Part 18

To the wise earth, Kind, and companionable, and dewy cool, Fair beyond words to tell, as you are fair, And cunning past compare To leash all heaven in a windless pool, I said--"The mysteries of death and birth Are in your care. You love, and sleep; you drain life to the lees; And wonderful things you know. Angels have visited you, and at your knees Learned what I learn forever at her eyes, The pain that still enhances Paradise. You in your breast felt her first pulses stir; And you have thrilled to the light touch of her feet, Blindingly sweet. Now make me wise with some new word of Her."

Said the wise earth-- "She is not all my child. But the wild spirit that rules her heart-beats wild Is of diviner birth, And kin to the unknown light beyond my ken. All I can give to Her have I not given? Strength to be glad, to suffer, and to know; The sorcery that subdues the souls of men; The beauty that is as the shadow of heaven; The hunger of love And unspeakable joy thereof. And these are dear to Her because of you. You need no word of mine to make you wise Who worship at her eyes And find there life and love forever new!"

To the white stars, Eternal and all-seeing, In their wide home beyond the wells of being, I said--"There is a little cloud that mars The mystical perfection of her kiss. Mine, mine, She is, As far as lip to lip, and heart to heart, And spirit to spirit when lips and hands must part, Can make her mine. But there is more than this,-- More, more of Her to know. For still her soul escapes me unaware, To dwell in secret where I may not go. Take, and uplift me. Make me wholly Hers."

Said the white stars, the heavenly ministers,-- "This life is brief, but it is only one. Before to-morrow's sun For one or both of you it may be done. This love of yours is only just begun. Will all the ecstasy that may be won Before this life its little course has run At all suffice The love that agonizes in your eyes? Therefore be wise. Content you with the wonder of love that lies Between her lips and underneath her eyes. If more you should surprise, What would be left to hope from Paradise? In other worlds expect another joy Of Her, which blundering fate shall not annoy, Nor time nor change destroy."

So, Dear, I talked the long, divine night through, And felt you in the chrismal balms of dew. The thing then learned Has ever since within my bosom burned-- One life is not enough for love of you.

A NOCTURNE OF SPIRITUAL LOVE

Sleep, sleep, imperious heart! Sleep, fair and undefiled! Sleep, and be free! Come in your dreams at last, comrade and queen and child,-- At last to me.

Come, for the honeysuckle calls you out of the night. Come, for the air Calls with a tyrannous remembrance of delight, Passion and prayer.

Sleep, sovereign heart! And now--for dream and memory Endure no door,-- My spirit undenied goes where my feet, to thee, Have gone before.

A moonbeam or a breath, above thine eyes I bow, Silent, unseen, But not, ah not unknown! Thy spirit knows me now Where I have been.

Surely my long desire upon thy soul hath power. Surely for this Thy sleep shall breathe thee forth, soul of the lily flower, Under my kiss.

Sleep, body wonderful! Wake, spirit wise and wild, White and divine! Here is our heaven of dreams, O dear and undefiled, All thine, all mine.

AN ODE FOR THE CANADIAN CONFEDERACY

Awake, my country, the hour is great with change! Under this gloom which yet obscures the land, From ice-blue strait and stem Laurentian range To where giant peaks our western bounds command, A deep voice stirs, vibrating in men's ears As if their own hearts throbbed that thunder forth, A sound wherein who hearkens wisely hears The voice of the desire of this strong North,-- This North whose heart of fire Yet knows not its desire Clearly, but dreams, and murmurs in the dream. The hour of dreams is done. Lo, on the hills the gleam!

Awake, my country, the hour of dreams is done! Doubt not, nor dread the greatness of thy fate. Tho' faint souls fear the keen confronting sun, And fain would bid the morn of splendor wait; Tho' dreamers, rapt in starry visions, cry "Lo, yon thy future, yon thy faith, thy fame!" And stretch vain hands to stars, thy fame is nigh, Here in Canadian hearth, and home, and name;-- This name which yet shall grow Till all the nations know Us for a patriot people, heart and hand Loyal to our native earth, our own Canadian land!

O strong hearts, guarding the birthright of our glory, Worth your best blood this heritage that ye guard! These mighty streams resplendent with our story, These iron coasts by rage of seas unjarred,-- What fields of peace these bulwarks will secure! What vales of plenty those calm floods supply! Shall not our love this rough, sweet land make sure, Her bounds preserve inviolate, though we die? O strong hearts of the North, Let flame your loyalty forth, And put the craven and base to an open shame, Till earth shall know the Child of Nations by her name!

CANADIAN STREAMS

O rivers rolling to the sea From lands that bear the maple tree, How swell your voices with the strain Of loyalty and liberty!

A holy music, heard in vain By coward heart and sordid brain, To whom this strenuous being seems Naught but a greedy race for gain.

O unsung streams--not splendid themes Ye lack to fire your patriot dreams! Annals of glory gild your waves, Hope freights your tides, Canadian streams!

St Lawrence, whose wide water laves The shores that ne'er have nourished slaves! Swift Richelieu of lilied fame! Niagara of glorious graves!

Thy rapids, Ottawa, proclaim Where Daulac and his heroes came! Thy tides, St John, declare La Tour, And, later, many a loyal name!

Thou inland stream, whose vales, secure From storm, Tecumseh's death made poor! And thou, small water, red with war, 'Twixt Beaubassin and Beauséjour!

Dread Saguenay, where eagles soar, What voice shall from the bastioned shore The tale of Roberval reveal, Or his mysterious fate deplore?

Annapolis, do thy floods yet feel Faint memories of Champlain's keel, Thy pulses yet the deed repeat Of Poutrincourt and d'Iberville?

And thou far tide, whose plains now beat With march of myriad westering feet, Saskatchewan, whose virgin sod So late Canadian blood made sweet?

Your bulwark hills, your valleys broad, Streams where de Salaberry trod, Where Wolfe achieved, where Brock was slain,-- Their voices are the voice of God!

O sacred waters! not in vain, Across Canadian height and plain, Ye sound us in triumphant tone The summons of your high refrain.

THE SILVER THAW

There came a day of showers Upon the shrinking snow; The south wind sighed of flowers, The softening skies hung low. Midwinter for a space Foreshadowing April's face, The white world caught the fancy, And would not let it go.

In reawakened courses The brooks rejoiced the land; We dreamed the Spring's shy forces Were gathering close at hand. The dripping buds were stirred, As if the sap had heard The long-desired persuasion Of April's soft command.

But antic Time had cheated With hope's elusive gleam; The phantom Spring, defeated, Fled down the ways of dream. And in the night the reign Of winter came again, With frost upon the forest And stillness on the stream.

When morn in rose and crocus Came up the bitter sky, Celestial beams awoke us To wondering ecstasy. The wizard Winter's spell Had wrought so passing well, That earth was bathed in glory, As if God's smile were nigh.

The silver'd saplings, bending, Flashed in a rain of gems; The statelier trees, attending, Blazed in their diadems. White fire and amethyst All common things had kissed, And chrysolites and sapphires Adorned the bramble-stems.

In crystalline confusion All beauty came to birth; It was a kind illusion To comfort waiting earth-- To bid the buds forget The Spring so distant yet, And hearts no more remember The iron season's dearth.

EPITAPH FOR A SAILOR BURIED ASHORE

He who but yesterday would roam Careless as clouds, and currents range, In homeless wandering most at home, Inhabiter of change;

Who wooed the West to win the East, And named the stars of North and South, And felt the zest of Freedom's feast Familiar in his mouth;

Who found a faith in stranger-speech, And fellowship in foreign hands, And had within his eager reach The relish of all lands--

How circumscribed a plot of earth Keeps now his restless footsteps still, Whose wish was wide as ocean's girth, Whose will the water's will!

THE TRAIN AMONG THE HILLS

Vast, unrevealed, in silence and the night Brooding, the ancient hills commune with sleep. Inviolate the solemn valleys keep Their contemplation. Soon from height to height Steals a red finger of mysterious light, And lion-footed through the forests creep Strange mutterings; till suddenly, with sweep And shattering thunder of resistless flight And crash of routed echoes, roars to view, Down the long mountain gorge, the Night Express, Freighted with fears and tears and happiness.... The dread form passes; silence falls anew. And lo! I have beheld the thronged, blind world To goals unseen from God's hand onward hurled.

A SONG OF GROWTH

In the heart of a man Is a thought upfurled, Reached its full span It shakes the world, And to one high thought Is a whole race wrought.

Not with vain noise The great work grows, Nor with foolish voice, But in repose,-- Not in the rush But in the hush.

From the cogent lash Of the cloud-herd wind The low clouds dash, Blown headlong, blind; But beyond, the great blue Looks moveless through.

O'er the loud world sweep The scourge and the rod; But in deep beyond deep Is the stillness of God;-- At the Fountains of Life No cry, no strife.

SLEEPY MAN

When the Sleepy Man comes with dust in his eyes (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) He shuts up the earth, and he opens the skies. (So hush-a-by, weary, my Dearie!)

He smiles through his fingers, and shuts up the sun; (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) The stars that he loves he lets out one by one. (So hush-a-by, weary, my Dearie!)

He comes from the castles of Drowsy-boy Town; (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) At the touch of his hand the tired eyelids fall down. (So hush-a-by, weary, my Dearie!)

He comes with a murmur of dreams in his wings (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) And whispers of mermaids and wonderful things. (So hush-a-by, weary, my Dearie!)

When the top is a burden, the bugle a bane, (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) When one would be faring down Dream-a-way Lane, (So hush-a-by, weary, my Dearie!)

When one would be wending in Lullaby Wherry (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) To Sleepy Man's Castle by Comforting Ferry. (So hush-a-by, weary, my Dearie!)

NIGHT IN A DOWN-TOWN STREET

Not in the eyed, expectant gloom, Where soaring peaks repose And incommunicable space Companions with the snows;

Not in the glimmering dusk that crawls Upon the clouded sea, Where bourneless wave on bourneless wave Complains continually;

Not in the palpable dark of woods Where groping hands clutch fear, Does Night her deeps of solitude Reveal unveiled as here.

The street is a grim cañon carved In the eternal stone, That knows no more the rushing stream It anciently has known.

The emptying tide of life has drained The iron channel dry, Strange winds from the forgotten day Draw down, and dream, and sigh.

The narrow heaven, the desolate moon Made wan with endless years, Seem less immeasurably remote Than laughter, love, or tears.

THE FALLING LEAVES

Lightly He blows, and at His breath they fall, The perishing kindreds of the leaves; they drift, Spent flames of scarlet, gold aërial, Across the hollow year, noiseless and swift. Lightly he blows, and countless as the falling Of snow by night upon a solemn sea, The ages circle down beyond recalling, To strew the hollows of Eternity. He sees them drifting through the spaces dim, And leaves and ages are as one to Him.

AN EPITAPH FOR A HUSBANDMAN

He who would start and rise Before the crowing cocks-- No more he lifts his eyes, Whoever knocks.

He who before the stars Would call the cattle home,-- They wait about the bars For him to come.

Him at whose hearty calls The farmstead woke again, The horses in their stalls Expect in vain.

Busy, and blithe, and bold, He labored for the morrow,-- The plough his hands would hold Rusts in the furrow.

His fields he had to leave, His orchards cool and dim; The clods he used to cleave Now cover him.

But the green, growing things Lean kindly to his sleep,-- White roots and wandering strings, Closer they creep.

Because he loved them long And with them bore his part, Tenderly now they throng About his heart.

ORIGINS

Out of the dreams that heap The hollow hand of sleep,-- Out of the dark sublime, The echoing deeps of time,-- From the averted Face Beyond the bournes of space, Into the sudden sun We journey, one by one. Out of the hidden shade Wherein desire is made,-- Out of the pregnant stir Where death and life confer,-- The dark and mystic heat Where soul and matter meet,-- The enigmatic Will,-- We start! and then are still.

Inexorably decreed By the ancestral deed, The puppets of our sires, We work out blind desires, And for our sons ordain The blessing or the bane. In ignorance we stand With fate on either hand, And question stars and earth Of life, and death, and birth. With wonder in our eyes We scan the kindred skies, While through the common grass Our atoms mix and pass. We feel the sap go free When spring comes to the tree; And in our blood is stirred What warms the brooding bird. The vital fire we breathe That bud and blade bequeathe, And strength of native clay In our full veins hath sway.

But in the urge intense And fellowship of sense, Suddenly comes a word In other ages heard. On a great wind our souls Are borne to unknown goals, And past the bournes of space To the unaverted Face.

THE WRESTLER

When God sends out His company to travel through the stars, There is every kind of wonder in the show; There is every kind of animal behind its prison bars; With riders in a many-colored row. The master showman, Time, has a strange trick of rhyme, And the clown's most ribald jest is a tear; But the best drawing card is the Wrestler huge and hard, Who can fill the tent at any time of year.

His eye is on the crowd, and he beckons with his hand, With authoritative finger, and they come. The rules of the game they do not understand, But they go as in a dream, and are dumb. They would fain say him nay, and they look the other way, Till at last to the ropes they cling; But he throws them one by one till the show for them is done, In the blood-red dust of the ring.

There's none to shun his challenge--they must meet him soon or late, And he knows a cunning trick for all heels. The king's haughty crown drops in jeers from his pate As the hold closes on him, and he reels. The burly and the proud, the braggarts of the crowd, Every one of them he topples down in thunder. His grip grows mild for the dotard and the child, But alike they must all go under.

Oh, many a mighty foeman would try a fall with him-- Persepolis and Babylon and Rome, Assyria and Sardis, they see their fame grow dim, As he tumbles in the dust every dome. At length will come an hour when the stars shall feel his power, And he shall have his will upon the sun. Ere we know what he's about, the stars will be put out, And the wonder of the show will be undone.

RECESSIONAL

Now along the solemn heights Fade the Autumn's altar-lights; Down the great earth's glimmering chancel Glide the days and nights.

Little kindred of the grass, Like a shadow in a glass Falls the dark and falls the stillness; We must rise and pass.

We must rise and follow, wending Where the nights and days have ending,-- Pass in order pale and slow Unto sleep extending.

Little brothers of the clod, Soul of fire and seed of sod, We must fare into the silence At the knees of God.

Little comrades of the sky Wing to wing we wander by, Going, going, going, going, Softly as a sigh.

Hark, the moving shapes confer, Globe of dew and gossamer, Fading and ephemeral spirits In the dusk astir.

Moth and blossom, blade and bee, Worlds must go as well as we, In the long procession joining Mount, and star, and sea.

Toward the shadowy brink we climb Where the round year rolls sublime, Rolls, and drops, and falls forever In the vast of time;

Like a plummet plunging deep Past the utmost reach of sleep, Till remembrance has no longer Care to laugh or weep.

ASCRIPTION

O Thou who hast beneath Thy hand The dark foundations of the land,-- The motion of whose ordered thought An instant universe hath wrought;

Who hast within Thine equal hand The rolling sun, the ripening seed, The azure of the speedwell's eye, The vast solemnities of sky,--

Who hear'st no less the feeble note Of one small bird's awakening throat Than that unnamed, tremendous chord Arcturus sounds before his Lord,--

More sweet to Thee than all acclaim Of storm and ocean, stars and flame, In favor more before Thy face Than pageantry of time and space,

The worship and the service be Of him Thou madest most like Thee,-- Who in his nostrils hath Thy breath, Whose spirit is the lord of death!

THEODORE ROBERTS

THE SPEARS OF KAN-MAR

Eyes that we look into--so, Hands that we kiss ere we go, Keep us,--remember us, hold us a night and a day; For the white road stretches ahead, And our spears have a vision of red, And our horses champ with their bits, and rear at the way.

The tussocks of grass in the glare Are brown as a dream-maiden's hair, And over them, white in the sun, the spears of Kan-Mar; The curbs, and the froth at the lips-- The bridle chains snapping like whips, And our plumes tossed red, and scenting the heels of war.

The eyes that twinkle and burn-- The wrists like elk-thongs that turn With the balancing, pausing, slender, murderous spear; The swords that lead us along, The thrust, the shriek and the song-- Sights not fit for their eyes, nor sounds for their ears to hear.

The city gates in the sun, The glory of brave deeds done, The clatter of horning hoofs and the song of old Kan-Mar, The roar of the narrow street Filled with clanging of feet-- The white hands over the balconies, and the kiss on the burning scar!

COLD

"Cold," cried the wind on the hill, "Cold," sang the tree; Your eyes were blue-grey and still And cold as the sea.

Cold lay the snow on the land; Cold stood the pine; But neither as cold as your hand Lying in mine.

Ah, Love, has the fire died so soon-- Just smoldered and gone; A kiss by the light of the moon, A parting by dawn.

THE MEN OF MY HEART'S DESIRE

Where are the men of my heart's desire? Of the British blood and the loyal names? Some are North, at the home hearth-fire, Where the hemlock glooms and the maple flames, And some are tramping the old world round For the pot of gold they have never found.

Oh, leal are the men of my heart's desire-- Their fathers were leal in the days gone by-- And their blood is blithe with the subtle fire The purple breeds, and their hearts are high,-- Poor, and gallant, and dear to me, With a strong hand each, and a pedigree.

Good men are bred in the East and the West, And ripe, true gentles in Boston town, But the men of my blood to my blood seem best-- Who still hold the honor of Mitre and Crown. Though empty their cellars and worn their attire, These are the men of my heart's desire.

So, gentles, these stumbling rhymes I send To our spruce-clad hills, for a word of cheer,-- Where there's ever a welcome and ever a friend, And the brown coat covers the cavalier. Take them, I pray you, for what they are worth, For I swear by my soul you're the salt of the earth.

THE CHASE

Down the long lanes of Arcadie My lady canters merrily; The grain is bleaching in the sun, The russet hickories confer, And mounted on old Cheveron With laughing call I follow her.

The maples stand in flaming red, The sturdy brakes are sere and dead; But still my lady canters on Through field and wood and busy town, And mounted on old Cheveron I try to ride her down.

Through the long lanes of Arcadie The crickets skip and chirp to me; My lady's just 'round yonder bend, Methinks I hear her call to me-- Methinks our chase is at an end Through these long lanes of Arcadie!

Nay, still she canters down the lane With floating skirt and loosened rein. We've traveled all this summer land, And still we mount and gallop on; Sometimes she turns and waves her hand, A challenge to old Cheveron.