Part 5

Your words would tax the heart's belief. I thought That here along these shores when, at the close Of a week of storm, the gull alone remained Upon the waters, and the blinds were drawn Within a hundred homes, that there was left On earth nothing that might out-range the winds.

THADDEUS.

Death--Death stalked everywhere on land and sea, In clouds that banked the sun, in mists that hid The stars, or half disclosed the swollen moon. No cavern sunk beneath the earth but bore His foot-prints. Deep below the waters' rim Great fish had trailed his scent. Earth's myriad forms Had felt the plague-spot of his rampant touch. From the small field-mouse, caught within the fumes Of sulphurous air that crept from knoll to knoll, Withering the grass blades, to the giant fighter Of storm and wave that, ribbed and sheathed with steel, Felt the swift scorpion in her sides, then rocked And plunged with bellowing nostrils till she sank In a wild litany of guns, with wind, And night, and flame. But busier was his hand With subtler workmanship. On eye and brow And cheek were delved the traces of his passing-- Blindness, that like a thunder-clap at noon. Closed on the sight; furrows that struck the veins, Turning the red sap from its wonted course; Sharp lines of pain and fury and quick hate That on the instant changed to graven stone, Callous and motionless. And deadlier still, With flying leap he strode a continent, Or the wide prairies of a sea, and snatched The cup from the wan fingers of a life That slaked its thirst upon the wine of hope; So sure his hand--light, as with finger-tips, He touched the hair and wove the grey and white Within the brown, or hard, with rough-spurred heel, He mauled the bosom till its heavings ceased.

JULIAN.

Where ever in its course was this wide world So plunged in an unmeasured desolation? What tenders offered, save in a fool's faith, Would gamble on the chance of raising it From the complete involvement of its ruin?

THADDEUS.

Many there were who, clutching at a straw Of some dark saying of the past, some tone, Or flash of eye carrying strange emphasis, Sought for the battered remnants of their faith An anchorage; and around a clay-damp grave That buried hope with dust would stoop to tie Their heartstrings to a pansy, murmuring thus: "Who bade this flower renew its own fair lease Of youth perennial? Springs it not this year From the same soil and root, with that same pride With which a year ago it lifted up Its face before the sun? Does not each year Declare its trumpet-pledges at the spring?"

JULIAN.

Think they so to convince the heart with words Like those, to mesh it with a logic meet For bloodless ends? What though the winds of May Call to the springing rootlets, lure the bud From the rose-stem, and chase the resinous sap From the pine's trunk to branch and topmost twig-- Who yields to such delusion? Does the spring Forget November's hecatombs, the last Convulsion of the leaf, the gale-torn limbs Of trees scarred to the death, the flowers that danced Upon the fields scythed by the autumn's hands. The writhen spectres of earth's quick decay Flashed out upon the winds? All these as dust Around the season's tombs--dust-heaps, no more; As sands that eddy in the desert, these: For these no resurrection. What amends Does summer make for winter's numbing stroke? It's death he gives, not slumber. His pale forms Breathe not again, and eyelids that have closed On the congealing air reflect no more The warm glance of the sun. The swallows build Their nests once more within the eaves; the thrush, The red-breast and the lark cover again Their young in bush and tree and meadow-grain-- _They_ have not died. But weak ones that, impaled Upon the thorn, screamed out their notes of pain, Or dashed, wing-broken, by the wildering blast, Fell when their strength had failed them on far plains, On treeless hills, or dazed in homeward flight, Fluttered and sank in furrows of the sea-- _Their_ song has ended; _they_ return no more.

THADDEUS.

Yet, like a crocus in the swamps of spring, I saw life push its way through mire of death, Triumphant.

JULIAN.

How?

THADDEUS.

A ship lay motionless, Not anchored, nor becalmed, but held in spell Of some great shock. She listed heavily As though a hidden wound had gripped her loins, And in the rain and chill were lowered boats, So filled they lacked the margin of an inch To meet the water's edge. A law well known To men who live upon the sea here ran Its old and honored course. The boats were few And small, and there was left upon the deck A sturdier throng who stretched out willing hands To save the weak. One boat hung yet suspended, Filled short of obvious risk, and a slim girl Stepped out, and gave an aged woman, left Unnoticed in the crowd, her place. Her lips Were closed, and her face pale, but yet a smile Made soft and sweet the pallor of her cheeks. Then out into the night the boat was rowed, Steadily and silently. No clamour broke The stillness on the deck, nor was there sound Of any voiced farewell, but here and there A hand was raised, and a white fluttering Answered the distant rhythm of the oars.

JULIAN.

Chaos indeed may well disclose a star Caught unaware within the tangled drift Of cloud and chasing glooms. Look on the plains Again. Charred ruins, not of nature's hand, Lie deep within unfathomable slime. How foul the wreckage stands--a spectacle So ill that it might seem to bar for ever The lily's right to grow therein again.

THADDEUS.

And yet a few short hours before, when death Was taking in his most exacting toll Of this, his bloodiest year, were women seen, Fulfilling well their office. Lovingly Their hands were placed on the hot flush of wounds Made by the steel of surgeon and of foe. They beat the angels, at the angels' game, Those women. God might well His embassage Forego--His feudals of pure space--and take In chartered ministry those lovelier forms, They know the ravelled driftings of our life, And hence God's art of salvage all the more.

JULIAN.

These are fine colors woven in a grey And tattered fabric.

THADDEUS.

Grant you not as well A value to a life that's lost! The lad That struck out in the storm without a star, Or faintest glimmer of a port, that took His orders with blanched cheeks, yet with a heart That pumped its resolution through young limbs, Untaxed till now by paths wherein the errand Failed by fore-doom of the sure goal--think you, That with his eyes made blind before he struck The highway, when his senses clouded fast With the delusions of ungoverned winds, That falling here, somewhere around the place Of starting, he should then be counted out, His life not worth the value of a smile?

JULIAN.

This tangled, sacrificial thread has grown Till it has thickened to a scourge that bears No discipline in human fashionings.

THADDEUS.

Causes lost awhile on earth try out On new arenas fiercer qualities. They are re-born upon the air; they storm The souls of men; find homes in thunder peals; Are hitched to lightnings. Slain, they rise again With such forged temper that they turn aside The opposing edge of armouries of steel. Marks he the issue well, who sees here naught Save huge world-fires upon whose smouldering ruins Man's hand has lost its cunning to re-build, Or that the piles new-reared shall fall once more In the mad blasts that periodic run Their cycles of decay? May not the eye Range over those dun fields of death and see, From vile putrescence, beauty rise in light Unquenchable? May not the scar remind The sufferer of his healing as of wound?

JULIAN.

Look how in cluttered heaps the crosses rise, Stacked pile on pile, until they twist and sag The rivets on the bolted doors of God. This is a storm beyond imaginings, Unknown to land or sea. Were waves and gales The only agents of man's ruin, then The chance might fall upon his side--the fight With nature growing simpler every hour, Her ways being known; but when the struggle takes Its eddying fortunes in these blinded routes, Not once, nor twice, as though an incident Of casual kind had touched man's history, But as a baffling epidemic strikes A thousand times his life, failure of cure-- How strike this foul, insistent integer Clean from his life? ... The taint is in the blood.

II

A LATER SPRING

A flash of indigo in the air, A streak of orange edged with black! A bluebird skimmed the spruces there, A redstart followed in his track.

The light grows in the eastern skies, The deeper shadows are withdrawn; From marsh and swamp the vapors rise In the cool cloisters of the dawn.

What loom, a-weaving on the land, Such color and fragrance fuses! Magenta and white on moss and sand, Azaleas, arethusas.

And higher up along the steeps, The pink of mountain-laurel; While lower down the yellow creeps From celandine and sorrel.

Sea-foam or snow-drift, flecked with spurt Of flame, upon the grasses spread. The snow is foam of mitre-wort; The flame, the ragged robin's red.

..............

Where sits the lily of the morning dew When light winds waken, And gems that the violets hold Gently are shaken To crystalline purple and blue, And emerald, crimson and gold From the heart of the rose unfold, And burst into view;

There, at the dawn's first blush, The notes of a brown thrasher fall, And the importunate voice of the thrush Blends with a tannager's call; There, under a dragon-fly's wings, A stream carols by with sweet noise, And slowly a daffodil swings To a humming-bird's marvellous poise.

(_Thaddeus, walking through a field in the direction of Julian's home. The day is warm and sunny. A rapid stream, a short distance away, flows through a valley whose banks slope down from small hills covered with evergreen. Afar off, the land is high and forest-clad. At a bend of the stream he suddenly meets Julian._)

THADDEUS.

There is a quality in this air that stirs The blood as readily as the balsam sap. What brew, what chemistry; what hand is this That grips the pestle? Never was the grass So green upon the fields. A miracle! Throughout arterial nature, marble-cold And pale, are heard the joyous sounds of life Revived; earth's wells are opened in the vales; Through ice-clad mountains, chiselled by the hands Of northern blasts, the gurgling waters run In stream and torrent, and in the mad plunge Of cataract. Beyond the snow-capped ranges Lusty young rivers tear and strain at the dugs Of the foot-hills, and parting, force their pace Through gorge and valley to the open sea. Life, boundless, keen, ecstatic, uncontrolled! Vast, heaving, surging life, strung to great thews, Rapt in wide wonderments. Flail, life of Spring! Born of prophetic gales and plangent shocks, That rouse the torpor of earth's granite veins, And sluggard eyes. Glorious in resurrection! Thou peerless colorist of nature's life! With what unrivaled hands the lines are drawn. The shadows set, and the rich hues enwrought Upon how great a canvas! The far climb Majestic of fresh-foliaged ash and elm Along the mountain crags; the river banks Where the white spray falls softly on the iris, And violets creep along the sides; the gift Of minted treasure on the open fields, Where bloom those golden legions of the earth-- The daffodils and lowland marigolds; Cerulean tints that light our common paths. That bless our road-sides, cheer our vacant wastes; Bluets and harebells and the lilac bloom; Orchards a-flame beneath a setting sun, And, trailing slow around moss-covered rocks. The flower of May superlatively veined. Come! Leave your tents, O mortals, gather here In Nature's high rotunda, crystal-domed, And offer praises .... Julian, give me Your hand. We meet under new skies to-day. The times are changed; the earth renews her face; There is a fine contagion in the spring For heavy hearts.

JULIAN.

You would infect the blood Of an old man.

THADDEUS.

Come, Julian! In this life There is an unslain good that has outlived All floods and fires. There are undaunted spirits The age has not destroyed. I have seen them breathe Upon dry bones until they leaped with sinew; Even flotsam by their touch was salvable. No life, however craven at the face, But found a courage stirring at the core. The groundwork's there to build a structure on; The hand that yesterday tore like an eagle's claw Now pours in balm to-day, blesses and cures. There is a restoration in a smile We knew not of; we had forgotten it-- But wings unseen were flying in the night.

JULIAN.

I would there was a rock from which man's hopes Might never more be swept, or that his blood Might always bathe his heart with healthy stream. But those alternate currents, like the seasons, Have been our fateful legacy through all time. What power is this you speak of, that the dark May sudden blaze with light before the morn Is ushered in at nature's call? Is this The ultimate conquest of her will, that day Shall not know supersession by the night, With earth's diurnal axis overruled?

THADDEUS.

Have you not noticed, standing in the aisles Of some high-vaulted temple when the massed And reverent throngs were hushed in expectation, How a great organ poured forth like a flood Its spell of music as the master's hands Swept the wide boards? What power over the soul To lift its hopes, to plant its aspirations In the rich soil of heaven came from the touch! But let untutored fingers meet the keys, And the rapt ear is split by harsh discords. Are not the strings, the instrument, the same With either press? But how extremes depend Upon the craft of him who plays. Life's songs From baser jars and fretted failures range Along the gamut of their enterprise, In spiral movement to such high refrains As could, with buoyant amplitude of roll, Lift up the souls of sinking men, and float The world's grey cares on seas of evening-calm... Have you not heard such music when the winds Are given boundless space wherein to blow Upon the greenness of the earth? They pass, And from the meadows and the valley-slopes The latent rhythms of the daisies blend With the low rustle of the sedge. They pass Again, and lo, in grander orchestra, The pines lift up their voices on the hills. A blade of grass, a daisy or a pine, A wave, a waterfall, a heart-string, these, Tuned to the world's blood rhythms, now await. As cords you touch, as reeds you breathe upon, The rising pulses of the morning air.

JULIAN.

Dust gathers in my mouth. I cannot speak What I would say. Whether it is the drought Of age, or some strange filtrate of the past That sets a parchèd seal upon the lips, I do not know. It may be that from thistles I tried to gather figs, or where I looked Before I plucked, I said the vines were dry. Now I am old. I find the roadways blocked, And memory, ranging through the fungus years, Finds but the husks where it would take the fruit. And yet there is a knocking in this clay-- A restless flame--something that, if it could, Would leap these grammared confines of slow speech, And give the echo to your dancing words.

THIS BOOK IS A PRODUCTION OF THE RYERSON PRESS, TORONTO, CANADA