Chapter 5

The sleeper dreamed, and lo! this was his dream: He rode a streaming horse across a moor. Sudden 'mid pit-black night a lightning gleam Showed him a way-side inn, forlorn and poor. A sullen host unbarred the creaking door, And led him to a dim and dreary room; Wherein he sat and poked the fire a-roar, So that weird shadows jigged athwart the gloom. He ordered wine. 'Od's blood! but he was tired. What matter! Charles was crushed and George was King; His party high in power; how he aspired! Red guineas packed his purse, too tight to ring. The fire-light gleamed upon his silken hose, His silver buckles and his powdered wig. What ho! more wine! He drank, he slowly rose. What made the shadows dance that madcap jig? He clutched the candle, steered his way to bed, And in a trice was sleeping like the dead.

. . . . .

Across the room there crept, so shadow soft, His sullen host, with naked knife a-gleam, (A gaunt and hairy man with wolfish eyes.) . . . And as he lay, the sleeper dreamed a dream.

* * * * *

'Twas in a ruder land, a wilder day. A rival princeling sat upon his throne, Within a dungeon, dark and foul he lay, With chains that bit and festered to the bone. They haled him harshly to a vaulted room, Where One gazed on him with malignant eye; And in that devil-face he read his doom, Knowing that ere the dawn-light he must die. Well, he was sorrow-glutted; let them bring Their prize assassins to the bloody work. His kingdom lost, yet would he die a King, Fearless and proud, as when he faced the Turk. Ah God! the glory of that great Crusade! The bannered pomp, the gleam, the splendid urge! The crash of reeking combat, blade to blade! The reeling ranks, blood-avid and a-surge! For long he thought; then feeling o'er him creep Vast weariness, he fell into a sleep.

. . . . .

The cell door opened; soft the headsman came, Within his hand a mighty axe a-gleam, (A gaunt and hairy man with wolfish eyes,) . . . And as he lay, the sleeper dreamed a dream.

* * * * *

'Twas in a land unkempt of life's red dawn; Where in his sanded cave he dwelt alone; Sleeping by day, or sometimes worked upon His flint-head arrows and his knives of stone; By night stole forth and slew the savage boar, So that he loomed a hunter of loud fame, And many a skin of wolf and wild-cat wore, And counted many a flint-head to his name; Wherefore he walked the envy of the band, Hated and feared, but matchless in his skill. Till lo! one night deep in that shaggy land, He tracked a yearling bear and made his kill; Then over-worn he rested by a stream, And sank into a sleep too deep for dream.

. . . . .

Hunting his food a rival caveman crept Through those dark woods, and marked him where he lay; Cowered and crawled upon him as he slept, Poising a mighty stone aloft to slay -- (A gaunt and hairy man with wolfish eyes.) . . .

* * * * *

The great stone crashed. The Dreamer shrieked and woke, And saw, fear-blinded, in his dripping cell, A gaunt and hairy man, who with one stroke Swung a great ax of steel that flashed and fell . . .

So that he woke amid his bedroom gloom, And saw, hair-poised, a naked, thirsting knife, A gaunt and hairy man with eyes of doom -- And then the blade plunged down to drink his life . . . So that he woke, wrenched back his robe, and looked, And saw beside his dying fire upstart A gaunt and hairy man with finger crooked -- A rifle rang, a bullet searched his heart . . .

* * * * *

The morning sky was sinister and cold. Grotesque the Dreamer sprawled, and did not rise. For long and long there gazed upon some gold _A GAUNT AND HAIRY MAN WITH WOLFISH EYES_.

At Thirty-Five

Three score and ten, the psalmist saith, And half my course is well-nigh run; I've had my flout at dusty death, I've had my whack of feast and fun. I've mocked at those who prate and preach; I've laughed with any man alive; But now with sobered heart I reach The Great Divide of Thirty-five.

And looking back I must confess I've little cause to feel elate. I've played the mummer more or less; I fumbled fortune, flouted fate. I've vastly dreamed and little done; I've idly watched my brothers strive: Oh, I have loitered in the sun By primrose paths to Thirty-five!

And those who matched me in the race, Well, some are out and trampled down; The others jog with sober pace; Yet one wins delicate renown. O midnight feast and famished dawn! O gay, hard life, with hope alive! O golden youth, forever gone, How sweet you seem at Thirty-five!

Each of our lives is just a book As absolute as Holy Writ; We humbly read, and may not look Ahead, nor change one word of it. And here are joys and here are pains; And here we fail and here we thrive; O wondrous volume! what remains When we reach chapter Thirty-five?

The very best, I dare to hope, Ere Fate writes Finis to the tome; A wiser head, a wider scope, And for the gipsy heart, a home; A songful home, with loved ones near, With joy, with sunshine all alive: Watch me grow younger every year -- Old Age! thy name is Thirty-five!

The Squaw Man

The cow-moose comes to water, and the beaver's overbold, The net is in the eddy of the stream; The teepee stars the vivid sward with russet, red and gold, And in the velvet gloom the fire's a-gleam. The night is ripe with quiet, rich with incense of the pine; From sanctuary lake I hear the loon; The peaks are bright against the blue, and drenched with sunset wine, And like a silver bubble is the moon.

Cloud-high I climbed but yesterday; a hundred miles around I looked to see a rival fire a-gleam. As in a crystal lens it lay, a land without a bound, All lure, and virgin vastitude, and dream. The great sky soared exultantly, the great earth bared its breast, All river-veined and patterned with the pine; The heedless hordes of caribou were streaming to the West, A land of lustrous mystery -- and mine.

Yea, mine to frame my Odyssey: Oh, little do they know My conquest and the kingdom that I keep! The meadows of the musk-ox, where the laughing grasses grow, The rivers where the careless conies leap. Beyond the silent Circle, where white men are fierce and few, I lord it, and I mock at man-made law; Like a flame upon the water is my little light canoe, And yonder in the fireglow is my squaw.

A squaw man! yes, that's what I am; sneer at me if you will. I've gone the grilling pace that cannot last; With bawdry, bridge and brandy -- Oh, I've drank enough to kill A dozen such as you, but that is past. I've swung round to my senses, found the place where I belong; The City made a madman out of me; But here beyond the Circle, where there's neither right or wrong, I leap from life's straight-jacket, and I'm free.

Yet ever in the far forlorn, by trails of lone desire; Yet ever in the dawn's white leer of hate; Yet ever by the dripping kill, beside the drowsy fire, There comes the fierce heart-hunger for a mate. There comes the mad blood-clamour for a woman's clinging hand, Love-humid eyes, the velvet of a breast; And so I sought the Bonnet-plumes, and chose from out the band The girl I thought the sweetest and the best.

O wistful women I have loved before my dark disgrace! O women fair and rare in my home land! Dear ladies, if I saw you now I'd turn away my face, Then crawl to kiss your foot-prints in the sand! And yet -- that day the rifle jammed -- a wounded moose at bay -- A roar, a charge . . . I faced it with my knife: A shot from out the willow-scrub, and there the monster lay. . . . Yes, little Laughing Eyes, you saved my life.

The man must have the woman, and we're all brutes more or less, Since first the male ape shinned the family tree; And yet I think I love her with a husband's tenderness, And yet I know that she would die for me. Oh, if I left you, Laughing Eyes, and nevermore came back, God help you, girl! I know what you would do. . . . I see the lake wan in the moon, and from the shadow black, There drifts a little, _EMPTY_ birch canoe.

We're here beyond the Circle, where there's never wrong nor right; We aren't spliced according to the law; But by the gods I hail you on this hushed and holy night As the mother of my children, and my squaw. I see your little slender face set in the firelight glow; I pray that I may never make it sad; I hear you croon a baby song, all slumber-soft and low -- God bless you, little Laughing Eyes! I'm glad.

Home and Love

Just Home and Love! the words are small Four little letters unto each; And yet you will not find in all The wide and gracious range of speech Two more so tenderly complete: When angels talk in Heaven above, I'm sure they have no words more sweet Than Home and Love.

Just Home and Love! it's hard to guess Which of the two were best to gain; Home without Love is bitterness; Love without Home is often pain. No! each alone will seldom do; Somehow they travel hand and glove: If you win one you must have two, Both Home and Love.

And if you've both, well then I'm sure You ought to sing the whole day long; It doesn't matter if you're poor With these to make divine your song. And so I praisefully repeat, When angels talk in Heaven above, There are no words more simply sweet Than Home and Love.

I'm Scared of it All

I'm scared of it all, God's truth! so I am; It's too big and brutal for me. My nerve's on the raw and I don't give a damn For all the "hoorah" that I see. I'm pinned between subway and overhead train, Where automobillies swoop down: Oh, I want to go back to the timber again -- I'm scared of the terrible town.

I want to go back to my lean, ashen plains; My rivers that flash into foam; My ultimate valleys where solitude reigns; My trail from Fort Churchill to Nome. My forests packed full of mysterious gloom, My ice-fields agrind and aglare: The city is deadfalled with danger and doom -- I know that I'm safer up there.

I watch the wan faces that flash in the street; All kinds and all classes I see. Yet never a one in the million I meet, Has the smile of a comrade for me. Just jaded and panting like dogs in a pack; Just tensed and intent on the goal: O God! but I'm lonesome -- I wish I was back, Up there in the land of the Pole.

I wish I was back on the Hunger Plateaus, And seeking the lost caribou; I wish I was up where the Coppermine flows To the kick of my little canoe. I'd like to be far on some weariful shore, In the Land of the Blizzard and Bear; Oh, I wish I was snug in the Arctic once more, For I know I am safer up there!

I prowl in the canyons of dismal unrest; I cringe -- I'm so weak and so small. I can't get my bearings, I'm crushed and oppressed With the haste and the waste of it all. The slaves and the madman, the lust and the sweat, The fear in the faces I see; The getting, the spending, the fever, the fret -- It's too bleeding cruel for me.

I feel it's all wrong, but I can't tell you why -- The palace, the hovel next door; The insolent towers that sprawl to the sky, The crush and the rush and the roar. I'm trapped like a fox and I fear for my pelt; I cower in the crash and the glare; Oh, I want to be back in the avalanche belt, For I know that it's safer up there!

I'm scared of it all: Oh, afar I can hear The voice of my solitudes call! We're nothing but brute with a little veneer, And nature is best after all. There's tumult and terror abroad in the street; There's menace and doom in the air; I've got to get back to my thousand-mile beat; The trail where the cougar and silver-tip meet; The snows and the camp-fire, with wolves at my feet; Good-bye, for it's safer up there.

_To be forming good habits up there; To be starving on rabbits up there; In your hunger and woe, Though it's sixty below, Oh, I know that it's safer up there!_

A Song of Success

Ho! we were strong, we were swift, we were brave. Youth was a challenge, and Life was a fight. All that was best in us gladly we gave, Sprang from the rally, and leapt for the height. Smiling is Love in a foam of Spring flowers: Harden our hearts to him -- on let us press! Oh, what a triumph and pride shall be ours! See where it beacons, the star of success!

Cares seem to crowd on us -- so much to do; New fields to conquer, and time's on the wing. Grey hairs are showing, a wrinkle or two; Somehow our footstep is losing its spring. Pleasure's forsaken us, Love ceased to smile; Youth has been funeralled; Age travels fast. Sometimes we wonder: is it worth while? There! we have gained to the summit at last.

Aye, we have triumphed! Now must we haste, Revel in victory . . . why! what is wrong? Life's choicest vintage is flat to the taste -- Are we too late? Have we laboured too long? Wealth, power, fame we hold . . . ah! but the truth: Would we not give this vain glory of ours For one mad, glad year of glorious youth, Life in the Springtide, and Love in the flowers.

The Song of the Camp-Fire

I

Heed me, feed me, I am hungry, I am red-tongued with desire; Boughs of balsam, slabs of cedar, gummy fagots of the pine, Heap them on me, let me hug them to my eager heart of fire, Roaring, soaring up to heaven as a symbol and a sign. Bring me knots of sunny maple, silver birch and tamarack; Leaping, sweeping, I will lap them with my ardent wings of flame; I will kindle them to glory, I will beat the darkness back; Streaming, gleaming, I will goad them to my glory and my fame. Bring me gnarly limbs of live-oak, aid me in my frenzied fight; Strips of iron-wood, scaly blue-gum, writhing redly in my hold; With my lunge of lurid lances, with my whips that flail the night, They will burgeon into beauty, they will foliate in gold. Let me star the dim sierras, stab with light the inland seas; Roaming wind and roaring darkness! seek no mercy at my hands; I will mock the marly heavens, lamp the purple prairies, I will flaunt my deathless banners down the far, unhouseled lands. In the vast and vaulted pine-gloom where the pillared forests frown, By the sullen, bestial rivers running where God only knows, On the starlit coral beaches when the combers thunder down, In the death-spell of the barrens, in the shudder of the snows; In a blazing belt of triumph from the palm-leaf to the pine, As a symbol of defiance lo! the wilderness I span; And my beacons burn exultant as an everlasting sign Of unending domination, of the mastery of Man; I, the Life, the fierce Uplifter, I that weaned him from the mire; I, the angel and the devil, I, the tyrant and the slave; I, the Spirit of the Struggle; I, the mighty God of Fire; I, the Maker and Destroyer; I, the Giver and the Grave.

II

Gather round me, boy and grey-beard, frontiersman of every kind. Few are you, and far and lonely, yet an army forms behind: By your camp-fires shall they know you, ashes scattered to the wind.

Peer into my heart of solace, break your bannock at my blaze; Smoking, stretched in lazy shelter, build your castles as you gaze; Or, it may be, deep in dreaming, think of dim, unhappy days.

Let my warmth and glow caress you, for your trails are grim and hard; Let my arms of comfort press you, hunger-hewn and battle-scarred: O my lovers! how I bless you with your lives so madly marred!

For you seek the silent spaces, and their secret lore you glean: For you win the savage races, and the brutish Wild you wean; And I gladden desert places, where camp-fire has never been.

From the Pole unto the Tropics is there trail ye have not dared? And because you hold death lightly, so by death shall you be spared, (As the sages of the ages in their pages have declared).

On the roaring Arkilinik in a leaky bark canoe; Up the cloud of Mount McKinley, where the avalanche leaps through; In the furnace of Death Valley, when the mirage glimmers blue.

Now a smudge of wiry willows on the weary Kuskoquim; Now a flare of gummy pine-knots where Vancouver's scaur is grim; Now a gleam of sunny ceiba, when the Cuban beaches dim.

Always, always God's Great Open: lo! I burn with keener light In the corridors of silence, in the vestibules of night; 'Mid the ferns and grasses gleaming, was there ever gem so bright?

Not for weaklings, not for women, like my brother of the hearth; Ring your songs of wrath around me, I was made for manful mirth, In the lusty, gusty greatness, on the bald spots of the earth.

Men, my masters! men, my lovers! ye have fought and ye have bled; Gather round my ruddy embers, softly glowing is my bed; By my heart of solace dreaming, rest ye and be comforted!

III

I am dying, O my masters! by my fitful flame ye sleep; My purple plumes of glory droop forlorn. Grey ashes choke and cloak me, and above the pines there creep The stealthy silver moccasins of morn. There comes a countless army, it's the Legion of the Light; It tramps in gleaming triumph round the world; And before its jewelled lances all the shadows of the night Back in to abysmal darknesses are hurled.

Leap to life again, my lovers! ye must toil and never tire; The day of daring, doing, brightens clear, When the bed of spicy cedar and the jovial camp-fire Must only be a memory of cheer. There is hope and golden promise in the vast portentous dawn; There is glamour in the glad, effluent sky: Go and leave me; I will dream of you and love you when you're gone; I have served you, O my masters! let me die.

A little heap of ashes, grey and sodden by the rain, Wind-scattered, blurred and blotted by the snow: Let that be all to tell of me, and glorious again, Ye things of greening gladness, leap and glow! A black scar in the sunshine by the palm-leaf or the pine, Blind to the night and dead to all desire; Yet oh, of life and uplift what a symbol and a sign! Yet oh, of power and conquest what a destiny is mine! A little heap of ashes -- Yea! a miracle divine, The foot-print of a god, all-radiant Fire.

Her Letter

"I'm taking pen in hand this night, and hard it is for me; My poor old fingers tremble so, my hand is stiff and slow, And even with my glasses on I'm troubled sore to see. . . . You'd little know your mother, boy; you'd little, little know. You mind how brisk and bright I was, how straight and trim and smart; 'Tis weariful I am the now, and bent and frail and grey. I'm waiting at the road's end, lad; and all that's in my heart, Is just to see my boy again before I'm called away."

"Oh well I mind the sorry day you crossed the gurly sea; 'Twas like the heart was torn from me, a waeful wife was I. You said that you'd be home again in two years, maybe three; But nigh a score of years have gone, and still the years go by. I know it's cruel hard for you, you've bairnies of your own; I know the siller's hard to win, and folks have used you ill: But oh, think of your mother, lad, that's waiting by her lone! And even if you canna come -- _JUST WRITE AND SAY YOU WILL_."

"Aye, even though there's little hope, just promise that you'll try. It's weary, weary waiting, lad; just say you'll come next year. I'm thinking there will be no 'next'; I'm thinking soon I'll lie With all the ones I've laid away . . . but oh, the hope will cheer! You know you're all that's left to me, and we are seas apart; But if you'll only _SAY_ you'll come, then will I hope and pray. I'm waiting by the grave-side, lad; and all that's in my heart Is just to see my boy again before I'm called away."

The Man Who Knew

The Dreamer visioned Life as it might be, And from his dream forthright a picture grew, A painting all the people thronged to see, And joyed therein -- till came the Man Who Knew, Saying: "'Tis bad! Why do ye gape, ye fools! He painteth not according to the schools."

The Dreamer probed Life's mystery of woe, And in a book he sought to give the clue; The people read, and saw that it was so, And read again -- then came the Man Who Knew, Saying: "Ye witless ones! this book is vile: It hath not got the rudiments of style."

Love smote the Dreamer's lips, and silver clear He sang a song so sweet, so tender true, That all the market-place was thrilled to hear, And listened rapt -- till came the Man Who Knew, Saying: "His technique's wrong; he singeth ill. Waste not your time." The singer's voice was still.

And then the people roused as if from sleep, Crying: "What care we if it be not Art! Hath he not charmed us, made us laugh and weep? Come, let us crown him where he sits apart." Then, with his picture spurned, his book unread, His song unsung, they found their Dreamer -- _DEAD_.

The Logger

In the moonless, misty night, with my little pipe alight, I am sitting by the camp-fire's fading cheer; Oh, the dew is falling chill on the dim, deer-haunted hill, And the breakers in the bay are moaning drear. The toilful hours are sped, the boys are long abed, And I alone a weary vigil keep; In the sightless, sullen sky I can hear the night-hawk cry, And the frogs in frenzied chorus from the creek.

And somehow the embers' glow brings me back the long ago, The days of merry laughter and light song; When I sped the hours away with the gayest of the gay In the giddy whirl of fashion's festal throng. Oh, I ran a grilling race and I little recked the pace, For the lust of youth ran riot in my blood; But at last I made a stand in this God-forsaken land Of the pine-tree and the mountain and the flood.

And now I've got to stay, with an overdraft to pay, For pleasure in the past with future pain; And I'm not the chap to whine, for if the chance were mine I know I'd choose the old life once again. With its woman's eyes a-shine, and its flood of golden wine; Its fever and its frolic and its fun; The old life with its din, its laughter and its sin -- And chuck me in the gutter when it's done.