Part 21

The creak of sail, the splash of oar, Were heard by none upon the shore; And in the forest vale None knew the ambush that was kept, Nor saw a thousand men who crept Along the narrow trail.

When day at last was breaking forth There came two eagles flying north, And on the morn awoke The solemn pageantry of war, And o'er the shining hills afar Floated the rolling smoke.

THE LAST ORISON

Shaper of breathing lives, and Lord of all above, Thy name I learned beside my mother's knee; She drew me to her arms, and said that Thou wert Love-- Oh, art Thou Love to me?

I cannot rear my thoughts amid the golden spheres, Where roll the stars about Thy throne on high, But here in lowly wise I call on Thee with tears, And feel Thy presence nigh.

Childlike to Thee I looked when came the night of fear, On Thee I laid my sorrows of the day; The whole earth spake of One who seemed to be so near, It was not hard to pray.

The bolted doors that lock the corridors of Time, And bar the awful avenues of Space, My soul at last shall pass, and then, O dream sublime! I shall gaze on Thy face.

ALEXANDER CHARLES STEWART

_From_ "THE WANDERER"

Adieu to these!--Niagara, thy roar Is as the voice of freedom sounding far, And thundering Liberty to either shore, With boom that puts to shame the breath of war. The clouds which hover softly o'er thee are Symbolical of peace; while thou, fierce flood, Hast all the fury of a plunging star, Churning its liquid flames to foaming blood, And overturning worlds that have for ages stood.

Forever pour thy dashing speed along Between the homes of Freedom and the Free; And chant forever thy resounding song To hearts that may re-echo liberty. The first who dares destroy thy purity, Or bridge thee for enslavers, may thy roar Cease like a thunderbolt, and o'er thy sea The chill of horror fall and wrap him o'er, Dry up thy foaming flood and be thy voice no more!

PHILLIPS STEWART

HOPE

In shadowy calm the boat Sleeps by the dreaming oar, The green hills are afloat Beside the silver shore.

Youth hoists the white-winged sail, Love takes the longing oar-- The oft-told fairy tale Beside the silver shore.

Soft lip to lip, and heart To heart, and hand to hand, And wistful eyes depart Unto another strand.

And lovely as a star They tremble o'er the wave, With eager wings afar, Unto the joys they crave.

In a sweet trance they fare Unto the wind and rain, With wind-tossed waves of hair, And ne'er return again.

And at the drifting side, Changed faces in the deep They see, a changing tide, Like phantoms in a sleep.

Slow hands furl the torn sail Without one silver-gleam, And, sad and wan and pale, They gaze into a dream.

_From_ "CORYDON AND AMARYLLIS"

Pale melancholy, faithfully thou lov'st The human soul when youth and passion fail; How precious all things grow beneath thy smile! Sad sister of the poet's lonely hours, Thy clinging arms embrace us all, thy feet Are in all paths, and Nature saddens 'neath Thine eyes. The lotus and the poppy have Thee in their dreamy veins; thine image dwells For ever in the jewelled wine; thou art The hungry beauty of Love's crescent eyes, The tremor of white hands, the ashy gleam Of noble brows, and thou dost startle Love's Young dream into a dying swoon, and strew A flowery sadness on some new-made grave.

_From_ "DE PROFUNDIS"

I hear the wondrous lyre Of the blind bard, and see the Grecian throng About Troy's lofty walls, and Hector slain, The white-stained face and blackened crest, And great Achilles crumbling on his pyre. Then comes Ulysses sighing for his home Afar, leaving the ruins of old Troy For Ithaca, where oft, a glad-faced boy, He played amid the ripening vines and heard His father's voice ere he began to roam The weary waves. His heart is stirred With thoughts of home, and son, and wife, And ever Circe holds him in her arms. How have I longed to drift on some fair isle, Like thee, from feverish alarms, And voices of reproach, and earth's vain strife-- Some urnless land beyond the wile Of grief and gold, where man can quite forget All pain, and sleep and dream not of regret.

BARRY STRATON

LOVE'S HARVEST

The furrows of life Time is plowing, But we mourn not the Spring which departs, For the husbandman Fate, in his sowing, Scattered love in the soil of our hearts.

The sunshine of virtue and beauty Shall wake the sweet seedlings to bloom; The warm dews of mercy and duty Shall moisten the tractable loam.

Oh, blow, grains of love to the binding! Oh, blush, golden fruit on the hill! 'Tis a dreary, long day to the grinding, But a short, pleasant way from the mill.

But fondness and faith will be growing, Be the sky clear or cloudy above. When fortune is ripe to the mowing We shall gather our harvest of love!

CHARITY

Come! walk with the world and go down to the destitute homes of the poor, Where weeping is louder than laughter, where sorrow and famine abide; Where Azrael reaps a full harvest and darkens each desolate door; And learn of the lowly and meek to lessen your thoughtless pride.

I have seen my Lady flash by--a beauteous vision of ease; I have seen the widow at work till the shadows of night fled the day; I have seen God's poor drink the cup of sorrow and toil to the lees; I have seen the wicked get wealth, and the good go empty away.

"The poor are unworthy, and sinning is found in the homes of the low. If we give we but pander to vice: the beggars our gifts will abuse."

So say you, and pass in your pride, but your heart cries out as you go, "The vile are the first to ape virtue; the wicked the first to accuse!" Communist? Not I! But I hold that the miser who hugs to his heart What for him is but clay and a curse, but to some would be blessing and bread, Is selling his merciful Saviour. Better throw down the price and depart; Better, belike, do as Judas, put a rope to his miserable head.

'Twould be well with you, Midas, to pity the poor who are tarrying here. They may count to your just condemnation the tears which their hungry babes weep. Though you harden your heart for a lifetime, and turn an adamant ear, Their wails may pierce through to your coffin and trouble your long, last sleep.

How read you the Scriptures? What say they? "These three with the world now abide, Hope, charity, faith, and the greatest is charity--blessed above all." Our hands should be fruitful and open; the field for our giving is wide, And blessing shall follow the gifts, though the power to give may be small.

Then time may toil on with its tumults, its troubles and tempests of tears; The sweet, voiceless shadows shall hold us till striving and sorrow are past. We shall wake full refreshed to the judgment, though we slumber for eons of years; And the Lord shall shew us His glory, we shall be like to God at the last.

AMERICA

Columbus came to thee and called thee new! New World to him, but thy rich blood, bright gold, Lay cold where once the fires manifold Raged fiercely. New? Primeval forests grew, Had fallen, and were coal! Thine eagles flew Undaunted then as now, and where the bold South Rocky Mountains rise in fold on fold The Aztec to his God the victim slew. The tropic verdure of thy far north world Had passed forever, moon-like fading out. Sky-piercing mounts have reared them from the seas-- The lost Atlantis has been depth-ward hurled, Since thou wert new!--Old! all thy landmarks shout, And bid us read thy waiting mysteries.

ARTHUR J. STRINGER

A SONG IN AUTUMN

O love, can the tree lure the summer bird Again to the bough where it used to sing, When never a throat in the autumn is heard, And never the glint of a vagrant wing?

Love, Love, can the lute lure the old-time touch Unto fingers forgetful of melody? And we, who have loved for a time overmuch, Bring back the old life as it used to be?

Nay, though there is little in me to love, Come back as the bird to a songless bough: Back now as you came when the blue was above, And summer gleamed soft on your girlish brow.

Come home, O Heart, for the autumn is grey, And I, who have looked for your coming so long, En-isled in your arms, in the old lost way Shall dream our December estranged by a song.

So come, Vernal-Heart, now summer is flown; Let autumn elude the return of the rime, And the sad sea change with the season alone: Not us who have loved--loved well in our time.

* * * * *

Shall summer not know the autumnal touch? Shall love when forlorn of the spring be green? Or we, who were lovers of old overmuch, Regain what is lost, or relume what has been?

BESIDE THE MARTYR'S MEMORIAL

(OXFORD)

Their very gods, it seems, we have forgot; And drawing back the riven veil once more, Too late we learn that theirs the happier lot Who had their foolish gods to perish for.

CANADA TO ENGLAND

Sang one of England in his island home: "Her veins are million, but her heart is one;" And looked from out his wave-bound homeland isle To us who dwell beyond its western sun.

And we among the northland plains and lakes, We youthful dwellers on a younger land, Turn eastward to the wide Atlantic waste, And feel the clasp of England's outstretched hand.

For we are they who wandered far from home To swell the glory of an ancient name; Who journeyed seaward on an exile long, When fortune's twilight to our island came.

But every keel that cleaves the midway waste Binds with a silent thread our sea-cleft strands, Till ocean dwindles and the sea-waste shrinks, And England mingles with a hundred lands.

And weaving silently all far-off shores A thousand singing wires stretch round the earth, Or sleep still vocal in their ocean depths, Till all lands die to make one glorious birth.

So we remote compatriots reply, And feel the world-task only half begun: "We are the girders of the ageing earth, Whose veins are million, but whose heart is one."

BEETHOVEN

He wandered down, an Orpheus wilder-souled, From some melodious world of love and song, And through our earthly vales strange music rolled. Who heard that alien note could only long, As pale Eurydice once longed, to know again The happier ways, the more harmonious air, Where once they heard that half-remembered strain,-- Where once their exiled feet were wont to fare. A gleam of some strange golden life now gone, A sad remembrance of celestial things, Some old-time glory, like the gods', outshone From men's rapt souls, wherein a memory clings Of that diviner day, from them withdrawn. For all the dreams that smouldered in man's breast, And all the clearer ways he yearned to reach,-- The fugitive ideal, the old unrest,-- Found utterance in song, that slept in speech. And like a minstrel in an alien land, Who sings his native strains while men crowd round And hearken long, but cannot understand, He sang to us, and through the unknown sound We caught a passing glimmer of the soul Those foreign runes concealed, and strove to glean From out the uninterpretable whole Some earthlier harmony.

It must have been He heard far-off that low uranian strain That only maddens him who vainly hears; For they, the gods, soon saw the god-like pain That mocked a man, and closed his listening ears.

ALAN SULLIVAN

VENICE

If you would see Venice as she is, Wander by night in silence and alone Among her towers and sculptured palaces, And read the story she has writ in stone; Then, as you read, she will upon you cast The fascination of her wondrous past.

Muse on, and let the silent gondolier Wind at his will 'mid tortuous, twisting ways And broad lagoons, with waters wide and clear, On whose unruffled breast the moonbeam plays; And move not, speak not, for the mystery Of Venice is with you on the sea.

Pass, if you will, beneath the five great domes Of old Saint Mark's; watch how the glittering height Soars in quick curves; see how each sunbeam roams And fills the nave with soft pure amber light; This is the heart of Venice, and the tomb Which folds her story in its sacred gloom.

So leave her sunlight, enter now her cells, By frowning black-browed ports and massy bars, Where pestilence in foul dank vapor dwells, Far, far from sun and day, from moon and stars; The only sound when whispering waters glide In on the bosom of a sluggish tide.

Then turn again into her solitudes,-- Things of to-day will faint and fade like smoke,-- Drift through the darkened nooks where silence broods, Let memory fall upon you like a cloak: Venice will rise around you as of old, Decked out in marble, amethyst, and gold.

But that was years ago; to-day the notes Of wild free song have left her silver streets; Her blazoned banner now no longer floats In aureate folds, no more the sunrise greets; She lives but in a past so strong and brave It serves alike for monument and grave.

THE WHITE CANOE

There's a whisper of life in the gray dead trees, And a murmuring wash on the shore, And a breath of the south in the loitering breeze, To tell that a winter is o'er. While, free at last from its fetters of ice, The river is clear and blue, And cries with a tremulous, quivering voice For the launch of the White Canoe.

Oh, gently the ripples will kiss her side, And tenderly bear her on; For she is the wandering phantom bride Of the river she rests upon; She is loved with a love than cannot forget, A passion so strong and true That never a billow has risen yet To peril the White Canoe.

So come when the moon is enthroned in the sky, And the echoes are sweet and low, And Nature is full of the mystery That none but her children know. Come, taste of the rest that the weary crave, But is only revealed to a few: When there's trouble on shore, there's peace on the wave, Afloat in the White Canoe.

BERTRAM TENNYSON

GORDON

Son of Britannia's isle, There by the storied Nile, The dust has claimed him e'er his work was done; But not for that alone Has Fame's clear trumpet blown Most mournful music o'er her bravest son. Alas! for England, when the dead Fell by a coward's hand her honor fled!

No English squadrons broke Through the thick battle smoke, At that last hour when the hero fell; He hoped to see again (But ah! that hope was vain) Those English colors he had served so well; He fell, forsaken, undismayed, True to the land that thus his trust betrayed.

His was the hardest part, That tries the staunchest heart; Better the headlong charge when hundreds die, Than the relentless foe Watching to strike the blow, And the slow waiting while the bullets fly-- No friends, no hope, but, like a star, High duty shining through the clouds of war.

No stately Gothic fane Roofs in the hero slain, But the wide sky above the desert sands; No graven stone shall tell Where at the last he fell, And, if interred at all, by alien hands,-- Thrust in a shallow grave to wait The last loud summons to the fallen great.

No more can England boast Her name from coast to coast Shall be a passport to her wandering sons; Once they could freely roam, As in their Island home, Safe far abroad as underneath her guns; Or, should mishap for vengeance call, Swift would her anger on the oppressor fall.

But let the meed of blame Fall with its weight of shame On those who lacked the courage to command; The heart of England beats In London's thronging streets, And in the quiet places of the land, Still to its old traditions true, In spite of all our rulers failed to do.

EDWARD WILLIAM THOMSON

A DAY-DREAM

When, high above the busy street, Some hidden voice poured Mary's song. Oh, then my soul forgot the heat And roaring of the city's throng: Then London bells and cries fell low, Blent to a far and murmured tone That changed and chimed in mystic flow, Weaving a spell for me alone.

No more the towering blocks were there, No longer pressed the crowds around: All freely roamed a magic air Within what vast horizon's bound: Beneath a sky of lucent gray Far stretched my circled northern plain, Wild sunflowers decked a prairie gay, And one dear Autumn came again.

Before me trod a winsome maid, And oh, the mien with which she stept! Her soft brown hair, without a braid, Hiding the shoulders where it swept; And glancing backward now she gave To me the smile so true and wise, The radiant look from eyes so grave That spoke her inmost Paradise.

Divinely on my daughter went, The wild flowers leaning from her tread; Dreaming she lived, I watched intent Till, ah, the gracious vision fled; The plain gave place to blocks of grey, The sunlit heaven to murky cloud-- Staring I stood in common day. And never knew the street so loud.

THE SONG-SPARROW

When plowmen ridge the steamy brown, And yearning meadows sprout to green, And all the spires and towers of town Blent soft with wavering mists are seen: When quickened woods in freshening hue Along Mount Royal billowy swell, When airs caress and May is new, Oh, then my shy bird sings so well!

Because the blood-roots flock in white, And blossomed branches scent the air, And mounds with trillium flags are dight, And myriad dells of violets rare; Because such velvet leaves unclose, And newborn rills all chiming ring, And blue the dear St Lawrence flows-- My timid bird is forced to sing.

A joyful flourish lilted clear,-- Four notes--then fails the frolic song, And memories of a vanished year The wistful cadences prolong: "A vanished year--O, heart too sore-- I cannot sing;" thus ends the lay: Long silence, then awakes once more His song, ecstatic of the May!

THE BAD YEAR

May, blighted by keen frosts, passed on to June No blooms, but many a stalk with drooping leaves, And arid Summer wilted these full soon, And Autumn gathered up no wealthy sheaves; Plaintive October saddened for the year, But wild November raged that hope was past, Shrieking, "All days of life are made how drear-- Mad whirl of snow! and Death comes driving fast." Yet sane December, when the winds fell low, And cold, calm light with sunshine tinkled clear, Hearkened to bells more sweet than long ago, And meditated in a mind sincere:-- "Beneath these snows shining from yon red west How sleep the blooms of some delighted May, And June shall riot, lovely as the best That flung their odors forth on all their way: Yes, violet Spring, the balms of her soft breath, Her birdlike voice, the child-joy in her air. Her gentle colors"--sane December saith "They come, they come--O heart, sigh not 'They were.'"

JOHN STUART THOMSON

THE VALE OF ESTABELLE

They hide within the hollows, and they creep into the dell, The little time-stained headstones in the vale of Estabelle.

I often looked across them when I lounged upon the hill; I never walked among them, nor could cross the moody rill.

I had a dread of seeing e'er the dead of pallid face, And feared at night to meet their ghosts haunting a lonely place.

The church bell rang at night time, just one hollow, dismal toll; The agëd by the cranny heard, and sighed: "How grows Death's roll!"

Each meadow has its sparrow and each copse its note of spring; But seasons through I never heard a bird in graveyard sing.

A solemn man, the sexton, and 'twas he you saw at eve Look at the sun, lay down his spade, wipe brow upon his sleeve.

The church was old; its tower bold, and dust bedimmed the panes; The preacher ever paused a while when fell the autumn rains.

The goodwives ceased from musing, and some fear upon them came; "'Tis ill to be from church to-day, when one's not blind or lame."

They often asked me why it was I shunned the headstones so; "I fear them not," I said, "to some new grave with you I'll go."

I thought perhaps a patriarch would tire of life, and sleep; I'd walk behind,--he was so old,--there'd be no need to weep.

The morrow morn came darkly; there was awe within the town; Three days of dread before they said, "'Twas pretty Alice Brown."

Oh! 'tis not she of hazel eyes; of plaited golden hair; Whose smiles of greeting always beamed like heaven on my care!

Not Alice of the sidelong glance, soft heart, and tender sigh, That kissed the rose aswoon: tell me, did God let Alice die?

"The third day past came darkly; there was awe within the town; They called her long, but ne'er will wake your pretty Alice Brown."

I linger in the village still; I cannot go away; I walk the ways alone at eve; sometimes I pause and pray;--

It is not much I say of her; I say it very low; But somehow it is sweet to think, "Perhaps the spirits know."

One house there is I never pass; one way I never look; I never climb the hill at eve; I never cross the brook;

But over there, amid the rest, is carved into a stone, Her name and day, and that sad word I feel the most: "Alone."

They hide within the hollows and they creep into the dell, Those little crumbling headstones in the vale of Estabelle.

EVEN-TIME