we struggle, die,
And know not why we are."
Oh, self-immured! ye cannot see?
Stand back!--your brother shall be free.
Stand back!--from 'neath your trampling feet
The young, the weak shall rise.
Their white lips breathe in silent pain
The prayer your pride denies;
Their pale hands clasp the faded flowers
Of faith that bloomed in happier hours
Beneath their childhood's skies.
Oh, still for these within your walls
May justice, truth and self-control
Set wide the gateways of the soul
To where, beyond, God's glory calls
Man's spirit to its goal.
INSPIRATION
A lark sprang up to greet the dawn
Close to a rose one day,
The tears upon her glowing cheek
His light wing brushed away,
Her fragrant beauty fresh and fair
He kissed in passing by,
And wove her name into his song
Of rapture in the sky.
The lonely rose sighed, "Ah, my love,
I cannot follow thee;
Far, far above in golden light
Thou hast forgotten me.
Yet am I blest for evermore
Though but an instant dear,--
Thou singest now a sweeter song
For all the world to hear!"
R. E. MULLINS LEPROHON
THE HURON CHIEF'S DAUGHTER
The dusky warriors stood in groups around the funeral pyre;
The scowl upon their knotted brows betrayed their vengeful ire.
It needed not the cords, the stake, the rites so stern and rude,
To tell it was to be a scene of cruelty and blood....
O lovely was that winsome child of a dark and rugged line,
And e'en 'mid Europe's daughters fair surpassing might she shine:
For ne'er had coral lips been wreathed by brighter, sunnier smile,
Or dark eyes beamed with lustrous light more full of winsome
wile....
And, yet it was not wonderful, that haughty, highborn grace--
She stood amid her direst foes a Princess of her race;
Knowing they'd met to wreak on her their hatred 'gainst her name,
To doom her to a fearful death, to pangs of fire and flame....