Worth your best blood this heritage that ye guard!
These mighty streams resplendent with our story,
These iron coasts by rage of seas unjarred,--
What fields of peace these bulwarks will secure!
What vales of plenty those calm floods supply!
Shall not our love this rough, sweet land make sure,
Her bounds preserve inviolate, though we die?
O strong hearts of the North,
Let flame your loyalty forth,
And put the craven and base to an open shame,
Till earth shall know the Child of Nations by her name!
CANADIAN STREAMS
O rivers rolling to the sea
From lands that bear the maple tree,
How swell your voices with the strain
Of loyalty and liberty!
A holy music, heard in vain
By coward heart and sordid brain,
To whom this strenuous being seems
Naught but a greedy race for gain.
O unsung streams--not splendid themes
Ye lack to fire your patriot dreams!
Annals of glory gild your waves,
Hope freights your tides, Canadian streams!
St Lawrence, whose wide water laves
The shores that ne'er have nourished slaves!
Swift Richelieu of lilied fame!
Niagara of glorious graves!
Thy rapids, Ottawa, proclaim
Where Daulac and his heroes came!
Thy tides, St John, declare La Tour,
And, later, many a loyal name!
Thou inland stream, whose vales, secure
From storm, Tecumseh's death made poor!
And thou, small water, red with war,
'Twixt Beaubassin and Beauséjour!
Dread Saguenay, where eagles soar,
What voice shall from the bastioned shore
The tale of Roberval reveal,
Or his mysterious fate deplore?
Annapolis, do thy floods yet feel
Faint memories of Champlain's keel,
Thy pulses yet the deed repeat
Of Poutrincourt and d'Iberville?
And thou far tide, whose plains now beat
With march of myriad westering feet,
Saskatchewan, whose virgin sod
So late Canadian blood made sweet?
Your bulwark hills, your valleys broad,
Streams where de Salaberry trod,
Where Wolfe achieved, where Brock was slain,--
Their voices are the voice of God!
O sacred waters! not in vain,
Across Canadian height and plain,
Ye sound us in triumphant tone
The summons of your high refrain.
THE SILVER THAW
There came a day of showers
Upon the shrinking snow;
The south wind sighed of flowers,
The softening skies hung low.
Midwinter for a space
Foreshadowing April's face,
The white world caught the fancy,
And would not let it go.
In reawakened courses
The brooks rejoiced the land;
We dreamed the Spring's shy forces
Were gathering close at hand.
The dripping buds were stirred,
As if the sap had heard
The long-desired persuasion
Of April's soft command.
But antic Time had cheated
With hope's elusive gleam;
The phantom Spring, defeated,
Fled down the ways of dream.
And in the night the reign
Of winter came again,
With frost upon the forest
And stillness on the stream.
When morn in rose and crocus
Came up the bitter sky,
Celestial beams awoke us
To wondering ecstasy.
The wizard Winter's spell
Had wrought so passing well,
That earth was bathed in glory,
As if God's smile were nigh.
The silver'd saplings, bending,
Flashed in a rain of gems;
The statelier trees, attending,
Blazed in their diadems.
White fire and amethyst
All common things had kissed,
And chrysolites and sapphires
Adorned the bramble-stems.
In crystalline confusion
All beauty came to birth;
It was a kind illusion
To comfort waiting earth--
To bid the buds forget
The Spring so distant yet,
And hearts no more remember
The iron season's dearth.
EPITAPH FOR A SAILOR BURIED ASHORE
He who but yesterday would roam
Careless as clouds, and currents range,
In homeless wandering most at home,
Inhabiter of change;
Who wooed the West to win the East,
And named the stars of North and South,
And felt the zest of Freedom's feast
Familiar in his mouth;
Who found a faith in stranger-speech,
And fellowship in foreign hands,
And had within his eager reach
The relish of all lands--
How circumscribed a plot of earth
Keeps now his restless footsteps still,
Whose wish was wide as ocean's girth,
Whose will the water's will!
THE TRAIN AMONG THE HILLS
Vast, unrevealed, in silence and the night
Brooding, the ancient hills commune with sleep.
Inviolate the solemn valleys keep
Their contemplation. Soon from height to height
Steals a red finger of mysterious light,
And lion-footed through the forests creep
Strange mutterings; till suddenly, with sweep
And shattering thunder of resistless flight
And crash of routed echoes, roars to view,
Down the long mountain gorge, the Night Express,
Freighted with fears and tears and happiness....
The dread form passes; silence falls anew.
And lo! I have beheld the thronged, blind world
To goals unseen from God's hand onward hurled.
A SONG OF GROWTH
In the heart of a man
Is a thought upfurled,
Reached its full span
It shakes the world,
And to one high thought
Is a whole race wrought.
Not with vain noise
The great work grows,
Nor with foolish voice,
But in repose,--
Not in the rush
But in the hush.
From the cogent lash
Of the cloud-herd wind
The low clouds dash,
Blown headlong, blind;
But beyond, the great blue
Looks moveless through.
O'er the loud world sweep
The scourge and the rod;
But in deep beyond deep
Is the stillness of God;--
At the Fountains of Life
No cry, no strife.
SLEEPY MAN
When the Sleepy Man comes with dust in his eyes
(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)
He shuts up the earth, and he opens the skies.
(So hush-a-by, weary, my Dearie!)
He smiles through his fingers, and shuts up the sun;
(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)
The stars that he loves he lets out one by one.
(So hush-a-by, weary, my Dearie!)
He comes from the castles of Drowsy-boy Town;
(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)
At the touch of his hand the tired eyelids fall down.
(So hush-a-by, weary, my Dearie!)
He comes with a murmur of dreams in his wings
(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)
And whispers of mermaids and wonderful things.
(So hush-a-by, weary, my Dearie!)
When the top is a burden, the bugle a bane,
(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)
When one would be faring down Dream-a-way Lane,
(So hush-a-by, weary, my Dearie!)
When one would be wending in Lullaby Wherry
(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)
To Sleepy Man's Castle by Comforting Ferry.
(So hush-a-by, weary, my Dearie!)
NIGHT IN A DOWN-TOWN STREET
Not in the eyed, expectant gloom,
Where soaring peaks repose
And incommunicable space
Companions with the snows;
Not in the glimmering dusk that crawls
Upon the clouded sea,
Where bourneless wave on bourneless wave
Complains continually;
Not in the palpable dark of woods
Where groping hands clutch fear,
Does Night her deeps of solitude
Reveal unveiled as here.
The street is a grim cañon carved
In the eternal stone,
That knows no more the rushing stream
It anciently has known.
The emptying tide of life has drained
The iron channel dry,
Strange winds from the forgotten day
Draw down, and dream, and sigh.
The narrow heaven, the desolate moon
Made wan with endless years,
Seem less immeasurably remote
Than laughter, love, or tears.
THE FALLING LEAVES
Lightly He blows, and at His breath they fall,
The perishing kindreds of the leaves; they drift,
Spent flames of scarlet, gold aërial,
Across the hollow year, noiseless and swift.
Lightly he blows, and countless as the falling
Of snow by night upon a solemn sea,
The ages circle down beyond recalling,
To strew the hollows of Eternity.
He sees them drifting through the spaces dim,
And leaves and ages are as one to Him.
AN EPITAPH FOR A HUSBANDMAN
He who would start and rise
Before the crowing cocks--
No more he lifts his eyes,
Whoever knocks.
He who before the stars
Would call the cattle home,--
They wait about the bars
For him to come.
Him at whose hearty calls
The farmstead woke again,
The horses in their stalls
Expect in vain.
Busy, and blithe, and bold,
He labored for the morrow,--
The plough his hands would hold
Rusts in the furrow.
His fields he had to leave,
His orchards cool and dim;
The clods he used to cleave
Now cover him.
But the green, growing things
Lean kindly to his sleep,--
White roots and wandering strings,
Closer they creep.
Because he loved them long
And with them bore his part,
Tenderly now they throng
About his heart.
ORIGINS
Out of the dreams that heap
The hollow hand of sleep,--
Out of the dark sublime,
The echoing deeps of time,--
From the averted Face
Beyond the bournes of space,
Into the sudden sun
We journey, one by one.
Out of the hidden shade
Wherein desire is made,--
Out of the pregnant stir
Where death and life confer,--
The dark and mystic heat
Where soul and matter meet,--
The enigmatic Will,--
We start! and then are still.
Inexorably decreed
By the ancestral deed,
The puppets of our sires,
We work out blind desires,
And for our sons ordain
The blessing or the bane.
In ignorance we stand
With fate on either hand,
And question stars and earth
Of life, and death, and birth.
With wonder in our eyes
We scan the kindred skies,
While through the common grass
Our atoms mix and pass.
We feel the sap go free
When spring comes to the tree;
And in our blood is stirred
What warms the brooding bird.
The vital fire we breathe
That bud and blade bequeathe,
And strength of native clay
In our full veins hath sway.
But in the urge intense
And fellowship of sense,
Suddenly comes a word
In other ages heard.
On a great wind our souls
Are borne to unknown goals,
And past the bournes of space
To the unaverted Face.
THE WRESTLER
When God sends out His company to travel
through the stars,
There is every kind of wonder in the show;
There is every kind of animal behind its prison bars;
With riders in a many-colored row.
The master showman, Time, has a strange trick of rhyme,
And the clown's most ribald jest is a tear;
But the best drawing card is the Wrestler huge and hard,
Who can fill the tent at any time of year.
His eye is on the crowd, and he beckons with his hand,
With authoritative finger, and they come.
The rules of the game they do not understand,
But they go as in a dream, and are dumb.
They would fain say him nay, and they look the other way,
Till at last to the ropes they cling;
But he throws them one by one till the show for them is done,
In the blood-red dust of the ring.
There's none to shun his challenge--they must meet him soon or
late,
And he knows a cunning trick for all heels.
The king's haughty crown drops in jeers from his pate
As the hold closes on him, and he reels.
The burly and the proud, the braggarts of the crowd,
Every one of them he topples down in thunder.
His grip grows mild for the dotard and the child,
But alike they must all go under.
Oh, many a mighty foeman would try a fall with him--
Persepolis and Babylon and Rome,
Assyria and Sardis, they see their fame grow dim,
As he tumbles in the dust every dome.
At length will come an hour when the stars shall feel his power,
And he shall have his will upon the sun.
Ere we know what he's about, the stars will be put out,
And the wonder of the show will be undone.
RECESSIONAL
Now along the solemn heights
Fade the Autumn's altar-lights;
Down the great earth's glimmering chancel
Glide the days and nights.
Little kindred of the grass,
Like a shadow in a glass
Falls the dark and falls the stillness;
We must rise and pass.
We must rise and follow, wending
Where the nights and days have ending,--
Pass in order pale and slow
Unto sleep extending.
Little brothers of the clod,
Soul of fire and seed of sod,
We must fare into the silence
At the knees of God.
Little comrades of the sky
Wing to wing we wander by,
Going, going, going, going,
Softly as a sigh.
Hark, the moving shapes confer,
Globe of dew and gossamer,
Fading and ephemeral spirits
In the dusk astir.
Moth and blossom, blade and bee,
Worlds must go as well as we,
In the long procession joining
Mount, and star, and sea.
Toward the shadowy brink we climb
Where the round year rolls sublime,
Rolls, and drops, and falls forever
In the vast of time;
Like a plummet plunging deep
Past the utmost reach of sleep,
Till remembrance has no longer
Care to laugh or weep.
ASCRIPTION
O Thou who hast beneath Thy hand
The dark foundations of the land,--
The motion of whose ordered thought
An instant universe hath wrought;
Who hast within Thine equal hand
The rolling sun, the ripening seed,
The azure of the speedwell's eye,
The vast solemnities of sky,--
Who hear'st no less the feeble note
Of one small bird's awakening throat
Than that unnamed, tremendous chord
Arcturus sounds before his Lord,--
More sweet to Thee than all acclaim
Of storm and ocean, stars and flame,
In favor more before Thy face
Than pageantry of time and space,
The worship and the service be
Of him Thou madest most like Thee,--
Who in his nostrils hath Thy breath,
Whose spirit is the lord of death!
THEODORE ROBERTS
THE SPEARS OF KAN-MAR
Eyes that we look into--so,
Hands that we kiss ere we go,
Keep us,--remember us, hold us a night and a day;
For the white road stretches ahead,
And our spears have a vision of red,
And our horses champ with their bits, and rear at the way.
The tussocks of grass in the glare
Are brown as a dream-maiden's hair,
And over them, white in the sun, the spears of Kan-Mar;
The curbs, and the froth at the lips--
The bridle chains snapping like whips,
And our plumes tossed red, and scenting the heels of war.
The eyes that twinkle and burn--
The wrists like elk-thongs that turn
With the balancing, pausing, slender, murderous spear;
The swords that lead us along,
The thrust, the shriek and the song--
Sights not fit for their eyes, nor sounds for their ears to hear.
The city gates in the sun,
The glory of brave deeds done,
The clatter of horning hoofs and the song of old Kan-Mar,
The roar of the narrow street
Filled with clanging of feet--
The white hands over the balconies, and the kiss on the burning
scar!
COLD
"Cold," cried the wind on the hill,
"Cold," sang the tree;
Your eyes were blue-grey and still
And cold as the sea.
Cold lay the snow on the land;
Cold stood the pine;
But neither as cold as your hand
Lying in mine.
Ah, Love, has the fire died so soon--
Just smoldered and gone;
A kiss by the light of the moon,
A parting by dawn.
THE MEN OF MY HEART'S DESIRE
Where are the men of my heart's desire?
Of the British blood and the loyal names?
Some are North, at the home hearth-fire,
Where the hemlock glooms and the maple flames,
And some are tramping the old world round
For the pot of gold they have never found.
Oh, leal are the men of my heart's desire--
Their fathers were leal in the days gone by--
And their blood is blithe with the subtle fire
The purple breeds, and their hearts are high,--
Poor, and gallant, and dear to me,
With a strong hand each, and a pedigree.
Good men are bred in the East and the West,
And ripe, true gentles in Boston town,
But the men of my blood to my blood seem best--
Who still hold the honor of Mitre and Crown.
Though empty their cellars and worn their attire,
These are the men of my heart's desire.
So, gentles, these stumbling rhymes I send
To our spruce-clad hills, for a word of cheer,--
Where there's ever a welcome and ever a friend,
And the brown coat covers the cavalier.
Take them, I pray you, for what they are worth,
For I swear by my soul you're the salt of the earth.
THE CHASE
Down the long lanes of Arcadie
My lady canters merrily;
The grain is bleaching in the sun,
The russet hickories confer,
And mounted on old Cheveron
With laughing call I follow her.
The maples stand in flaming red,
The sturdy brakes are sere and dead;
But still my lady canters on
Through field and wood and busy town,
And mounted on old Cheveron
I try to ride her down.
Through the long lanes of Arcadie
The crickets skip and chirp to me;
My lady's just 'round yonder bend,
Methinks I hear her call to me--
Methinks our chase is at an end
Through these long lanes of Arcadie!
Nay, still she canters down the lane
With floating skirt and loosened rein.
We've traveled all this summer land,
And still we mount and gallop on;
Sometimes she turns and waves her hand,
A challenge to old Cheveron.
Through all this land of Arcadie
She leads old Cheveron and me,
And how her good mount stands it so
Is really more than I can see;
The valleys now are white with snow,
Yet still we ride through Arcadie.
Old Cheveron has cast his shoes!
The Chase is up, my Lady Muse!
WILLIAM CARMAN ROBERTS
HISTORY
Her gold hair fallen about her face
Made light within that shadowy place,
But on her garments lay the dust
Of many a vanished race.
Her deep eyes, gazing straight ahead,
Saw years and days and hours long dead,
While strange gems glimmered at her feet,
Yellow, and green, and red.
And ever from the shadows came
Voices to pierce her heart like flame.
The great bats fanned her with their wings,
The voices called her name.
But yet her look turned not aside
From the black deep where dreams abide,
Where worlds and pageantries lay dead
Beneath that viewless tide.
Her elbow on her knee was set,
Her strong hand propt her chin, and yet
No man might name that look she wore,
Nor any man forget.
AN EASTER MEMORY
The chime of bells across the waking year
Peals out "The White Christ risen from the dead"--
The gospel that the April winds have spread,
The mystery the golden-wing makes clear.
The tender sky smiles over it; the air
Is kind with love to comfort all the earth.
The brown parks have forgotten winter's dearth
Since daffodils and sunlight made them fair.
But still the gray church from the crowded street
Allures me with the spell of broken dreams.
O heart, my heart, to you and me it seems
That God has left His glory incomplete.
Can we not see her, as a year ago,
Beyond that sunlight flaked in colored fire--
The upturned face, the eyes of still desire,
The dusk-gold hair that now the angels know?
What means this tender April sky to her,
With bells that chime against the winds of spring?
Does memory move her when the blue birds sing,
Or does she feel the old sweet pulses stir?
The organ lays its voice across our strife.
What is it that the sobbing notes would say?
For you and me, my heart, another day!
For her--the Resurrection and the Life!
MY COMRADE CANOE
True comrade, we have tasted life together;
With the wild joy at heart have slipped the tether
To follow, follow, to strange wildernesses,
The frank enticement of the wind and weather.
Joy of the quivering pole, the thrilling sinew,
When mad black rapids shook the soul within you.
As climbing toward the lakes of inland silence
I laughed to see the fanged rocks strain to win you.
Joy of the moonlight on the quiet reaches,
Where loitering we caught the word that teaches
The poise of Godhead to the questing spirit,
The urge of springtime to the budding beeches.
When through the dusk the serried clouds were massing,
Where some lost lake among the hills was glassing
The stormy fire above the western spruces,
The looming moose would wonder at our passing.
Then, when the outland voices ceased to hold us,
When winds would tell no more what once they told us,
We dreamed how far away a little village
Lay waiting with its welcome to infold us.
GEORGE JOHN ROMANES
I ASK NOT FOR THY LOVE, O LORD
I ask not for thy Love, O Lord; the days
Can never come when anguish shall atone.
Enough for me were but Thy pity shown
To me, as to the stricken sheep that strays,
With ceaseless cry for unforgotten ways--
Oh, lead me back to pastures I have known,
Or find me in the wilderness alone,
And slay me as the hand of mercy slays.
I ask not for Thy love; nor e'en so much
As for a hope on Thy dear breast to lie;
But be Thou still my shepherd--still with such
Compassion as may melt to such a cry;
That so I hear Thy feet, and feel Thy touch,
And dimly see Thy face ere yet I die.
CARROLL RYAN
_From_ "MALTA"
_O, bella fior del mondo!_ to-morrow
I'll leave thee to follow the path of the sun,
No more to return, yet departing in sorrow--
The stranger may go as the stranger hath done.
I've met the hot breath of the scorching siroc
As I guarded thy ramparts that frown on the sea,
I've lain 'neath the shade of the vine-covered rock
Weaving bright fancies of glory and thee....
Old Notabile[A] stands upon a hill
With olive groves and vineyards at its base,
Its lofty wall, half-ruined, beareth still
Of siege and battle many a cruel trace;
The centre of this lovely isle,--
The home of song and story,--
Whose tranquil beauty seems to smile
Forgetful of its glory.
Deserted streets of marble halls,
And temples grand and olden,
Where startled Echo rarely calls
Strange sounds thro' sunlight golden:
High convent walls in ivy wrapt,
Shrines of our blessed Lady,
In melancholy silence lapt,
In lanes of cypress shady.
And now and then
Queer aged men
Pass where the bastions moulder,
And seem to me,
So strange they be,
Old as the place or older.
And carved in stone above each door
Is many a knightly crest,
That flamed in hostile fields of yore--
But now the sparrow's nest.
The wingëd hand still grasps the sword
Before the ancient palace;
In dungeons underneath is stored
Verdala's burning chalice.
And Bellfiorè's ruined wall
Frowns on the peasant's labor,
While from its brow strange echoes call
Of song, and pipe, and tabor.
Oh! what a host of shadows wait
Before yon dark unopened gate;
Heroes from the east and west,
In their iron armor drest,
The white cross gleaming on each breast;
Stern warriors of the cross are they--
Those shadows of a former day!
But hark!
In the dark
The bells are tolling,
While, up from the Levant,
The night cloud is rolling.
O, those bells! those Malta bells,
Loudly, wildly ringing,
High their deafening chorus swells,
All my spirit winging.
Now higher, higher,
The iron choir
Like tongues of fire
From earth ascend;
The wide air beating,
Their notes repeating,
Like spirits meeting
They rise and blend!
Now coming softly
From belfrys lofty
Sweet silver voices float thro' the gloom,
Then, loud as thunder,
From Cassels under
Rush sounds of wonder
As if from the tomb!
They cease, and slowly from afar,
Where Dhingli's vale reposes,
I hear a voice and see a star
That beams on paths of roses!
[A] Citta Vecchia
CHARLES SANGSTER
ENGLAND AND AMERICA
Greatest twain among the nations,
Bound alike by kindred ties--
Ties that never should be sundered
While your banners grace the skies--
But united, stand and labor,
Side by side, and hand in hand,
Battling with the sword of Freedom
For the peace of every land.
Yours the one beloved language,
Yours the same religious creed,
Yours the glory and the power,
Great as ever was the meed
Of old Rome, or Greece, or Sparta,
When their arms victoriously
Proved their terrible puissance
Over every land and sea.
Let the son respect the sire,
Let the father love the son,
Both unitedly supporting
All the glories they have won:
Thus in concert nobly wrestling,
They may work the world's release,
And when having crushed its tyrants,
Stand the Sentinels of Peace--
Stand the mighty twin Colossus'
Giants of the latter days,
Straightening for the coming kingdom
All the steep and rugged ways,
Down which many a lofty nation--
Lofty on the scroll of fame--
Has been swept to righteous judgment,
Naught remaining but its name.
What! allied to Merrie England,
Have ye not a noble birth?
Yours, America, her honors,
Yours her every deed of worth.
Have ye not her Norman courage?
Wear ye not her Saxon cast?
Boast ye not her love of Freedom?
Do ye not revere the past
When her mighty men of genius--
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope--
Glorified that self-same language,
Since become your pride and hope?...
There will come a time, my Brothers,
And a dread time it will be,
When your swords will flash together,
For your faith in jeopardy.
Not for crowns, or lands, or sceptres,
Will the fight be fought and won,
Not for fame, or treaties broken,
But for God and God alone:
For the mind with which He blessed us,
That a false creed would keep down,
Shackle--bind it to its purpose--
To uphold a falling crown.
See that then ye fail not, Brothers!
Set the listening skies aglow
With such deeds as live in heaven,
If your Faith be worth a blow.
Proud, then, of each other's greatness,
Ever struggle side by side;
Noble Son! time-honored Parent!
Let no paltry strife divide
Hearts like yours, that should be mindful
Only of each other's worth--
Mindful of your high position
'Mongst the powers of the earth.
Mightiest twain among the nations!
Bound alike by kindred ties--
Ties that never should be sundered,
While your banners grace the skies:
Hearts and destinies once united,
Steadfast to each other prove,
Bind them with enduring fetters--
Bind them with the Bonds of Love.
A LIVING TEMPLE