We sisters drew from that one Saxon breast.
Where oftentimes thy maiden cheek has pressed,
Mine resting still in loving trust remains.
Our bonds of blood should be unbroken chains!
Obey thy heart and grasp the proffered hand,
Then all the world our wills may not withstand.
_From_ "A DAY WITH HOMER"
Methought the stream of Time had backward rolled,
And I was standing on the fruitful plain
That lay between the sea and ancient Troy.
I saw one standing on the curving beach
Whose hoary locks were playthings for the wind
That freshening came across the swelling waves.
I listened to the mystic music of a voice
That chanted to their measured beat, in tones
Now whispering soft and low as rustling leaves,
Now rolling with the boom of tumbling waves,
Now clanging as the clash of brazen arms.
* * * * *
There sat the virgin queen whose buskined feet
Are swift to chase at early dawn, across
The breezy hills, the flying stag that falls
By wingëd shaft shot from her sounding bow;
And Venus, favored child of mighty Jove,
With perfect moulded arm and breast of snow,
Mirth-lighted eye and soft-caressing hand;--
Love, fairest form that ever found a home
On earth, or in the golden halls of heaven.
WILLIAM WYE SMITH
THE CANADIANS ON THE NILE
O, the East is but the West, with the sun a little hotter;
And the pine becomes a palm by the dark Egyptian water;
And the Nile's like many a stream we know that fills its brimming
cup;
We'll think it is the Ottawa as we track the batteaux up!
Pull, pull, pull! as we track the batteaux up!
It's easy shooting homeward when we're at the top.
O, the cedar and the spruce line each dark Canadian river;
But the thirsty date is here, where the sultry sunbeams quiver;
And the mocking mirage spreads its view afar on either hand;
But strong we bend the sturdy oar towards the Southern land!
Pull, pull, pull! as we track the batteaux up!
It's easy shooting homeward when we're at the top!
O, we've tracked the Rapids up, and o'er many a portage crossing;
And it's often such we've seen, though so loud the waves are
tossing!
Then it's homeward when the run is o'er! o'er stream and ocean
deep--
To bring the memory of the Nile, where the maple shadows sleep!
Pull, pull, pull! as we track the batteaux up!
It's easy shooting homeward when we're at the top!
And it yet may come to pass that the hearts and hands so ready
May be sought again to help when some poise is off the steady!
And the Maple and the Pine be matched with British Oak the while,
As once beneath Egyptian suns the Canadians on the Nile!
Pull, pull, pull! as we track the batteaux up!
It's easy shooting homeward when we're at the top!
ALBERT E. S. SMYTHE
THE FORGOTTEN POET
With fragrance flown, as of a long-plucked bud,
The little song I sing with so much care,
Sweet for a day, will swoon upon the flood
Of days that will forget my song was fair.
The master-song is mighty rushing wind
Mixed with all fragrance, strong with a great breath
From cloudland, and the climes that win the mind,
And full of pulses to awaken death.
Full well I know the storm will smite my flower,
My tiny short-stemmed blossom of the sod;
But when my flower and I have lived an hour
I'll bear it on the wind away to God:
And wind and flower and spirit may adorn
Some Eden-garden where new worlds are born.
DEATH THE REVEALER
I know that death is God's interpreter:
His quiet voice makes gracious meanings clear
In grievous things that vex us deeply here
Between the cradle and the sepulchre.
We, gazing into darkness, greatly err,
And fear the shrouded shadow of a fear
Till dawn reveals the vestments of a Seer
With gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.
There is a mystery I cannot read
Around the mastery I no more dread;
For love is but a heart to brood and bleed,
And life is but a dream among the dead
Whose wisdom waits for us. God give me heed
Till the day break and shadows all be fled!
HIRAM LADD SPENCER
THE RIVER
By cliffs grown gray, as men grow gray
With weariness and sorrow,
Awhile I pause, and then away,
And in the wild and restless Bay
I lose myself to-morrow.
I turn the wheels of many mills,
By many islands dally;
I gossip with the daffodils,
And to my bosom take the rills
That from the woodlands sally.
I love the songs that childhood sings--
Its smiles and roguish glances,--
A picture paint of many things
That o'er the mind a halo flings
As onward time advances.
I listen to the tender chime
Of city bells a-swaying:
O dower of youth! O wealth of time!
O pleasant dreams! O hopes sublime,
When all the world's a-swaying!
By cliffs grown gray, as men grow gray
With weariness and sorrow,
Awhile I pause, and then away,
Like you who loiter here to-day,
And lose myself to-morrow.
A HUNDRED YEARS TO COME
Where, where will be the birds that sing,
A hundred years to come?
The flowers that now in beauty spring,
A hundred years to come?
The rosy cheek,
The lofty brow,
The heart that beats
So gaily now:
Where, where will be our hopes and fears,
Joy's pleasant smiles and Sorrow's tears,
A hundred years to come?
Who'll press for gold this crowded street,
A hundred years to come?
Who'll tread yon aisles with willing feet,
A hundred years to come?
Pale, trembling Age,
And fiery Youth,
And Childhood with
Its brow of truth;
The rich, the poor, on land and sea,
Where will the mighty millions be,
A hundred years to come?
We all within our graves will sleep,
A hundred years to come;
No living soul for us will weep,
A hundred years to come;
But other men
Our homes will fill,
And others then
Our lands will till,
And other birds will sing as gay,
And bright the sunshine as to-day,
A hundred years to come.
EZRA HURLBURT STAFFORD
CHINOOK
(_At Stampede Pass_)
Mildly through the mists of night
Floats a breath of flowers sweet,
Warmly through the waning light
Wafts a wind with perfumed feet,
Down the gorge and mountain brook,
With the sound of wings--Chinook!
By no trail his spirits go,
Through the mountain passes high,
Where the moon is on the snow
And the screaming eagles fly,
Where the yawning canyon roars
With memories of misty shores.
On still prairies, mountain-locked,
Frost lies white upon the grass,
But where the witch of winter walked,
Now the summer's masquers pass;
And at May's refreshing breath
Tender flowers rose from death.
And the breeze, that on the Coast
Wakened softly at the morn,
Is on snowy prairies lost
When the twilight pales forlorn;
Sweet Chinook! who breathes betimes
Summer's kiss in winter climes.
THE STRANGE VESSEL
(_Quebec, 1759_)
And no one saw, while it was dark,
The outline of a sweeping barque,
Without a flag or light;
And no one counted, one by one,
Along her decks each silent gun,
That glimmered through the night.
And far above the water's swell,
Upon a guarded citadel,
Arose the laugh of men;
But some upon the ramparts there
Felt Evil hurrying through the air,
And never laughed again.
The creak of sail, the splash of oar,
Were heard by none upon the shore;
And in the forest vale
None knew the ambush that was kept,
Nor saw a thousand men who crept
Along the narrow trail.
When day at last was breaking forth
There came two eagles flying north,
And on the morn awoke
The solemn pageantry of war,
And o'er the shining hills afar
Floated the rolling smoke.
THE LAST ORISON
Shaper of breathing lives, and Lord of all above,
Thy name I learned beside my mother's knee;
She drew me to her arms, and said that Thou wert Love--
Oh, art Thou Love to me?
I cannot rear my thoughts amid the golden spheres,
Where roll the stars about Thy throne on high,
But here in lowly wise I call on Thee with tears,
And feel Thy presence nigh.
Childlike to Thee I looked when came the night of fear,
On Thee I laid my sorrows of the day;
The whole earth spake of One who seemed to be so near,
It was not hard to pray.
The bolted doors that lock the corridors of Time,
And bar the awful avenues of Space,
My soul at last shall pass, and then, O dream sublime!
I shall gaze on Thy face.
ALEXANDER CHARLES STEWART
_From_ "THE WANDERER"
Adieu to these!--Niagara, thy roar
Is as the voice of freedom sounding far,
And thundering Liberty to either shore,
With boom that puts to shame the breath of war.
The clouds which hover softly o'er thee are
Symbolical of peace; while thou, fierce flood,
Hast all the fury of a plunging star,
Churning its liquid flames to foaming blood,
And overturning worlds that have for ages stood.
Forever pour thy dashing speed along
Between the homes of Freedom and the Free;
And chant forever thy resounding song
To hearts that may re-echo liberty.
The first who dares destroy thy purity,
Or bridge thee for enslavers, may thy roar
Cease like a thunderbolt, and o'er thy sea
The chill of horror fall and wrap him o'er,
Dry up thy foaming flood and be thy voice no more!
PHILLIPS STEWART
HOPE
In shadowy calm the boat
Sleeps by the dreaming oar,
The green hills are afloat
Beside the silver shore.
Youth hoists the white-winged sail,
Love takes the longing oar--
The oft-told fairy tale
Beside the silver shore.
Soft lip to lip, and heart
To heart, and hand to hand,
And wistful eyes depart
Unto another strand.
And lovely as a star
They tremble o'er the wave,
With eager wings afar,
Unto the joys they crave.
In a sweet trance they fare
Unto the wind and rain,
With wind-tossed waves of hair,
And ne'er return again.
And at the drifting side,
Changed faces in the deep
They see, a changing tide,
Like phantoms in a sleep.
Slow hands furl the torn sail
Without one silver-gleam,
And, sad and wan and pale,
They gaze into a dream.
_From_ "CORYDON AND AMARYLLIS"
Pale melancholy, faithfully thou lov'st
The human soul when youth and passion fail;
How precious all things grow beneath thy smile!
Sad sister of the poet's lonely hours,
Thy clinging arms embrace us all, thy feet
Are in all paths, and Nature saddens 'neath
Thine eyes. The lotus and the poppy have
Thee in their dreamy veins; thine image dwells
For ever in the jewelled wine; thou art
The hungry beauty of Love's crescent eyes,
The tremor of white hands, the ashy gleam
Of noble brows, and thou dost startle Love's
Young dream into a dying swoon, and strew
A flowery sadness on some new-made grave.
_From_ "DE PROFUNDIS"
I hear the wondrous lyre
Of the blind bard, and see the Grecian throng
About Troy's lofty walls, and Hector slain,
The white-stained face and blackened crest,
And great Achilles crumbling on his pyre.
Then comes Ulysses sighing for his home
Afar, leaving the ruins of old Troy
For Ithaca, where oft, a glad-faced boy,
He played amid the ripening vines and heard
His father's voice ere he began to roam
The weary waves. His heart is stirred
With thoughts of home, and son, and wife,
And ever Circe holds him in her arms.
How have I longed to drift on some fair isle,
Like thee, from feverish alarms,
And voices of reproach, and earth's vain strife--
Some urnless land beyond the wile
Of grief and gold, where man can quite forget
All pain, and sleep and dream not of regret.
BARRY STRATON
LOVE'S HARVEST
The furrows of life Time is plowing,
But we mourn not the Spring which departs,
For the husbandman Fate, in his sowing,
Scattered love in the soil of our hearts.
The sunshine of virtue and beauty
Shall wake the sweet seedlings to bloom;
The warm dews of mercy and duty
Shall moisten the tractable loam.
Oh, blow, grains of love to the binding!
Oh, blush, golden fruit on the hill!
'Tis a dreary, long day to the grinding,
But a short, pleasant way from the mill.
But fondness and faith will be growing,
Be the sky clear or cloudy above.
When fortune is ripe to the mowing
We shall gather our harvest of love!
CHARITY
Come! walk with the world and go down to the destitute homes of
the poor,
Where weeping is louder than laughter, where sorrow and famine
abide;
Where Azrael reaps a full harvest and darkens each desolate door;
And learn of the lowly and meek to lessen your thoughtless pride.
I have seen my Lady flash by--a beauteous vision of ease;
I have seen the widow at work till the shadows of night fled the
day;
I have seen God's poor drink the cup of sorrow and toil to the
lees;
I have seen the wicked get wealth, and the good go empty away.
"The poor are unworthy, and sinning is found in the homes of the
low.
If we give we but pander to vice: the beggars our gifts will
abuse."
So say you, and pass in your pride, but your heart cries out as
you go,
"The vile are the first to ape virtue; the wicked the first to
accuse!"
Communist? Not I! But I hold that the miser who hugs to his heart
What for him is but clay and a curse, but to some would be
blessing and bread,
Is selling his merciful Saviour. Better throw down the price and
depart;
Better, belike, do as Judas, put a rope to his miserable head.
'Twould be well with you, Midas, to pity the poor who are tarrying
here.
They may count to your just condemnation the tears which their
hungry babes weep.
Though you harden your heart for a lifetime, and turn an adamant
ear,
Their wails may pierce through to your coffin and trouble your
long, last sleep.
How read you the Scriptures? What say they? "These three with the
world now abide,
Hope, charity, faith, and the greatest is charity--blessed above
all."
Our hands should be fruitful and open; the field for our giving is
wide,
And blessing shall follow the gifts, though the power to give may
be small.
Then time may toil on with its tumults, its troubles and tempests
of tears;
The sweet, voiceless shadows shall hold us till striving and
sorrow are past.
We shall wake full refreshed to the judgment, though we slumber
for eons of years;
And the Lord shall shew us His glory, we shall be like to God at
the last.
AMERICA
Columbus came to thee and called thee new!
New World to him, but thy rich blood, bright gold,
Lay cold where once the fires manifold
Raged fiercely. New? Primeval forests grew,
Had fallen, and were coal! Thine eagles flew
Undaunted then as now, and where the bold
South Rocky Mountains rise in fold on fold
The Aztec to his God the victim slew.
The tropic verdure of thy far north world
Had passed forever, moon-like fading out.
Sky-piercing mounts have reared them from the seas--
The lost Atlantis has been depth-ward hurled,
Since thou wert new!--Old! all thy landmarks shout,
And bid us read thy waiting mysteries.
ARTHUR J. STRINGER
A SONG IN AUTUMN
O love, can the tree lure the summer bird
Again to the bough where it used to sing,
When never a throat in the autumn is heard,
And never the glint of a vagrant wing?
Love, Love, can the lute lure the old-time touch
Unto fingers forgetful of melody?
And we, who have loved for a time overmuch,
Bring back the old life as it used to be?
Nay, though there is little in me to love,
Come back as the bird to a songless bough:
Back now as you came when the blue was above,
And summer gleamed soft on your girlish brow.
Come home, O Heart, for the autumn is grey,
And I, who have looked for your coming so long,
En-isled in your arms, in the old lost way
Shall dream our December estranged by a song.
So come, Vernal-Heart, now summer is flown;
Let autumn elude the return of the rime,
And the sad sea change with the season alone:
Not us who have loved--loved well in our time.
* * * * *
Shall summer not know the autumnal touch?
Shall love when forlorn of the spring be green?
Or we, who were lovers of old overmuch,
Regain what is lost, or relume what has been?
BESIDE THE MARTYR'S MEMORIAL
(OXFORD)
Their very gods, it seems, we have forgot;
And drawing back the riven veil once more,
Too late we learn that theirs the happier lot
Who had their foolish gods to perish for.
CANADA TO ENGLAND
Sang one of England in his island home:
"Her veins are million, but her heart is one;"
And looked from out his wave-bound homeland isle
To us who dwell beyond its western sun.
And we among the northland plains and lakes,
We youthful dwellers on a younger land,
Turn eastward to the wide Atlantic waste,
And feel the clasp of England's outstretched hand.
For we are they who wandered far from home
To swell the glory of an ancient name;
Who journeyed seaward on an exile long,
When fortune's twilight to our island came.
But every keel that cleaves the midway waste
Binds with a silent thread our sea-cleft strands,
Till ocean dwindles and the sea-waste shrinks,
And England mingles with a hundred lands.
And weaving silently all far-off shores
A thousand singing wires stretch round the earth,
Or sleep still vocal in their ocean depths,
Till all lands die to make one glorious birth.
So we remote compatriots reply,
And feel the world-task only half begun:
"We are the girders of the ageing earth,
Whose veins are million, but whose heart is one."
BEETHOVEN
He wandered down, an Orpheus wilder-souled,
From some melodious world of love and song,
And through our earthly vales strange music rolled.
Who heard that alien note could only long,
As pale Eurydice once longed, to know again
The happier ways, the more harmonious air,
Where once they heard that half-remembered strain,--
Where once their exiled feet were wont to fare.
A gleam of some strange golden life now gone,
A sad remembrance of celestial things,
Some old-time glory, like the gods', outshone
From men's rapt souls, wherein a memory clings
Of that diviner day, from them withdrawn.
For all the dreams that smouldered in man's breast,
And all the clearer ways he yearned to reach,--
The fugitive ideal, the old unrest,--
Found utterance in song, that slept in speech.
And like a minstrel in an alien land,
Who sings his native strains while men crowd round
And hearken long, but cannot understand,
He sang to us, and through the unknown sound
We caught a passing glimmer of the soul
Those foreign runes concealed, and strove to glean
From out the uninterpretable whole
Some earthlier harmony.
It must have been
He heard far-off that low uranian strain
That only maddens him who vainly hears;
For they, the gods, soon saw the god-like pain
That mocked a man, and closed his listening ears.
ALAN SULLIVAN
VENICE
If you would see Venice as she is,
Wander by night in silence and alone
Among her towers and sculptured palaces,
And read the story she has writ in stone;
Then, as you read, she will upon you cast
The fascination of her wondrous past.
Muse on, and let the silent gondolier
Wind at his will 'mid tortuous, twisting ways
And broad lagoons, with waters wide and clear,
On whose unruffled breast the moonbeam plays;
And move not, speak not, for the mystery
Of Venice is with you on the sea.
Pass, if you will, beneath the five great domes
Of old Saint Mark's; watch how the glittering height
Soars in quick curves; see how each sunbeam roams
And fills the nave with soft pure amber light;
This is the heart of Venice, and the tomb
Which folds her story in its sacred gloom.
So leave her sunlight, enter now her cells,
By frowning black-browed ports and massy bars,
Where pestilence in foul dank vapor dwells,
Far, far from sun and day, from moon and stars;
The only sound when whispering waters glide
In on the bosom of a sluggish tide.
Then turn again into her solitudes,--
Things of to-day will faint and fade like smoke,--
Drift through the darkened nooks where silence broods,
Let memory fall upon you like a cloak:
Venice will rise around you as of old,
Decked out in marble, amethyst, and gold.
But that was years ago; to-day the notes
Of wild free song have left her silver streets;
Her blazoned banner now no longer floats
In aureate folds, no more the sunrise greets;
She lives but in a past so strong and brave
It serves alike for monument and grave.
THE WHITE CANOE
There's a whisper of life in the gray dead trees,
And a murmuring wash on the shore,
And a breath of the south in the loitering breeze,
To tell that a winter is o'er.
While, free at last from its fetters of ice,
The river is clear and blue,
And cries with a tremulous, quivering voice
For the launch of the White Canoe.
Oh, gently the ripples will kiss her side,
And tenderly bear her on;
For she is the wandering phantom bride
Of the river she rests upon;
She is loved with a love than cannot forget,
A passion so strong and true
That never a billow has risen yet
To peril the White Canoe.
So come when the moon is enthroned in the sky,
And the echoes are sweet and low,
And Nature is full of the mystery
That none but her children know.
Come, taste of the rest that the weary crave,
But is only revealed to a few:
When there's trouble on shore, there's peace on the wave,
Afloat in the White Canoe.
BERTRAM TENNYSON
GORDON
Son of Britannia's isle,
There by the storied Nile,
The dust has claimed him e'er his work was done;
But not for that alone
Has Fame's clear trumpet blown
Most mournful music o'er her bravest son.
Alas! for England, when the dead
Fell by a coward's hand her honor fled!
No English squadrons broke
Through the thick battle smoke,
At that last hour when the hero fell;
He hoped to see again
(But ah! that hope was vain)
Those English colors he had served so well;
He fell, forsaken, undismayed,
True to the land that thus his trust betrayed.
His was the hardest part,
That tries the staunchest heart;
Better the headlong charge when hundreds die,
Than the relentless foe
Watching to strike the blow,
And the slow waiting while the bullets fly--
No friends, no hope, but, like a star,
High duty shining through the clouds of war.
No stately Gothic fane
Roofs in the hero slain,
But the wide sky above the desert sands;
No graven stone shall tell
Where at the last he fell,
And, if interred at all, by alien hands,--
Thrust in a shallow grave to wait
The last loud summons to the fallen great.
No more can England boast
Her name from coast to coast
Shall be a passport to her wandering sons;
Once they could freely roam,
As in their Island home,
Safe far abroad as underneath her guns;
Or, should mishap for vengeance call,
Swift would her anger on the oppressor fall.
But let the meed of blame
Fall with its weight of shame
On those who lacked the courage to command;
The heart of England beats
In London's thronging streets,
And in the quiet places of the land,
Still to its old traditions true,
In spite of all our rulers failed to do.
EDWARD WILLIAM THOMSON
A DAY-DREAM
When, high above the busy street,
Some hidden voice poured Mary's song.
Oh, then my soul forgot the heat
And roaring of the city's throng:
Then London bells and cries fell low,
Blent to a far and murmured tone
That changed and chimed in mystic flow,
Weaving a spell for me alone.
No more the towering blocks were there,
No longer pressed the crowds around:
All freely roamed a magic air
Within what vast horizon's bound:
Beneath a sky of lucent gray
Far stretched my circled northern plain,
Wild sunflowers decked a prairie gay,
And one dear Autumn came again.
Before me trod a winsome maid,
And oh, the mien with which she stept!
Her soft brown hair, without a braid,
Hiding the shoulders where it swept;
And glancing backward now she gave
To me the smile so true and wise,
The radiant look from eyes so grave
That spoke her inmost Paradise.
Divinely on my daughter went,
The wild flowers leaning from her tread;
Dreaming she lived, I watched intent
Till, ah, the gracious vision fled;
The plain gave place to blocks of grey,
The sunlit heaven to murky cloud--
Staring I stood in common day.
And never knew the street so loud.
THE SONG-SPARROW
When plowmen ridge the steamy brown,
And yearning meadows sprout to green,
And all the spires and towers of town
Blent soft with wavering mists are seen:
When quickened woods in freshening hue
Along Mount Royal billowy swell,
When airs caress and May is new,
Oh, then my shy bird sings so well!
Because the blood-roots flock in white,
And blossomed branches scent the air,
And mounds with trillium flags are dight,
And myriad dells of violets rare;
Because such velvet leaves unclose,
And newborn rills all chiming ring,
And blue the dear St Lawrence flows--
My timid bird is forced to sing.
A joyful flourish lilted clear,--
Four notes--then fails the frolic song,
And memories of a vanished year
The wistful cadences prolong:
"A vanished year--O, heart too sore--
I cannot sing;" thus ends the lay:
Long silence, then awakes once more
His song, ecstatic of the May!
THE BAD YEAR