Chapter I: Front Matter

_Lundy's Lane

and Other Poems_

_By_

_Duncan Campbell Scott_

_Author of "The Magic House," "In the Village of Viger," etc., etc._

_McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart_ _Publishers_ :: :: :: :: _Toronto_

Copyright, 1916, By GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

To the Memory of My Daughter

ELIZABETH DUNCAN SCOTT

1895-1907

CONTENTS

Page

THE BATTLE OF LUNDY'S LANE 13

VIA BOREALIS--
Spring on Mattagami 25
An Impromptu 36
The Half-Breed Girl 38
Night Burial in the Forest 41
Dream Voyageurs 44
Song: Creep into My Heart 45
Ecstasy 46

LYRICS, SONGS AND SONNETS--
Meditation at Perugia 49
At William MacLennan's Grave. Near Florence 53
The Wood-Spring to the Poet 56
The November Pansy 63
The Height of Land 68
New Year's Night, 1916 77
Fragment of an Ode to Canada 79
Fantasia 84
The Lover to His Lass 86
The Ghost's Story 90
Night 92
The Apparition 94
At Sea 96
Madonna with Two Angels 98
Mid-August 100
Mist and Frost 105
The Beggar and the Angel 110
Improvisation on an Old Song 117
O Turn Once More 121
At the Gill-Nets 124
A Love Song 126
Three Songs:
I Where love is life 128
II Nothing came here but sunlight 129
III I have songs of dancing pleasure 129
The Sailor's Sweetheart 131
Feuilles d'Automne 133
To the Heroic Soul:
I Nurture thyself, O Soul! 135
II Be strong, O Warring Soul! 136
Retrospect 138
Frost Magic:
I Now in the moonrise, from a wintry sky 139
II With these alone he draws in magic lines 140
In Snow-Time 142
To a Canadian Lad Killed in the War 143

THE CLOSED DOOR--
By a Child's Bed 147
Elizabeth Speaks 149
A Legend of Christ's Nativity 154
Willow-Pipes 163
Angel 164
Christmas Folk-Song 165
From Beyond 166
The Leaf 167
A Mystery Play 168

LINES IN MEMORY OF EDMUND MORRIS 179

THE BATTLE OF LUNDY'S LANE

THE BATTLE OF LUNDY'S LANE

Rufus Gale speaks--1852

Yes,--in the Lincoln Militia,--in the war of eighteen-twelve; Many's the day I've had since then to dig and delve-- But those are the years I remember as the brightest years of all, When we left the plow in the furrow to follow the bugle's call. Why, even our son Abner wanted to fight with the men! "Don't you go, d'ye hear, sir!"--I was angry with him then. "Stay with your mother!" I said, and he looked so old and grim-- He was just sixteen that April--I couldn't believe it was him; But I didn't think--I was off--and we met the foe again, Five thousand strong and ready, at the hill by Lundy's Lane. There as the night came on we fought them from six to nine, Whenever they broke our line we broke their line, They took our guns and we won them again, and around the levels Where the hill sloped up--with the Eighty-ninth,--we fought like devils Around the flag;--and on they came and we drove them back, Until with its very fierceness the fight grew slack.

It was then about nine and dark as a miser's pocket, When up came Hercules Scott's brigade swift as a rocket, And charged,--and the flashes sprang in the dark like a lion's eyes; The night was full of fire--groans, and cheers, and cries; Then through the sound and the fury another sound broke in-- The roar of a great old duck-gun shattered the rest of the din; It took two minutes to charge it and another to set it free. Every time I heard it an angel spoke to me; Yes, the minute I heard it I felt the strangest tide Flow in my veins like lightning, as if, there, by my side, Was the very spirit of Valor. But 'twas dark--you couldn't see-- And the one who was firing the duck-gun fell against me And slid down to the clover, and lay there still; Something went through me--piercing--with a strange, swift thrill; The noise fell away into silence, and I heard as clear as thunder The long, slow roar of Niagara: O the wonder Of that deep sound. But again the battle broke And the foe, driven before us desperately--stroke upon stroke, Left the field to his master, and sullenly down the road Sounded the boom of his guns, trailing the heavy load Of his wounded men and his shattered flags, sullen and slow, Setting fire in his rage to Bridgewater mills and the glow Flared in the distant forest. We rested as we could, And for a while I slept in the dark of a maple wood: But when the clouds in the east were red all over, I came back there to the place we made the stand in the clover; For my heart was heavy then with a strange deep pain, As I thought of the glorious fight, and again and again I remembered the valiant spirit and the piercing thrill; But I knew it all when I reached the top of the hill,-- For there, there with the blood on his dear, brave head, There on the hill in the clover lay our Abner--dead!-- No--thank you--no, I don't need it; I'm solid as granite rock, But every time that I tell it I feel the old, cold shock, I'm eighty-one my next birthday--do you breed such fellows now? There he lay with the dawn cooling his broad fair brow, That was no dawn for him; and there was the old duck-gun That many and many's the time,--just for the fun, We together, alone, would take to the hickory rise, And bring home more wild pigeons than ever you saw with your eyes. Up with Hercules Scott's brigade, just as it came on night-- He was the angel beside me in the thickest of the fight-- Wrote a note to his mother--He said, "I've got to go; Mother what would home be under the heel of the foe!" Oh! she never slept a wink, she would rise and walk the floor; She'd say this over and over, "I knew it all before!" I'd try to speak of the glory to give her a little joy. "What is the glory to me when I want my boy, my boy!" She'd say, and she'd wring her hands; her hair grew white as snow-- And I'd argue with her up and down, to and fro, Of how she had mothered a hero, and his was a glorious fate, Better than years of grubbing to gather an estate. Sometimes I'd put it this way: "If God was to say to me now 'Take him back as he once was helping you with the plow,' I'd say, 'No, God, thank You kindly; 'twas You that he obeyed; You told him to fight and he fought, and he wasn't afraid; You wanted to prove him in battle, You sent him to Lundy's Lane, 'Tis well!" But she only would answer over and over again, "Give me back my Abner--give me back my son!" It was so all through the winter until the spring had begun, And the crocus was up in the dooryard, and the drift by the fence was thinned, And the sap drip-dropped from the branches wounded by the wind, And the whole earth smelled like a flower,--then she came to me one night-- "Rufus!" she said, with a sob in her throat,--"Rufus, you're right." I hadn't cried till then, not a tear--but then I was torn in two-- There, it's all right--my eyes don't see as they used to do!

But O the joy of that battle--it was worth the whole of life, You felt immortal in action with the rapture of the strife, There in the dark by the river, with the flashes of fire before, Running and crashing along, there in the dark, and the roar Of the guns, and the shrilling cheers, and the knowledge that filled your heart That there was a victory making and you must do your part, But--there's his grave in the orchard where the headstone glimmers white: We could see it, we thought, from our window even on the darkest night; It is set there for a sign that what one lad could do Would be done by a hundred hundred lads whose hearts were stout and true. And when in the time of trial you hear the recreant say, Shooting his coward lips at us, "You shall have had your day: For all your state and glory shall pass like a cloudy wrack, And here some other flag shall fly where flew the Union Jack,"-- Why tell him a hundred thousand men would spring from these sleepy farms, To tie that flag in its ancient place with the sinews of their arms; And if they doubt you and put you to scorn, why you can make it plain, With the tale of the gallant Lincoln men and the fight at Lundy's Lane.

1908.

VIA BOREALIS

TO

_Pelham Edgar_

SPRING ON MATTAGAMI

Far in the east the rain-clouds sweep and harry,
Down the long haggard hills, formless and low,
Far in the west the shell-tints meet and marry,
Piled gray and tender blue and roseate snow;
East--like a fiend, the bolt-breasted, streaming
Storm strikes the world with lightning and with hail;
West--like the thought of a seraph that is dreaming,
Venus leads the young moon down the vale.

Through the lake furrow between the gloom and bright'ning
Firm runs our long canoe with a whistling rush,
While Potan the wise and the cunning Silver Lightning
Break with their slender blades the long clear hush;
Soon shall I pitch my tent amid the birches,
Wise Potan shall gather boughs of balsam fir,
While for bark and dry wood Silver Lightning searches;
Soon the smoke shall hang and lapse in the moist air.

Soon shall I sleep--if I may not remember
One who lives far away where the storm-cloud went;
May it part and starshine burn in many a quiet ember,
Over her towered city crowned with large content;
Dear God, let me sleep, here where deep peace is,
Let me own a dreamless sleep once for all the years,
Let me know a quiet mind and what heart ease is,
Lost to light and life and hope, to longing and to tears.

Here in the solitude less her memory presses,
Yet I see her lingering where the birches shine,
All the dark cedars are sleep-laden like her tresses,
The gold-moted wood-pools pellucid as her eyen;
Memories and ghost-forms of the days departed
People all the forest lone in the dead of night;
While Potan and Silver Lightning sleep, the happy-hearted,
Troop they from their fastnesses upon my sight.

Once when the tide came straining from the Lido,
In a sea of flame our gondola flickered like a sword,
Venice lay abroad builded like beauty's credo,
Smouldering like a gorget on the breast of the Lord:
Did she mourn for fame foredoomed or passion shattered
That with a sudden impulse she gathered at my side?
But when I spoke the ancient fates were flattered,
Chill there crept between us the imperceptible tide.

Once I well remember in her twilight garden,
She pulled a half-blown rose, I thought it meant for me,
But poising in the act, and with half a sigh for pardon,
She hid it in her bosom where none may dare to see:
Had she a subtle meaning?--would to God I knew it,
Where'er I am I always feel the rose leaves nestling there,
If I might know her mind and the thought which then flashed through it,
My soul might look to heaven not commissioned to despair.

Though she denied at parting the gift that I besought her,
Just a bit of ribbon or a strand of her hair;
Though she would not keep the token that I brought her,
Proud she stood and calm and marvellously fair;
Yet I saw her spirit--truth cannot dissemble--
Saw her pure as gold, staunch and keen and brave,
For she knows my worth and her heart was all atremble,
Lest her will should weaken and make her heart a slave.

If she could be here where all the world is eager For dear love with the primal Eden sway, Where the blood is fire and no pulse is thin or meagre, All the heart of all the world beats one way! There is the land of fraud and fame and fashion, Joy is but a gaud and withers in an hour, Here is the land of quintessential passion, Where in a wild throb Spring wells up with power.

She would hear the partridge drumming in the distance,
Rolling out his mimic thunder in the sultry noons;
Hear beyond the silver reach in ringing wild persistence
Reel remote the ululating laughter of the loons;
See the shy moose fawn nestling by its mother,
In a cool marsh pool where the sedges meet;
Rest by a moss-mound where the twin-flowers smother
With a drowse of orient perfume drenched in light and heat:

She would see the dawn rise behind the smoky mountain, In a jet of colour curving up to break, While like spray from the iridescent fountain, Opal fires weave over all the oval of the lake: She would see like fireflies the stars alight and spangle All the heaven meadows thick with growing dusk, Feel the gipsy airs that gather up and tangle The woodsy odours in a maze of myrrh and musk:

There in the forest all the birds are nesting,
Tells the hermit thrush the song he cannot tell,
While the white-throat sparrow never resting,
Even in the deepest night rings his crystal bell:
O, she would love me then with a wild elation,
Then she must love me and leave her lonely state,
Give me love yet keep her soul's imperial reservation,
Large as her deep nature and fathomless as fate:

Then, if she would lie beside me in the even,
On my deep couch heaped of balsam fir,
Fragrant with sleep as nothing under heaven,
Let the past and future mingle in one blur;
While all the stars were watchful and thereunder
Earth breathed not but took their silent light,
All life withdrew and wrapt in a wild wonder
Peace fell tranquil on the odorous night:

She would let me steal,--not consenting or denying--
One strong arm beneath her dusky hair,
She would let me bare, not resisting or complying,
One sweet breast so sweet and firm and fair;
Then with the quick sob of passion's shy endeavour,
She would gather close and shudder and swoon away,
She would be mine for ever and for ever,
Mine for all time and beyond the judgment day.

Vain is the dream, and deep with all derision--
Fate is stern and hard--fair and false and vain--
But what would life be worth without the vision,
Dark with sordid passion, pale with wringing pain?
What I dream is mine, mine beyond all cavil,
Pure and fair and sweet, and mine for evermore,
And when I will my life I may unravel,
And find my passion dream deep at the red core.

Venus sinks first lost in ruby splendour,
Stars like wood-daffodils grow golden in the night,
Far, far above, in a space entranced and tender,
Floats the growing moon pale with virgin light.
Vaster than the world or life or death my trust is
Based in the unseen and towering far above;
Hold me, O Law, that deeper lies than Justice,
Guide me, O Light, that stronger burns than Love.

AN IMPROMPTU

Here in the pungent gloom Where the tamarac roses glow And the balsam burns its perfume, A vireo turns his slow Cadence, as if he gloated Over the last phrase he floated; Each one he moulds and mellows Matching it with its fellows: So have you noted How the oboe croons, The canary-throated, In the gloom of the violoncellos And bassoons.

But afar in the thickset forest I hear a sound go free, Crashing the stately neighbours The pine and the cedar tree, Horns and harps and tabors, Drumming and harping and horning In savage minstrelsy-- It wakes in my soul a warning Of the wind of destiny.

My life is soaring and swinging In triple walls of quiet, In my heart there is rippling and ringing A song with melodious riot, When a fateful thing comes nigh it A hush falls, and then I hear in the thickset world The wind of destiny hurled On the lives of men.

THE HALF-BREED GIRL

She is free of the trap and the paddle,
The portage and the trail,
But something behind her savage life
Shines like a fragile veil.

Her dreams are undiscovered,
Shadows trouble her breast,
When the time for resting cometh
Then least is she at rest.

Oft in the morns of winter,
When she visits the rabbit snares,
An appearance floats in the crystal air
Beyond the balsam firs.

Oft in the summer mornings
When she strips the nets of fish,
The smell of the dripping net-twine
Gives to her heart a wish.

But she cannot learn the meaning
Of the shadows in her soul,
The lights that break and gather,
The clouds that part and roll,

The reek of rock-built cities,
Where her fathers dwelt of yore,
The gleam of loch and shealing,
The mist on the moor,

Frail traces of kindred kindness,
Of feud by hill and strand,
The heritage of an age-long life
In a legendary land.

She wakes in the stifling wigwam,
Where the air is heavy and wild,
She fears for something or nothing
With the heart of a frightened child.

She sees the stars turn slowly
Past the tangle of the poles,
Through the smoke of the dying embers,
Like the eyes of dead souls.

Her heart is shaken with longing
For the strange, still years,
For what she knows and knows not,
For the wells of ancient tears.

A voice calls from the rapids,
Deep, careless and free,
A voice that is larger than her life
Or than her death shall be.

She covers her face with her blanket,
Her fierce soul hates her breath,
As it cries with a sudden passion
For life or death.

NIGHT BURIAL IN THE FOREST

Lay him down where the fern is thick and fair. Fain was he for life, here lies he low: With the blood washed clean from his brow and his beautiful hair, Lay him here in the dell where the orchids grow.

Let the birch-bark torches roar in the gloom, And the trees crowd up in a quiet startled ring So lone is the land that in this lonely room Never before has breathed a human thing.

Cover him well in his canvas shroud, and the moss Part and heap again on his quiet breast, What recks he now of gain, or love, or loss Who for love gained rest?

While she who caused it all hides her insolent eyes Or braids her hair with the ribbons of lust and of lies, And he who did the deed fares out like a hunted beast To lurk where the musk-ox tramples the barren ground Where the stroke of his coward heart is the only sound.

Haunting the tamarac shade, Hear them up-thronging Memories foredoomed Of strife and of longing: Haggard or bright By the tamaracs and birches, Where the red torch light Trembles and searches, The wilderness teems With inscrutable eyes Of ghosts that are dreams Commingled with memories.

Leave him here in his secret ferny tomb, Withdraw the little light from the ocean of gloom, He who feared nought will fear aught never, Left alone in the forest forever and ever.

Then, as we fare on our way to the shore Sudden the torches cease to roar: For cleaving the darkness remote and still Comes a wind with a rushing, harp-like thrill, The sound of wings hurled and furled and unfurled, The wings of the Angel who gathers the souls from the wastes of the world.

DREAM VOYAGEURS

To ports of balm through isles of musk The gentle airs are leading us; To curtained calm and tents of dusk, The wood-wild things unheeding us Will share their hoards of hardihood, Cool dew and roots of fern for food, Frail berries full of the sun's blood.

To planets bland with dales of dream A tranquil life is leading us, We shall land from the languid stream, The musing shades, unheeding us, Will share their veils of angelhood, Thoughts that are tranced with mystic food, Still broodings tinct with a seraph's blood.

SONG

Creep into my heart, creep in, creep in, Afar from the fret, the toil and the din, Where the spring of love forever flows, As clear as light and as sweet as the rose; (Creep into my heart), Where the dreams never wilt but their tints refine, Rooted in beautiful thoughts of thine; Where morn falls cool on the soul, like sleep, And the nights are tranquil and tranced and deep; Where the fairest thing of all the fair Thou art, who hast somehow crept in there, Deep into my heart, Deep into my heart.

ECSTASY

The shore-lark soars to his topmost flight,
Sings at the height where morning springs,
What though his voice be lost in the light,
The light comes dropping from his wings.

Mount, my soul, and sing at the height
Of thy clear flight in the light and the air,
Heard or unheard in the night in the light
Sing there! Sing there!

LYRICS, SONGS AND SONNETS

MEDITATION AT PERUGIA

The sunset colours mingle in the sky,
And over all the Umbrian valleys flow;
Trevi is touched with wonder, and the glow
Finds high Perugia crimson with renown;
Spello is bright;
And, ah! St. Francis, thy deep-treasured town,
Enshrined Assisi, fully fronts the light.

This valley knew thee many a year ago;
Thy shrine was built by simpleness of heart;
And from the wound called life thou drew'st the smart:
Unquiet kings came to thee and the sad poor--
Thou gavest them peace;
Far as the Sultan and the Iberian shore
Thy faith and abnegation gave release.

Deeper our faith, but not so sweet as thine;
Wider our view, but not so sanely sure;
For we are troubled by the witching lure
Of Science, with her lightning on the mist;
Science that clears,
Yet never quite discloses what she wist,
And leaves us half with doubts and half with fears.

We act her dreams that shadow forth the truth,
That somehow here the very nerves of God
Thrill the old fires, the rocks, the primal sod;
We throw our speech upon the open air,
And it is caught
Far down the world, to sing and murmur there;
Our common words are with deep wonder fraught.

Shall not the subtle spirit of man contrive
To charm the tremulous ether of the soul,
Wherein it breathes?--until, from pole to pole,
Those who are kin shall speak, as face to face,
From star to star,
Even from earth to the most secret place,
Where God and the supreme archangels are.

Shall we not prove, what thou hast faintly taught,
That all the powers of earth and air are one,
That one deep law persists from mole to sun?
Shall we not search the heart of God and find
That law empearled,
Until all things that are in matter and mind
Throb with the secret that began the world?

Yea, we have journeyed since thou trod'st the road,
Yet still we keep the foreappointed quest;
While the last sunset smoulders in the West,
Still the great faith with the undying hope
Upsprings and flows,
While dim Assisi fades on the wide slope
And the deep Umbrian valleys fill with rose.

AT WILLIAM MACLENNAN'S GRAVE

Here where the cypress tall Shadows the stucco wall, Bronze and deep, Where the chrysanthemums blow, And the roses--blood and snow-- He lies asleep.

Florence dreameth afar; Memories of foray and war, Murmur still; The Certosa crowns with a cold Cloud of snow and gold The olive hill.

What has he now for the streams Born sweet and deep with dreams From the cedar meres? Only the Arno's flow, Turbid, and weary, and slow With wrath and tears.

What has he now for the song Of the boatmen, joyous and long, Where the rapids shine? Only the sound of toil, Where the peasants press the soil For the oil and wine.

Spirit-fellow in sooth With bold La Salle and Duluth, And La Verandrye,-- Nothing he has but rest, Deep in his cypress nest With memory.

Hearts of steel and of fire, Why do ye love and aspire, When follows Death--all your passionate deeds, Garnered with rust and with weeds In the hollows?

God that hardened the steel, Bid the flame leap and reel, Gave us unrest; We act in the dusk afar, In a star beyond your star, His behest.

"We leave you dreams and names Still we are iron and flames, Biting and bright; Into some virgin world, Champions, we are hurled, Of venture and fight."

Here where the shadows fall, From the cypress by the wall, Where the roses are-- Here is a dream and a name, There, like a rose of flame, Rises--a star.

THE WOOD-SPRING TO THE POET

Dawn-cool, dew-cool Gleams the surface of my pool Bird haunted, fern enchanted, Where but tempered spirits rule; Stars do not trace their mystic lines In my confines; I take a double night within my breast A night of darkened heavens, a night of leaves, And in the two-fold dark I hear the owl Puff at his velvet horn And the wolves howl. Even daylight comes with a touch of gold Not overbold, And shows dwarf-cornel and the twin-flowers, Below the balsam bowers, Their tints enamelled in my dew-drop shield. Too small even for a thirsty fawn To quench upon, I hold my crystal at one level There where you see the liquid bevel Break in silver and go free Singing to its destiny.

Give, Poet, give! Thus only shalt thou live. Give! for 'tis thy joyous doom To charm, to comfort, to illume.

Speak to the maiden and the child With accents deep and mild, Tell them of the world so wide In words of wonder and pure pride, Touched with the rapture of surprise That dwells in a child angel's eyes, Awed with the strangeness of new-birth, When the flaming seraph sent To lead him into Paradise, Calls his name with the mother's voice He has just ceased to hear on earth.

Give to the youth his heart's content, But power with prudence blent, Thicken his sinews with love, With courage his heart prove, Till over his spirit shall roll The vast wave of control. In the cages and dens of strife, Where men draw breath Thick with a curse at the dear thing called life, Give them courage to bear, Strength to aspire and dare; Give them hopes rooted in stone, That the loveliest flowers take on, Bind on their brows with a gesture free The palm green bays of liberty.

Give to the mothers of men The knowledge of joy in pain, Give them the sense of reward That grew in the breast of the Lord On the dawn of the seventh morn; For 'tis they who re-create the world Whenever a child is born.

Give, Poet, give! Give them songs that charm and fill The soul with an alluring pleasure, Prelusive to a deeper thrill, A richer tone, a fuller measure; Like voices, veiled with hidden treasure, Of angels on a windy morning, That first far off, then all together, Come with a glorious clarion calling; And when they swoon beneath the spell Recapture them to hear the echoes Falling--falling--falling.

To those stoned for the truth Give ruth; Give manna for the mourner's mouth Sovereign as air; For his heart's drouth A prayer.

Give to dead souls that mock at life Aweary of their cankered hearts, Weary of sleep and weary of strife, Weary of markets and of arts,-- Helve them a song of life, Two-edged with joyous life, Tempered trusty with life, Proud pointed with wild life, Plunge it as lightning plunges, Stab them to life!

Give to those who grieve in secret, Those who bear the sorrows of earth, The deep unappeasable longings Which beset them with throngings and throngings, (As, on a windless night, Through the fold of a dark mantle furled, Gleams on our world, world after unknown world) Give them peace, Wide as the veil that hides God's face, The pure plenitude of space, In which our universe is but a glittering crease,-- Give them such peace.

Give, Poet, give! Thus only shalt thou live: Give as we give who are hidden In myriad dimples of rock and fern; Give as we give unbidden To tarn and rillet and burn, Where the lake dreams, Where the fall is hurled, Striving to sweeten The oceans of the world.

Should my song for a moment cease, Silence fall in the woodland peace; Should I wilfully check the flow Bubbling and dancing up from below; Say to my heart be still--be still, Let the murmur die with the rill; Then should the glittering, grey sea-things Sigh as they wallow the under springs; Where the deep brine-pools used to lie Deserts vast would stare at the sky, And even thy rich heart (O Poet, Poet!) Even thy rich heart run dry.

THE NOVEMBER PANSY

This is not June,--by Autumn's stratagem Thou hast been ambushed in the chilly air; Upon thy fragile crest virginal fair The rime has clustered in a diadem; The early frost Has nipped thy roots and tried thy tender stem, Seared thy gold petals, all thy charm is lost.

Thyself the only sunshine: in obeying The law that bids thee blossom in the world Thy little flag of courage is unfurled; Inherent pansy-memories are saying That there is sun, That there is dew and colour and warmth repaying The rain, the starlight when the light is done.

These are the gaunt forms of the hollyhocks That shower the seeds from out their withered purses; Here were the pinks; there the nasturtium nurses The last of colour in her gaudy smocks; The ruins yonder Show but a vestige of the flaming phlox; The poppies on their faded glory ponder.

Here visited the vagrant humming-bird, The nebulous darting green, the ruby-throated; The warm fans of the butterfly here floated; Those two nests reared the robins, and the third Was left forlorn Muffled in lilacs, whence the perfume stirred The tremulous eyelids of the dewy morn.

Thy sisters of the early summer-time Were masquers in this carnival of pleasure; Each in her turn unrolled her golden treasure, And thou hast but the ashes of the prime; 'Tis life's own malice That brings the peasant of a race sublime To feed her flock around her ruined palace.

Yet for withstanding thus the autumn's dart Some deeper pansy-insight will atone; It comes to souls neglected and alone, Something that prodigals in pleasure's mart Lose in the whirl; The peasant child will have a purer heart Than the vain favourite of the vanished earl.

And far above this tragic world of ours There is a world of a diviner fashion, A mystic world, a world of dreams and passion That each aspiring thing creates and dowers With its own light; Where even the frail spirits of trees and flowers Pause, and reach out, and pass from height to height.

Here will we claim for thee another fief, An upland where a glamour haunts the meadows, Snow peaks arise enrobed in rosy shadows, Fairer the under slopes with vine and sheaf And shimmering lea; The paradise of a simple old belief, That flourished in the Islands of the Sea.

A snow-cool cistern in the fairy hills Shall feed thy roots with moisture clear as dew; A ferny shield to temper the warm blue That heaven is; a thrush that thrills To answer his mate, And when above the ferns the shadow fills, Fireflies to render darkness consolate.

Here muse and brood, moulding thy seed and die And re-create thy form a thousand fold, Mellowing thy petals to more lucent gold, Till they expand, tissues of amber sky; Till the full hour, And the full light and the fulfilling eye Shall find amid the ferns the perfect flower.

THE HEIGHT OF LAND

Here is the height of land: The watershed on either hand Goes down to Hudson Bay Or Lake Superior; The stars are up, and far away The wind sounds in the wood, wearier Than the long Ojibway cadence In which Potan the Wise Declares the ills of life And Chees-que-ne-ne makes a mournful sound Of acquiescence. The fires burn low With just sufficient glow To light the flakes of ash that play At being moths, and flutter away To fall in the dark and die as ashes: Here there is peace in the lofty air, And Something comes by flashes Deeper than peace;-- The spruces have retired a little space And left a field of sky in violet shadow With stars like marigolds in a water-meadow.

Now the Indian guides are dead asleep; There is no sound unless the soul can hear The gathering of the waters in their sources.

We have come up through the spreading lakes From level to level,-- Pitching our tents sometimes over a revel Of roses that nodded all night, Dreaming within our dreams, To wake at dawn and find that they were captured With no dew on their leaves; Sometimes mid sheaves Of braken and dwarf-cornel, and again On a wide blue-berry plain Brushed with the shimmer of a bluebird's wing; A rocky islet followed With one lone poplar and a single nest Of white-throat-sparrows that took no rest But sang in dreams or woke to sing,-- To the last portage and the height of land--: Upon one hand The lonely north enlaced with lakes and streams, And the enormous targe of Hudson Bay, Glimmering all night In the cold arctic light; On the other hand The crowded southern land With all the welter of the lives of men. But here is peace, and again That Something comes by flashes Deeper than peace,--a spell Golden and inappellable That gives the inarticulate part Of our strange being one moment of release That seems more native than the touch of time, And we must answer in chime; Though yet no man may tell The secret of that spell Golden and inappellable.

Now are there sounds walking in the wood, And all the spruces shiver and tremble, And the stars move a little in their courses. The ancient disturber of solitude Breathes a pervasive sigh, And the soul seems to hear The gathering of the waters at their sources; Then quiet ensues and pure starlight and dark; The region-spirit murmurs in meditation, The heart replies in exaltation And echoes faintly like an inland shell Ghost tremors of the spell; Thought reawakens and is linked again With all the welter of the lives of men.

Here on the uplands where the air is clear We think of life as of a stormy scene,-- Of tempest, of revolt and desperate shock; And here, where we can think, on the bright uplands Where the air is clear, we deeply brood on life Until the tempest parts, and it appears As simple as to the shepherd seems his flock: A Something to be guided by ideals-- That in themselves are simple and serene-- Of noble deed to foster noble thought, And noble thought to image noble deed, Till deed and thought shall interpenetrate, Making life lovelier, till we come to doubt Whether the perfect beauty that escapes Is beauty of deed or thought or some high thing Mingled of both, a greater boon than either: Thus we have seen in the retreating tempest The victor-sunlight merge with the ruined rain, And from the rain and sunlight spring the rainbow.

The ancient disturber of solitude Stirs his ancestral potion in the gloom, And the dark wood Is stifled with the pungent fume Of charred earth burnt to the bone That takes the place of air. Then sudden I remember when and where,-- The last weird lakelet foul with weedy growths And slimy viscid things the spirit loathes, Skin of vile water over viler mud Where the paddle stirred unutterable stenches, And the canoes seemed heavy with fear, Not to be urged toward the fatal shore Where a bush fire, smouldering, with sudden roar Leaped on a cedar and smothered it with light And terror. It had left the portage-height A tangle of slanted spruces burned to the roots, Covered still with patches of bright fire Smoking with incense of the fragrant resin That even then began to thin and lessen Into the gloom and glimmer of ruin.

'Tis overpast. How strange the stars have grown;
The presage of extinction glows on their crests
And they are beautied with impermanence;
They shall be after the race of men
And mourn for them who snared their fiery pinions,
Entangled in the meshes of bright words.

A lemming stirs the fern and in the mosses Eft-minded things feel the air change, and dawn Tolls out from the dark belfries of the spruces. How often in the autumn of the world Shall the crystal shrine of dawning be rebuilt With deeper meaning! Shall the poet then, Wrapped in his mantle on the height of land, Brood on the welter of the lives of men And dream of his ideal hope and promise In the blush sunrise? Shall he base his flight Upon a more compelling law than Love As Life's atonement; shall the vision Of noble deed and noble thought immingled Seem as uncouth to him as the pictograph Scratched on the cave side by the cave-dweller To us of the Christ-time? Shall he stand With deeper joy, with more complex emotion, In closer commune with divinity, With the deep fathomed, with the firmament charted, With life as simple as a sheep-boy's song, What lies beyond a romaunt that was read Once on a morn of storm and laid aside Memorious with strange immortal memories? Or shall he see the sunrise as I see it In shoals of misty fire the deluge-light Dashes upon and whelms with purer radiance, And feel the lulled earth, older in pulse and motion, Turn the rich lands and the inundant oceans To the flushed color, and hear as now I hear The thrill of life beat up the planet's margin And break in the clear susurrus of deep joy That echoes and reechoes in my being? O Life is intuition the measure of knowledge And do I stand with heart entranced and burning At the zenith of our wisdom when I feel The long light flow, the long wind pause, the deep Influx of spirit, of which no man may tell The Secret, golden and inappellable?

NEW YEAR'S NIGHT, 1916

The Earth moans in her sleep Like an old mother Whose sons have gone to the war, Who weeps silently in her heart Till dreams comfort her.

The Earth tosses As if she would shake off humanity, A burden too heavy to be borne, And free of the pest of intolerable men, Spin with woods and waters Joyously in the clear heavens In the beautiful cool rains, Bearing gladly the dumb animals, And sleep when the time comes Glistening in the remains of sunlight With marmoreal innocency.

Be comforted, old mother, Whose sons have gone to the war; And be assured, O Earth, Of your burden of passionate men, For without them who would dream the dreams That encompass you with glory, Who would gather your youth And store it in the jar of remembrance, Who would comfort your old heart With tales told of the heroes, Who would cover your face with the cerecloth All rustling with stars, And mourn in the ashes of sunlight, Mourn your marmoreal innocency?

FRAGMENT OF AN ODE TO CANADA

This is the land! It lies outstretched a vision of delight, Bent like a shield between the silver seas It flashes back the hauteur of the sun; Yet teems with humblest beauties, still a part Of its Titanic and ebullient heart.

Land of the glacial, lonely mountain ranges, Where nothing haps save vast AEonian changes, The slow moraine, the avalanche's wings, Summer and Sun,--the elemental things, Pulses of Awe,--Winter and Night and the lightnings. Land of the pines that rear their dusky spars A ready midnight for the earliest stars. The land of rivers, rivulets, and rills, Straining incessant everyway to the sea With their white thunder harnessed in the mills, Turning one wealth to another wealth perpetually; Spinning the lightning with dynamic spindles, Till some far city dowered with fire enkindles.

The land of fruit, fine-flavoured with the frost, Land of the cattle, the deep-chested host, The happy-souled, that contemplate the hours, Their dew-laps buried in the grass and flowers. And, O! the myriad-miracle of the grain Cresting the hill, brimming the level plain, The miracle of the flower and milk and kernel, Nurtured by sun-fire and frost-fire supernal, Until the farmer turns it in his hand, The million-millioned miracle of the land.

And yet with all these pastoral and heroic graces, Our simplest flowers wear the loveliest faces; The sparrows are our most enraptured singers, And round their songs the fondest memory lingers; Our forests tower and tremble, star-enchanted, Their roots are by the timid spirits haunted Of hermit thrushes,--tranced is the air, Ever in doubt when they shall sing or where; The mountains may with ice and avalanche wrestle, Far down their rugged steeps dimple and nestle The still, translucent, turquoise-hearted tarns.

* * * * *

And Thou, O Power, that 'stablishest the Nation, Give wisdom in the midst of our elation; Who are so free that we forget we are-- That freedom brings the deepest obligation: Grant us this presage for a guiding star, To lead the van of Peace, not with a craven spirit, But with the consciousness that we inherit What built the Empire out of blood and fire, And can smite, too, in passion and with ire. Purge us of Pride, who are so quick in vaunting Thy gift, this land, that is in nothing wanting; Give Mind to match the glory of the gift, Give great Ideals to bridge the sordid rift Between our heritage and our use of it.

Then in some day of terror for the world, When all the flags of the Furies are unfurled, When Truth and Justice, wildered and unknit, Shall turn for help to this young, radiant land, We shall be quick to see and understand: What shall we answer in that stricken hour? Shall the deep thought be pregnant then with power? Shall the few words spring swift and grave and clear? Use well the present moment. They shall hear.

August, 1911.

FANTASIA

Here in Samarcand they offer emeralds, Pure as frozen drops of sea-water, Rubies, pale as dew-ponds stained with slaughter, Where the fairies fought for a king's daughter In the elfin upland. Here they sell you jade and calcedony, And the matrix of the turquoise, Spheres of onyx held in eagles' claws, But they keep the gems as far asunder From the dull stones as the lightning from the thunder; They can never come together On the mats of Turkish leather In the booths of Samarcand.

Here they sell you balls of nard and honey, And squat jars of clarid butter, And the cheese from Kurdistan. When you offer Frankish money, Then they scowl and curse and mutter, Deep in Kurdish or Persan For they want your heart out and my hand In the booths of Samarcand.

They would sell your heart's blood separate, In a jar with a gold brim, With a text of burning hatred Coiled around the rim; They would sell my hand upon a beam of teak wood, In the other scale a feather curled; They would sell your heart upon a silver balance Weighed against the world. But your heart could never touch my hand, They could never come together On the mats of Turkish leather In the booths of Samarcand.

THE LOVER TO HIS LASS

Crown her with stars, this angel of our planet,
Cover her with morning, this thing of pure delight,
Mantle her with midnight till a mortal cannot
See her for the garments of the light and the night.

How far I wandered, worlds away and far away,
Heard a voice but knew it not in the clear cold,
Many a wide circle and many a wan star away,
Dwelling in the chambers where the worlds were growing old.

Saw them growing old and heard them falling
Like ripe fruit when a tree is in the wind;
Saw the seraphs gather them, their clarion voices calling
In rounds of cheering labour till the orchard floor was thinned.

Saw a whole universe turn to its setting,
Old and cold and weary, gray and cold as death,
But before mine eyes were veiled in forgetting,
Something always caught my soul and held its breath.

Caught it up and held it, now I know the reason;
Governed it and soothed it, now I know why;
Nurtured it and trained it and kept it for the season
When new worlds should blossom in the springtime sky.

How have they blossomed, see the sky is like a garden!
Ah! how fresh the worlds look hanging on the slope!
Pluck one and wear it, Love, and ask the Gardener's pardon,
Pluck out the Pleiads like a spray of heliotrope.

See Aldebaran like a red rose clamber,
See brave Betelgeux pranked with poppy light;
This young earth must float in floods of amber
Glowing with a crocus flame in the dells of night.

O you cannot cheat the soul of an inborn ambition,
'Tis a naked viewless thing living in its thought,
But it mounts through errors and by valleys of contrition
Till it conquers destiny and finds the thing it sought.

Crown her with stars, this angel of our planet,
Cover her with morning, this thing of pure delight,
Mantle her with midnight till a mortal cannot
See her for the garments of the light and the night.

THE GHOST'S STORY

All my life long I heard the step
Of some one I would know,
Break softly in upon my days
And lightly come and go.

A foot so brisk I said must bear
A heart that's clean and clear;
If that companion blithe would come,
I should be happy here.

But though I waited long and well,
He never came at all,
I grew aweary of the void,
Even of the light foot-fall.

From loneliness to loneliness
I felt my spirit grope--
At last I knew the uttermost,
The loneliness of hope.

And just upon the border land,
Where flesh and spirit part,
I knew the secret foot-fall was
The beating of my heart.

NIGHT

The night is old, and all the world
Is wearied out with strife;
A long gray mist lies heavy and wan
Above the house of life.

Four stars burn up and are unquelled
By the low, shrunken moon;
Her spirit draws her down and down--
She shall be buried soon.

There is a sound that is no sound,
Yet fine it falls and clear,
The whisper of the spinning earth
To the tranced atmosphere.

An odour lives where once was air,
A strange, unearthly scent,
From the burning of the four great stars
Within the firmament.

The universe, deathless and old,
Breathes, yet is void of breath:
As still as death that seems to move
And yet is still as death.

THE APPARITION

Gentle angel with your mantle,
All of tender green,
I was yearning for a vision
Of the life unseen.

When you hovered in the sunset,
Just as rain was done;
Where the dropping from the poplars
Seemed like rain begun.

There you gathered forming slowly
Rounding into view:
All your vesture glowed like verdure
When the sap is new.

Then you mutely gave your warning
And I felt the stress
Of its passion and its presage
And its utterness.

There you swayed one tranquil moment,
Mystically fair,
Then you were not of the sunset,
Were not in the air.

AT SEA

Three are emerald pools in the sea,
And wing-like flashes of light;
The sea is bound with the heavens
In a large delight.

Night comes out of the east
And rushes down on the sun;
The emerald pools and the light pools
Are darkened and done.

Our boat dips and cleaves onward,
Careless of night or of light,
Following the line of her compass
By her engines' might.

Through the desert of air and of water;
Like the lonely soul of man,
Following her fate to the ending,
Unaware of the hidden plan.

Sure only of battle and longing,
Of the pain and the quest,
And beyond in the darkness somewhere
Sure of her rest.

MADONNA WITH TWO ANGELS

Under the sky without a stain The long, ripe, rippling of the grain; Light, broadcast from the golden oats Over the blackberry fences floats. Madonna sits in a cedar chair Tranquillized by the warm, still air; One of the angels asleep on her knee Under the shade of an apple tree. The other angel holds a doll, Covered warm in a tiny shawl; The toy is supposed to be fast asleep As the sister angel: in dimples deep The grave, sweet charm on the baby face Repeats the look of maturer grace That hovers about Madonna's eyes, One of the heavenly mysteries From far ethereal latitudes Where neither doubt nor trouble intrudes. Ponder here in the orchard nest On the truth of life made manifest: The struggle and effort was all to prove That the best of the world is home and love.

MID-AUGUST

From the upland hidden,
Where the hill is sunny
Tawny like pure honey
In the August heat,
Memories float unbidden
Where the thicket serries
Fragrant with ripe berries
And the milk-weed sweet.

Like a prayer-mat holy
Are the patterned mosses
Which the twin-flower crosses
With her flowerless vine;
In fragile melancholy
The pallid ghost flowers hover
As if to guard and cover
The shadow of a shrine.

Where the pine-linnet lingered
The pale water searches,
The roots of gleaming birches
Draw silver from the lake;
The ripples, liquid-fingered,
Plucking the root-layers,
Fairy like lute players
Lulling music make.

O to lie here brooding
Where the pine-tree column
Rises dark and solemn
To the airy lair,
Where, the day eluding,
Night is couched dream laden,
Like a deep witch-maiden
Hidden in her hair.

In filmy evanescence
Wraithlike scents assemble,
Then dissolve and tremble
A little until they die;
Spirits of the florescence
Where the bees searched and tarried
Till the blossoms all were married
In the days before July.

Light has lost its splendour,
Light refined and sifted,
Cool light and dream drifted
Ventures even where,
(Seeping silver tender)
In the dim recesses,
Trembling mid her tresses,
Hides the maiden hair.

Covered with the shy-light,
Filling in the hushes,
Slide the tawny thrushes
Calling to their broods,
Hoarding till the twilight
The song that made for noon-days
Of the amorous June days
Preludes and interludes.

The joy that I am feeling
Is there something in it
Unlike the warble the linnet
Phrases and intones?
Or is a like thought stealing
With a rapture fine, free
Through the happy pine tree
Ripening her cones?

In some high existence
In another planet
Where their poets cannot
Know our birds and flowers,
Does the same persistence
Give the dreams they issue
Something like the tissue
Of these dreams of ours?

O to lie athinking--
Moods and whims! I fancy
Only necromancy
Could the web unroll,
Only somehow linking
Beauties that meet and mingle
In this quiet dingle
With the beauty of the whole.

MIST AND FROST

Veil-like and beautiful Gathered the dutiful Mist in the night, True to the messaging, Dreamful and presaging Vapour and light.

Ghostly and chill it is, Pallid and still it is, Sudden uprist; What is there tragical, Moving or magical, Hid in the mist?

Millions of essences, Fairy-like presences Formless as yet; Light-riven spangles, Crystalline tangles Floating unset.

Frost will come shepherding Nowise enjeoparding Frondage or flower; Just a degree of it, Nought can we see of it Only its power.

Earth like a Swimmer Plunged into the dimmer Wave of the night, Now is uprisen, An Elysian vision Of spray and of light.

'Tis the intangible Delicate frangible Secret of mist, Breathing may banish it, Thought may evanish it,-- Ponder and whist!

Passionless purity, Calmness in surety Dwells everywhere, A winnowed whiteness, A lunar lightness Glows in the air.

But in the heart of it Every least part of it Blooms with the charm, Star-shape and frondage Broken from bondage Forged into form.

Crystals encrusted, Diamonds dusted Line everything, Tiny the stencillings Are as the pencillings On a moth's wing.

And O, what a wonder! No farther asunder Than atoms are laid, The arches and angles Of star-froth and spangles Cast their own shade.

Out from the chalices, The pigmy palaces Where the tint hides, Opal and sapphire Half-pearl and half-fire The colour slides;

Till the frail miracle Rapturous lyrical Flushes and glows With a wraith of florescence That tempers or lessens The light of the snows.

Held all aquiver,-- But now with a shiver The power of the sun Dissolves the laces Of the tender mazes, All is undone.

But the old Earth brooding, All wisdom including, Affirms and assures That above the material, Triumphal imperial Beauty endures.

THE BEGGAR AND THE ANGEL

An angel burdened with self-pity Came out of heaven to a modern city.

He saw a beggar on the street, Where the tides of traffic meet.

A pair of brass-bound hickory pegs Brought him his pence instead of legs.

A murky dog by him did lie, Poodle, in part, his ancestry.

The angel stood and thought upon This poodle-haunted beggar man.

"My life is grown a bore," said he, "One long round of sciamachy;

I think I'll do a little good, By way of change from angelhood."

He drew near to the beggar grim, And gravely thus accosted him:

"How would you like, my friend, to fly All day through the translucent sky;

To knock at the door of the red leaven, And even to enter the orthodox heaven?

If you would care to know this joy, I will surrender my employ,

And take your ills, collect your pelf, An humble beggar like yourself.

For ages you these joys may know, While I shall suffer here below;

And in the end we both may gain Access of pleasure from my pain."

The stationary vagrant said, "I do not mind, so go ahead."

The angel told the heavenly charm, He felt a wing on either arm;

"Good-day," he said, "this floating's queer If I should want to change next year--?"

"Pull out that feather!" the angel said, "The one half black and the other half red."

The cripple cried, "Before you're through You may get fagged, and if you do,--"

The angel superciliously-- "My transformed friend, don't think of me.

I shall be happy day and night, In doing what I think is right."

"So so," the feathered beggar said, "Good-bye, I am just overhead."

* * * * *

The angel when he grasped the dish, Began to criticize his wish.

The seat was hard as granite rocks, His real legs were in the box.

His knees were cramped, his shins were sore, The lying pegs stuck out before.

In vain he clinked the dish and whined. The passers-by seemed deaf and blind.

As pious looking as Saint Denis, An urchin stole his catch-penny.

And even the beggar's drab-fleeced poodle Began to know him for a noodle.

"It has an uncelestial scent, The clothing of this mendicant;"

He cried, "That trickling down my spine Is anything but hyaline.

This day is like a thousand years: I'd give an age of sighs and tears

To see with his confectioned grin One cherub sitting on his chin.

That cripple was by far too sly-- I wish he'd tumble from the sky,

That things might be as they were before; I really cannot stand much more!"

* * * * *

The beggar in the angel's guise, Rose far above the smoky skies.

But being a beggar, never saw The charm of the compelling law

That turned the swinging universe: 'Twas gloomy as an empty purse.

Often with heaven in his head, He blundered on a planet dead.

And when with an immortal fuss, He singed his wings at Sirius.

He plucked the feather with his teeth, The charm was potent and beneath,

He saw the turmoil of the way Grown wilder at the close of day,

With the sad poodle, can in hand, The angel still at the old stand.

"My friend," said the angel, hemming and humming, "Truly I thought you were never coming."

"That's an unhandsome thing to say, Seeing I've only been gone a day.

But there's nothing in all your brazen sky To match the cock of that poodle's eye.

Take your dish and give me my wings, 'Tis but a fair exchange of things."

* * * * *

The beggar felt his garment's rot, The horn ridge of each callous spot;

He clinked his can and was content; His poverty was permanent.

IMPROVISATION ON AN OLD SONG

(The refrain is quoted by Edward Fitzgerald in one of his letters)