Part 4

Yea, he is dead; this mighty seaman! Four long centuries ago. Beating westward, ever westward, Beating out from old Bristowe, Saw he far in visions lifted, Down the golden sunset's glow, Through the bars of twilight rifted, All the glories that we know. Beating westward, ever westward, Over heaving leagues of brine, Buffeted by arctic scurries, Languid trade-winds from the line; With a courage heaven-gifted, And a fortitude divine. Yea, he is dead; but who shall say That all the splendid deeds he wrought, That all the lofty truths he taught (If truth be knowledge nobly sought), Are dead and vanished quite away? Nay nay, he lives; and such as he, In every lofty human dream, In every true sublimity That splendors earth and makes it teem With inward might and majesty; This grand old Pilot of Bristowe, Incarnate, comes to earth again, As when, four hundred years ago, He swept in storm and shine and snow, Athwart the thunders of the main.

IX

Greater far than shaft or storied fane, Than bronze and marble blent, Greater than all the honors he could gain From a nation's high intent, He sleeps alone, in his great isle, unknown, With the chalk-cliffs all around him for his mighty grave-yard stone, And the league-long sounding roar Of old ocean, forevermore Beating, beating, about his rest, For fane and monument.

The World-Mother

(SCOTLAND)

By crag and lonely moor she stands, This mother of half a world's great men, And kens them far by sea-wracked lands, Or orient jungle or western fen.

And far out mid the mad turmoil, Or where the desert places keep Their lonely hush, her children toil, Or wrapt in wide-world honor sleep.

By Egypt's sands or western wave, She kens her latest heroes rest, With Scotland's honor o'er each grave, And Britain's flag above each breast.

And some at home.--Her mother love Keeps crooning wind-songs o'er their graves, Where Arthur's castle looms above, Or Strathy storms or Solway raves.

Or Lomond unto Nevis bends In olden love of clouds and dew; Where Trosach unto Stirling sends Greetings that build the years anew.

Out where her miles of heather sweep, Her dust of legend in his breast, 'Neath agèd Dryburgh's aisle and keep, Her Wizard Walter takes his rest.

And her loved ploughman, he of Ayr, More loved than any singer loved By heart of man amid those rare, High souls the world hath tried and proved;

Whose songs are first to heart and tongue, Wherever Scotsmen greet together, And, far-out alien scenes among, Go mad at the glint of a sprig of heather.

And he her latest wayward child, Her Louis of the magic pen, Who sleeps by tropic crater piled, Far, far, alas, from misted glen;

Who loved her, knew her, drew her so, Beyond all common poet's whim;-- In dreams the whaups are calling low, In sooth her heart is woe for him.

And they, her warriors, greater none E'er drew the blade of daring forth, Her Colin[2] under Indian sun, Her Donald[3] of the fighting North.

Or he, her greatest hero, he, Who sleeps somewhere by Nilus' sands, Grave Gordon, mightiest of those free, Great captains of her fighting bands.

Yea, these and myriad myriads more, Who stormed the fort or ploughed the main, To free the wave or win the shore, She calls in vain, she calls in vain.

Brave sons of her, far severed wide By purpling peak or reeling foam; From western ridge or orient side, She calls them home, she calls them home.

And far, from east to western sea, The answering word comes back to her, "Our hands were slack, our hopes were free, We answered to the blood astir;

"The life by Kelpie loch was dull, The homeward slothful work was done, We followed where the world was full, To dree the weird our fates had spun.

"We built the brigg, we reared the town, We spanned the earth with lightning gleam, We ploughed, we fought, mid smile and frown, Where all the world's four corners teem.

"But under all the surge of life, The mad race-fight for mastery, Though foremost in the surgent strife, Our hearts went back, went back to thee."

For the Scotsman's speech is wise and slow, And the Scotsman's thought it is hard to ken, But through all the yearnings of men that go, His heart is the heart of the northern glen.

His song is the song of the windy moor, And the humming pipes of the squirling din; And his love is the love of the shieling door, And the smell of the smoking peat within.

And nohap how much of the alien blood Is crossed with the strain that holds him fast, Mid the world's great ill and the world's great good, He yearns to the Mother of men at last.

For there's something strong and something true In the wind where the sprig of heather is blown; And something great in the blood so blue, That makes him stand like a man alone.

Yea, give him the road and loose him free, He sets his teeth to the fiercest blast, For there's never a toil in a far countrie, But a Scotsman tackles it hard and fast.

He builds their commerce, he sings their songs, He weaves their creeds with an iron twist, And making of laws or righting of wrongs, He grinds it all as the Scotsman's grist.

* * * * *

Yea, there by crag and moor she stands, This mother of half a world's great men, And out of the heart of her haunted lands She calls her children home again.

And over the glens and the wild sea floors She peers so still as she counts her cost, With the whaups low calling over the moors, "Woe, woe, for the great ones she hath lost."

[2] Colin Campbell, Hero of Lucknow.

[3] Sir Donald Mackay, first Lord Reay, whose Mackay Dutch regiment was famous in the thirty years war.

The Lazarus of Empire

The Celt, he is proud in his protest, The Scot, he is calm in his place, For each has a word in the ruling and doom Of the Empire that honors his race; And the Englishman, doggèd and grim, Looks the world in the face as he goes, And he holds a proud lip, for he sails his own ship, And he cares not for rivals nor foes:-- But lowest and last, with his areas vast, And horizon so servile and tame, Sits the poor beggar Colonial Who feeds on the crumbs of her fame.

He knows no place in her councils, He holds no part in the word That girdles the world with its thunders When the fiat of Britain is heard:-- He beats no drums to her battles, He gives no triumphs her name, But lowest and last, with his areas vast, He feeds on the crumbs of her fame.

How long, O how long, the dishonor, The servile and suppliant place? Are we Britons who batten upon her, Or degenerate sons of the race? It is souls that make nations, not numbers, As our forefathers proved in the past. Let us take up the burden of empire, Or nail our own flag to the mast. Doth she care for us, value us, want us, Or are we but pawns in the game; Where lowest and last, with our areas vast, We feed on the crumbs of her fame?

In Holyrood

1897

I stand in Edinburgh, in Holyrood, Where Scotland's Mary flaunted; iron Knox came, With cavernous eyes and words of prophet-flame, And broke her soul as bonds of brittle wood:-- And all stern Scotland's evil and her good, Her austere ghosts, her souls of fiery shame, Her adamantine passions none could tame, Arise anew and drip in Rizzio's blood.

Here in these walls, these guilty corridors, Beside[4] that bed where Elizabeth's eyes look down;-- Across the centuries with their fading band Of angry years of Presbyterian frown,-- I only know these tears[5] of weird remorse; The woman rules. All else is shifting sand.

[4] In Queen Mary's bedroom in Holyrood, a portrait of Queen Elizabeth hangs on the wall above the bed.

[5] It is said that Knox, during this memorable interview, made the Queen weep.

Unabsolved

A DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE

(This poem is founded on the confession of a man who went with one of the expeditions to save Sir John Franklin's party, and who, being sent ahead, saw signs of them, but, through cowardice, was afraid to tell.)

O Father, hear my tale, then pity me, For even God his pity hath withdrawn. O death was dread and awful in those days! You prate of hell and punishment to come, And endless torments made for those who sin. Stern priest, put down your cross and hearken me;-- I see forever a white glinting plain, From night to night across the twinkling dark, A world of cold and fear and dread and death, And poor lost ones who starve and pinch and die;-- I could have saved them--I--yea, even I. You talk of hell! Is hell to see poor frames, Wan, leathery cheeks, and dull, despairing eyes, From whence a low-flamed madness ebbing out, Goes slowly deathward through the eerie hours, To hear forever pitiless, icy winds Feel in the shivering canvas of the tent, With idle, brute curiosity nature hath, While out around, one universe of death, Stretches the loveless, hearthless arctic night?

This is my doom, it sitteth by my side, And never leaves me through the desolate years. Go, take your hell to men who never lived, Save as the slow world wendeth, sluggish, dull. Even they must suffer also, poor bleak ones, Then is your feeble comfort nothing worth. You tell me to have hope, God will forgive. O Priest, can God forgive a sin like mine? You say He is all-loving, did He lie With me that night amid the eyeless dark, And writhe with me, and whisper, "Save thyself, That way to north lies cold and age and death, And awful failure on men's awèd tongues, To linger years hereafter; Southward lies Home heat and love, and sweet, blood-pulsing life,-- Life, with its morns and eves and glad to-morrows, And joy and hope for many days to be?"

Did He, I say, lie with me there that night, And know that awful tragedy beyond, And my poor tragedy enacted there? Then must He feel Him since as I have felt, And live that hideous misery in His heart. And, knowing this, I say unto thee, priest, He could not be a God and say, forgive. You plead my soul's salvation the one end And aim of all my thought; then hearken, priest, For this my sin hath made me more than wise:-- That seems to me the one great sin I sinned In selling all to save mine evil self.

Stay, hearken, priest, and haunt me not with hopes As futile as those icy-fingered winds That stirred the canvas there that arctic night. I bid thee hark and mumble not thy prayers Like August bees heard in a summer room, That drone afar, but keep them for the dead, The dull-eared dead who sleep and heed them not.

Then hearken, priest, and learn thee of my woe, For I have lain afar on northern nights, By star-filled wastes, and conned it o'er and o'er, And thought on God, and life, and many things, And all the baffling mystery of the dark. And I have held that awful rendezvous Of naked self with self alone and bare, And knew myself as men have never known;-- Have fought the duel, flashing hilt to hilt, And blade to blade, of flesh and spirit there, Until I lay a weak and wounded thing, Like some poor, mangled bird the sportsman leaves, Writhing and twisting there amid the dark.

You talk of ladders leading up to light, Of windows bursting on the perfect day, Of dawns grown ruddy on the blackest night. Yea, I have groped about the muffled walls, And beat my spirit's prison all in vain, Only to find them shrouded fold on fold; And still the cruel, icy stars look down, And my dread memory stayeth with me still.

It was a strange, mad quest we went upon, To seek the living in the lifeless north. For days and days and long, lone, loveless nights We set our faces toward the arctic sky, And threaded wastes of that lone wilderness, Beyond the lands of summer and glad spring, Beyond the regions kind of flower and bird, Past glint horizons of auroral gleams, A haunted world of winter's wizened sleep, Where death, a giant, aged, and stark and wan, Kept fast the entrance of those sunless caves Where hides the day beyond the icy seas. Long day by day a desolation went Where our wan faces fared, o'er all that waste; And I was young and filled with love of life, And fear of ugly death as some weird black, The enemy of love and youth and joy; A lonely, ruined bridge at edge of night, Fading in blackness at the outer end. And those were cold, stern men I went with there, Who held their lives as men do hold a gift Not worth the keeping; men who told dread tales, That made a madness in me of that waste And all its hellish, lonely solitude, And set my heart abeating for the south, Until that awful desolation ringed My reason round, and shrunk my fearful heart. Yea, Father, I had saved them but for this;-- Why did they send me on alone, ahead, Poor me, the only weak one of that band, Who was too much of coward to show my fear? Why did life give me that mad fear of death, To make me selfish at the very last? Why did God give those men into my hand, And leave them victim to a craven fear That walked those lonely wastes in form of man?

No, Father, take your cross, mine is a pain That only distant ages can out-burn. Forgiveness! No, you know not what you say; You churchmen mumble words as charmers do, And talk of God and love so glib and pat, And think you reach men's souls and give them light, When all the time my spirit is to you A land unfound, a region far-removed, Where walk dim ghosts of thoughts and fears and pains You never dreamed of. What know you of souls Like this of mine that hath girt misery's sum, And found the black with which God veils His face? You say the church absolves, you speak of peace; You talk of what not even God can do, Be He but what you make Him. In my light,-- And mine is light of one who knows the case, The facts, the reasons, and hath weighed them too,-- There is but one absolver, the absolved.

For I, since that far, fatal, arctic night, Have been alone in some dread, shadowy court, Where I was judge and guilty prisoner too. Words, words are empty; were life built on words, How rich the poor would grow, the weak be strong, The hateful loving, and the scornful weak!-- The king would be a peasant, and the poor A king in his own right; the murderer, red From his foul guilt, would pass to God's own breast, And all damned things, long damned of earth's consent, And some dread law much older far than we, Would blossom righteous under heaven's face.

Still fared we north across that frozen waste Of icy horror ringed with awful night, To seek the living in a world of death; And as we fared a terror grew and grew About my heart like madness, till I dreamed A vague desire to flee by night and creep, By steel-blue windless plain and haunted wood, And wizened shore and headland, once more south. There, as we went, the days grew wan and shrunk, And nights grew vast and weird and beautiful, Walled with flame-glories of auroral light, Ringing the frozen world with myriad spears Of awful splendor there across the night. And ever anon a shadowy, spectral pack Of gleaming eyes and panting, lurid tongues Haunted the lone horizon toward the south.

Then life ebbed lower in the bravest heart, And spake the leader, "If in ten more days We chance on nothing, then will we return, And set our faces once more to the south." For that dread land began to close us in, With cold and hunger, bit at our poor limbs, Till life grew there a feeble, flickering flame, Amid the snows and ice-floes of that land. Then ten days crept out shrunk and gray and wan, With nothing but the lonely, haunted waste. Then spake the leader, "If in five more days!" Then parcelled out those five gray, haggard days, While life to me grew like an ebbing tide, That surged far out from some dread death-like strand. And horror came upon me like the night, That seemed to gird the world in desolate walls. Then spake the leader, "If in three more days!"

But when the third day waned we came, at last, Unto the shores of some dread, lonely sea, That gloomed to north and night, and far beyond, Where ruined straits and headlands loomed and sank, There seemed the awful endings of the world.

Then spake the leader, "Let us go not yet, But stay a little ere we turn us south, Perchance, poor souls, they might be somewhere here." And then to me, "You go, for you are young And strong, and life throbs quickest in your veins, And you have eyes more strong to see, for ours Are dimmed by the dread frost-mists of this land; And creep out there beyond yon gleaming ledge, And bring me word of what you there may see.

And if you meet no sign of mast or sail, Or hull or wreck, or mark of living soul, Then we will turn our faces to the south; For this great ocean's vastness hems us in, And death here nightly creeps from strand to strand, And binds with girth of black the gleaming world."

Then, whispering "Madness, madness," to the dark, I crept me fearful o'er that gleaming ledge, And saw but night and awful gulfs of dark, And weird ice-mountains looming desolate there, And far beyond the vastness of that sea. And then--O God, why died I not that hour?-- Amid the gleaming floes far up that shore, So far it seemed that man's foot scarce could go, The certain, tapering outline of a mast, And one small patch of rag; and then I felt No man could ever live to reach that place, And horror seized me of that haunted world, That I should die there and be froze for aye, Amid the ice-core of its awful heart. Then crept I back, the weak ghost of a life, A miserable, shaking, coffined fear, And spake, "I saw but ice and winds and dark, And the dread vastness of that desolate sea." Again he spake, "Creep out once more and look; Perchance your sight was misled by the gleam." And then once more I crept out on that ledge, And saw again the night and awful dark, And that poor beckoning mast that haunts me yet; And as I lay those moments seemed to grow, As men have felt in looking down long years, And there I chose 'twixt evil and the good, And took the evil; then began my hell, And back I crept with that black lie on lips, And spake again, "I only saw the night, And those weird mountains and the awful deep."

At that he moaned and spake, "Poor souls! poor souls! Then they are doomed if ever men were doomed." Whereat a sudden, great auroral flame Filled all the heaven, lighting wastes and sea, And came a wondrous shock across the world, Like sounds of far-off battle where hosts die, As if God thundered back mine awful lie, And I fell in a heap where all was black.

When next I lived, we were full three days south, And two had died upon that dreadful march; The memory came, and I went laughing mad, But kept mine awful secret to this hour.

No, priest, you can do nothing; pain like mine Must smoulder out in its own agony, Till there be nought but ashes at the last.

But something 'mid the pauses of the dark Doth teach me that I am not all alone, For I have dreamed in my dread, maddest hour, An awful shadow, blacker than my black, Went ever with me. Hearken to me now: I never felt a hand or saw a face, I never knew a comfort more than sleep, The winters they are only barren snows, And age is hard, and death waits at the last.

But I have felt in some dim, shapeless way, As memories long remembered after youth, That back of all there is some mighty will, Beyond the little dreams that we are here, Beyond the misery of our days and years, Beyond the outmost system's outmost rim, Where wrinkled suns in awful blackness swim, A wondrous mercy that is working still.

Her Look

Time may set his fingers there, Fix the smiles that curve about Her winsome mouth, and touch her hair, Put the curves of youth to rout; But the "something" God put there, That which drew me to her first, Not the imps of pain and care, Not all sorrow's fiends accurst, Can kill the look that God put there.

Something beautiful and rare, Nothing common can destroy; Not all the leaden load of care, Not all the dross of earth's alloy; Better than all fame or gold, True as only God's own truth, It is something all hearts hold Who have loved once in their youth.

That sweet look her face doth hold Thus will ever be to me; Joy may all her pinions fold, Care may come and misery; Through the days of murk and shine, Though the roads be foul or fair, I will see through love's glad eyne That sweet look that God put there.

The Wayfarer

He woke with the dawning Met eyes with the sun, And drank the wild rapture Of living begun.

But he went with the moment To follow the clue, Ere the first red of dawning Had drunk the blue dew.

Follow him, follow him, Where the world will, Under the sunlight By meadow and hill.

Down the blue distance, Round the world's rim, Where the hosts of the future Are horning for him.

Follow him, call to him, Pray to him, Sweet, Tell him the morning Is fresh for his feet;

Sing him the rapture, The glamour, the gleam Of pearly dew-azure That curtains the stream;

Sing the glad thrushnote That never knew pain, But sing him and call him And pray him in vain.

For ere the red dewdrop In sunlight was pearled, He heard that mad ocean That whelms the world.

Yea, heard that voice calling Past sunlight and dew, That rarest, alluringest, Ever heart knew.

That siren of sunrise, That weaver of songs, Till the heart of man hearkens And gladdens and longs,

Till o'er the blue distance, As opens the rose, The yearning impulsion Of all his life goes;

And many a dragon Chimera so grim, Down the dream of the morning Is vanquished by him.

Yea, sing to him, call him through Heartache in vain. But the gladdest day wakened To glory, must wane;

And the noonday he longed for To fierce light will burn, And the battles he wages Grow bitter and stern;

And the surge of life sink To the moan of a bar; And the hopes of the morning Grow hollow and far;

And the road that he follows Less luring and true, Till he longs for a whiff Of the morning he knew.

For he hears thy far singing, That lures not in vain, Till he comes to thy beauty Of dawning again.

But the roads of returning Are never the same As the sweet dewy meadows Of morning we came.