Chapter II

This opens on the sunset, and the sea
From its high casement: never twice the same
Grand picture rises in its sea-girt frame
Islets of pearl, and rocks of porphyry
And cliffs of jasper, touched with sunset flame,
And island-trees--that look like Eden's--grow
Palm-like and slender, in gradations fine,
That fade and die along the horizon line,
And the wide heavens become--above--below--
A luminous sea without a boundary

Nay wistful heart,--at day-dawn, or at noon--
Or midnight watch--the Bridegroom cometh soon;
By yonder shining path--or pearly gate;
The word is sure,--thou therefore, watch and wait.

THE MEETING OF SPIRITS.

From out the dark of death, before the gates
Flung wide, that open into paradise--
More radiant than the white gates of the morn--
A human soul, new-born,
Stood with glad wonder in its luminous eyes,
For all the glory of that blessed place
Flowed thence, and made a halo round the face--
gentle, and strong with the rapt faith that waits
And faints not: sweet with hallowing pain
The face was, as a sunset after rain,
with a grave tender brightness. Now it turned
From the white splendours where God's glory burned,
And the long ranks of quiring cherubim--
Each with wing-shaded eyelids, near the throne,
Who sang--and ceased not--the adoring hymn
Of Holy, Holy! And the cloud of smoke
Went up from the waved censers, with the prayers
Of saints, that wafted outward blessing-freighted broke
Around him standing at the gate alone.
All down the radiant slope of golden stairs,
By which he climbed so late from earth to heaven,
It rolled impalpable--a fragrant cloud;
And still, turned from the Alleluias loud,
Beyond the portal-guarding angels seven,
He listened earthward, for a voice--a sound
Out of the dark that spread beneath profound.

No wind of God stirred in that cloudy land
That bordered all the River's thither side;
To his that called no voice responsive cried,
Or cleft the dark with flash of answering hand.
And soft the while, sheathed, as it were, within
The noise of heaven's rejoicing, to him stole
Beloved voices, long to earth a sole
Remembered sweetness only; sacred kept
As reliquaries are that guard from sin,
And wake the holy aim which else had slept.
How yearned his heart to those long parted ones
The amaranth, and the sacred flower which grew
A saintly lily by the jasper wall,
Making light shadows on those wondrous stones,
As the wind touched its slender stems and tall,
Turned not to sunward more divinely true,
Than his most worshipping soul to that which made
The light of heaven.

But now the nether shade
Grew luminous with white ascending wings,
And radiant arms of angels, who upbore
With tender hands another soul new-born,
Fairer than that last star whose bearing flings
Another beauty on the brow of morn.
Nearer the lovely vision rose, and more
Aerial clear each moment to his eyes,
Who stood in ecstacy of glad surprise,
And looks of joyous welcome, while the air was stirred
With the swift winnowing plumes approaching.

This I heard,
And only this,--"Oh! haste thee, spirit blest,
For thee and me remains at length the rest,
The welcome end of life's long toilsome road,
That leads us to our Father and our God."
And--"Oh beloved, is it thou indeed,
Hast reached before me these fair heavenly lands,
Who taught thine infant lips, with reverent heed
To say Our Father with small upraised hands:
How lovely are thine eyes, that have no pain,
And thy worn cheek, that keeps no travel-stain,
From mid-noon labour called to thy reward;
While I, at evening, a forgotten sheaf
Still left afield, in mingled trust and grief,
Waited the footsteps of our harvest Lord."

I heard no more--for wave succeeding wave--
A sea of intermittent music swelled and grew,
And filled the dome of heaven, all sharply cut
With spires of glittering crystal: all the land
Throbbed with the pulse of music keen, which clave
A shining path before them: hand in hand--
With their rapt faces toward the throne--the two
Went in together--and the gates were shut.

GEORGE BROWN.

O Leader fallen by the wayside prone,--
O strong great soul gone forth
For thee the wide inhospitable north,
And east and west, from sea to sea make moan:
And thy loved land, whose stalwart limbs and brain,
Beneath thy fostering care have thriven and grown
To stately stature, and erect proud head,
Freedom and Right and Justice to maintain
Here in her place inviolate. Without stain
The name and fame which stood for thee in stead
Of titles and dominions: all men's praise,
And some men's hate thou had'st, yet all shall weep thee dead;
O Leader, fallen mid-march in the ways,
Who shall fill up the measure of thy days!

TIDE-WATER.

Through many-winding valleys far inland,
A maze among the convoluted hills,
Of rocks up-piled, and pines on either hand,
And meadows ribbanded with silver rills,
Faint, mingled-up, composite sweetnesses
Of scented grass and clover, and the blue
Wild-violet hid in muffling moss and fern,
Keen and diverse another breath cleaves through,
Familiar as the taste of tears to me,
As on my lips, insistent, I discern
The salt and bitter kisses of the sea.

The tide sets up the river; mimic fleetnesses
Of little wavelets, fretted by the shells
And shingle of the beach, circle and eddy round,
And smooth themselves perpetually: there dwells
A spirit of peace in their low murmuring noise
Subsiding into quiet, as if life were such
A struggle with inexorable bound,
Brief, bright, despairing, never over-lept,
Dying in such wise, with a sighing voice
Breathed out, and after silence absolute.

Faith, eager hope, toil, tears, despair,--so much
The common lot,--together over-swept
Into the pitiless unreturning sea,
The vast immitigable sea.

I walk beside the river, and am mute
Under the burden of its mystery.
The cricket pipes among the meadow grass
His shrill small trumpet, of long summer nights
Sole minstrel: and the lonely heron makes
Voyaging slow toward her reedy nest
A moving shadow among sunset lights
Upon the river's darkening wave, which breaks.
Into a thousand circling shapes that pass
Into the one black shadow of the shore.

O tranquil spirit of the pervading test
Brooding along the valleys with shut wings
That fold all sentient and inanimate things
In their entrenched calm for evermore,
Save only the unquiet human soul;
Hear'st thou the far-off sound of waves that roll
In sighing cadence, like a soul in pain,
Hopeless of heaven or peace, beating in vain
The shores implacable for some replies
To the dumb anguish of eternal doubt,
(As I, for the sad thoughts that rise in me):
Feel'st thou upon thy heavy-lidded eyes
The salt and bitter kisses of the sea;
And dost thou draw, like me, a shuddering breath
Among dusk shadows brooding silently?

Ah me, thou hear'st me not: I walk alone.
The doubt within me, and the dark without,
In my sad ears, the waves' recurrent moan,
Sounds like the surges of the sea of death,
Beating for evermore the shores of time
With muttered prophecies, which sorrow saith
Over and over, like a set slow chime
Of funeral bells, tolling remote, forlorn,
Dirge-like the burden--"Man was made to mourn."

FORGOTTEN SONGS.

There is a splendid tropic flower which flings
Its fiery disc wide open to the core--
One pulse of subtlest fragrance--once a life
That rounds a century of blossoming things
And dies, a flower's apotheosis: nevermore
To send up in the sunshine, in sweet strife
With all the winds, a fountain of live flame,
A winged censer in the starlight swung
Once only, flinging all its wealth abroad
To the wide deserts without shore or name
And dying, like a lovely song, once sung
By some dead poet, music's wandering ghost,
Aeons ago blown out of life and lost,
Remembered only in the heart of God.

TO THE DAUGHTER OF THE AUTHOR OF "VIOLET KEITH."

I never looked upon thy face;
I never saw thy dwelling-place;
My home is by Lake Erie's shore,
Beyond Niagara's distant roar;
And thine where ships at anchor ride,
By fair St. Lawrence's rolling tide,
With half a continent between
Its seas of blue, and isles of green,
And many a mountain's nodding crest,
And many a valley's jewelled breast.
Thou in the east, I in the west;
Yet in this book thou hast to me
An individuality;
Something more tangible and fair
Than any dream or shape of air,
With more than an ideal grace,
And sweeter than a pictured face:
For in this book my thought recalls
The garden quaint, the convent walls.
And thou beneath their shadow set,
A blue-eyed fragrant violet.
So for the maiden of the tale,
Whose brave true heart might break, not fail,
Thyself, my Violet I make,
And love thee for thy mother's sake.

A PRELUDE, AND A BIRD'S SONG.

The poet's song, and the bird's,
And the waters' that chant as they run
And the waves' that kiss the beach,
And the wind's--they are but one.
He who may read their words,
And the secret hid in each,
May know the solemn monochords
That breathe in vast still places;
And the voices of myriad races,
Shy, and far-off from man,
That hide in shadow and sun,
And are seen but of him who can
To him the awful face is shown
Swathed in a cloud wind-blown
Of Him, who from His secret throne,
In some void, shadowy, and unknown land
Comes forth to lay His mighty hand
On the sounding organ keys,
That play deep thunder-marches,
Like the rush and the roar of seas,
And fill the cavernous arches
Of antique wildernesses hoary,
With a long-resounding roll,
As they fill man's listening soul
With a shuddering sense of might and glory.

These he shall hear, and more than these
In bird's song, and in poet's scroll;
Something underneath the whole,
A music yet unbreathed.--unsung--
Unwritten--incommunicable;
Whispered from no mortal tongue:
What seer nor prophet may rehearse
In oracle, or Delphic fable,
Since the old dead gods were young,
And made with man their dwelling-place;
But he shall hear, of all his race,
The dread wherefore of life and death;
He shall behold the ultimates
Of fears and doubts, and scores and hates,
And the sure final crown of faith.
And in his ear the rhythmic verse
Shall sound the steps of that beyond,
Serene, that hastens not, nor waits,
But holds within its depths profound
The mystery of all lives--all fates--
The secret of the universe.

AN APRIL DAWN.

All night a slow soft rain,
A shadowy stranger from a cloudy land,
Sighing and sobbing, with unsteady hand
Beat at the lattice, ceased, and beat again,
And fled like some wild startled thing pursued
By demons of the night and solitude,
Returning ever--wistful--timid--fain--
The intermittent rain.

And still the sad hours crept
Within uncounted, the while hopes and fears
Swayed our full hearts, and overflowed in tears
That fell in silence, as she waked or slept,
Still drawing nearer to that unknown shore
Whence foot of mortal cometh nevermore,
And still the rain was as a pulse that kept
Time as the slow hours crept.

The plummet of the night
Sank through the hollow dark that closed us round,
A lamp lit globe of space; outside, the sound
Of rain-drops falling from abysmal height
To vast mysterious depths rose faint and far,
Like a dull muffled echo from some star
Swung, like our own, an orb of tears and light
In the unheeding night.

But when the April dawn
Touched the closed lattice softly, and a bird,
Too early wakened from its sleep, was stirred,
And trilled a sudden note broke off, withdrawn,
She heard and woke. All silently she laid
Her gentle hands in ours, with such a look as made
A rainbow of tears it fell upon,
Caught from another and a heavenlier dawn,
Fixed--trembled--and was gone.
Swung, like our own, an orb of tears and light
In the unheeding night.