Part 1

AT MINAS BASIN

_AND OTHER POEMS_

AT MINAS BASIN

And Other Poems

BY

THEODORE H. RAND D.C.L.

TORONTO: WILLIAM BRIGGS WESLEY BUILDINGS. MONTREAL: C. W. COATES. HALIFAX: S. F. HUESTIS. 1897

Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven, by THEODORE H. RAND, at the Department of Agriculture.

To E.

SHARER OF PERFECT SUMMER DAYS AT PARTRIDGE ISLAND BASIN OF MINAS

TORONTO, CANADA, 1897

(_POESY SPEAKS._)

A body of beauty is mine. O poet, moulder of me, Withhold not the breath divine, The soul of truth that makes free.

Fair form in repose for a day (The body of beauty of me) With the pulse-beats of life all away, Is well, for beauty and thee.

Yet give to me life all aglow,-- Not a demon of darkness to blight, But a love-lit soul pure as snow,-- Beckon me an angel of light.

A body of beauty is mine. O poet, moulder of me, Inbreathe with breathings divine, Or body alone let it be.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

_Poesy Speaks_ ix

At Minas Basin 15

The Rain Cloud 16

The Rose 17

A Willow at Grand Pré 18

The Bowing Dyke 19

Love's Immanence 20

Mystery 21

The Night-Fisher 22

A Deep-Sea Shell 23

A Red Sunrise 24

The Opal Fires are Gone 25

The Cumulus Cloud 26

Sea Fog 27

Partridge Island 28

Tennyson Rock 29

Of Beauty 30

The Undertow 31

Glooscap 32

Silas Tertius Rand 33

The Tireless Sea 34

The Veiled Presence 35

Resistless Fate 36

The Sea Undine 37

To Emeline 38

The Cirrus Cloud 39

Day and Night 40

Under the Beeches 41

The Nightingale 42

The Loon 43

Hepaticas 44

In the Mayflower Copse 45

June 46

An Inland Spruce 47

The Ghost Flower 48

Annapolis Basin 49

In Autumn's Dreamy Ear 50

Victor is He! 51

McMaster University 52

Conduct 53

International Arbitration 54

The House of God 55

Ben Nachmani 56

Renewal 57

The Christ 58

Revelation 58

Light at Eventide 59

Ben Shalom 59

Banishment 60

Now are the Bridals of the Leafy Wood 60

May's Fairy Tale 61

My Robin 67

Elissa 69

The Humming-Bird 71

The Hepatica 73

The White Rose.--(At ----'s Grave) 75

The War Hercules 77

In the Cool of the Day 79

Beauty 82

The Dragonfly 84

Deathless 90

A Dream 93

Nature 96

"I Am" 99

The Glad Golden Year 102

Tetrapla 105

Fairy Glen 107

In City Streets 109

Bay of Fundy 112

At the Look-off.--(Partridge Island) 116

The Stormy Petrel 120

Oblivion 122

Sea Music 126

Summer Fog 130

The Arethusa 132

Dian and Fundy.--(Designs for a Time-Piece) 134

The Old Fisher's Song 136

Nora Lee 144

To W 150

Marie Depure 157

"By the Love."--An Easter Idyll 161

_Notes_ 171

AT MINAS BASIN.

About the buried feet of Blomidon, Red-breasted sphinx with crown of grey and green, The tides of Minas swirl,--their veilëd queen Fleet-oared from far by galleys of the sun. The tidal breeze blows its divinest gale! The blue air winks with life like beaded wine!-- Storied of Glooscap, of Evangeline-- Each to the setting sun this sea did sail. Opulent day has poured its living gold Till all the west is belt with crimson bars, Now darkness lights its silver moon and stars,-- The festal beauty of the world new-old. Facing the dawn, in vigil that ne'er sleeps, The sphinx the secret of the Basin keeps.

THE RAIN CLOUD.

Swift changed to storm tones is the golden air, And shut the heavens with the descending veil Of cloud,--here warm and brown, there cold and pale, White-veined with sudden fire and red with glare. Now falls the twisted rain, like unbound hair, Dusking the wooded hills and mountain trail, Now, marshalled by the trumpets of the gale, Sweeps wide with level lances to their blare.

O rain cloud, minister of cooling dew To waiting harvests sheathed in mystery, Bearer of blessed balms for fevered ills! Thy rending veil breaks on the holiest blue, All quick and palpitant as angels see, And God's smile falls upon the breathing hills.

THE ROSE.

Five-petaled splendor set in hillside place, Parent of queenly sisterhood that stir To every garden wind, and swift confer Attar to pour from out each precious vase! Symbol of secrecy to Latin race, Virtue and blood to York and Lancaster, Thy tint _de Pompadour_ sweet arts transfer To Sevres', and erst "rose noble" bore thy grace.

To me thou art the glow of secret heat That burneth at the heart of day and night, An odorous flush of beauty without blame,-- Love's oriel wherethrough my eyes discreet May look far in beyond the outward sight And, unconsumëd, see His fiery flame.

A WILLOW AT GRAND PRÉ.

The fitful rustle of thy sea-green leaves Tells of the homeward tide, and free-blown air Upturns thy gleaming leafage like a share,-- A silvery foam thy bosom, as it heaves! O peasant tree, the regal Bay doth bare Its throbbing breast to ebbs and floods--and grieves! O slender fronds, pale as a moonbeam weaves, Joy woke your strain that trembles to despair!

Willow of Normandy, say, do the birds Of Motherland plain in thy sea-chant low, Or voice of those who brought thee in the ships To tidal vales of Acadie?--Vain words! Grief unassuaged makes moan that Gaspereau Bore on its flood the fleet with iron lips!

THE BOWING DYKE.

Sea-widowed lands more fair than Tantramar! Winter's green providence in July's sun! The clattering steel till all was over and done, Flashed on thy breast from dawn to evening star. Soon herds of sweet-breathed kine of sere Canard, Whose eager hoofs the hasting morn outrun, Sea of lush clover aftermath has won, And golden-girdled bees anear and far.

Lo, as the harvest moon comes up the sky, Her shield of argent mellowed to the rim, The phantom of the buried tide doth flow; And without noise of wave or sea-bird's cry Fills all thy ancient channels to the brim, Thy levels of a thousand years ago!

LOVE'S IMMANENCE.

I watch the cloud soft-poised in upper air And feel a presence bodied in its folds, The wind in dark and shine a voice aye holds, The noontide forest listens to my prayer. The trampling seas with rumbling chariots bear Significant behests in heats and colds, Urim fire throbs intense on barren wolds-- The crystal globëd dew-drops Love declare!

The silence of the wheeling heavens by night, By day, is but the pealing anthem sweet Beyond the pitch of my dull ears to hear, While veiling shadows are the excess of light That marks the goings of His power so near, And hides Love's regal presence on His seat.

MYSTERY.

O veiled enchantress of my days and nights, That in sweet wonder's realm of witchery To fairer visions ever beckons me, Thou'st left the valleys for the rugged heights! A gladsome youth, the hill of thy delights Winged my lithe spirit to speed after thee, But now, come down, close-veilëd Mystery, The garish sun but withers and affrights.

I feel thy charm, shy and elusive one, As in the gleaming springtide of my life, Whose zest was all thy unattained pursuit. Still flit before me till the race is run, And when with doubt the common day is rife, Thy wonder-wand set thick with flower and fruit.

THE NIGHT-FISHER.

Grey liegeman of sundown and dawn, who chides With a lone song the ocean-murmuring trees, I haste with thee at dusk to stalk the seas Where feed the finny flocks of shepherding tides. O wild the pulses beat as round us glides The tidal spirit, like a midnight breeze, Burdened with moan of life-and-death decrees,-- The deep night's tide-line pacing with our strides!

More weird than winkings of the ruddy Mars These flitting gleams and breaths of hell and heaven, Searching the shadowy folds 'twixt peace and dread!-- Nor dreamed I such solemnities did leaven Life's daily meal and league its dole of bread With unseen forces vaster than the stars'.

A DEEP-SEA SHELL.

[GEORGE V. DEARBORN.]

Arrived from out abysmal deeps of brine, A regal splendor glows within thy whorl, Like pomp of rosy morn in shimmering pearl. Surely "the hand that made thee is divine"! Ah, why so richly dight for beauty's shrine? No eye can feast on walls of gemmëd burl Far down the overwhelming rush and swirl Of awful wastes scarce plumbed of fathom-line!

Fit for the palace of high seneschal! Inlaid with colors which the Tyrian King Vain sought to rival on his royal scroll, And echoing yet the ocean's trembling string: Methinks the Master wrought this ivory hall To please the love of beauty in His soul.

A RED SUNRISE.

The naked Bay its silver notes is telling Sweeter than flute or harp or singing bird, Beatings of rosy rhythm in winsome word Of lilting song are softly shoreward welling: Anear and far the ruddy waters swelling, In laughter-peals around the fair earth heard, Thrill swift the home-bound keels so long unstirred-- The kiss of day the weary wings compelling.

Beware the elfin bugles sounding clear As glows morn's pallid ash to crimson flame And makes a bloody dazzle of the waves! Ere burn the embers in the west all blear, The deep shall thunder its awful chant of fame O'er noble hearts gone down to wandering graves.

THE OPAL FIRES ARE GONE.

The opal fires are gone, and but a stain Of day yet lingers as the sudden night With swift cloud blots the crouching hills from sight, And the far sea moans deep in ominous pain. Ah me, it is the swart-winged hurricane! The furious tide in elemental fight Is lashing fierce and hoar with giant might,-- The bleeding shores the tale shall tell the main!

Brave sailor, reeling in thy storm-drunk bark, Blinded by sheeted rain blown tempest-wild, And vexed with roaring darkness round about! The heaven-sent vision fair of wife and child Calm seated at love's hearth, with face ahark, Makes thee divine amid the awful rout.

THE CUMULUS CLOUD.

Mountains of heaven, in stainless white ye shine, Islanded in calm of pearl- and sapphire-blue! The pillared heights are lifted into view In spectral power reposeful as divine. A timeless peace abides in every line Soft moulded from the quarries of the dew, Yet fateful fire the inmost heart throbs through, And thunder slumbers in the brows benign.

Paling before the massive whiteness there, The faltering moon comes up the waiting night; The faithful stars, like folded lilies, sleep Till Love's wide wonder of the lullëd air Melts with its rose-tipt crests in azure deep, And sets the skyey plains abloom with light.

SEA FOG.

Here danced an hour ago a sapphire sea; Now, airy nothingness, wan spaces vast, Pale draperies of the formless fog o'ercast, And wreathëd waters grey with mystery! The ship glides like a phantom silently, As screams the white-winged gull before the mast; Weird elemental shapes go flitting past, Which loom as giant ghosts above the quay.

The vapor lifts! Again the sea gleams bright; The heavens have hid within their chambers far Cloud-stuff of gossamer, from which are spun To-morrow's skyey pomps inwove with light, The belted splendors for the rising sun, And rosy curtains for the evening star.

PARTRIDGE ISLAND.

The title deeds of these rich shores are thine By age,--thine, too, by succor and defence; Ere they were kissed by winds, or waves beat thence, Thy breast of beauty broke the beating brine. All hail, fair Isle, first born! Thy jeweled shrine Is worn by pilgrim feet; thy firgroves dense, Peopled with Hamadryads, cheat the sense With frolic fays and all the rosy Nine.

These younglings--Gilbert's Cliff, and Sharp, and Split, Bold Silver Crag, the Islands Five, and Two, And broad-browed Blomidon--the Basin's Ben,-- When comes the witchery of fog-wreathed view, Each robed in richest hues, with curtsies fit, Sails in and out the circle of thy ken.

TENNYSON ROCK.

Majestic, awesome and inspiring mock, Sculptured by frost and sun and bitter brine! Has nature sympathy with men divine, To carve remembrance in colossal rock? Circled by voices of the sea-god's flock, Deep calm is his, aloofness of the pine,-- As when he waited his great Pilot's sign Ere he embarked from out earth's sheltered loch.

O seer and Englishman, our answering hearts Leapt at thy words of empire! Sure 'tis meet In "that true North" thy form should front the sea, Where Howe, McDonald, Tupper played their parts At statecraft, gath'ring at Old England's feet Our Pleiad State,--one flag, one destiny.

OF BEAUTY.

The convoluted wave, God's first sea-shell, Upgathers now the deep's great harmonies; From the far blue an Alp-like cloud doth well, Baring its azured peaks to the heavenlies. My spirit's outward bound, hath liberty! Earnest as rising flame its young love burns To catch the awesome gladness flowing free O'er earth and sky as Beauty's face upturns.

O naught is great without thy effluence! In curving billow's culminating sweep, In mountain heights, the strength of grace is seen. Essence divine, of God-like competence,-- Reposeful in the heart of things as sleep! Robed in the purple, sceptred, throned a queen!

THE UNDERTOW.

[B. B. D.]

O'er all the shining levels of the beach The tide outpours its hissing, foaming brine, While with the primal surge the winds combine To press the eager waves to utmost reach. See yon brave billow, rising from the pleach Of seething waters, with a might divine, Its sinews wrought in beauty's flowing line, Leap forward now to make the age-sought breach!

Lo, as the cresting plume is seen aloft, The footing of its strength on sudden slips And all is whelmed in thunderous recoils! Ah, tragedy of lusty life! How oft Some high emprise a soul divinely grips, But as it crests fate's undertow despoils!

GLOOSCAP.

Dim name, yet grand, that ever winks serene In the red fagot's light, and like a ghost Hovers above these raucous tides, this coast, Wreathing weird webs of arrowy salts and keen! Under the black blue night's unrollëd screen The loon is calling to the fiery host, And yet no answer comes to keep thy boast,-- Far years their mellow thunders roll between.

Divinest of the red man's race and name, Fulness of Hiawatha's dawning day, Giver of laws, priest, prophet, all confest! Thou'lt come again, appeased thy wrath and shame, Thy speed in all thy limbs, up yonder Bay In white canoe from out the naked west.

SILAS TERTIUS RAND.

Oft did thy spell enthrall me, spite the cost! Thou brought'st a charmed and fadeless holiday-- Stories and songs and Indian epic lay-- Whene'er thy eager step the threshold crost. Imagination all its plumes uptost To follow where thy spirit led the way!-- (The sense that thou saw'st God when thou didst pray I never through the dimming years have lost.)

Fair Minas' shores thy step did gladden, too! Thou charm'dst great Glooscap from the unlettered past, And told'st his story to the listener nigh'st; Ay, lover of song, of learnëd lore and vast, Thou lov'dst the Indian with a love so true, In his sweet tongue thou gavest him the Christ.

THE TIRELESS SEA.

Age after age the tireless sea doth fling Its serried waves against this frowning rock, (Whose base has known a thousand years of shock,) And shouts its purpose to its floor to bring. High up and landward now the ravens wing, On trees sure-rooted inland nests the hawk; Instinct of doom! for here swift ships shall dock, And give of east and west, and commerce sing.

Warriors of truth, unwearied host of God, Who, like the deep, march to the signs of heaven, "Thus saith the Lord" your cry, count not the years! Grey superstition's crumbling front shall nod Beneath the iteration of your steven, And God's sweet love flood all the place of tears.

THE VEILED PRESENCE.

An ashen grey touched faint my night-dark room, I flung my window wide to the whispering lawn-- Great God! I saw Thy mighty globe from gloom Roll with its sleeping millions to the dawn. No tremor spoke its motion swift and vast, In hush it swept the awful curve adown, The shadow that its rushing speed did cast Concealed the Father's hand, the Kingly crown.

Into the deeps an age has passed since then, Yet evermore for me, more humble grown, The vision of His awesome presence veiled, Burns in the flying spheres, still all unknown, In nature's mist-immantled seas unsailed, And in the deeper shadowed hearts of men.

RESISTLESS FATE.

Resistless fate and iron destiny Are writ upon the tide--its branded mark. It comes and goes heedless of wind or bark, Nature's untamed and tameless energy. So rolls the cycle of eternity,-- Days, months, and years--faint shadows on the arc Within our human ken--rush from the dark And speed return as God's own mystery.

I on this tide-beat shore, and clutching time, Marvel of what account my selfhood's will,-- 'Gainst timeless might time's impotence is laid! And through my inmost soul, as at the prime, A voice from out the awesome vast doth thrill: "O man, thou art in God's own image made!"

THE SEA UNDINE.

Exquisite thing soft cradled by the tide, Sprung not from lathe or wheel or human wit, Wonder of whorls which touch the infinite,-- Shallop that waits a brave undine's white bride! Within, the smooth and sheeny walls are dyed With the pure pink of autumn dawns alit; Without, with stories of the deep o'er-writ,-- How fairy slight the thunderous seas to ride!

The massy tides gride over reef and ledge, And sudden waves from fell Euroclydon Dash to swift death the sailor in the Bay; But this, all lipt with pearl, and on the edge Of doom--the fingers of a babe might slay-- Sleeps in the stressful surge at Blomidon.

TO EMELINE.

In white-spruce bower, with outlook on the sea, Kingcups and daisies dancing down the slope, And broad-winged ships, world-messengers of hope, Furling their plumes or lifting them all free To catch the skyey airs--here 'tis that we Oft watch the fringes of the tide, where ope The swinging doors through which all blind-fold grope The muffled waves of shoreless mystery.

The touch of two vast worlds is on us now. Our spirits hear the ebb and flow unseen Of swift commingling tides of far and near,-- The low sweet murmur of the early vow, Commerce of life's strange sea, on wing between, And folding plumes arrived the heavenly pier.

THE CIRRUS CLOUD.

Thou hast the secret of the fiery dew, Variety and number infinite Are vestured in thy wavy flakes of white,-- Of distance and of space thou hast the clue. Aloof from vapory clouds that fume and spue, Lifting thyself victorious in fight Into the far repose of zonëd light, Thou strivest to attain nirvâna-blue.

Mottled, or plumed, or ribbed, or ripple-barred, Encamped upon the unfenced fields of space, Unsullied are thy tents cool-washed in air; And when morn's bugle blows, or sky's new-starred, Thy cohorts wait day's coming, parting face, Like flocks of rosy angels drifting there.

DAY AND NIGHT.

And so the strife goes on from age to age, In ceaseless round of victory and defeat: Young Day comes forth, sun-clad, with shining feet, In beauteous pomp, and throws his battle-gage. Grim ancient Night, distraught and blind with rage, Twanging her dreadful bow, flies in retreat, Wrapt round with raven darkness as a sheet, Till from the east she may the duel wage.

So Night, pursuing wounded Day, takes breath To find his blood-stained mantle in the west, And dusks it o'er with plumëd shafts of death. Secure beneath the horizon's verge, in wrath He wings a Parthian arrow back his path, And dyes with crimson Ethiop's jeweled vest.

UNDER THE BEECHES.

The sibyl's speech breaks from these leafen lips, Moved by soft airs from shadowy spaces blown: "We rear these giant boles amid eclipse, We workmen die, the work abides alone." The day has met the night beneath the sky, And the hot earth put off its robe of flame; Sweet peace and rest come with the night-bird's cry, Sweet rest and peace the herald stars proclaim.

'Tis very heaven to taste the wells of sleep, The founts of supersensuous repose!-- The sibyl's rune still murmurs on the breeze, The purple night falls thick about the trees, And blessed stars, like lilies white and rose, Burst into bloom on heaven's far azure deep.

THE NIGHTINGALE.

O seraph bird who on God's altar-stairs Dost ring, in showers of silver peals, thy bells Of song that ceaseless flows like dropping-wells, And sprinkles all the dusk with holy prayers! O welkin glad, shot through and through with song, As upward springs the spirit tipt with flame! 'Tis not to Itys dead nor Dian's shame These joy-pangs, with their hint of tears, belong.

The life which pulses in the bursting year A thousand choirs hymn on the sunlit globe; But, lest the living flame to ashes turn, Thou, in the voiceless night, O priestly seer, Interpreter of nature, tak'st thy robe, And fill'st with vocal fire the sacred urn.

THE LOON.