Part 11

What went ye to the wilderness to see? A shaking reed? Men in king's houses dwelling? A prophet? Yea, more than a prophet telling Of lands new named for Christ--a gift in fee, And heritage of millions yet to be. Green prairies like an ocean swelling From rise to set of sun--great rivers spelling Their rugged names in Blackfoot and in Cree. That went you forth to see, and saw it lie, The glorious land reserved by God till now, For England's help in need--to drive the plough, A thousand miles on end--till in the sky The snowy mountains, from the plains upborne, Bear on the proudest peak the name of Lorne.

AT SPENCER GRANGE

Upon the heights of Sillery one day, Led by the dryad of the fairy wood, A daughter of the land, as bright and good As spring's first daffodil, bade me survey Wolfe's cove, the gleaming city with array Of walls and pinnacles, each in a hood Of sunset glory, while the shining flood Swept through the mountains far and far away. And then the nearer landscape she recalls, The grove, the Grange, Belle Borne's romantic rill, Which in a chain of silvery waterfalls Ran down the cliff and vanished; but she still Stands there to me. A memory will not fade-- Part of the glorious vision I surveyed.

_From_ "THE SPARROWS"

So sat I yesterday, with weary eyes Looking at leafless trees and snow-swept plains, And broad Ontario's ice-encumbered sea. My thoughts had wandered in a waking dream Across the deep abyss of vanished years, To that dear land I never saw again-- When suddenly a fluttering of wings Shook the soft snow--a twittering of birds Chirping a strange old note, but heard before In English hedges and on roofs red-tiled, Of cottage homes that looked on village greens! An old familiar note! Who says the ear Forgets a voice once heard? the eye, a charm? The heart, affection's touch, from man or woman? Not mine at least! I knew my own birds' language, And recognised their little forms with joy.

A flock of English sparrows at my door, With feathers ruffled in the cold north wind, Claimed kinship with me--hospitality!-- Brown-coated things! Not for uncounted gold Would I have made denial of their claims! Five! six! ten! twenty! But I lost all count In my great joy. Whence come I knew not; glad They came to me, who loved them for the sake Of that dear land at once both theirs and mine.

I ran to get the food I knew they liked, Remembering how--a child--in frost and snow-- I used to scatter crumbs before the door, And wheat in harvest gleaned, to feed the birds Which left us not in winter, but made gay The bleak, inclement season of the year. The sparrows chirped and pecked while eyeing me With little diamond glances, like old friends, As round my feet they fluttered, hopped and fed, In perfect confidence and void of fear. Their forms, their notes, their pretty ways so strange, Yet so familiar--like a rustic word Learned in my childhood and not spoken since-- All, all came back to me! and as I looked And listened--a thousand memories rose up, Like a vast audience at the nation's song!

Old England's hills and dales of matchless charm, Sweeping in lines of beauty, stood revealed: Her fragrant lanes where woodbine trailed the hedge, And little feet with mine ran side by side As we plucked primroses, or marked the spot Where blackbird, thrush or linnet reared its young, While sang the cuckoo on the branching tree. Those meadows, too! Who can forget them ever? So green! with buttercups and daisies set, Where skylarks nested and sprang up at dawn To heaven's top, singing their rapturous lay! Those gentle rivers, not too large to grasp By the strong swimmer of his native streams; Those landward homes that breed the nation's strength; Those beaconed cliffs that watch her stormy seas, Covered with ships that search all oceans round: Those havens, marts, and high-built cities, full Of work and wealth and men who rule the world! All rose before me in supernal light, As when beheld with childhood's eyes of strength, And stirred my soul with impulses divine.

My heart opened its depths--glad tears and sad Mingled upon my cheek, which forty years' Strange winds had fanned and heat and cold embrowned. God's hand is nearer than we think--a touch Suffices to restore the dead; a word Becomes a wonder of creative power. The little sparrows in their rustic speech Talking a tongue I knew--this message brought From Christ, who spake it, merciful to man: "Are not two sparrows for a farthing sold, And not one falls without the Father's leave? Fear not, therefore! for of more value, ye, Than many sparrows, yea, whose very hairs Are numbered by the loving care of God."

I blessed the little messengers who brought These words of comfort to my lonely heart, To teach me resignation, hope and peace. Like children in a darkened room we cry, Despairing of the light when 'tis most nigh.... The callow bird must wait its wings to fly, And so must thou! God's love is law in love, Working in elements of moral strife That will not yield obedience but with pain.

"Perfect through suffering." Comprehend'st thou that? Upon the cross who was it, dying, cried, In the last agony that rends the soul: "Eli! Eli! lama sabacthani!" No other way! Christ, too, must drink that cup Before His human life was made divine And our redemption possible from sin! Or if a gentler lesson thou would'st learn, Dismayed at those tremendous mysteries, Think of the birds, the lilies, all things He Takes care of to the end: why not of thee? But while their round of life is here complete, Thine but begins! The law of laws is love, That needs two worlds to perfect all of man, And an eternity to teach God's ways!...

MATTHEW RICHEY KNIGHT

JACQUES CARTIER

No flame of war was he, no flower of grace, No star of wisdom; but a plain, bold man, More careful of the end than of the plan. No mystery was he afraid to face; No savage strategy, no furious storm, No stings of climate, no unthought disease: His master purpose would not bend to these, But saw, through all, achievement's towering form.

He first beheld the gloomy Saguenay, And Stadacona's high, forbidding brow; His venturous vision too did first survey Fair Hochelaga, but not fair as now. St. Malo holds his dust, the world his fame, But his strong, dauntless soul 'tis ours to claim.

SOVEREIGN MOMENTS

Life has two sovereign moments; One when we settle down To some life-worthy purpose,-- One when we grasp the crown.

THE MERCY OF GOD

They have a saying in the East:-- Two angels note the deeds of men, And one is first and one is least. When men do right, one takes his pen And magnifies the deed to ten. This angel is at God's right hand, And holds the other in command. He says to him when men do wrong, "The man was weak, temptation strong,-- "Write not the record down to-day; "To-morrow he may grieve and pray." It may be myth; but this is sooth-- No ruth is lasting as God's ruth; The strongest is the tenderest; He who best knows us loves us best.

ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN

THE RAILWAY STATION

The darkness brings no quiet here, the light No waking: ever on my blinded brain The flare of lights, the rush, and cry, and strain, The engines' scream, the hiss and thunder smite: I see the hurrying crowds, the clasp, the flight, Faces that touch, eyes that are dim with pain: I see the hoarse wheels turn, and the great train Move laboring out into the bourneless night.

So many souls within its dim recesses, So many bright, so many mournful eyes: Mine eyes that watch grow fixed with dreams and guesses; What threads of life, what hidden histories, What sweet or passionate dreams and dark distresses, What unknown thoughts, what various agonies!

OUTLOOK

Not to be conquered by these headlong days, But to stand free: to keep the mind at brood On life's deep meaning, nature's altitude Of loveliness, and time's mysterious ways; At every thought and deed to clear the haze Out of our eyes, considering only this, What man, what life, what love, what beauty is, This is to live, and win the final praise.

Though strife, ill fortune, and harsh human need Beat down the soul, at moments blind and dumb With agony; yet, patience--there shall come Many great voices from life's outer sea, Hours of strange triumph, and, when few men heed, Murmurs and glimpses of eternity.

AMONG THE MILLET

The dew is gleaming in the grass, The morning hours are seven; And I am fain to watch you pass, Ye soft white clouds of heaven. Ye stray and gather, part and fold; The wind alone can tame you; I think of what in time of old The poets loved to name you. They called you sheep, the sky your sward, A field without a reaper; They called the shining sun your lord, The shepherd wind your keeper. Your sweetest poets I will deem The men of old for moulding, In simple beauty, such a dream,-- And I could lie beholding, Where daisies in the meadow toss, The wind from morn till even Forever shepherd you across The shining field of heaven.

THE LOONS

Once ye were happy, once by many a shore, Wherever Glooscap's gentle feet might stray, Lulled by his presence like a dream, ye lay Floating at rest; but that was long of yore. He was too good for earthly men; he bore Their bitter deeds for many a patient day, And then at last he took his unseen way. He was your friend, and ye might rest no more.

And now, though many hundred altering years Have passed, among the desolate northern meres Still must ye search and wander querulously, Crying for Glooscap, still bemoan the light With weird entreaties, and in agony With awful laughter pierce the lonely night.

THE SUN CUP

The earth is the cup of the sun, That he filleth at morning with wine,-- With the warm, strong wine of his might From the vintage of gold and of light, Fills it, and makes it divine.

And at night when his journey is done, At the gate of his radiant hall, He setteth his lips to the brim, With a long last look of his eye, And lifts it and draineth it dry,-- Drains till he leaveth it all Empty and hollow and dim.

And then, as he passes to sleep, Still full of the feats that he did Long ago in Olympian wars, He closes it down with the sweep Of its slow-turning luminous lid, Its cover of darkness and stars, Wrought once by Hephaestus of old With violet and vastness and gold.

AFTER RAIN

For three whole days across the sky, In sullen packs that loomed and broke, With flying fringes dim as smoke, The columns of the rain went by; At every hour the rain went by; At every hour the wind awoke; The darkness passed upon the plain; The great drops rattled at the pane.

Now piped the wind, or far aloof Fell to a sough remote and dull; And all night long with rush and lull The rain kept drumming on the roof: I heard till ear and sense were full The clash or silence of the leaves, The gurgle in the creaking eaves.

But when the fourth day came--at noon, The darkness and the rain were by; The sunward roofs were steaming dry; And all the world was flecked and strewn With shadows from a fleecy sky. The haymakers were forth and gone, And every rillet laughed and shone.

Then, too, on me that loved so well The world, despairing in her blight, Uplifted with her least delight, On me, as on the earth, there fell New happiness of mirth and might; I strode the valleys pied and still; I climbed upon the breezy hill.

I watched the gray hawk wheel and drop, Sole shadow on the shining world; I saw the mountains clothed and curled, With forest ruffling to the top; I saw the river's length unfurled, Pale silver down the fruited plain, Grown great and stately with the rain.

Through miles of shadow and soft heat, Where field and fallow, fence and tree, Were all one world of greenery, I heard the robin singing sweet, The sparrow piping silverly, The thrushes at the forest's hem; And as I went I sang with them.

JUNE

Long, long ago, it seems, this summer morn, That pale-browed April passed with pensive tread Through the frore woods, and from its frost-bound bed Woke the arbutus with her silver horn; And now May, too, is fled, The flower-crowned month, the merry laughing May, With rosy feet and fingers dewy wet, Leaving the woods and all cool gardens gay With tulips and the scented violet.

Gone are the wind-flower and the adder-tongue, And the sad drooping bellwort, and no more The snowy trilliums crowd the forest floor; The purpling grasses are no longer young, And summer's wide-set door O'er the thronged hills and the broad panting earth Lets in the torrent of the later bloom, Haytime, and harvest, and the after mirth, The slow soft rain, the rushing thunder plume.

All day in garden alleys moist and dim, The humid air is burdened with the rose; In moss-deep woods the creamy orchid blows; And now the vesper-sparrow's pealing hymn From every orchard close At eve comes flooding rich and silvery; The daisies in great meadows swing and shine; And with the wind a sound as of the sea Roars in the maples and the topmost pine.

High in the hills the solitary thrush Tunes magically his music of fine dreams, In briary dells, by boulder-broken streams; And wide and far on nebulous fields aflush The mellow morning gleams. The orange cone-flowers purple-bossed are there, The meadow's bold-eyed gypsies deep of hue, And slender hawkweed tall and softly fair, And rosy tops of fleabane veiled with dew.

So with thronged voices and unhasting flight The fervid hours with long return go by; The far-heard bugles, piping shrill and high, Tell the slow moments of the solemn night With unremitting cry; Lustrous and large out of the gathering drouth The planets gleam; the baleful Scorpion Trails his dim fires along the drousëd south; The silent world-incrusted round moves on.

And all the dim night long the moon's white beams Nestle deep down in every brooding tree, And sleeping birds, touched with a silly glee, Waken at midnight from their blissful dreams, And carol brokenly. Dim surging motions and uneasy dreads Scare the light slumber from men's busy eyes, And parted lovers on their restless beds Toss and yearn out, and cannot sleep for sighs.

Oft have I striven, sweet month, to figure thee, As dreamers of old time were wont to feign, In living form of flesh, and striven in vain; Yet when some sudden old-world mystery Of passion fixed my brain, Thy shape hath flashed upon me like no dream, Wandering with scented curls that heaped the breeze, Or by some hollow of some reeded stream Sitting waist-deep in white anemones;

And even as I glimpsed thee thou wert gone, A dream for mortal eyes too proudly coy, Yet in thy place for subtle thoughts employ The golden magic clung, a light that shone And filled me with thy joy. Before me like a mist that streamed and fell All names and shapes of antique beauty passed In garlanded procession, with the swell Of flutes between the beechen stems; and, last,

I was the Arcadian valley, the loved wood, Alpheus stream divine, the sighing shore, And through the cool green glades, awake once more, Psyche, the white-limbed goddess, still pursued, Fleet-footed as of yore, The noonday ringing with her frighted peals, Down the bright sward and through the reeds she ran, Urged by the mountain echoes, at her heels The hot-blown cheeks and trampling feet of Pan.

SEPTEMBER

Now hath the summer reached her golden close, And, lost amid her corn-fields, bright of soul, Scarcely perceives from her divine repose How near, how swift, the inevitable goal: Still, still she smiles, though from her careless feet The bounty and the fruitful strength are gone, And through the soft long wandering days goes on The silent sere decadence sad and sweet.

The kingbird and the pensive thrush are fled, Children of light, too fearful of the gloom; The sun falls low, the secret word is said, The mouldering woods grow silent as the tomb; Even the fields have lost their sovereign grace, The corn-flower and the marguerite; and no more Across the river's shadow-haunted floor The paths of skimming swallows interlace.

Already in the outland wilderness The forests echo with unwonted dins; In clamorous gangs the gathering woodmen press Northward, and the stern winter's toil begins. Around the long low shanties, whose rough lines Break the sealed dreams of many an unnamed lake, Already in the frost-clear morns awake The crash and thunder of the falling pines.

Where the tilled earth, with all its fields set free, Naked and yellow from the harvest lies, By many a loft and busy granary, The hum and tumult of the threshers rise; There the tanned farmers labor without slack, Till twilight deepens round the spouting mill, Feeding the loosened sheaves, or with fierce will Pitching waist-deep upon the dusky stack.

Still a brief while, ere the old year quite pass, Our wandering steps and wistful eyes shall greet The leaf, the water, the beloved grass; Still from these haunts and this accustomed seat I see the wood-wrapt city, swept with light, The blue, long-shadowed distance, and, between, The dotted farm-lands with their parcelled green, The dark pine forest and the watchful height.

I see the broad rough meadow stretched away Into the crystal sunshine, wastes of sod, Acres of withered vervain, purple-gray, Branches of aster, groves of goldenrod; And yonder, toward the sunlit summit, strewn With shadowy boulders, crowned and swathed with weed, Stand ranks of silken thistles, blown to seed, Long silver fleeces shining like the moon.

In far-off russet corn-fields, where the dry Gray shocks stand peaked and withering, half concealed In the rough earth, the orange pumpkins lie, Full-ribbed; and in the windless pasture-field The sleek red horses o'er the sun-warmed ground Stand pensively about in companies, While all around them from the motionless trees The long clean shadows sleep without a sound.

Under cool elm-trees floats the distant stream, Moveless as air; and o'er the vast warm earth The fathomless daylight seems to stand and dream, A liquid cool elixir--all its girth Bound with faint haze, a frail transparency, Whose lucid purple barely veils and fills The utmost valleys and the thin last hills, Nor mars one whit their perfect clarity.

Thus without grief the golden days go by, So soft we scarcely notice how they wend, And like a smile half happy, or a sigh, The summer passes to her quiet end; And soon, too soon, around the cumbered eaves Shy frosts shall take the creepers by surprise, And through the wind-touched reddening woods shall rise October with the rain of ruined leaves.

THE GOAL OF LIFE

There is a beauty at the goal of life, A beauty growing since the world began, Through every age and race, through lapse and strife, Till the great human soul complete her span. Beneath the waves of storm that lash and burn, The currents of blind passion that appal, To listen and keep watch till we discern The tide of sovereign truth that guides it all; So to address our spirits to the height, And so attune them to the valiant whole, That the great light be clearer for our light, And the great soul the stronger for our soul: To have done this is to have lived, though fame Remember us with no familiar name.

MARY JANE KATZMANN LAWSON

THE FACE IN THE CATHEDRAL

It was one of those grand cathedrals, "A poem in wood and stone," Fashioned by master-builders, For the glory of God alone. The sound of hammer and chisel From morning till night was there, As it rose in its Gothic grandeur, A temple so vast and fair!

Workmen from every nation With skill and craft had planned Column and nave and chancel, All wrought with cunning hand. Strength was inlaid with beauty-- A goodly sight to see The rainbow light through the mullioned panes Of that glorious sanctuary!

One day past the crowd of watchers Came a man with silver hair, And asked of the master-builder For leave to labor there. The workmen stood in wonder, For the stranger's eyes were dim, And the hands so thin and nerveless Ne'er told of work in him.

The master smiled as he answered, "Our men must be strong and true, Able, as well as willing, For the work they have to do; Your skill and your strength are over." "Try me," the old man said, "Let me but work in the windowed niche Of the turret above my head."

And the master in pity yielded To the pleading of voice and eye. The old man climbed the minster stairs, To the window aslant the sky; And there where the sunrise glory Fell first through the diamond pane, And pillar and arch and chancel Were bathed in golden rain,

Day after day on the panel He had won from the builder's grace, His trembling hands were busy, Carving a single face; Silent, and always keeping From watchers and workers aloof, There by the oriel window, Under the fretted roof.