And watched the living soul as it passed through,
Arrayed in pearly vestments, white and pure.
The calm, immortal presence made me start.
It searched through all the chambers of her mind
With one mild glance of love, and smiled to view
The fastnesses of feeling, strong--secure
And safe from all surprise. It sits enshrined
And offers incense in her heart, as on
An altar sacred unto God. The dawn
Of an imperishable love passed through
The lattice of my senses, and I, too,
Did offer incense in that solemn place--
A woman's heart made pure and sanctified by grace.
THE ILLUMINED GOAL
Slowly rose the dædal Earth
Through the purple-hued abysm,
Glowing like a gorgeous prism,
Heaven exulting o'er its birth.
Still the mighty wonder came
Through the jasper-colored sphere,
Ether-winged, and crystal-clear,
Trembling to the loud acclaim.
In a haze of golden rain
Up the heavens rolled the sun,
Danäe-like the earth was won,
Else his love and light were vain.
So the heart and soul of man
Own the light and love of heaven;
Nothing yet in vain was given,
Nature's is a perfect plan.
LOVE'S RENEWAL
Love's sun, like that of day, may set, and set,
It hath as bright a rising in the morn.
True love has no grey hairs; his golden locks
Can never whiten with the snows of time.
Sorrow lies drear on many a youthful heart,
Like snow upon the evergreens; but love
Can gather sweetest honey by the way,
E'en from the carcass of some prostrate grief.--
We have been spoiled with blessings. Though the world
Holds nothing dearer than the hope that's fled,
God ever opens up new founts of bliss--
Spiritual Bethsaidas where the soul
Can wash the earth-stains from its fevered loins.
We carve our sorrows on the face of joy,
Reversing the true image; we are weak
Where strength is needed most, and most is given.
'TIS SUMMER STILL
'Tis Summer still, yet now and then a leaf
Falls from some stately tree. True type of life!
How emblematic of the pangs that grief
Wrings from our blighted hopes, that one by one
Drop from us in our wrestle with the strife
And natural passions of our stately youth.
And thus we fall beneath life's summer sun.
Each step conducts us through an opening door
Into new halls of being, hand in hand
With grave Experience, until we command
The open, wide-spread autumn fields, and store
The full ripe grain of Wisdom and of Truth.
As on life's tottering precipice we stand,
Our sins, like withered leaves, are blown about the land.
DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT
THE FIFTEENTH OF APRIL
Pallid saffron glows the broken stubble,
Brimmed with silver lie the ruts,
Purple the ploughed hill;
Down a sluice with break and bubble
Hollow falls the rill;
Falls and spreads and searches,
Where, beyond the wood,
Starts a group of silver birches,
Bursting into blood.
Under Venus sings the vesper sparrow,
Down a path of rosy gold
Floats the slender moon;
Ringing from the rounded barrow
Rolls the robin's tune;
Lighter than the robin--hark!
Quivering silver-strong
From the field a hidden shore-lark
Shakes his sparkling song.
Now the dewy sounds begin to dwindle,
Dimmer grow the burnished rills,
Breezes creep and halt,
Soon the guardian night shall kindle
In the violet vault,
All the twinkling tapers,
Touched with steady gold,
Burning through the lawny vapors
Where they float and fold.
ABOVE ST IRÉNÉE
I rested on the breezy height,
In cooler shade and clearer air,
Beneath a maple tree;
Below, the mighty river took
Its sparkling shade and sheening light
Down to the sombre sea,
And clustered by the leaping brook
The roofs of white St Irénée.
The sapphire hills on either hand
Broke down upon the silver tide,
The river ran in streams,
In streams of mingled azure-grey,
With here a broken purple band,
And whorls of drab, and beams
Of shattered silver light astray,
Where far away the south shore gleams.
I walked a mile along the height
Between the flowers upon the road,
Asters and golden-rod;
And in the gardens pinks and stocks,
And gaudy poppies shaking light,
And daisies blooming near the sod,
And lowly pansies set in flocks,
With purple monkshood overawed.
And there I saw a little child,
Between the tossing golden-rod,
Coming along to me;
She was a tender little thing,
So fragile-sweet, so Mary-mild,
I thought her name Marie;
No other name methought could cling
To any one so fair as she.
And when we came at last to meet,
I spoke a simple word to her,
"Where are you going, Marie?"
She answered, and she did not smile,
But oh! her voice,--her voice so sweet,
"Down to St Irénée,"
And so passed on to walk her mile,
And left the lonely road to me.
And as the night came on apace,
With stars above the darkened hills,
I heard perpetually,
Chiming along the falling hours,
On the deep dusk that mellow phrase,
"Down to St Irénée:"
It seemed as if the stars and flowers
Should all go there with me.
OFF RIVIÈRE DU LOUP
O ship incoming from the sea
With all your cloudy tower of sail,
Dashing the water to the lee,
And leaning grandly to the gale;
The sunset pageant in the west
Has filled your canvas curves with rose,
And jewelled every toppling crest
That crashes into silver snows!
You know the joy of coming home
After long leagues to France or Spain;
You feel the clear Canadian foam
And the gulf water heave again.
Between these sombre purple hills
That cool the sunset's molten bars,
You will go on as the wind wills,
Beneath the river's roof of stars.
You will toss onward toward the lights
That spangle over the lone pier,
By hamlets glimmering on the heights,
By level islands black and clear:
You will go on beyond the tide,
Through brimming plains of olive sedge,
Through paler shallows light and wide,
The rapids piled along the ledge.
At evening off some reedy bay
You will swing slowly on your chain,
And catch the scent of dewy hay,
Soft blowing from the pleasant plain.
THE END OF THE DAY
I hear the bells at eventide
Peal slowly one by one,
Near and far off they break and glide;
Across the stream float faintly beautiful
The antiphonal bells of Hull;
The day is done, done, done,
The day is done.
The dew has gathered in the flowers,
Like tears from some unconscious deep:
The swallows whirl around the towers,
The light runs out beyond the long cloud bars,
And leaves the single stars;
'Tis time for sleep, sleep, sleep,
'Tis time for sleep.
The hermit thrush begins again,--
Timorous eremite--
That song of risen tears and pain,
As if the one he loved was far away:
'Alas! another day--'
'And now Good Night, Good Night,'
'Good Night.'
A FLOCK OF SHEEP
Over the field the bright air clings and tingles
In the gold sunset, while the red wind swoops;
Upon the nibbled knolls, and from the dingles,
The sheep are gathering in frightened groups.
From the wide field the laggards bleat and follow,
A drover hurls his cry and hooting laugh;
And one young swain, too glad to whoop or hollo,
Is singing wildly as he whirls his staff.
Now crowding into little groups and eddies
They swirl about and charge and try to pass;
The sheep-dog yelps and heads them off and steadies
And rounds and moulds them in a seething mass.
They stand a moment with their heads uplifted
Till the wise dog barks loudly on the flank,
They all at once roll over and are drifted
Down the small hill toward the river bank.
Covered with rusty marks and purple blotches
Around the fallen bars they flow and leap;
The wary dog stands by and keenly watches
As if he knew the name of every sheep.
Now down the road the nimble sound decreases,
The drovers cry, the dog delays and whines,
And now with twinkling feet and glimmering fleeces
They round and vanish past the dusky pines.
The drove is gone, the ruddy wind grows colder,
The singing youth puts up the heavy bars,
Beyond the pines he sees the crimson smoulder,
And catches in his eyes the early stars.
MEMORY
I see a schooner in the bay
Cutting the current into foam;
One day she flies and then one day
Comes like a swallow veering home.
I hear a water miles away
Go sobbing down the wooded glen;
One day it falls and then one day
Comes sobbing on the wind again.
Remembrance goes but will not stay;
That cry of unpermitted pain
One day departs and then one day
Comes sobbing to my heart again.
HOME SONG
There is rain upon the window,
There is wind upon the tree;
The rain is slowly sobbing,
The wind is blowing free:
It bears my weary heart
To my own country.
I hear the whitethroat calling,
Hid in the hazel ring;
Deep in the misty hollows
I hear the sparrows sing;
I see the bloodroot starting,
All silvered with the spring.
I skirt the buried reed-beds,
In the starry solitude:
My snowshoes creak and whisper,
I have my ready blood.
I hear the lynx-cub yelling
In the gaunt and shaggy wood.
I hear the wolf-tongued rapid
Howl in the rocky break;
Beyond the pines at the portage
I hear the trapper wake
His _En roulant ma boulé_,
From the clear gloom of the lake.
O! take me back to the homestead,
To the great rooms warm and low,
Where the frost creeps on the casement,
When the year comes in with snow.
Give me, give me the old folk
Of the dear long ago.
Oh, land of the dusky balsam,
And the darling maple tree,
Where the cedar buds and berries,
And the pine grows strong and free!
My heart is weary and weary
For my own country.
LIFE AND DEATH
I thought of death beside the lonely sea,
That went beyond the limit of my sight,
Seeming the image of his mastery,
The semblance of his huge and gloomy might.
But firm beneath the sea went the great earth,
With sober bulk and adamantine hold,
The water but a mantle for her girth,
That played about her splendor fold on fold.
And life seemed like this dear familiar shore,
That stretched from the wet sands' last wavy crease,
Beneath the sea's remote and sombre roar,
To inland stillness and the wilds of peace.
Death seems triumphant only here and there;
Life is the sovereign presence everywhere.
OTTAWA
City about whose brow the north winds blow,
Girdled with woods and shod with river foam,
Called by a name as old as Troy or Rome,
Be great as they, but pure as thine own snow;
Rather flash up amid the auroral glow,
The Lamia city of the northern star,
Than be so hard with craft or wild with war,
Peopled with deeds remembered for their woe.
Thou art too bright for guile, too young for tears,
And thou wilt live to be too strong for Time;
For he may mock thee with his furrowed frowns,
But thou wilt grow in calm throughout the years,
Cinctured with peace and crowned with power sublime,
The maiden queen of all the towered towns.
GEORGE FREDERICK SCOTT
A REVERIE
O tender love of long ago,
O buried love, so near me still
On tides of thought that ebb and flow,
Beyond the empire of the will;
To-night with mingled joy and pain
I fold thee to my heart again.
And down the meadows, dear, we stray,
And under woods still clothed in green,
Though many springs have passed away
And many harvests there have been,
Since through the youth-enchanted land
We wandered idly hand in hand.
Then every brook was loud with song,
And every tree was stirred with love,
And every breeze that passed along
Was like the breath of God above;--
And now to-night we go the ways
We went in those sweet summer days.
Dear love, thy dark and earnest eyes
Look up as tender as of yore,
And, purer than the evening skies,
Thy cheeks have still the rose they wore;
I--I have changed, but thou art fair
And fresh as in life's morning air.
What little hands these were to chain
So many years a wayward heart;
How slight a girlish form to reign
As queen upon a throne apart
In a man's thought, through hopes and fears,
And all the changes of the years.
Dear girl, behold, thy boy is now
A man, and grown to middle-age;
The lines are deep upon his brow,
His heart hath been griefs hermitage;
But hidden where no eye can see,
His boyhood's love still lives for thee,--
Still blooms above thy grave to-day,
Where death hath harvested the land,
Though such long years have passed away
Since down the meadows hand in hand
We went, with hearts too full to know
How deep their love was long ago.
EASTER ISLAND
There lies a lone isle in the tropic seas,--
A mountain isle, with beaches shining white,
Where soft stars smile upon its sleep by night,
And every noonday fans it with a breeze.
Here on a cliff, carved upward from the knees,
Three uncouth statues of gigantic height,
Upon whose brows the circling sea-birds light,
Stare out to ocean over the tall trees.
Forever gaze they at the sea and sky,
Forever hear the thunder of the main,
Forever watch the ages die away;
And ever round them rings the phantom cry
Of some lost race that died in human pain,
Looking towards heaven, yet seeing no more than they.
A DREAM OF THE PREHISTORIC
Naked and shaggy, they herded at eve by the sound of the seas,
When the sky and the ocean were red as with blood from the
battles of God,
And the wind like a monster sped forth with its feet on the rocks
and the trees,
And the sands of the desert blew over the wastes of the
drought-smitten sod.
Here, mad with the torments of hunger, despairing they sank to
their rest,
Some crouching alone in their anguish, some gathered in groups
on the beach;
And with tears almost human the mother looked down at the babe on
her breast,
And her pain was the germ of our love, and her cry was the root
of our speech.
Then a cloud from the sunset arose, like a cormorant gorged with
its prey,
And extended its wings on the sky till it smothered the stars in
its gloom,
And ever the famine-worn faces were wet with the wind-carried
spray,
And dimly the voice of the deep to their ears was a portent of
doom.
And the dawn that rose up on the morrow, apparelled in gold like a
priest,
Through the smoke of the incense of morning, looked down on a
vision of death;
For the vultures were gathered together and circled with joy to
their feast
On hearts that had ceased from their sorrow, and lips that had
yielded their breath.
Then the ages went by like a dream, and the shoreline emerged from
the deep,
And the stars as they watched through the years saw a change on
the face of the earth;
For over the blanket of sand that had covered the dead in their
sleep
Great forests grew up with their green, and the sources of
rivers had birth.
And here in the aftertimes, man, the white faced and
smooth-handed, came by,
And he built him a city to dwell in and temples of prayer to his
God;
He filled it with music and beauty, his spirit aspired to the sky,
While the dead by whose pain it was fashioned lay under the
ground that he trod.
He wrenched from great Nature her secrets, the stars in their
courses he named,
He weighed them and measured their orbits; he harnessed the
horses of steam;
He captured the lightnings of heaven, the waves of the ocean he
tamed,--
And ever the wonder amazed him as one that awakes from a dream.
But under the streets and the markets, the banks and the temples
of prayer,
Where humanity laboured and plotted, or loved with an instinct
divine,
Deep down in the silence and gloom of the earth that had shrouded
them there
Were the fossil remains of a skull and the bones of what once
was a spine.
Enfolded in darkness forever, untouched by the changes above,
And mingled as clay with the clay which the hands of the ages
had brought,
Were the hearts in whose furnace of anguish was smelted the gold
of our love,
And the brains from whose twilight of instinct has risen the
dawn of our thought.
But the law, that was victor of old with its heel on the neck of
the brute,
Still tramples our hearts in the darkness, still grinds down our
face in the dust;
We are sown in corruption and anguish--whose fingers will gather
the fruit?
Our life is but lent for a season--for whom do we hold it in
trust?
In the vault of the sky overhead, in the gulfs that lie under our
feet,
The wheels of the universe turn, and the laws of the universe
blend;
The pulse of our life is in tune with the rhythm of forces that
beat
In the surf of the furthest star's sea, and are spent and
regathered to spend.
Yet we trust in the will of the Being whose fingers have spangled
the night
With the dust of a myriad worlds, and who speaks in the thunders
of space;
Though we see not the start or the finish, though vainly we cry
for the light,
Let us mount in the glory of manhood and meet the God-Man face
to face.
DAWN
The immortal spirit hath no bars
To circumscribe its dwelling-place;
My soul hath pastured with the stars
Upon the meadow-lands of space.
My mind and ear at times have caught,
From realms beyond our mortal reach,
The utterance of Eternal Thought,
Of which all nature is the speech.
And high above the seas and lands,
On peaks just tipped with morning light,
My dauntless spirit mutely stands
With eagle wings outspread for flight.
VAN ELSEN
God spake three times and saved Van Elsen's soul;
He spake by sickness first, and made him whole;
Van Elsen heard Him not,
Or soon forgot.
God spake to him by wealth; the world outpoured
Its treasures at his feet, and called him lord;
Van Elsen's heart grew fat
And proud thereat.
God spake the third time when the great world smiled,
And in the sunshine slew his little child;
Van Elsen like a tree
Fell hopelessly.
Then in the darkness came a voice which said,
"As thy heart bleedeth, so My heart hath bled;
As I have need of thee,
Thou needest Me."
That night Van Elsen kissed the baby feet,
And kneeling by the narrow winding sheet,
Praised Him with fervent breath
Who conquered death.
CHARLES DAWSON SHANLY
THE WALKER OF THE SNOW
Speed on, speed on, good Master!
The camp lies far away;
We must cross the haunted valley
Before the close of day.
How the snow-blight came upon me
I will tell you as I go,--
The blight of the Shadow hunter,
Who walks the midnight snow.
To the cold December heaven
Came the pale moon and the stars,
As the yellow sun was sinking
Behind the purple bars.
The snow was deeply drifted
Upon the ridges drear,
That lay for miles around me
And the camps for which we steer.
'Twas silent on the hill-side,
And by the solemn wood,
No sound of life or motion
To break the solitude,
Save the wailing of the moose-bird
With a plaintive note and low,
And the skating of the red leaf
Upon the frozen snow.
And said I, "Though dark is falling,
And far the camp must be,
Yet my heart it would be lightsome
If I had but company."
And then I sang and shouted,
Keeping measure, as I sped,
To the harp-twang of the snow-shoe
As it sprang beneath my tread.
Nor far into the valley
Had I dipped upon my way,
When a dusky figure joined me,
In a capuchon of grey,
Bending upon the snow-shoes,
With a long and limber stride;
And I hailed the dusky stranger
As we travelled side by side.
But no token of communion
Gave he by word or look,
And the fear-chill fell upon me
At the crossing of the brook.
For I saw by the sickly moonlight
As I followed, bending low,
That the walking of the stranger
Left no footmarks on the snow.
Then the fear-chill gathered o'er me,
Like a shroud around me cast,
As I sank upon the snow-drift
Where the Shadow-hunter passed.
And the other-trappers found me,
Before the break of day,
With my dark hair blanched and whitened
As the snow in which I lay.
But they spoke not as they raised me;
For they knew that in the night
I had seen the Shadow-hunter,
And had withered in his blight.
Sancta Maria speed us!
The sun is falling low,--
Before us lies the valley
Of the Walker of the Snow!
FRANCIS SHERMAN
THE BUILDER
Come and let me make thee glad
In this house that I have made!
Nowhere (I am unafraid!)
Canst thou find its like on Earth:
Come, and learn the perfect worth
Of the labor I have had.
I have fashioned it for thee,
Every room and pictured wall;
Every marble pillar tall,
Every door and window-place;
All were done that thy fair face
Might look kindlier on me.
Here, moreover, thou shalt find
Strange, delightful, far-brought things:
Dulcimers, whose tightened strings
Once dead women loved to touch;
(Deeming they could mimic much
Of the music of the wind!)
Heavy candlesticks of brass;
Chess-men carved of ivory;
Mass-books written perfectly
By some patient monk of old;
Flagons wrought of thick, red gold,
Set with gems and colored glass;
Burnished armor, once some knight
(Dead, I deem, long years ago!)
Its great strength was glad to know
When his lady needed him:
(Now that both his eyes are dim
Both his sword and shield are bright!)
Come, and share these things with me,
Men have died to leave to us!
We shall find life glorious
In this splendid house of love;
Come, and claim thy part thereof,--
I have fashioned it for thee!
BETWEEN THE BATTLES
Let us bury him here,
Where the maples are red!
He is dead,
And he died thanking God that he fell with the fall of the leaf
and the year.
Where the hillside is sheer,
Let it echo our tread
Whom he led;
Let us follow as gladly as ever we followed who never knew fear.
Ere he died they had fled;
Yet they heard his last cheer
Ringing clear,--
When we lifted him up, he would fain have pursued, but grew dizzy
instead.
Break his sword and his spear!
Let this last prayer be said
By the bed
We have made underneath the wet wind in the maple trees moaning so
drear:
"O Lord God, by the red
Sullen end of the year
That is here,
We beseech Thee to guide us and strengthen our swords till his
slayers be dead!"
_From_ "A PRELUDE"
O covering grasses! O unchanging trees!
Is it not good to feel the odorous wind
Come down upon you with such harmonies
Only the giant hills can ever find?
O little leaves, are ye not glad to be?
Is not the sunlight fair, the shadow kind,
That falls at noontide over you and me?
O gleam of birches lost among the firs,
Let your high treble chime in silverly
Across the half-imagined wind that stirs
A muffled organ-music from the pines!
Earth knows to-day that not one note of hers
Is minor. For, behold, the loud sun shines
Till the young maples are no longer gray,
And stronger grows their faint, uncertain lines;
Each violet takes a deeper blue to-day,
And purpler swell the cones hung overhead,
Until the sound of their far feet who stray
About the wood, fades from me; and, instead,
I hear a robin singing--not as one
That calls unto his mate, uncomforted--
But as one sings a welcome to the sun.
A LITTLE WHILE BEFORE THE FALL WAS DONE
A little while before the fall was done
A day came when the frail year paused and said:
"Behold! a little while and I am dead;
Wilt thou not choose, of all the old dreams, one?"
Then dwelt I in a garden, where the sun
Shone always, and the roses all were red;
Far off the great sea slept, and overhead
Among the robins matins had begun.
And I knew not at all it was a dream
Only, and that the year was near its close;
Garden and sunshine, robin-song and rose,
The half-heard murmur and the distant gleam
Of all the unvext sea, a little space
Were as a mist above the Autumn's face.
GOLDWIN SMITH
FLOSSY (WITH HER OWN PORTRAIT) TO HER MISTRESS
ON HER WEDDING DAY
Of all the tiny race of Skye,
The prettiest, so friends say, am I;
My name is Flossy, well-bestowed,
A silkier coat Skye never shewed!
With sable back, and silver head,
Blue bow, and feathery paws outspread,
As on my crimson rug I lie,
What fairer sight for painter's eye?
Short are my legs, yet mark my pace
Whene'er I cats or postmen chase!
In human language if I fail,
What so expressive as my tail?
See how it wags, as if to say,
"Dear mistress, a glad wedding day!"
Though bounded is my being's range,
And knows no world beyond The Grange--
A universe by half-a-span
Less than the universe of man--
Yet am I Queen of all I see,
The household are but slaves to me.
Let others toil the livelong day,
I play and sleep, and sleep and play;
Or in my carriage proudly ride
With two fair ladies at my side.
Gaily I live, by all caressed,
And in a doting mistress blessed!
Affection's happiness I prove,
And see no fault in those I love;
Nor when my little bones are laid
Beneath the turf on which I played,
Nor when the rug which now I press
Each winter's eve is Flossieless,
Shall Flossy die; but pictured here
To her loved mistress still be dear.
LYMAN C. SMITH
CANADA TO COLUMBIA
O elder sister, though thou didst of yore
Forsake thy mother's ancient hall and flee
To be the chosen bride of Liberty,
She cherishes her grief and wrath no more,
Nor seeks her broken circle to restore,
Yet fain would clasp thee to her breast again,
But thou aloof uncertain dost remain.
O canst thou not the one mistake forget
Of her that bore thee, taught thy lips to frame
Thy early words, thy God in prayer to name;
That in the paths of right and justice set
Thy feet, where not infrequent walk they yet;
That stood devoted at thy youthful side,
Nor e'en her blood in thy defence denied?
But if thy younger sister yet abide
Content and happy in her mother's hall,
Nor feel the bond of blood a menial thrall,
But, leaning heart to heart, of choice confide
In mother yet as dearest guard and guide--
If thou wilt not thy mother's love regain,
Why must thy cradle sister plead in vain?