The Song of the Prairie Land 101 Pauline Johnson
CONTENTS PAGE
A TOAST TO BEAUTY 17
PRELUDE 18
TIrE CRY OF THE SONG CHILDREN 20
A SONG TO CANADA 24
A POET STOOD FORLORN 27
SONG OF THE SNOWSHOE TRAMP 34
ADVERSITY. 40
WHOM SHALL MY HEART CONDEMN? • 42
FIRST SONG WITHOUT A NAME 49
THE WHIP-POOR-WILL 51
TRAPPER ONE AND TRAPPER Two; OR, THE GHOST OF UNGAVA. 57
REED SONGS 69 A SONG OF BROTHERHOOD 74
BARBARY 78
To THE UNCROWNED KINGS 80
I FEEL NOR UNDERSTAND 83
AT THE PIANO 85
THE WAKING THOUGHT 87
OTUS AND RISMEL (A BALLADE OF THE LONG SEA
LANES) PAG! THE SONG OF THE PRAIRIE LAND 101 PAULINE JOHNSON. 107 THE HAUNT OF A LoST LoVE. 108 AT THE FORD • 109 THE ROSE AND THE WILDFLOWER 112 SECOND SONG WITHOUT A NAME 116 BRITISH COLUMBIA. 117 A SONG TO THE SINGERS. 119 ALONE 120 A SONG OF BETTER UNDERSTANDING 121 THE MONGREL. 126 WHIST-WHEE 132 THIRD SONG WITHOUT A NAME. 134 THE CONVICT MARCH. 135 MARY MAHONE. 137 SAINT ELIAS 141 AT BROOKSIDE MANOR. 144 SOMEWHERE, SOMETIME THE GLORY. 146 FRANCE • 148 GIFTS 149 By HOWE SOUND 150 PEACE 152
6
Prelude PRELUDE
wo jugs upon a table stood; 1 am Caneo; T One ample of girth and sweet of cavern, And my skin is brown from the comrade sun. But a shapeless bit of homely wood And my heart is a cluster of grapes; each one That .you would scorn in the poorest tavern; I ip and ready to flow together The other traced and interlaced In the channel sweet of a purple song. By the strange fancy of a Dorian J\nd I stand at the wonderful gates of "whether," Was sloped and curved to a woman's waist, Lu ty and true and strong. And worthy the pen of a grim historian. Wh ther the verse that the poets favored, Wr ught with Dorian taste and skill, Caneo came over a purple shoulder r a basin of rock, by the sea flavored, Where the vineyards crawl in the lazy sun; Shall be the cup I fill. A bold man, Caneo; no bolder Ever a woman won. II re is the basin of rock, lean low, Bold was he as all men grow bold I rink of me for the wine hath a tang Who wash themselves long in the sun. N t only of me but the sea. no thy lips shall give it a tang of thee. And Caneo carried a cask of wine Th y ars grow cold unto Poesy; haste, Where the grapes had flowed together. 0, ha. tc; He saw the vase with the rich design 1'01' th' wine 1 trong as the drinker's taste. And paused whether- (Ah, wonderful gate of "whether") A dram of juice would it hold, and he Had a cask of wine to pour. So, he filled the jug of homely wood, The ample of girth and sweet of cavern, And the journeymen found the wine was good As they pledged their luck at the nearest tavern.
18 19 THE CRY OF THE SONG CHILDREN The Cry of the Song Children The souls of these unborn crowd me round AY not I write to a metre's measure And call to be clad S Who gather my words in flood. In the mystical, glad Say not I write for the lilting's pleasure, Body of sound. For lo! my ink is blood. I am coming, I cry, to release you all.
o, if these lines could show my, passion: \ The roses are red Look, is the blood not rich and red! On the sea-brown wall; I will pour it out till my soul is ashen But the roses come and the roses fall; And my grief lies dead. And the children call, And the children call; I am a fragment of restless wind But I am asearch for bread. Against the peak of a mountain broken. A wisp is here and a wisp is there; My heart is oft with the snow entwined A long day's march in the blinding dust, And wears as a sweet token, And I gain the form of a fleeting crust Wherever I move, or ever I run, To lessen an hour's d~spair. The sting of the frost and the kiss of the sun To show that I favor no pilgrim more And I cry to God: Than the next who knocks at my cheerful door. Shall my blood be shed And my years be trampled away in the sod As a woman, athirst for an infant's cry, For bread, for bread! Rocks her thin arms to the cooing air 0, softly I cry, nor chide my fate. And croons a Lydian lullaby But the rose hangs red To soothe the child of her own despair, Far over the beautiful garden gate, So I go out on the hills at night And the children wait. And rock my arms with a sad delight; Rock them long I am Caneo; For the children of song And my skin is brown from the comrade sun. Which my barren page is athirst to bear. And my heart is a cluster of grapes; each one
21 20 ·I~- THE CRY OF THE SONG CHILDREN THE CRY OF THE SONG CHILDREN
Ripe and ready to flow together Dance, here on this page, and never In the channel sweet of a purple song. To the last forever And the unborn children around me throng. Need you to call again. I will fill the air I stole this hour to give you birth; the ram With their floating hair, Let down your hair. I said. The sky's And I rose when the morn was a film of grey Deepest dyes And moiled in a garden where love lay dead. Tinctured your eyes. And the children called and I answered "Yea, Dear little flaxen-haired, I come ;" but the beckoning wisp of bread Throat-bared, wild, Called me away, away; Sun-browned child And the children mourned as I lay in sleep; Here is your life in a song undefiled. When the night was deep I could hear them weep. The morn is a film of lovely grey; And the rose is blown .from a crimson thread; This is the poet's Hell; to know But I am over the hills, and away How fair his unborn, wildly crying; For Bread. To stand at night in the wind flow, As the last light is dying; To call to his children and find His voice is a broken chord That is weary from calling all day in the wind ': "This hour's bread, 0 Lord."
Come, little flaxen-haired, I Throat-bared, Sun-brown imp who hath called me long, Here is your life in a song.
22 23 , A Song to Canada .. A SONG TO CANADA
y land is a woman who knows But this is my grief that no longer she cares M Not the child at her breast. For the old, wounding message of truth All her quest That sounds on the lips of a poet, who dares Hath been gold. L ok under the rouge of her youth. All her joys, all her woes With the thin, yellow leaf are unrolled. My land is a woman whose boast And here is my grief that no longer she dreams l' of iron and of stone. Of the tumult that crowds in a rune he hath thrown When the white, curving throat of a cataract gleams To the wind In the light of a high-floating moon. All that yielded her most. I am Caneo, And to-night she must walk with the blind. And this is my grief that her gold and her gain The poet she loves not, grown bold. Bold am I as all men grow bold Buys never a fragment of joy, A morsel of truth or of honor a grain Who wash themselves long in the sun: r a love that is free from alloy. I know what she lost when she gathered th~ gold And she alone knows what she won. Hiss of hate or rain of applause, I shall sing my song in a freeman's cause. My land is a woman who loves J have bathed in the spray All whose word is a lie; n the long, white curve of Digby Bay. The limitless doves And from Labrador That coo in the hour when her peril is nigh; To Juan de Fuca, the toreador, The poets who sing: Who tames the bull at our western door "Very fair is the bride of the north J have smoothed each rood of my country's floor. As she now steppeth forth .reat is all God lay on our sad, To enter that council which girdles the world with its The cricket's song or the Selkirk's reach; ring." And small is all we have given to God, A heart of hate and a braggart's speech. 24 2S A SONG 1'0 CANADA A Poet Stood Forlorn
A span of steel and a tier of stone', I' ET toad forlorn at break of day. What boast to fling against His throne! Hi comrades had forsaken, one by one; We twist His trees and they plough His main: I III d by applause that greets the lesser play We sow His seed and we reap His grain; 'I h P rfect phrase to even cadence spun. Our kingdom's girth II t toad forlorn; Is the poet's toast: I ris oul awinged, his foot upon a thorn. But is it God or we should boast? pon hi left, the wine cup's cheering glow; My love for my land is as strong Upon hi right Delila's lustrous eyes. As the love of the sap for the tree; l'fIIward, the flagons of the melted snow For she is the channel through which I upreached to 11<1 holy manna broken in the skies: the air. \I J( I ne small voice that said: In the lilt of my song II My laurel wreath shall grace thy simple spread." A garland of sheltering leaves I wove her to wear' And she gave not a hint of her love to the sheen ' 'I lit Y stooped to do the Lesser Thing, and said: Of their shimmering green, "w will come back to-morrow to the Great," But fingered away at her gold; I despair; I despair: (1\1 brother poets) "FOr we must be fed." And yet comes a day she will listen to me. 1)0 s ever man return who thus tempts fate? I am Caneo, I II(' f olish lamb is shorn: The poet she loves not, grown bold: lint there's no tempered wind where thoughts are Bold am I as all men grow bold born. Who wash themselves long in the sun. . I know what she lost when she gathered the gold \ \ t r' I not cold how should I come to know And she alone knows what she won. ' ()n potent pleasure of the sun's sweet rays? h did I never breast the driving snow Vancouver, Decern1>.er, 1916. What bliss were sweetest kernel of June days? I his Lesser Thing Brings warmth that droops in drowsiness the wing. 26 27 A POET STOOD FORLORN A POET STOOD FORLORN I, Applause might hurt that look of straight intent This is the Greatest Thing I deem: a song Until I lost the wonder of the whole. As sings the skylark in its roundelay; There's music on the merchantman; my ship Notes bursting, leaping, dancing in a throng; An argosy-is silent as my soul. rowding like children loosed from school, for For them 'tis food and wine: play: With one lone star my fasting soul shall dine. race on silver bells To find the mystic haunt where Beauty dwells. "There's pleasant music in the whirring wheel; Listen to it awhile; then to the seas." rchance the even music of the line Thus spake the tempter; but I knew full well May stumble on some inharmonious sound Such sounds would haunt all future symphonies: Some proper discord that doth but refine- And through all time my verse For this should we reject the sweet when found? Would shroud its beauty in a soulless curse. The sparrow twitters true In level phrase the skylark never knew. A perfect thing I might create, and then '( he violet on the mountain side is scarred Strike faultless notes with an impassioned hand. A beauty scar, the finger of the storm- But perfect phrase is not the speech of men lJngentle winds have kissed the sea and marred Whose brows are by the winds of passion fanned. To greater beauty its impassioned form. And they, who dare to rise, 'Twas imperfection's gain Shall stumble most as they approach the skies. To split this elm and make it grow in twain.
Applauds the world the work of plane and rule: In one famed park, of dull, unerring craft, Cheers the toy moon mounting the toy stage. With listless steps but yestermorn I strolled. If stars were sown in even rows one school B fore me rose a sun-dial's mantled shaft Would praise Diana and her equipage. Whose shadows fell on gardens wrought in gold. Spirit of Cowper! rise. 11<1 here, beneath my feet, In Pope we find too much perfection lies. [ found a wild flower and its breath was sweet.
28 29 A POET STOOD FORLORN A POET STOOD FORLORN
Torn were its petals; broken was its stem: Methinks I see a group in Paradise. (A child of charity amid those flowers.) (My brother poets who have gone before.) I touched it as those faithful touched the hem There's gentle laughter in each spirit's eyes Of ]esu's garment, to enlist its powers. That sends a merry message to this shore. And straightway I was healed; And wherefore all this mirth! The burdened sense was gone: wild music pealed. Their lowly glances ever seek the earth.
Low bent the pine: the sunbeams danced on rocks: And where they look reclines a little band, Fair clouds drew silken veils across the sun. Themselves have dubbed the censors of our verse, The poplar dressed her elves in silver frocks. Who walk with stern iambics, in each hand, (The wind transformed them from the sombre And fixed rules with which to praise or curse; nun) And who declare as nought And laughter, half discord, The rugged phrase where poets trip on thought. Pealed through the air-a tribute to the Lord. Cold critic! scornful since our time began Who gleans no beauty from a cold, grey sky Of every· templar of immortal muse; Doth gather none when it is flaming red. What chorie note conforms unto thy plan Who knows no rapture when sad breezes sigh Shall never light with passion's holy fuse. Feels none, aright, when balmy zephyrs tread, For, since old Triton's horn With whispering feet, on flowers First woke the seas, the great have felt thy scorn. Yearning to bud beneath warm April showers. "Browning insane or we" all Oxford cries. There is more loveliness in one lone flower "The milk and water poet" is our Keats. That hungers, on the cliff, her parent mould, Sad Poe and robust vVhitman seek new skies; Than all the pomp, Arrangement, in its power, And Goldsmith wears away old London's streets. Ever displayed in rows of shining gold. And Byron, fired by youth, The sweetest song of bird Strangles old Blackwood's with a grain of truth. Is that whose note is half guessed and half heard.
30 31 3 ] A POET STOOD FORLORN A POET STOOD FORLORN.
Shall Scottish pens subdue our English bards? J 11 t stood forlorn at break of day: Or Yankee thimbles quench Canadian fires? II is comrades had forsaken, one by one. They prune their shrubs in Boston's timid yards Yct. in his ear, an angel whispered: "They And shudder at Ungava's lordly spires. 'hall cease to sup when thy feast is begun. And five small plots have they 'cp thou thine eye ahead: Wherein a "man who fits" may, monthly, play. They live the most who to the most are dead." Pray let me introduce this man; he writes JJaytou, Ohio, March) 1907. A cultured song-whoever may command. He has a book; it says: lights rhymes with nights; Jig rhymes with pig and sand with contraband. (Poor Burns had no such book: His rhyme beside this man's would sorry look.)
His verse is even as a sparrow's cry Always a passport on the modern mart. God gives us men who dare where eagles fly; Who soar with bruised wing and bleeding heart Above the crags of song About whose base the vassal singers throng.
I'll play to some lone shepherd on the hill The rugged harmonies that free my soul. The Lesser Thing may please Ambition's will But surely wiII it burn with shame my scroll. 0, brother poet, hear: Stray hack where steps are rough but skies are cIear.
32 33
., Song of the Snowshoe Tramp s G OF THE SNOWSHOE TRAMP
HEN you're tired of the dance hall's hurry, 1'111 n this cap, and this blanket wrap W When you're cloyed with vaudeville jokes, 1\ lid button about your breast: When you're heartily sick of bloodless girls lid tie this sash where its silken flash Looking languid in opera cloaks; May flame in the wind's unrest. Come out with me to the open plain, Through nature's wide-flung door, \• carried the shoes to the end of the town, And I'll cram more pleasure within your brain '( the edge of a still white moor: Than ever was there before. nd we hummed a tune to the silver moon There's a snowshoe tramp, with a moon for lamp, s we made the thongs secure. And there's music in the pine; 'I II n we blazed a trail, over field and rail, And there's something now, in a balsam bough, In a white and fenceless land. That touches the heart like wine. nd we slid each hill, with a craftsman's skill, And laughed at the sons of weaker will I'll give you a girl with foot as light Who pled for a friendly hand. As the brown leaf on the snow; As the leaf that whirls with a mad delight Then a lengthened chain spread over the plain Whenever the winds do blow. As each couple drew apart; I'll give you a girl whom men call fair, l' or a lad had something to tell a lass And God calls fairer still. That long had troubled his heart; And it's hip and ho for the rolling snow nd a field of white, on a silver night, And the wood beyond the hill. Lends words a witching art.
Ah! even now to my window floats Over a cold, bleak field we drove The soul of the cloistered spruce. Our faltering snowshoes fast; So fling in a corner the SIlk-lined coat U nti! we came to a singing grove, And the prisoned feet let loose. Like a blanket before the blast.
34 35 SONG OF THE SNOWSHOE TRAMP SONG OF THE SNOWSHOE TRAMP
And here the fir did lazily stir: \Iltl he who looks across long plains, And the dead leaf, in its woe, 'vVhile winter winds do blow, Pled from the tree that the wind might free keener, broader vision gains Its hand and let it go- Than he who looks through window panes, Pled with the wind to let it find And haunts four walls, I know. A brother beneath the snow. Oh, thoughts like these ride on the breeze, And I could not help comparing, then, And pierce at will the mind, That leaf's one piteous song On a snowshoe tramp, with a moon for lamp, To the cry of women, the cry of men, nd music in the wind. Who linger in life too long. Oh! a snowshoe tramp, with a moon for lamp, There are stories writ on the cold, white snow, Brings thoughts like these in throng. Where velvet feet have pressed, More tersely told than the pen's long flow; 'vVe trailed a path that pierced the wootl More eloquently expressed. Like a fallen strand of thread. So, when ahead a rabbit sped, And under a great pine bough we stood, And a fox's dainty mark 'Till it poured a blessing from overhead. Told forage tales on the field's white spread, There's the heart of a bird, I've often heard, And a feast when skies were dark, Imprisoned within the pine; We had better fun than the timid one For slowly it lifts long arms and sings Who chose of an indoor ease, Long ebon arms like the raven's wings And breathed of a modern's sickly tales, But the grasping root too tightly clings; Instead of the balsam breeze. And the earth erie: "Thou are mine." A field of white is a cheerless sight Who lists to the pine's half-whispered lines With never a touch of red; In speech will gentler grow. So, high on the slope of a wooded height, And he will soon less harshly tread 'Where the lithe young pines are bred, \Vllo hears furred feet on snow.
36 37 SONG OF THE SNOWSHOE TRAMP ONG OF THE SNOWSHOE TRAMP
We lifted the tongue of a tiny flame I have walked the velvet floors of a king And it whispered to branches dry; But they were marble to that white floor. And, all in a moment, the answer came I have listened to hosts of a chorus sing; In a voice that pierced the sky. But those pines held music that r loved more. r have seen the flash of a thousand arcs Yea, all in a moment the answer came; And the city's strange, white glare; And we circled the yellow fire. But that anvil moon, with her countless sparks, And we hurled on twigs, with unerring aim, Was infinitely more fair: While the long, red, tongue grew higher; The moon which, on that winter's night, While the long, red tongue lapped up the dark Looked down through the guiltless air. That floated the starry choir. And there, on the height, we sang a tune \Vhen you're tired of the dance hall's hurry, With the storm-cry in its rote; When you're cloyed with vaudeville jokes, No Southern song, with its dreamy rune, When you're heartily sick of bloodless girls But an air that swelled the throat! Looking languid in opera cloaks; Yea, an air our sires had handed down Come out with me, where the heart beats free Like an heirloom of the mind. And, scorning conventional pride, And we blessed the shoes that had left the town Try a snowshoe tramp, with a moon for lamp, So many leagues behind. And a sweet girl at your side. Montreal} 1908. Oh, many a pair who tramped that night Took a longer trip together. And many a pair who braved that cold Walked down with life to her gate of gold Where the soul floats out from her crimson fold Like an idly drifting feather. For a snowshoe tramp, with a moon for lamp. Doth tie full many a tether.
38 39 Adversity ADVERSITY.
BARREN moor is at my door; Wild winds may speak of gentle bowers: A A sullen moon on high. Soft zephyrs breathe of death. It is as wild a winter night The crag may nurse the frailest flowers; As ever washed the sky. And they-the scorpion's breath.
A lean, white bird, that rides the storm, o Nature! consolation sweet, Doth lift her wounded wing \Vhat messages are thine! Against my windows, till they mourn To-night-the wind with tragic feet: Like any living thing. To-morrow-God's design.
"0 woeful wind," my spirit cried, Without-the winds of life are cold: "What black land gave thee birth?" Within-my heart is warm. "My soul was born," the wind replied, But all the windows of my soul "Where summer woos the earth. Are lovely from the storm. "Where summer strews her lustrous dews Winnipeg, January, 1913. O'er Leto's lonely lawn; Until her sward's a beaded cup To cheer the lips of dawn.
"I dream of ferns and sleeping burns When sweeping o'er the snow." "0 winter wind," my spirit cried, "Thy dream is all of woe."
But, 0, at dawn, to chide my words, Betwixt me and the sun, Upon my window pane was scrolled A fern-a perfect one. .40 41
" WHOM SHALL MY HEART CONDEMN? Whom Shall My Heart Condemn? S little has been given to some while I ERE are a few lines in defense declaimed Itave been endowed with so divine a trust. H For' them, the blind of soul, the spirit maimed; nd yet my august soul would shrink in dread The human tragedies who thread our strife; I id I believe an angel judged the dead; The debris cast upon the sea of life. r held I not the Master knew full well They through all time have tangled His design; IIow subtle was the art to which I fell. Have marched discordant to the rhythmic line. If I then fear such mercy, should not these- Not all the stars that, falling, scar the cheek Poor, piteous forms adrift on Life's rough seas Of night, bound in one avalanche, could speak Dread the untempted judge and his decrees! To them of beauty. Not all music wrung Thus saith the Lord: "The judgment seat is mine; From the white lips of waters shoreward flung, nd yet I fill your cup with mercy's wine. Could rouse their souls with harmonies divine. O, likewise, turn to him of weaker will For them no rose refines her odorous breath; And his poor measure with thy pity fill." No king or priest unrolls his shibboleth; Pity! fairest bloom the soul may wear, No galaxy of planets nightly shine. Thou art the verdure on the face of earth o Folly! place thy mark upon the task Making the rocks to sing and giving birth That binds the eye and cries, "See through the mask." To chiidren of the leaves with laughing hair. Rather than bid the night unfold her flowers Doth nature lead her to the morning hours. Trow shall I judge? To sin, the silver chord Rather than ask the waters underground That tethers me to beauty, with a sword To sparkle brightly, on a sunless round, Must I first cut; must grow forgetful quite Doth she not lead them out through grassy bowers Of eyes that held my morning in their light: And teach them how to bound. Must drown remembrance of lips red with love, Lord, to such judgment make our verdicts thrall, nd eyes, accustomed to the realms above, And Mercy's foot shall tread our Justice hall. Train earthward. Ah! but these; they are not bound By one small tether to diviner sound. Whom shall my heart condemn? what law apply They sin because 'tis easiest of the .arts; That will have flavor of a judgment just? The single gift of birth endowed theIr hearts. 43 42 WHOM SHALL MY HEART CONDEMN? WHOM SHALL MY HEART CONDEMN?
Then, Lord, as Thy good mercy we desire (I soft a babe he lay, Let us not fan our hatred into fire II vclvet to the touch, upon the bed. Against our brothers of the Lesser Will; mother's failures and a father's faults But rather let us lead them up, until I'illed half his tiny head. They hear the higher music that lures on I h 11 Hate came early and stood by him long, The climbing soul that goes to meet the dawn. .\IIe1 taught him all the discords of life's song. :\ nel, last of all, the grim law passed his way When thou shalt judge, 0 monarch of the Bench, nel, with coarse fingers, pressed his unshapen head, Thy verdict shall two verdicts ever be; l ntil within one chamber, Love lay dead. For if thy poor, proud logic turned on thee 'I'll n', when he killed that which he might have loved, 'Twould hang thee twice ere sunset, and the trench I 1Cll stood unmoved; You dig for one would hold you both at night. ()r at the wretch their maledictions hurled; The petulance of thy sarcastic smile, ~I cn who were ushered in a welcome world; Thy thought ungenerous, in Heaven's sight Whose cheeks were rounded by a mother's hand; Is crime more subtle than the steel's cold guile. Who knew the charmed circle's gentle bliss, He murders, steals, profanes and yet hurls less The morning kiss, At God than thy one act of bitterness. The velvet praise and musical command. Thy crime is all thine own, but half the State (. thou just Heaven, how shall thes~ men know; Had part in his, and urged him to his fate. These men made moral by birth's accident; Better than halter or electric chair Whose lips have never touched the cup of woe; Were childhood breathing virtue from clean air. \Vhose garments know of neither stain nor rent? Better at murder should the State convene righteous judge! 0 twelve good men and true! And try itself; learn wherefore hath it been • 0 very full of argument are you, . So loveless toward one man that he should feel So robed in ancient garments of the Jew, The satisfaction of a piece of ~teel; . T fain would now become debative, too; Than that it tread on him with mailed heel. WHOM SHALL 1Y HEART CONDEMN? WHOM SHALL MY HEART CONDEMN?
And ask some simple questions: pray, take note: Jesus they killed; and Mary, too, they slew. Should'st thou upon a street in Heaven meet John felt the spear that ran the Master through. A man with livid ring about his throat, Where stops the hand of State? Tell me, I pray, (Rope teeth prints sanctioned by thy judgment seat) And I'll correct you on the Judgment Day. Would that to thee make Paradise more sweet? Dost think the Christ a gibbet chain could see Can they be Christlike who this thing avow? And not feel shame for uses of a tree! The blood of Cain is on that nation's brow And who shall do the bloody deed I ask? Whose justice will such vengeful course allow. And all the Pilates cry; it shall be flung- The pulpit, holding up to man this creed, 'The trick that pulls the cord and swells the tongue \VilI give its message like a broken reed. And makes devouring lime a mortal's bed- The government that burns her dead with lime, Upon our hired assassin; he is dead Despite the churchman's poor, absolving rhyme, To that white vision of a soul's distress. Holds nothing but a licensed seat of crime. Whirl, busy loom, and weave a coward's dress For him who wears a hangman as a mask. Ye imps of Hell; let your black laughter live. On Satan's ears more pleasant sounds ne'er fell The pious churchman sends a soul to death, Than that word "Law" when put to such an end. Saying: "Forgive us Lord as we forgive:" They dance to music in the depths of Hell Old Pharisees of rotten heart and breath. When mortals such a bloody course defend. Laugh, ye black devils, in your caverns laugh; And write me out for them an epitaph. Who fells the tree For, if the Lord forgives as they forgave, Must know the branch goes too: \Vhat cup of mercy shalt their spirits save! And with the branch the leaves that wave to me, What drop of water shall their thirsting quell And twixt whose faces shineth Heaven's blue. In some biack cavern of their deeper Hell! o Lord, these too, these too, Weep, ye white angels, in the heavens weep; These proud-faced mothers, circled by strong anTIS, For Love hath been full many a year asleep. These sisters, sacrificial of their charms, ·Will hang beside him on the cursed tree. o ye, who cling unto this Old-World wrong, What comfort can ye find in David's song? 46 47 WHOM SHALL MY HEART CONDEMN? First Song Without a Name He murdered and, in God's sight, sang the stains HE took the best my heart could bring From out his heart. What had a tight rope done S And feasted for a while: But rob the world of those repentant strains; Nor knew I what a loveless thing As sweet as ever rose beneath the sun! Lay underneath her smile. Yea, farther I would go and say in truth: And though, to-day, my fond embrace This, life for life, this outworn, tooth for tooth, She scarcely can recall, Hath crushed full many a singer in his youth. The faintest smile that lit her face Is but a picture gaining grace: No more: if in the acres of thy heart My memory holdeth all. The seed sublime of Mercy is not sown What rain of words or wind of music blown I doubt if she remembers one Will make their fields to blossom with mine art. Long wistful look of mine. To stone I do not sing: the granite soul, I sooner could forget the sun Should I declaim a thousand years, would still Than how her hair did twine. Cleave to the old, outworn Hebraic scroll, Than I no flower gave to the wind :And lift its loveless arm of steel to kill. More freely of its soul. And yet in vain I have not roused my rhyme, And is it strange, when looks were kind, For, in some sweeter, nobler hour of Time, A luckless seaman ne'er divined A mother's eyes shall laugh and children play How shallow was the shoal? Because a poet sang this song to-day.. And yet her glances did implore; Her answers were complete. So little has been given to some; to me If words could carry love they bore Are borne the rarest gifts of land and sea. Her spirit to my feet. Yet now I know the sound I thought M ontrealJ N ovemberJ 1908. Love's sweet replying tone Was not the message which I sought But rather mine own echo caught Against her heart of stone.
48 49
,, FIRST SONG WITHOUT A NAME The Whip-poor-will
I look back o'er the drifted years, AD minstrel of the night's neglected hour; That lie as cold as snow, S Strange, unseen devotee of loneliness; And wonder why my soul endears In dim seclusion of some leafy tower The days of long ago. ''''arming, with song, the dews that round thee A thou.sand warm, red lips are here; press. And Beauty's eyes are wet. While other tribes confess And, when the autumn leaves are sere, Their secrets at the listing ear of day. I sit beside the fading year Till night thou waitest thy confessional. And bid my soul forget. But Mercy fled with one last golden ray, And song of twilight bell. "Though one so false possess such charms I will not pine away; Mercy is dead-yea fled is that warm sun; But gladly give to other am1S And when thou dost confess, none shall reply. This child of faithless clay." Thine oft repeated prayer can never run These words I spake and thought my heart Down the lost steps of light, to lure that eye Was healed its wound, and then Back to the gloomy sky. One, neath my window, touched my heart So shalt thou call, and call once more, in vain, With some old aria of lost art, o foolish Virgin of the feathered throng; And oped the wound again. Too late to trim thy lamp on sunlit plain, Or light a happy song. Montreal, 1909. Limned on a leaden sky, the huddled trees Stand like the evil dregs in some black drink; When Erebus invades with chilling breeze, And stirs this blackness to the cup's high brink, Where night doth interlink The solitary children Chaos bore.
51 so THE WHIP-POOR-WILL THE WHIP-POOR-WILL
And on a hill, in pensive mood, I stand, Full various are the kind And wait, in vain, for one who heard of yore That tune a medley for the exiled king. Thy lyrical command. And so, doth man not woo his minstrelsy . At flush of power; doth every bard not smg The droning singers of the drowsy eve \Vh n Pomp and Might pass by? O'er their low waves of song hear thy notes swell, As, o'er the murmur of the waters, grieve Creater, I deem it, that attempt to thrill The weary wailings of the mournful bell: The hour of gloom with deliquescent call. Nor they, nor I can tell W ndrous is it to me, .a Whip-poor-will, Which silent copse shall next thy message woo; That thy most wistful note should brave the pall More than, when gazing on the skies afar, f this Cerberian Hall. Can we tell where, upon the fading blue, pirit hast thou of that flower oped at night, Shall gleam the next cold star. That coral tinting on Atlanta's bed; oul of thy soul is Philomel's delight; Oft hath Selene, in the vale of sleep, Her glory on thy head. Fondling her fair Endymion, as he lay Pillowed where tearful grasses nightly weep, As thine our noblest utterance hath been Pled with Tacita through thy bowers to stray, Like sunlight through some grieving hemlock And warn thee lest thy lay caught. Should rouse her lover from his dreamful bourne. When the cold English lips with praise were lean And angry, often hath she, knowing thou The quill of Browning marched through leagues of Dost Phcebus fear, to trick thee it was morn, thought. Burnished her chariot's prow. Jn woof of midnight caught Did that blind prophet touch his epic chord. When Eunls drives the first reluctant light, And, by good Severn's lamp, Music's own child With all Apollo's pageantry behind- Melted our language, and its liquid poured A dew imbibing cortege-and the Night For but one heart that smiled. Staggers to some black cavern, stricken blind,
S3 52
, THE WHIP-POOR-WILL THE WHIP-POOR-WILL· • Fickle is fancy: first to me thy role II w , like thee, dear, gentle bird, could sing Was not unlike that Virgin when her doom, way our sorrow in the dark, alone, Heard through the shining doorway, froze her soul. I[ w oon would every forest hallway ring Thy courage then my lyric did illume With harmonies that breathed autumnal tone; 'When, through increasing gloom, '\1\(1 broken oft with moan. I heard thy ong at dusk-Defeat's own hour. But we must face the multitude and smile; Fancy must play; did pierce thine ebon sphere or dare to grant our souls a brief release Some soldier, broken parcel of lost power, long some lovely, winding, woodland aisle I doubt not he would hear \Vh re all is truth and peace.
Thee calling back to line the craven band 'I hOll wert a witness of the sweetest night That hushed their songs before the cuirassed dark, That e'er lit Peri pathways for my feet; Like some more ardent lover of his land N r was there ever melody that quite Who hails back fleeting soldiers to their mark. nearly made a paradise complete, Like thine his cry: 0, hark! As thy song, wildly sweet. Like his, thy note, so fraught with dull Despair. ing on, to-night, dear whip-poor-will, sing on; (Too full already is that gory bed.) That hour returns, and all too swiftly goes And thou dost call as vainly through night air To pave the path which I shall walk at dawn As he calls o'er his dead. \Vith dead leaves of the rose.
Cloaked in the shades of eventide, I hear :ing on; thy singing keeps the Vestal fires The mystic waves of Knowlton's gentle lake: Of song aflame when all the hearths are cold; A mute and gloomy host that, drawing near, When robins leave their blossom-scented lyres With long, tired breathing their cold journey break. And mutely wait within the shadow's fold And then I hear thee wake, Dawn riding aureoled. With triple thrusts of song, thy haunting choir, And each head dipped in feathers sleeps secure, Whose lyric arrows pierce the hueless night, I nowing the flame of song, through all the dark, Until her heavy curtain is afire In thy sad throat burns bright and sweetly pure. With wizardry of light. And from its star-hued spark, 54 55
, THE WHIP-POOR-WILL Trapper One and Trapper Two When morn comes quickly with her conquest tread, (Or the Ghost of Ungava) Shall each light up the ashes of her tune; Till flame shall leap to flame, and swiftly spread PART ONE O'er the lost Kingdom of a Spectral Moon. M ANING branches of the midnight, with your Nor shall again thy rune melancholy rune, Be heard till dies the sun's last level ray. \\'it h the mournful, mystic music of your cries; And though I haunt the wood in noonday hours, \\'ail f late November waters; mocking laughter of Not in the grove, nor on the sunlight way the loon, Shall Music wake thy powers. 1hat within the arms of desolation dies; \V 'ave your glamor through my song: Kingston, l1tly, 1909. I J:lllllt it at your doleful pleasure, 1ill the woodland's wilding throng I)ance upon my page a measure. I ,i f and song are tired of leisure; let my rune be wild and strong. II ' was Trapper One-the dead man; I am Trapper Two who write Of the ghost that came to haunt me through the long Ungavan night.
Moaning branches of the mi<;lnight! Have ye ever heard them moan III those wilds that God reserved to shame the soul; When you've buried a companion and you're in a world, alone, Where no echo from a living land can roll?
56 57 TRAPPER ONE AND TRAPPER TWO TRAPPER ONE AND TRAPPER TWO
In the winter's gothic light, Softer than an infant's breathing is the music of the When the sun's a dying ember pines: And the only joy of night When they sing I know how Sound doth reverence Is the pleasure you remember God. From a merry old December when a comrade's eyes O'er this life's abundant discord I can hear their mel- were bright, low lines Have ye ever heard the hemlock, underneath the wist As their harpists pave, with broken strings, the sad. ful sky, Yet the pine hath lost its power Chill the marrow bones of winter with the sadness of To renew my fainting spirit: her cry? I, who loved its singing tower, . Draw my cloak and madly fear It. . It is midnight in December, as I write these mystic I could rest but that I hear it wail her sorrow at tlllS lines: hour: And the burning branch is etching spectral walls. Wail her sorrow, and his sorrow, as the pine alone In the Gordian interlacing of its intricate designs can wail Pleads a witchery of motion that enthralls. In the depths of old Ungava, on the boldest trapper's In this cabin's haunt, alone, trail. Sale companion of my sorrow, While the pines, in monotone, Search the symbols faintly crawling o'er this yellow Wail to every wind a haro scroll of birch: I am waiting for the morrow, all my courage over Ride the dipping, curving tremor of my pen. thrown; And the day you find me lifeless, in this cabin, gently Fearful of the endless night and the gliding form in search white For a testament to prove my words to men. That descends to chill my senses from a wild Ungavan Should they challenge truth you'll find height. Foil to parry in a pocket. When you reach it, pray unwind Someone's hair within a locket. Hold it to mine eye's grim socket: I shall see it, dead 58 and blind. 59 TRAPPER ONE AND TRAPPER TWO TRAPPER ONE AND TRAPPER TWO
Would you grant a dead man bliss press it to my lips For the maid with fingers fair, to kiss: In a lover's hour of leisure, Though I'm dead I swear I'll kiss it with a dead Granted him a breadth of hair man's sacred kiss. 'Which would mate a finger's measure: Great enough to clasp his pleasure, big enough for my It was years ago, in Levis-from Quebec a river's despair. cry- Touch thy glass to mine, 0 comrade, who know sor- That two sons of Scotia loved a flower of France. row such as mine: And they wooed her in the autumn where the forts in Legion of the hopeless lovers! drink with me this ruin lie bitter wine. And the scarlet ranks of maple make advance. But the end of wooing came Northward came we in an autumn; Trapper One and With the curving snow in billow; Trapper Two, For a zephyr blew the flame To a hut that tamed the wildness with its light. From the roses on her pillow. And we sentineled the valleys with as treacherous a And we laid her neath the willow and the gentle crew springtime came, As did ever clasp a velvet foot at night. Bringing back her thousand roses; but the fairest of And we thinned the tribes orfur- them all Never touched by brand or tiver- At the bugle cry of April never answered to the call. In a land where not a stir Woke the slumber of the river But before the color faded from the petal of the rose, Save the tamarack, as~iver, and the pheasant's startled I, who loved her, knew how subtle was the thorn. whirr. When her favor chose the other all the joys of life But the wistful waves of sky saw my comrade droop arose and die. And re-clad their forms in sable, most forlorn. And I closed his lips aquiver with the music of good- bye.
61 60 TRAPPER ONE AND TRAPPER TWO TRAPPER ONE AND TRAPPER TWO
This is all: I stole his treasure when I crudely formed \ mi a warning in her message made me look across his bed the night In a scraping, cruel, frozen bit of ground. Where I saw the damning spirit in its gleaming robe And, although I ever loved him as the only link that of white. led Back where music of her foot made sacred sound, Moving like a light 0' lantern o'er the bare cliff's Yet the love of her was more rugged face: Than the solemn vow I carried. (Walls of rock so sheer the snow could never ~linl?) And though, at his bed, I swore With a melancholy motion, that was spectral 111 lts The sweet locket should be buried grace, . All my good resolves miscarried: and I'almost madly Fled the sprite; if ghost you call a nameless th111g. tore T had often hurled the boast, From his throat the silken compact: Life had given When I made the circle's number, him her breath: That a spectre or a ghost Was I wrong to press my warm lips on the thing he Was a phantasy of slumber; claimed in death? r a gentle myth to cumber timid children at the mo~t. But my boastful lips grew silent and my .heart dld I was happy with my comfort though I kept a dead wildly thrill man's right. When I first beheld the phantom moving slowly up the (Could he care, asleep beneath the forest floor?) hill. I would seek that Ancient City when the springtime's balmy light He had said a thing should haunt me if I broke his Fell on basking babies through the open door. last request: .. But a night when clouds, aflush, But I always scorned his necromantIc bra111. . Paled to pink, and amber after, Could a wisp of hair and locket, stolen from a hfe1ess Laughed a loon, across the hush, breast, ,With her revenantic laughter Have the power to call a spirit back again? Rising wild and growing dafter as it wailed above the rush. 63 62 5 TRAPPER ONE AND TRAPPER TWO TRAPPER ONE AND TRAPPER TWO
So, in anger, I did cry: Fool was I: no sprite pays homage to the lucent leap "'Tis my fancy sees the spirit: 0' lead. To the ghostly ledge I'll fly: 'Twas a phantom and my brother had not lied. And, since folly bids me fear it, Not an evening since my feasting, but the silver elk I will look not up till near it lest my resolution die." hath fled But anear the crag I stumbled and the partridge rose Through the darkness with the mark upon its side.' in flock: I have prayed a day's respite And a silver elk-the vision-I beheld against the But the breezes laugh in answer; rock. While the snow in wraith of white Whirls beside me like a dancer. Soon my rifle soiled that silver with the crimson's And a pale and stately lancer rides to meet me piteous mark: through the night. And the phantom was a legend with its flash. Brief the season I can brave it for the hours are And I washed the ruddy satin as, at eventide, the dark strange and cold; From the silvern cloud doth wash the scarlet splash. And my spirit feels the burden of a heart that's grow And I hung'the fur on high; ing old. And grew festive o'er the savor, As the flame, with eager cry, Freed the haunch's garish flavor. Smack of wintergreen for favor: e'en the breezes passing by PART Two Carried through the night its fragrance: such a zest as might enthuse Moaning branches of the midnight! He E'en the jaded lip of Gotham, lashed beneath the hath passed beyond their dirge; spice's ruse. Lying strangely on the foot-forgotten floor:
64 6S TRAPPER ONE AND TRAPPER TWO TRAPPER ONE AND TRAPPER TWO
For the Genius of Creation bade his infant soul Quickly as the wine that presses through the richest emerge summer cloud. From the womb of Life and creep to Heaven's door. Call me, then, Ungava's poet; for I love her bleak Does it matter if the call despair Comes amidst the fires of Java; More than palms and more than roses which the Or speaks weirdly through the hall tropic bosoms wear. Of the winter-washed Ungava? Lifted from the creeping lava and the thunders that o Ungava, wild Ungava! if thy treasured crypt had appal, tongue Through the portal of Uranus, shades of Pompeii Half the world, ere this, had tracked the moose's shall greet spoor, Spirits rising where the snowdrift wraps the pilgrim Shouting wildly their eurekas where a lavish Hand in its sheet. had flung, Underneath the stammel rock, the yellow lure. God creates and man interprets: 'tis interpretation Yet beneath the white star's stare fails Thou art lying like a sleeper When the moan of naked branches does not charm. On her golden coils of hair; Poor that lover, often praiseful of the glowing cheek, Ward of silence and the keeper who hails Of a thousand men's despair; Not the beauty of the curving snow of arm. Who shall deeply delve, and deeper, while the mid night beacons flare. UIler's wild and wintry shroud, Trappers here shall gain their treasure on the hills Barren of the wile of tresses, that smoke and croon; With such beauty is endowed And the dreamer feast forever on the laughter of As shall win my soul's caresses the loon.
66 67
.11 __ TRAPPER ONE AND TRAPPER TWO Reed Songs
Moaning branches of the midnight, with your melan I choly rune, With the mournful, mystic music of your cries,. N the land of Proven Fac,t, . Sob of late November waters, on the fading slope I High above the hammer s rIng, of noon, Kept a soaring skylark pact Or the bittern's doleful wailing ere it dies, With her spirit's blossoming. Blow your music through the ear Of the one who courts these p~ges. Sat the queen, unmoved, below: Let him conjure up the drear Sat her courtiers, one and all, From the storied depths of ages. Marking more the hammer's blow And when drowsyo'er the sages bid imagination peer Than the lyri~ prophet's call. For a moment on the madness of a lonely trapper's brain, Varied was her lilting's art. On the night he saw the vision with its guilty, crim Martial-toned, at first, it fell son stain. Till its rune rehearsed a part Softer than an evening bell. Toronto, October, 1910. Had there been a soldier there Quickly had his pulses stirred When, upon the vibrant air, Fled the music of this bird.
Did a poe~ stray the street, Beating breast against its walls, He had kept her message sweet E'en in Babylonia's halls.
69 68 REED SONGS REED SONGS
But the land of Proven Fact Does the shapeless mass of snow, Boasted neither flag nor bard. Tortured by a thousand feet, Strode alone its level tract Rob their glory, do ye know, Science, with her hueless shard. Or their craftsmanship defeat?
Sat a beggar in the sun, There's a sister to the gem, Frowsed of visage, lean of limb; Which I humble as I tread, In the land the only one Keeping pure a diadem Gaining import of thy hymn. On the mountain's savant head.
Three had spared the breasts of Tyre. Who shall scorn the graver's part, One shall save this soulless land: When the melted street shall run, Look; descending shafts of fire Too, must praise alike his art Upheld by the beggar's hand. Where a summit hails the sun.
II I, the carver of this line, Know not whether it shall fall Moaning sculptors of the air, On the robe of mountain pine Carving from a dewy globe Or the town's dissolvent wall. Crystal forms the pine shall wear On her dark, ancestral robe! lIT Where they work, an open door • Comes an ardent sun to woo, Swirls their treasures to the storm. On the valley's couch, the snow. Some shall find the city's floor: Though a day his love is true Others grace the mountain's form. Grief for him shall overflow.
7U 71
flf~__ REED SONGS REED SONGS
Dead at night his love shall lie, Waters, o'er forgetful sands, Crushed within his warm embrace, Wash the play of printed feet: Leaving underneath the sky Yesterday, the rain of hands: Of her beauty not a trace. Now, the dreadful judgment seat.
Rides a colder sun to greet, Blushful culprit I surprise On the higher hills, the maid. Sipping nectar of my pen, Fondly shall these lovers meet Praise that nestles in thine eyes Through the ages, unafraid. Shall outlive the toasts of men.
Toronto) 1910. Passion spends his lustful quest: Love preserves her heart's desire. Lean thou lightly on a breast Lest thine ardor quench its fire,
IV
Lover of my rhythm's rune, Best applause of all is thine, Sitting, museful, at· the noon, Finger on a favored line.
Others blessed me face to face: Called me poet, seer and sage. Yet I search each hidden place, Vainly, for my opened page.
72 . 73 A Song of Brotherhood A SO G OF BROTHERHOOD I WHO sing this, am of no land: And in those days I called myself a patriot. For though my heart is fondest of one land Now am I patriot to the kind deeds of a Brahmin; Yet is this fondness truer because I love all la~ds. To all that assists the ultimate ends of harmony r hate the sin of mine own flesh and blood' In the wild songs of savages; to the good in every And love the virtues of. mine enemy. ' thing. I am of England only as England is of truth. My flag is sewn by the fast shuttle of feet I am of France only as France is virtuous. Wherever, and whenever, good Samaritans tread the I am of Germany only as Germany is clean. highway. I burned my last, sad prejudice but yesterday: My National Anthem is the Silence of Universal ~ow am I free to speak, being of no land. Peace. Twas no pure fount of pride bade me prefer I love the sound of the breaking of bread, in India, A bloated Saxon, heavy with his wine, Better, far better, than the sob of waves To sad-faced Bedouins, fasting and at prayer. That kiss iron keels at Cowes. Brother of Fran.ce, brother of Germany, brother of I am more of America than I am of Canada: the Amencan States I am more of the world than I am of America: Brother of Italy, Russia, I~eland and Japan, I am more of the Universe than I am of the WorId. Comrade of the most unknown isle If thou art true, then, art thou mo:e to me No creed have I nor know I any law that is evil. Than one in mine own kingdom who is false. I am one of the hosts of Barbary; In .war my sword would urge its gleaming thrust, And even the clouds oppress my expansion of soul. vVlth better play, through traitors at my side I f I were given three things to damn Than at true-hearted foes. I would damn creed three times. I have seen dark-skinned men with great, pathetic If I were given three more things to damn eyes, I would damn creed three more times. And have cheered coarse, dull, white wretches who For had a creed been damned in India's dawn slew them. The Ganges ne'er had known its human cry.
74 ·75 A SONG OF BROTHERHOOD A SONG OF BROTHERHOOD
And 0, the ,blue-eyed Irish, but for creed, And there, while eyes grew eloquent and tongues Would lead the march of nations. You have asked: mute, "When will come brotherhood? When will come the I would assemble all the hosts of Barbary. Christ?" And I reply: "not until creeds are one Listen to me, 0 warring tribes of Earth: With the vain dust of their own temples." I am no longer of any land or of any creed. I am a patriot to the kind deeds of a Brahmin, The greatest teacher is he who comes both to learn To the good impulse of the lowest-scaled Pagan. and to teach. So, would'st thou join me, comrade, test thy heart; Go Methodist, or Baptist, into Burma; say: And if those chambers harbor no malice; "I come, my brown-skinned brother to learn from And if thou hast swept them clean of prejudice; thee And if thou art ready to slay a creed at God's com- ~ll that thou hast of Truth: I come to give mand- , All that I know of Good." Even a creed which thou lovest as Abraham loved Strange, when the garnishments are torn away, Isaac- How like the gods of other nations are Then, the hosts of Barbary await thy company. Unto my God. Toronto, December, 191 I. I would build high a fire, Whose tongue would sear the silver on the stars; And for my fuel would gather scripts of creeds, Worm-eaten altars, and the robes of priests, And treaty parchments brown, and pitiless swords, And all that militates against the Brotherhood. And to the warmth would I call Esquimaux, And Hottentots, and Englanders, and Arabs:
76 77 Barbary BARBARY ..wHAT is your creed?" cried the census man; Ye feed your souls on a worn-out scroll, And I answered: I have none: And chain them to chapel walls; I am one of the hosts of Barbary Until they have never a thought of God Who worship beneath the sun. Away from their pews and stalls. We have temples aflame with flowers; But we, whom your numbers despise, And wearing the clouds their towers. Are pastured on cloudless skies; And the seven days are the hymns of praise I For our souls have found that Holy Ground We sing to the Holy One. Is ever where Beauty calls.
The creed hath need of a belfry bell And ye are bound to a rule and law To summon the knee to prayer. Upheld by a chant and charm. But we, of the Hosts of Barbary, But we are fed from the veins of flowers Are called by the love we bear. That redden an upland's arm. 0, we ride through the morning dews 0, in Barbary fair, we grow To gird on the Master's shoes. A lily as white as snow, And we wait by night, while the stars burn white, And a damask rose to welcome those The soul of His smile to share. Who fly from a creed's alarm.
Ten falsehoods nailed to a truth have ye; So go to him who would know thy creed And a long cathedral aIsle. And say to him: "None have I: And we, of the Hosts of Barbary, I have joined the hosts of Barbary Stand out on the hills and smile. Who worship beneath the sky." But we garner your truthful word For a day, when the last creed's power And add it to one we heard, Goes down with her temple's tower, From a pagan band, somewhere 111 a land From a granite peak, shall the great God speak; By the Ganges or the Nile. And Barbary's hosts pass by.
Toronto, October, 191 I.
78 79 8 To the Uncrowned Kings TO THE UNCROWNED KINGS SO much is writ in honor of success Ever wilt thou be solace to the man I would here sing a solitary song Who gained no prize, nor ever fawned to know To those, who, judged by common standards, fail; What praise lay idly on a lip, and who Who touch no crown. I have caught such a light Chose ever crosses, when within his reach Upon the furrowed brows of men, whose names Lay wealth of kingdoms. So to those who lie Lie on our tongues like pity, as is seen Remotest in the applauding thoughts of men; To flash on chariots of the falling stars. Failing to earth, that they succeed to Heaven: I have heard their cries of noble anguish I sing here of the glory of bleak stars As lordly as the avalanche's cry. Failures of God, ere He designed a world, I have seen them measure to the earth Fanned by a palm, and perfumed by a rose. With all the stateliness of ancient trees. I speak here of the majesty of seas o Sons of World Discouragement! I know, Which run up hopeless cliffs, on sobbing nights. With knowledge sure, that where Dishonor leads I tell here of the glory of those peaks To one world failure she doth also lift Which thrust their arms, rock-muscled, through the The hands of ten to fortune. It might prove clouds, Strange reading if a volume came to men, All hopelessly, to catch a drifting moon. Writ by historians of the realms of Li 80 81 TO THE UNCROvVNED KINGS I Feel nor Understand Then should'st thou, heavy heart, from reaching high, winter winds, long overdue, Stand on the farewell crag of life, with brow s That freeze the bloodroot's broken arm, Unsung, unpraised, unloved, ungarlanded, A So felt my heart, the words from you, Forsake not courage: but when thou dost fall Whose lips, ere this, did never woo In that most narrow vision of men's eyes, Aught else, but music's charm. Gaze ever sunward: and as stars, that leap From the high pinnacles of lofty night, When students in companionship See their descent translated in the sea I might have understood the fall . To light that rises; thou shalt likewise find· From constant graciousness-the slip Thy fall reflected on the dome of Heaven, That to forgiveness of a lip As one who mounts up nobly to a crown. A youthful hour would call. Montreal, 1909. But now, as bloodroots, when the spring Bids every shrunken form expand, Are touched by some belated sting At zenith of their blossoming. I feel nor understand. Did we not draw the veil of husk, That hides the truth of what we are, When, oft, in gardens fraught with musk We saw, uncloaked from velvet dusk, The rapier of star? If I should carve a phrase to make Your heart to bleed, as mine hath bled, The sleeping hours we knew should wake And bid me, for their sweetness sake, To leave the word unsaid. 82 83 I FEEL NOR UNDERSTAND At the Piano When thou wert noviced in love's art 1 a crimson gown she waits me I understood each faithless strand. 1 At the golden dip of sun; But, now, so long I've held thy heart While her hands caress the lilies As fitted for a craftsman's part, Which an octave's garden spun, I feel nor understand. Through her fingers flows her spi rit Till her passion is outpoured Toronto, March, 1911. In the sweet, confession cloister Of the priestly clavichord. 'Tis an alchemy of wonder Gives this idyl to the breeze When her slender, shapely fingers Melt their whiteness with the keys: Keys that answer her caresses In the language of her soul; Passion, love and lamentation Pleading neath a fine control. Can my heart forget those twilights When she tamed the chord's unrest? Oft, it seemed, she took the burden Of the songsters, gone to rest. As the crimson of the morning Fades before the feathered throng, So her figure, in the gloaming, Melted neath her simple song. 85 AT THE PIANO The Waking Thought I have never heard that keyboard LE~~~~ Thou, 0 God, the roadways ~; ~YI Answer any other hand C With a melody so soothing Each night, when traffic ceases, J do pray; With a symphony so grand. That when I waken the clean morn may find Nor have ever maiden's glances No debris from my sins of yesterday. Wakened music, with their art, Send me one thought of Thine when fi~st mine eyes Half so sweet as she awakened Open with flowers unto the sweet sunnse; On the octaves of my heart. And this one thought will draw, throughout the day, Innumerable thoughts its way- Love doth make the stars grow humble: All children pure, drawn hither by this light; Love doth hold the seas in thrall: Drawn hither as that star, Love doth bridge eternal chasms Which Thou dost place against the dusking blue, With the music of her call. Draws from afar And, when Might shall find his army A countless host of its own silver hue, Baffled by a city's power, Arrayed in borrowed garments, pure and white. Love shall storm, and win the gateway, Let me on this thought look, when I awake, With the petals of a flower. As the poor, sick eyes first take Tor01lto) September) 191 I. A look at roses, leaning o'er the bed Roses, still wet with dew, Or tears, that almost seem to speak And plead with their lost sisters to mount through The snows that lie upon the withered cheek. By this first flower will all my hours be led: I would not have Thee pave the path I tread, Or lift the stones where gentler feet have bled. 87 86 THE WAKING THOUGHT Otus and Rismel Cleanse Thou, 0 God, is all I ask, and set A ballade of the long sea lanes My first look on the modest violet. • 'LL sing of Love an hundred songs; Should some foul bird I For there's an endless store. Slay the first robin, and usurp its place, I'll sing of Love till the listening stars I doubt so soon would we behold spring's face. Shall crowd the ocean floor. The flower had never stirred And then I'll sing again of Love From its moist bed, And then of Love once more. Had never lifted to the sun its uncrowned head, If that brave bird had failed to usher forth Here is the riddle; here the key: And sing of southern woodlands to the north. Uncoil the silken mesh. Then speak, 0 God, to me, For Otus is a human soul When first I wake at morn; and give, I pray, And Rismel is the flesh. A single thought of Thee And tho' my theme is the age's dream To shepherd all my fancies of the day. It's heart is young and fresh. And when the evening shadows softly creep Otus quaffed white flame of sun Over the earth, this shepherd, ere I sleep, That gilded Gramard's noon. Will. bring to Thee, for sacrifice, my sheep. But Rismel breathed where the cold weed wreathed Round Triton's heavy shoon. Toronto, April, 191 I. Rismel dwelt on the lone sea-veldt And wept for the round, red moon. It is a name that pours like wine: "Rismel, Rismel, RismeI." Whenever the word three times was heard, An answer-low and dismal- Moaned under the walls of sobbing halls, In sea arcades abysmal. 88 89 OTUS AND RJSMEL OTUS AND RISMEL Rismel, now, by the light of moon, Moving like shuttles over the deep Doth Gramard's glory wear. Through broken masts and spars And Otus knows where the whitest rose The dolphins sew the rents of woe Distils its fragrance rare. Where storm-gods smote the bars. And Otus goes with the whitest rose And the low, brown tide that floods my song And binds it in her hair. Unrolls a script of stars. The sea-gull rests on Gramard's shore Otus quaffs white flame of sun And mends her broken wing. From flask of Gramard's noon. And waters, dumb, from caverns come But Rismel sits where the sunbeam knits To Gramard's cliffs, and sing. Gold robes for Gramard's dune. So ride with me to Gramard's sea Nor shall she ever slip back to sea And all your dead loves bring. ' And weep for the round, red moon. This is a tale of hidden things Yea, bring your dead loves in your arms Which love, alone, may find- And I will kiss their brows. ' A tale that sinks in the sad sea-wave, And they shall walk with thee at morn And mounts in the soft night wind: And mend their broken vows. ' A tale that rides on the star-flecked tides And the merry breeze shall bid the seas That under the cliffs grow blind. Laugh over sunken prows. II More graves than one each man shall dig: (A sexton's trade we ply.) The graceful green, in grenadine, For every twilight spreads a grave Danced well to Otus' flute. Where some dead love doth lie And where his reed flung winged seed Some poor and pitiful dead love Her furrows bore quick fruit: That, buried, does not die. For countless fish thrust through the sea, Like silver grass in shoot. 90 91 OTUS AND RISMEL OTUS AND RISMEL And one strange fish among the hosts "And there's a hand in Gramard's land Had large and human eyes. For every lonesome maid. And every night it came and basked And there are flowers in Gramard's bowers Beneath the velvet skies. For every soul dismayed. And every night it stayed its flight But never a flute, save mine, can lure Till Arcturus would rise. The tribes of the deep sea shade." Love binds with silk; and then with hemp; Love binds with silk; and then with hemp; And then with iron thong. And then'with iron band. And Otus grew to love those eyes And then comes Fate and, soon or late, And they to love his song. Unwinds each precious strand: And every eve his flute would grieve And then the hours that promised flowers Above the silver throng. Bring only wastes of sand. The perfumed night called from the height One evening Otus missed the eyes That pierced her silver sails- That gazed with human fears: "An hundred maids, with amorous braids, Nor did they come the next, nor yet Dance now through Gramard's dales: Throughout the weary years. ',Vhy waste thy song on a motley throng And so he wandered, desolate, In slimy fins and scales? Mid Gramard's dunes and meres. "I'll stem thy wounded flow of heart And then at last a troubled voice With wealth of woman's hair. Assailed him in a dream- I'll light thy soul with woman's eyes; "And did'st thou love the fins and scales, And rid thee of despair." Or what did human seem ?" But Otus cried, "My only joys And Otus answered, "I did love Are those the fish may share. A living soul, I deem." 92 93 OTUS AND RISMEL OTUS AND RISMEL So, touched to pity by the look "Art thou the fish?" and Rismel said, The tender minstrel bore, "A mermaid was I born: The spirit cried, "The fish shall bide And yet I knew the sky was blue, To-morrow at thy door; Ere Neptune's robe was torn: If thou but call from Gramard's wall, And yet I knew the sky was blue, Rismel, three times, no more." And Gramard's dunes forlorn. From Gramard's cliff did Otus cry, "When in the songless caves I lay "Rismel, Rismel, Rismel." My soul yearned for a thing. And, after the word three times was heard, And what it yearned I only learned An answer, low and dismal, An hour your flute did sing- Moaned under the walls of sobbing halls, An hour your flute obeyed the mute, In sea arcades abysmal. White fingers of her king." And soon the mystic sea unrolled Then Otus played with madder art Her heaving portals wide; Than ever man did play; And near the shore, where oft of yore And drew from caverns of his heart The fish was wont to bide, An old and doleful lay; A mermaid, swaying a thousand stars, And lit the dole of its grieving soul Lay pillowed on the tide. On Dian's tapered way. And then, as Otus roused his flute And Rismel rose from out the sea, With lilt of ancient tunes, As ships lift in the gale: Her wistful eyes looked with surprise So far she rose the gleaming sun On Gramard's furrowed dunes- Revealed the fin and scale: To her their glow did seem to flow Which seen, once more, the sea's torn floor From old, familiar moons. She pierced, with hopeless wail. 94 9S 1 OTUS AND RISMEL OTUS AND RISMEL Nine days and nights on Gramard's shores III Did Otus' spirit bleed. Nine days his woe did sadly flow For twenty years the lonesome meres Through caverns of his reed. Claimed Otus as their child. They heard each lay his flute did play But for nine long days the secret sea When summer skies were mild: Bore only the wayward weed. And they heard his cry when the leaden sky Raged, like a thing defiled. And then one night the silver light, ',. That flooded to the West, Who watcheth long shall hear the song Unbared, upon the tearful wave, The glad home-comers sing. The mermaid's dead, cold breast: Who liveth well shall come to dwell Like drifted snow her flesh did show In palace of the king. , Above the billows' crest. And what are fears, that thread the years, To joys a day may bring, Her hair did hold a stifling fold Of sea-wave in its lair. And well I know the ancient woe And wide her eyes were to the skies Shall come to me again: Her life's last thought lay there- Yet it shall wear a gentler air, (It was a thought'that she had caught And grant me less of pain. From grottoes of despair.) But the joys I buried shall return In tenfold, like the grain. And Otus drew her to the sands, The vernal clover hath three tongues And made her last, cold bed. To drink the golden light. And the stars crept low in heaven, as though And rule of three binds land and sea, They honored, too, the dead. In Morning, Noon, and Night. And the sun did surely weep all night; And through the three of Trinity For the lids of Dawn were red. Doth God assert His might. 96 97 OTUS AND RISMEL OTUS AND RISMEL And three great days to Otus came; As three come to us all- Who watcheth long shall hear the song The day the wondrous fish arose The glad home-comers sing. To hear his flute's strange call; Who liveth well shall come to dwell And the hour the mermaid left her bower In palace of the king. Under the sad sea-wall. And what are all the woes of Time To joys a day may bring! And on the third, and greatest day, The years bridge chasms deep and wide: He walked on Gramard's hill: They bridge them span by span. And while his thoughts were on that love And bolt, and thong, and tier are strong; The years could never kill. And true the Builder's plan. A laugh rode on the rippling air And where the long, white arche~ end Like a spring-awakened rill. Stands Christ, the Son of Man. And Otus stilled his flute, and cried; IV "Rismel, Rismel, Rismel." And though the word three times was heard, Rismel is mermaid now no more; No answer, low and dismal, And the sea forsakes my tale. Moaned under the walls of sobbing halls, And so I tell of the chiming bell, In sea arcades abysmal. And the mists of wedding veil: And of children sweet, who bathe their feet But at his side a maiden stood; Where the blossoms drift the dale. And she was tall and fair: And she was crowned with crimson hood This is a tale of hidden things, That partly hid her hair. Which Love, alone, can find- And the deeps of seas were in her eyes; A tale that sinks in the sad sea-wave, And Rismel's soul lay there. And mounts in the soft night-wind; A tale that rides on the star-flecked tides, That, under the cliffs, grow blind. 98 99 OTUS AND RISMEL The Song of the Prairie Land Who reads this tale and still doth mourn HEY tell of the level sea For suns gone down the West, T And the wind rebukes their word. Is as a woman who doth press I sing of the long and level plain A dead babe to her breast, Which never a storm hath stirred. While at her gate the living wait I sing of the patient plain; And weep to be caressed. That drank of the sun and rain More graves than one each man shall dig; A thousand years, by the burning spheres, ("A sexton's trade we ply.") . To nourish this wisp of grain. For every twilight spreads a grave Where some dead love doth lie J sing of the honest plain Some poor and pitiful dead love Where nothing doth lie concealed: That, buried, does not die. Where never a branch doth raise her arm; Or never a t.eaf her shield. And only shall these loves awake Where never a lordly pine When Thanatos rides by. Breaks in on the endless line; So bid the mourners all disperse; Or the silver flakes of a poplar takes And dry thine own sad eye: The strength from the sun's white wme. For the vanishing clay that rides away Is scarcely worth a sigh. The child of the dancing leaf, Whose laughter sweetens the earth, v Doth never lure, on the barren moor, There was a stir, like gossamer, The soul, with her winsome mirth. When Rismel slipt to sea. And the wistful sound I hear And with a stir, like gossamer, Sweep over the spaces drear The deeps shall welcome me: Is the human dole of a childless soul But at Gramard's gates the Bridegroom waits; That mourns in a yearning year. And His words shall make me free. Toronto, January, 1912. 101 100 THE SONG OF THE PRAIRIE LAND THE SONG OF THE PRAIRIE LAND Let the guilty man depart: Who dwells with me on the Plain For no cover here shall hide. Shall never see spire or bell. His conscious brow from the lights that plough But he, too, shall miss the traitor's kiss Through the midnight's mystic tide. And the force that drags to Hell. For the plain no mantle hath And what if the coyotes howl To Ie sen the strong sun's wrath: When the black night draws her cowl! And the tranquil eye of the searching sky They have gentler glands than the human bands Is ever upon your path. That' under the arc lamps prowl I'll walk with the winds to-night; And ours is a creedless land, And under the burnished moon Far-flung from a script's commands. Shall the white night wake a silver lake But we sometimes think at the cold night's brink Where the rolling grasses croon. Of the wounded Master's hands. Shall waken a silken crest Yea, often at eventide, That swings to the night-bird's breast Our souls through the gloom have cried As the blue waves swing to the sea-gull's wing For a Guiding Light through the awful night When the gallant wind blows w.est. That sleeps at the hermit's side. Ah! easy to hide from truth I opened my cabin door; In the city's haunted hole. And the starry hosts were gone. But you cannot hide, on the prairies wide, And I knew that God had gathered their sparks Where the winds uncloak the soul. To kindle the flame of dawn: Where the dawn hath pure delight; To kindle a new, white sun And the stars are clean and white; That over the sward should run, And sweet and clean is the floor of green And drink new hope, on the greening slope, That washes the feet of Night. From the dewcups one by one. 102 103 THE SO G OF THE" PRAIRIE LAND THE SO G OF THE PRAIRIE LAI D Ah! here is the soul's true sphere: "Strange fool!" cry the men of gold, And here is the mind's true girth. "For what could thy wild ride win? If I could bring, on the swallow's wing, Why woo the woe of the winds that blow The sorrowful hosts of earth, When the fire burns bright within?" To sit in this vacant room, And I said to the men of gold: And spin on the wind's fair loom, "My heart could a tale unfold \iVhat golden bands would their spectral hands Of the truths we learn when the wild winds yearn, Weave over the wraith of Doom. And the kiss of night grows cold." For there is a wraith of Doom So, press on the spurs with me That wanders the crowded street. And drink of a freeman's joys, A heart of care is his pleasant lair, In the endless land, where the gophers stand And a soul his judgment seat. With a military poise. He comes in a robe of grey, And no more will life s~em sweet And stands in the sunbeam's way. On the yellow, flaming street- And a blaze of rings, from an hundred kings, A painted shrew, with a changeless hue, He wears on his hands to-day. And a heart that loves deceit. I loosed me a steed last night, And this is the Prairie Song And plunged in the doleful dusk. As it came from out my heart. And under the sky I heard no cry And the winds that moan are its undertone; Save that of the widowed husk And the sullen sky its art. Or a wolf-wail, long and low, And only the craven man, That came with a blare of snow; With his rhyming finger span, And I rode all night, with a mad delight, Shall sulk and whine at my stinging line 'Till I met the dawn, aglow. Or rail at its planless plan. 104 105 THE SONG OF THE PRAIRIE LAND I I Pauline Johnson But there is a king whose soul lIE sleeps betwixt the mountains and the sea, Hath grown to the Prairie's girth; S In that great Abbey of the setting sun: Whose heart delights in the Northern Lights, A Princess, Poet, \¥oman, three in one; On the borderlands of earth. And fine in every measure of the three. And when sunset pours her wine, And when we needed most her tragic plea At the weary day's decline, Against ignoble pGeans we had sung, I shall see him stand in the "Unknown Land" While yet her muse was warm, her lyric young, And his lips shall wear my line. She passed to realms of purer poesy. To-night she walks a trail past Lillooet: Winnipeg, February, 1913. Past wood and stream; yea, past the Dawn's white fire. And now the craft on Shadow River fret For one small blade that led their mystic choir. But nevermore will Night's responsive strings Awaken to the "Song her Paddle Sings." Regina, March, 1913. 107 106 The Haunt of a Lost Love At the Ford I DREW a marsh of solemn grey' And over it a heron flew' ' HO now shall fear to journey where the feet It was a sullen autumn day , W Of all our noble dead have ferried forth? When that sad marsh I drew. The solemn air that fans the tragic ford But, over all the wistful waste Is sweet with their remembrance. They have gone A spirit seemed to ride abo~e. To light the temples of a fading star And some one bade me call the scene: Against our lonely passing. Warm shall be "The Haunt of a Lost Love." The waves we breast upon our journey's end With touches of their bosoms; and the flowers I turned from solemn meres to gay We laid upon their biers shall float to us And dancing troops of summer flowers. In the sad current's drifting. We have learned I etche? the mopntains and the play From them the grandeur of farewells and all Of lIght about their towers. The majesty of parting; for they went And, though I warmed my brush's flow From warmth to winter with their almond locks In fern and flower and turtle-dove Held high and nobly in the breeze. What man A stranger passed and wrote below' ' Shall fear to follow their undaunted souls? "The Haunt of a Lost Love." . What.matter if I limn a gnome Alone, the first who died, entwined no hand AmId the gloom of Druid trees' To lift him from the current's heavy play. Or branches breaking into foam ' All, all the rest of that unceasing line Of blossom on the breeze' Have heard the numbers of our last adieus Or debris of the storm that floats Swoon in the song of welcome that unrolled . In black and broken clouds above! Its low andante on the farther shore. Smce all who come to view shall say The weeping Rachel saw her children blow ~~ether I paint the grave or gay:' Down to the mystic water's edge and drift HIS lost love passed along this way." Like petals from one flower upon the stream: Nor ever feared the journey from that hour. Regina, February, 1913. 108 1M AT THE FORD AT THE FORD o frost, that wakes the fire within the blood; My flesh shall keep her vigil in the dark o night, that rears the rosebud of the dawn, And cheerless caverns of the grave. Teach me how foolish is the fear of Death; Whose colder frost shall burn a purer fire; Pale Death! Whose darker night shall hood a clearer day. I go with thee as one who gaily rides Teach me until I know that every vale Through shadows to the dawn; as one who dips Is but the prelude of some mountain peak For sweet refreshment in the sea, and leaves That waits my soul's approach: then shall I gain, The weary dust of highways on her floor. From all the sorrow that attendeth man, No fear shall comrade me between the shades As he departs our day, a feeble gauge That haunt the Stygian Pass; rather would I To measure up the glory that enfolds Move swiftly to my pathway mid the blooms His destination's temple. In the fall That scent the cleaner stars; where Light doth clothe Of stars, that never may return, we find The naked horde, cast up by Lethes stream, No grievous passing, but a flame that burns In raiment fit to meet the Court and King. The last white fuel of Hope. In ali our 'Woe, Claresholm, May, 1913. Our cup of tears, the bandage of our pain, (That crushes out the soul), I see that train Of sad, attendant figures which preludes All resurrection. In the sightless ground What sobbings burst the yellow kernel's heart; What anguish frees its spirit! On the morn What echoes of that hour enchant the winds, That blow from Ceres' temple, with the cry Of dancing corn. Great Sower of the WorId ! I lie like a soft kernel in Thine hand; With more intent upon the harvest fields That wave beyond the tomb than on that hour 110 • 111 The Rose and the Wildflower THE ROSE AND THE WILDFLOWER H AVE y'e ever picked berries, 0 ye Englander, in I am of the rock's strong vigor: I am of the leaf's a wtld and towsy lair, unrest: At an hour when the dew hath blushes from the I am the liege of the silent towers and I am the dawn's first rosy stare? royal guest. Have ye ever heard that ancient cry of "Let there be I have dreamed my nights in a droning hall where a light, be light," star leaned on a tree, Sound over an unknown kingdom at the crimson In a land where a new desire hath taught old Free end of night! dom to be free. If ye never have, let your critic pen touch not the And if the sting of your critic's tongue shall leap at verse I bear; the song I bring, For the crags of Rosseau shall not smoothe to whim I doubt if the waves of Rosseau shall thereupon your London air. cease to sing. I have quaffed health with the berryman as the dawn We never shall culture a wreath of roses to vie with washed up the sun. your England's own, And the wine I drew was rare, I knew; else why Where, high on the cliffs of Devon, a garden of had the cobwebs spun: bloom is blown. Red, robust wine in a cluster held-so red that it But the flowers we nurse on our northern crags shall seemed the dew lean on the world's white breast Had captured the crimson kiss of morn and thrilled With grace as rare as the fairest rose that ever a lip with it through and through. hath pressed. Have ye ever torn, 0 critic man, your soft, white In our shadowy halls the whitethroat calls, and, if hands on a thorn? you dislike his rote, Then you'll tear them if you touch these lines that Think you that he'll fly over Surrey and study the deep in the wilds were born. skylark's note? 112 113 THE ROSE AND THE VnLDFLOWER THE ROSE AND THE \VILDFLOWER The reverent word is on our lips and we thrill at the Out of the North came battlemen who harried the song of Keats. Southern's rest. There isn't a man in all our land to sit in your And out of the North will come great bards, in Mighty's seats. their savage -garments drest. But there isn't a man in all your land can swing on For who stands face to the white-winged storm hath the giant limb a different tale to tell Held by the pine to nurse the line which the north Than he who sits in a tent of thyme and lists to ern bards shall hymn. the vesper bell. There's an even flow of omnibus that tides down your I've brought you a wreath of wildflowers and, if your Regent Street; fair London whines, But you cannot tame our daring streams to run I'll sit on the rocks of Rosseau and chant to a sea with its conquered feet. of pines. I am a lover of things unloved: for the virgin kiss I Have ye ever troubled the stars, 0 Englander, that yearn. lie in a blue lake's sleep, And my lady fair is an unwooed lair that pillows With a blade whose touch is a woman's lip, whose my head with fern. power is a panther's leap? The mosses wait all day for my touch and the crags Have ye ever stood at the end of things and the yearn for my cry edge of the things to be, To give release to the prisoned sounds that deep in In a land where a new desire hath taught old Free their caverns lie. dom to be free? And the granite cliffs within my song shall answer If ye never have, read on, read on; for I to the North the mocking hue belong. Of every don of the vassaled verse who sneers at And the stars that glow in Rosseau's deeps are my rugged crew. shining throughout my song. Claresholm} Alta.} Apr-il} 1913. 115 114 Second Song Without a Name British Columbia y Iute is cold; my heart is stripped of song: OVER the Great Divide they come to-day; M I lie in port like some dismantled ship; A mighty human stream of sturdy tone; And yet, but yesterday I dreamed along A stream whose robust flood shall wash away The scented seas on many a pleasant trip. The forest monarch from her ancient throne. Here is a land with measure like the sea; One word she spake tore down my robust sails; An Eden for a giant race of men: One look released the cordage from the mast. Columbia of the Briton, great and free! She left me for a pirate's fairy tales Where shall we look upon her kind again? Nor looked my way to-night as she went past. The long, deep sleep is over; now her limbs Move in the vigor of the sun's incline. Her people shall grow like her, and their hymns Shall breathe a solemn beauty from her pine. Their harness now is on the daring stream; Their roads of steel move thund'rous through the lands; And on the stillness of Creation's dream New harmonies awaken from their hands. Here men of love shall come and men of hate. And one shall rise and one go lower down. And here the torrents from their high estate Shall pour their fury on the fool's renown. Here lovers of the dew, and dawn, and flowers, Who scale the mountains in their daily prayers, Shall bind the sheaf of all the coming hours And walk with Beauty up her altar stairs. 117 116 BRITISH COLUMBIA A Song to the Singers Here hosts shall come from every sluggish clime, HOULD you descend the stairway of old Time, And quaff the cup that nursed the giant tree. S And search the webbed wine-cellars of the years, And here shall palsied limbs reclaim from time The breaking of each vessel of sweet rhyme The old, sweet hours of early ecstasy. 'Will make most merry music for thine ears. And here, where now the eagle slowly wheels No time is dead that gave the world a song: Above a foaming torrent, shall leap high The larger hours were wet with music's flagon; The temples of a city, at whose heels And half the garlands of the brave belong The lean, swift hounds of Progress long shall cry. To runes that calmed the courage of the dragon. Columbia of the Briton, great and fair; The clouds that flowed o'er robust Rome have found When shall we look upon thy kind again? Another prop to lean on than her stone. Of all our lands thou art the last to bear But in the heart of music still abound The arch triumphal, for the hosts of men. Sweet traces of her tragic poet's tone. From where Elias guards thy virgin gold And yonder tower, that crowds the ampler air, To proud Victoria, with her queenly grace, Shall pass away before this rhyming story. The morrow's sun shall witness thee unfold Let those who build arise where eagles dare: The thousand hidden beauties of thy face. I'll mount, on this white page, to surer glory. Great Artist of this canvas, which the day What arrow ever pierced a traitor's crown Doth gaze upon the longest; in thy brush, That winged not out from some fair singer's heart? And on thy palette, what creative play What courage on the ramparts of a town Fired this cold torrent with the gloaming's blush? But fired its vigor with our choric art? The prairie lands are God's plain speech; but her~ To-morrow one shall ride the steel-lipped way, Is writ, in stone, a poem by His hand; Or fold his arms when mast and helm are sinking, Against whose glory Stratford's daring seer Who wandered by the Muse's rill to-day, Might fling his treasures like a grain of sand. And roused his valor at my fountain drinking. October, 1913. Vancouver, B.C., December, 1913. 118 119 Alone A Song of Better Understanding HE great ship furrows a silent sea, SING this song that you may know me better; T And wakens the blue to flame. I That I may know thee better; But at morrowdawn will her track be gone, And that we two may burn our false idols And the waters flow on the same. At the same altar. The great ship looks with a thousand eyes I come first to you, In the blue eye of the bay. Young, inland mariner on a sea of flowing grapes, But never a gleam of her golden dream In purple France: Slips down in the sea to stay. Shaking the carv~d snow from my hardy shoulders I come to you. The little cart hath a creaking sound; Long has my race, companioned by strong elements, And moves like a thing asleep. Misunderstood the liquid nature of your soul. But it leaves a trace, on the road's white face, And you, with the same blindness as mine own, That many a year shall keep. Have called my silent Northmen cold and passionless. Let us approach one another, comrade; o tide of leaves, in the moaning eves, Look in mine eyes and I will look in thine; Wash down through my broken door; And that fair light which falls when soul greets soul For there's a road in the heart of me Will be the first spark to arouse the fires Where a wheel shall pass no more. Which shall consume our idols. Your people gave me to drink at the rare founts There are kings who yearn for a greater throne, Of Moliere, Hugo and Gounod. And peasants who would be crowned. My people renewed thy soul of art But I'd rather the long, white road, alone, With the clear flow of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Than ride in the great ship's sound. Keats. Vancouver} December} 1913. A thousand pleasures of the heart and eye We owe each other. 120 121 A SONG OF BETTER UNDERSTANDING A SONG OF BETTER UNDERSTANDING Upward reaching toward the same white light And when I raised my sword I turned, savagely, and Have all our yearnings been. slew Only have our idols blinded us through the long, sad Not him, but one of mine idols-my false idols. years. Then from the chapel organ a soft sound crept with Now the way is open: panther tread; Consume fires; flame fiercely; And through the windows of song passed, like a great For an idol does not burn readily, wind, And this can never be a Song of Better Understanding All the pent-up passions of the ages. "The Appasion Until all our false idols are translated into ashes. atta," I cried: His Appasionatta? Nay; My Appasionatta? Nay; Yesterday I said: "I will go kill a German: Our Appasionatta ? Yea. I hate Germans: I hate their diet: I hate their ag- And I swung my sword more savagely than before, gressiveness." and slew, So I buckled on my sword and sought out a Teuton. Not him, but all of mine idols-my false idols. And soon I found one sitting by the roadside, And when the last note had folded its head, like a And his head was bent in an attitude of profound tired child, thought. In the arms of silence, leaving our hearts, like sea Then I said: "Mine enemy, I have come to kiU thee." beaches, And he answered quietly, "I will let you slay me White and shining after the tempest has passed be If you will permit my body to fall on the floor of yond, yonder chapel." Mine enemy and I sang together the greatest song of So we journeyed to the chapel and entered its soli man: tude; The Song of Better Understanding. But as I prepared my sword he quoted unto me, In the rich accents of his thoughtful tongue, a song of And when we parted, I said: Goethe. "All white men are my brothers: I will slay a white His Goethe? nay; my Goethe? nay; our Goethe? yea. man no more. 122 123 A SONG OF BETTER U DERSTANDING A SONG OF BETTER UNDERSTANDING Only are the black men mine enemies, and the yellow What antagonism to America and her States men. Shall override our granite debt to Emerson, I wiII go and kill an African or aman of China." To Lowell, to Poe, to musical Lanier; To Whitman who blasphemed the god of Technique; And soon I found a yellow man sitting by the road To Whittier whose life was a gentle song! side: What prejud.ice against Italian fury And his head was bent in an attitude of profound Is justified when we unbare the page thought. Of Dante; or when eye and soul regale Then I s~id as before, "Mine enemy I have come to In the majestic sweep of Michael Angelo I kill thee." I sing this song that you might know me better; And he answered quietly, "I will let thee slay me That I might kn.ow thee better. If thou wilt let my body fall on the soft sands of the For now is the day at hand when we shall behold sea-shore." The dust of all our broken idols, our false gods, "And why the sea-shore?" I said: and he replied Paving the streets where lusty mortals walk unto me: Chanting the hymns of Barbary and her host~. "There is a star which I love better than all stars; And if I fall upon the sands my last look will be upon o magnificent hosts! I can see them pass and repass, that star." Singing, in diapason of a universal love, "The Song of Better Understanding." Then from his lips flowed the wisdom of Confucius. And my sword fell helpless and I said: Vancouver, December, 1913. "I loved that star best of all stars in old England; And I loved that truth of thy seer best of all truths: Let us sing together;" and we, lovers of the same star, Locked arms upon the rim of no-man's sea, and sang "The Song of Better Understanding." 124 125 The Mongrel THE MONGREL "THE West has no place for a poet," said the cor I had watched them rip mountains at Blairmore; I pulent man with a sneer, had felt the Chinook at MacLeod: As we sat by the fire, out at Harrison Lake, in the On a journey from Grand Forks to Nelson I had torn spring of the year- off a strip of a cloud. Out at Harrison Springs where the invalids go for a I had seen the grim Welshmen of Fernie pour out of bibulous spell, ' the earth like a stream To ease up their bellies on water that smells like the And walk through the ci'ty at midnight, like phantoms portals of Hell. that walk in a dream. "The West has no time for your verses; for what is I had stood on a summit of Kaslo and gained new the rhyme of a song conceptions of God, To souls in the kingdom of action, to men who are Who, lifting the bulk of the mountains, could bend to rugged and strong." the flower on the sod. And he threw out his chest as he said it, as much as I had chanted my songs to a trapper-a hundred miles to say: "If you'd see deep in the wild: A real worthy son of the Westland, pray, take a good When I blew him a whim of my music he wept with look over me." the tears of a child. I had read to strong men on the prairies my song of I had lived among cowboys and miners; I had lived Saskatchewan land; where the loggers pitch camp; And after the show they would tell me, with a fine, And from Medicine Hat to Vancouver I knew all the prairie grip of the hand: land like a tramp. "Say, stranger, you're right and we know it; and we I had ridden the plains on a broncho; I had panned need men like you to be told out the gold in a sluice; There are far truer measures than silver and far better treasures than gold." I had eaten. the ,fare..of a Pullman and quaffed of the nverman s JUIce. I had read in the shacks of the hill-lands, where wealth was the boast of a lamp; For from Medicine Hat to Vancouver I knew all the • land like a tramp. 126 THE MONGREL THE MONGREL And never a cowboy or miner, and never a logger "I speak for the men of the mountains!" He lied that year when he made that remark; But gave me a Western reception and sent me away For how could the flesh of the sparrow speak out for with a cheer. the soul of the lark? And I came to the towns of the Coast-line, where they Yea. how could a vain little spatrow, that whets on wear a brocade and a brogue, the pavement its bill, Where "peas on your knife," with the Smart Set, and Know aught of the tang of wild berries that grow on "strangle your soup" are in vogue, the brow of the hill? And, touching the ploughshare of fancy, I turned a So I said: "When I hear a man sneering at all that sweet rhyme of the earth- is sweetest or best A rhyme that had slept in the valleys since ever the I know he is not of the Eastland, and I know he is not grasses had birth. of the West. Before me were women whose culture was twenty He's a mongrel the East wouldn't stand for, and months old in the blood; the man of the mountains ignores; And men who had risen to greatness by pawning an He made a few bucks in the boom days or else he'd be acre of mud. sweeping out stores. And I sang them God's truths in my numbers-the He's like a soiled cat who sits snarling all night on truths which their hearts had opposed. the rim of a fence, And some of them laughed when I started, and all of And thinks: "'I'm a hell of a cougar; the tiger and them sneered when I closed. I are immense I' " "The West has no place for a poet," said the corpu He speaks for the men of the mountains? Nay, the lent man with a sneer, man of the West doesn't sneer. As we sat by the fire out at Harrison Lake in the It's the man that the East wouldn't stand for; and spring of the year: perhaps he has been here a year "Musicians and poets and artists are all out of place When he swells out his chest like the fat man I met in the \\Test: out at Harrison Springs, I speak for the men of the mountains:" and he smote And says: "We have no use for poets or any poor his fat hand on his breast. sissy who sings." 128 lZ9 THE MO GREL THE MONGREL. - My friend is the miner at Coleman, the rancher be And one hath the splendor of noonday, and one hath yond Pincher Creek, the glory of dawn. The logger who rides into Vernon, with the kiss of So, God give Thy smile to the vVestland, wherever a the wind on his cheek. true heart abides; But the ten-dollar clerk of the city, or the chewing And God give Thy smile to the EastlaI1d, and blot gum girl with the slang, out the line that divides. Or the half-naked daub from Vancouver, who drawls with the "400" twang, Who couldn't tell ragtime from Handel, or Milton from old Mother Goose, A two-dollar chromo from Rembrandt; and yet who are quick to turn loose Their sneers on the man who would pour them rare wines of his art, for a toast; But these are the breed of the mongrel-they're not the pure blood of the Coast. So, drink with me cowboys and miners; I'll pour you a cup of my dreams. My rhyme has grown strong in your mountains, and pure in your glacier streams. I'll limn you new flowers on the prairie; I'll show you grim shapes in the crag; And we'll dance with the maid of the North Wind a far better dance than the rag. The East hath her genius and culture; the West hath her vigor and brawn; 130 131 Whist-Whee WHIST-WHEE "WHIST-WHEEl" "You're a dear, you're a dear." Little brown Dee And I said, "Whist-whee; Peers from her shelter The rebels are all returning for thee." Of bush and of tree. And she hugged to the tree. Her time she is biding To leap from her hiding. "Whist-whee," just two little words: But I heard them to-day in the song of the birds. And she says unto me: And the waters all sang as I walked by the sea: "Don't look this way, big man, or they'll see You are looking at me: "Whist-whee, whist-whee." And I looked behind bush and I looked behind tree; Please, please look ont at the sea: And the birds still were there and the busy song bee. Whist-whee !" But little brown Dee, With her solemn "Whist-whee," And I walked up the sands, And three little rebels took hold of my hands; Spake not unto me. And they said: "Do you know And over the hills I. went, Where a little brown maid, And a gentle mound In a little brown plaid, I found; Did go?" Lying like some fairy's lost pillow upon the ground. And I lied and said: "No." And I knelt on my knee And they scampered away And wrote on the sand, Like young squirrels at play; With a sorrowing hand: And looked all over and under the rocks "Little brown Dee For a glimpse of brown frocks. Sleeps here by the sea: And I heard a quick cry All ye who pass From the shade of the tree Whist-whee !" Saying to me- Yes, saying to me: San Francisco, California, September, 1914· 132 133 Third Song Without a Name The~ Convict March MY love upon my palette lies, HAVEN head and garb of fool; And on my brush my heart. S Swing of steel and night's abyss; So is it strange a maiden walks Clang of chain, and cry of pain, Each canvas of mine art? And the memory of a kiss. I ne'er shall press this maiden's lips; Neath my window pass the convicts, with their hope But, 0, why should I thus despair less, sullen tread; When I could mend my soul with one And they're marching like an army of the dead. Gold sunbeam of her hair? Mine, the freedom of the land; Her faintest smile to me was meat Friendship of the merry town. For banquets of my worshipping; Their's-the loveless, cold command And yet she gave her love to one And the warden's heavy frown. Who held it as a common thing. Through my window I can see them, in their garb of Strange world! that grants the blind a rose; blue and white; And music, where the waters meet And my soul is sick with sorrow at the sight. Unto the deaf; while I must tread ' My soul to dust upon the street. Law of man and law of God! Break the first and lo! these bars. Los Angeles} California} N ove11lber} 1914. Break the other-Crcesus comes With his chain of gilded cars. Through my window I can see him, by the people's homage fanned, Though they know their children's blood is on his hand. If each broken law of Love Brought a garb of white and blue ]34 135 THE CONVICT MARCH Mary Mahone What a motley throng would swing POET in soul is our Mary Mahon¢: Up the crowded avenue. A She walks with a sweetheart when walking I could watch them from my window with more plea alone. I sure in my breast Than I watch these few Fate singles from the rest. A rose on her heart and a song on her lips, Adown a shy path to the ocean she slips. Shaven head and garb of fool; Swing of steel and Night's abyss. "A poet I'll be," said our Mary Mahone; Clang of chain is sweeter pain "And pour out my soul like the wind making moan. Than the memory of a kiss. Neath my window walk the convicts with their life "Like the wind making moan or the breakers that roll less, halting tread; I'll pour out the passionate flood of my souL" And they're marching like an army of the dead. A basket of roses at Ballymore grown Winnipeg, October, 1912. Was never as fair as was Mary Mahone. "To-morrow," she cried, "will I rise with the birds And fashion 'a lyric from magical words." But at peep-o-the-morn came a lad up the hill To tell her the widow O'Connor was ill. And waiting no ribbon or bonnet of lace, For fairer the sun on her hair and her face, She came to the room where the sick woman lay: And Death, when he saw her, soon hurried away. 136 137 MARY MAHONE MARY MAHONE 0, woe to the poem of Mary Mahone o woe to the poem of Mary Mahone; But joy to the miserable heart of a crone. But joy unto one of God's many unknown. And Mary in April, agowned in a shower, Thus year after year saw the green turn to gold Danced up the green meadows and left them in flower. And still was her song like a story untold. "Ah, April," she cried, "I have waited thee long: "0 never," she cried, with a Celtic despair, A poet am I and I'll sing thee a song." "Has God looked with favor upon my one prayer." And then on a May day, as fair as a bride, A lilt on her lips and a stranger passed by, Our Mary Mahone had a dream that she died. A limp in his foot and a tear in his eye. And, straight up to Heaven she went, for they say "0, sir," says my Mary, "you're weary, I see." The Irish go up by no roundabou~ way. "Yea, weary," he cried, "for the moaning banshee." The air was all music and, over its tone, She heard good Saint Peter say: "Mary Mahone, "0, sir," says my maiden, "come up to the town: The honey is gold and the biscuits are brown." "Pass up with the poets." But Mary replied: "0, sir, I'm no poet, though often I've tried He felt her warm arm and he felt her wet hair, And Heaven fell down upon Ireland right there. "To write me a poem; but never could I While there was a cheek which my fingers might dry." So well was he nursed by our Mary Mahone That his heart grew as fresh as the flowers at her zone. But softly Saint Peter said: "High on his throne God waits for the poet called Mary Mahone." And, late in the summer, he went back to sea The Lord rose to meet her and all the white throng With never a thought of the eerie banshee. Sang: "Hail to the poet who wrote the great song." 138 139 MARY MAHONE Saint Elias And Mary cried: "Lord, I am Mary Mahone, ERE is no momentary majesty And so many mortals around me made moan H That borrows from the season or the hour. But ever is the queen upon her throne; "That I toiled by the day and I watched by the moon The bishop with his hands upraised to Heaven; And never found time to awaken a rune." The soldier midst transfigurating fire. Not girth of thy green girdle nor the thrust The Lord smiled upon her and all the white thronO' That dares the scorn of Areas, but the calm Cried: "Hail to the poet who wrote the great song.~ Which mocks the changeful seasons at thy base Inspires me to the music of this song. And Mary, bewildered, looked up and implored: Red August in the vales enwraps my hours "Pray tell me what song I have written, 0 Lord?" But thou hast white December all the year: A whiter rose than ours that never fades; "Thy Life is the song," said the Lord in her dream; So pure that I, a mortal, fain would know "And Love is the metre and Love is the theme." Through what long twilight and beneath what suns Hast thou kept fair thine everlasting snows! Then Mary awakened and Phrebus rose, too" The warlike Mars hath seen this flag of truce And drank to the poet in wine of the dew. Held patiently unsoiled, and granted peace Unto the Earth; hath turned the comet's course And this is the story of Mary Mahone. On spheres that raise no chamade. That pale orb, And what if it, too, be a tale like thine own! When vapors veil the unambitious hills, Doth lavish her cold kisses on thy brow. And what if the Master hath seen in thine eyes 'Tis thine to mediate twixt earth and sky; The script of a poem they love in the skies. And while thine head doth rise above the storm Nor sun nor moon grows alien to the world. For you, though a song reed you never have blown, Ah! who was He, who raised thy prostrate form May, too, be a poet like Mary Mahone. From long humility of level lands, But Qne who hurls the mighty from their seats Vancouver, December, 1916. And lifts on high the lowly sons of men! 140 141 SAINT ELIAS SAINT ELIAS Elias, Saint Elias! would that I o silent peak! the angels see thy thrust, Might keep my head unsullied of the world; Above a sea of clouds, as men who looked And, like to thee, hold high cold Reason's dome Upon the gleaming sword, Excalibur. That bids thy clouds descend and slake the throats To mortals thou art something held aloof Of fires that flame their passions round thy breast. When things familiar breed irreverence: o dweller in gay Gotham, could I grant And that loud foot of conquest which blasphemes Thy soul one breathless moment near this tower, The last, lone temple of the priestless wood How soon its soundless song would rouse the stars Shall never soil those fair, unwritten folds, That fell at virgin yieldings of thy youth! Where, on thy brow, God keepeth white a page How soon would fan the furnace of thy heart, To pen His judgments on a boastful world. Consuming all her gods of yesterday! Who looks up at thy chancel cannot keep How soon those vistas, washed with unclean light, From out his vision noble fields of sky. That lured thine eye from slim Alsarte's moon, And deeper worshippers, when fretful creeds Would limn, in livid oils, their jaundiced glare! Grow narrow as their pews, shall seek thy spires And gain an unconfit:1ed theology. Against the summer stars 'tis strange to see, Alone, and reverent, at thy base I stand: o noblest summit of a lordly line, Pour on my head the blessing. Could I sell Thy wild, white, smoking drifts of winter blow. My birthright for a mess of pottage now? So long my soul upon this fare hath fed I yearn to call my comrades to the feast 'Tis summer and the prone limb of the earth Through the clear trumpets of this blast of song. Is white with tender blossoms; madrigals Too long their eyes rasorial have been: That wake the leaves make strange thy contrast's Too long their tongues have harped of gold and plains calm. Where night lies down on pillow of their bread. Ah! what a varied Artist toned the hue Here is a loaf that breaks continually. And limned the flower's minutest tracery And lo! there's many a vacant chair that calls With hand that shaped this daring rise, that wears. A laggard limb to this pine-scented vale So regally her tragic crown of snow. Where Saint Elias walks to meet the sea; Her cloudy breath about her as she goes. Vancouver, 1916. !43 14l 10 At Brookside Manor AT BROOKSIDE MANOR N Christmas Day I helped to widen a circle And I'm trying as hard as Hell O At Brookside Manor. To be one myself. I found mine host, the Master of the Manor, To be a damn fool; So, gentle Master of Brookside. Manor, And, therefore, immediately liked him. Crave no praise higher than thIS, . Who but a damn fool would invite a poet Spoken of you by Wilson MacDonald, the poet: To dine with him on Christmas Day "He was a damn fool; When anyone of five score wealthy men And God loved him for it." Would have accepted with joy the invitation? Who but a damn fool, in this west land, Kelowna, May, 19 16. Would waste good money on wall paper With a smoking tint. Or sacrifice a precious hour To harmonize the colors in a room? Who but a vagabond of reason Would translate to me The 111usic of a stream That kept the lyric note of life alive Beneath a casement of his dwelling place. Women speak their endearments in soft phrases: Weak men say affectionate things. When I call a man a damn fool My praise is noted of the gods. Shakespeare was a damn fool; Newton another. 144 145 Somewhere, Sometime the Glory SOMEWHERE, SOMETIME THE GLORY THE fog is heavy to-night and the sad horns are Torn from the crumbling mountain peaks of our droning. philosophies. What so sad as a bank of mist that cannot weep Bring me hither the music man, the brother of the into rain? bard, A little, old man comes down the road where you and And he shall mate it with music from the lips of I are moaning; seven seas. A little, old man who sings a song and here is the rune's refrain: Somewhere, sometime the glory; Somewhere the sun. Somewhere, sometime the glory; I'll read me on to the end of the story: Somewhere the sun. God's will be done. I'll read me on to the end of the story: Vancouver, October} 1916. God's will be done. o little, old man you shame me; for the weak oft shame the strong. The fog is heavy to-night and the sad horns are crying. What so sad as a pair of lips that cannot break into song; And learn so long as we keep a song Hope shall know no dying? Somewhere, sometime the glory; let me but keep this shard, 146 H7 France Gifts y heart go;s out to France ~n th~s mad war OW small a measure are these gifts of mine M This devl1-dance on one glganttc grave- H To lay upon the altar of the King! To that young, blue-eyed Breton who would save My genius, when all garnered, shall but bring A kiss for Death or for his Belle Aurore; A slender goblet of the purer wine. Who flung his sylvan days against the roar A drifting fancy and a lilting line, Of that strong, wrathful tyranny of guns A meagre word of beauty from the store That spume against the sky their flaring tons, Of language and her multitude; what more White-hot from maddened ages gone before. Have I to offer for Thy love divine? The world's barometer is in that lad- How shall the moon repay her borrowed ray? That Breton peasant against whom is hurled Or one blue flower of England count her gain The wild, down-leaping chariot of Mar~. From that old, upward look at Dorian skies! When France is laughing all the Earth is glad. , Or those white, curving throats on Biscay Bay And when she weeps the windows of the world Restore their debt, by some august refrain, Are darkened to the sun and to the stars. To that strange beauty in Selene's eyes! Vancouver, B.C., January, 1917. Vancouver, February, 1917. IN 148 By Howe Sound BY HOWE SOUND Yon sweet-voiced chapel bell IGHT on, old world, fight on! Sang once a luring song: F Thou shalt awaken soon, Sometimes I went to hear old men And all thy dreams be gone Rage at the tide of wrong. To mate the moon. Red now are the chapel halls: The pale, haggard moon whose days of strife The large sword swings in each. Have long since grown cold; Soiled are the pure walls The wan, floating moon, By the vanity of speech. Whose cargo once was gold. At the first cry of the gun I have lived to see that hour They altered all their prayers. When all my soul hath caught, Hate donned the vestry garb, In her white fancy's cup, And Love walked down the stairs. Is dashed away as naught. o sweeter grows the wind From this small camp of souls That changeth not her creed. To that great camp I go. So am I come out here The large sword swings in each To join the cold sea-weed. When the winds blow. A black, old ship throws 'off I turn from the world of cares The cramping cloak of land; To this old apple tree, And, naked, bids the sea \iVhose fragile, fragrant wares All her strong limbs command. Are spread for the sun to see. I sit here on this shore It breathes no different breath And watch the clouds go by; At the cry of the gun: And wonder why men left for me It only knows of Death These pastures of the sky. When the day is done. Vancouver, May, 1917. 150 151 Peace PEACE LOW, flag, in the soft wind; blow, bugle, blow; And that vast company we call the dead F The day we dreamed of through the years is Shall know the flag of Peace flies overhead here. Because of the new lightness of our tread. Lowered is Mars' red spear; And the shot-peopled air, In Flallders now the birds find their first wonder Tired of the wild trumpet's blare, Since that loud August thunder Tired of the upturned, glassy eyes of men, That shattered the blue skies like broken glass. Is quiet again. The wonder now is that the thing is dead Discord has fled with her gigantic peals, That passed, with crimson tread, And, at her heels, Over the silken floor of fragrant grass Walks the old si'lence of the long ago. The screaming, blatant woe Flow, flag, in the soft wind; blow, bugles, blow. That turned his plowshare in the flowers and sowed, By the quiet, dreaming road, The upturned faces of the world to-day His crop of gleaming crosses, row on row. Are like the laughing waves of a sea in May. Flow, flag, in the soft wind; blow, bugles, blow. Tears are a lost art of a hateful dream; Laughter is King, is King. Like as a river dries up in the light Blow, bugles, blow; let the wild sirens scream, Our tears have blown to vapor. Let the mad music ring, The airplanes drop down in their droning flight Until the very flowers shall nod and sing. Like floating paper. I hear the lusty cheers of youth whose years The gun that camouflaged her brutal throat Were blown to the crag's black edge; In Bourlon's thicket I see toe Hours quaff up a mother's tears Shall dream to-night in wonder at the note As the sun drinks dew upon a Devon hedge. Of some lone cricket. No more shall the sad wires transmit the dole And, where a maddened cuirassier grew gory That gflaws into the soul. 152 153 PEACE PEACE In that wild, sudden clash of yesterday, Down a soft English lane Some docile, blue-eyed youth will sing a story, Wild, happy, blue-eyed children chase the rain. And laughing, dancing children's feet will play. They wrap their throats in song from Maine to where The Golden Gate unwinds her mist of hair. The world is blown with color like a flower One grief alone we have; blow, bugle, blow: In this triumphant hour. The crosses stand in Flanders, row on row. The great procession grows, their shining feet They shall not watch with us to-day nor fare Sandalled with dewy peace. On our bright bugles blare. I watch them passing up the city street; Gaining on life a new and wondrous lease. Flow, flag, in the soft wind; blow, bugles, blow; Old men who pick up life like a broken rose And then, at e'en, when all the lights are dim, Which they had thrown away; Let us pour out our thanks in praise to Him Old women who unbind their temple snows Who gave the peace we know. And comb them up for a new holiday; Young maidens, .all their spirits like the flow Toronto, November IItk, 1918. Of the new melted snow; Flow, flag, in the soft wind; blow, bugles, blow. This that we hear is but a shining drop In the glad sea of mirth. The tide flows round the world and will not stop Until it brims the earth. The Bedouin Arab now invites his dance Where the sandstorms croon; And a mad company in lilting France Unwind a rigadoon. 154 155