Part 4

With bread-and-cheese and doughnuts fit to feed a farm a year! And we washed them down with tides of tea and oceans of spruce beer. _Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!_

At last the pipes were lighted and the chairs pushed back, And Bill struck up a sea-song on a rather risky tack; _Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!_

And the girls all thought it funny--but they never knew ’twas worse, For we gagged him with a doughnut at the famous second verse. _Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!_

Then someone fetched a fiddle, and we shoved away the table, And ’twas jig and reel and polka just as long as we were able, _Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!_

Till at last the girls grew sleepy, and we got our coats to go. We started off with racing-teams and moonlight on the snow; _Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!_

And soon again the winter world was voiceless as of old, Alone with all the wheeling stars, and the great white cold. _Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!_

_CANADIAN STREAMS_

O rivers rolling to the sea From lands that bear the maple-tree, How swell your voices with the strain Of loyalty and liberty!

A holy music, heard in vain By coward heart and sordid brain, To whom this strenuous being seems Naught but a greedy race for gain.

O unsung streams--not splendid themes Ye lack to fire your patriot dreams! Annals of glory gild your waves, Hope freights your tides, Canadian streams!

St. Lawrence, whose wide water laves The shores that ne’er have nourished slaves! Swift Richelieu of lilied fame! Niagara of glorious graves!

Thy rapids, Ottawa, proclaim Where Daulac and his heroes came! Thy tides, St. John, declare La Tour, And, later, many a loyal name!

Thou inland stream, whose vales, secure From storm, Tecumseh’s death made poor! And thou small water, red with war, ’Twixt Beaubassin and Beauséjour!

Dread Saguenay, where eagles soar, What voice shall from the bastioned shore The tale of Roberval reveal, Or his mysterious fate deplore?

Annapolis, do thy floods yet feel Faint memories of Champlain’s keel, Thy pulses yet the deed repeat Of Poutrincourt and d’Iberville?

And thou far tide, whose plains now beat With march of myriad westering feet, Saskatchewan, whose virgin sod So late Canadian blood made sweet?

Your bulwark hills, your valleys broad, Streams where de Salaberry trod, Where Wolfe achieved, where Brock was slain,-- Their voices are the voice of God!

O sacred waters! not in vain, Across Canadian height and plain, Ye sound us in triumphant tone The summons of your high refrain,

_AVE!_

AN ODE FOR THE CENTENARY OF SHELLEY’S BIRTH

I

O tranquil meadows, grassy Tantramar, Wide marshes ever washed in clearest air, Whether beneath the sole and spectral star The dear severity of dawn you wear, Or whether in the joy of ample day And speechless ecstasy of growing June You lie and dream the long blue hours away Till nightfall comes too soon, Or whether, naked to the unstarred night, You strike with wondering awe my inward sight,--

II

You know how I have loved you, how my dreams Go forth to you with longing, though the years That turn not back like your returning streams And fain would mist the memory with tears, Though the inexorable years deny My feet the fellowship of your deep grass, O’er which, as o’er another, tenderer sky, Cloud phantoms drift and pass,-- You know my confident love, since first, a child, Amid your wastes of green I wandered wild.

III

Inconstant, eager, curious, I roamed; And ever your long reaches lured me on; And ever o’er my feet your grasses foamed, And in my eyes your far horizons shone. But sometimes would you (as a stillness fell And on my pulse you laid a soothing palm), Instruct my ears in your most secret spell; And sometimes in the calm Initiate my young and wondering eyes Until my spirit grew more still and wise.

IV

Purged with high thoughts and infinite desire I entered fearless the most holy place, Received between my lips the secret fire, The breath of inspiration on my face. But not for long these rare illumined hours, The deep surprise and rapture not for long. Again I saw the common, kindly flowers, Again I heard the song Of the glad bobolink, whose lyric throat Pealed like a tangle of small bells afloat.

V

The pounce of mottled marsh-hawk on his prey; The flicker of sand-pipers in from sea In gusty flocks that puffed and fled; the play Of field-mice in the vetches;--these to me Were memorable events. But most availed Your strange unquiet waters to engage My kindred heart’s companionship; nor failed To grant this heritage,-- That in my veins for ever must abide The urge and fluctuation of the tide.

VI

The mystic river whence you take your name, River of hubbub, raucous Tantramar, Untamable and changeable as flame, It called me and compelled me from afar, Shaping my soul with its impetuous stress. When in its gaping channel deep withdrawn Its waves ran crying of the wilderness And winds and stars and dawn, How I companioned them in speed sublime, Led out a vagrant on the hills of Time!

VII

And when the orange flood came roaring in From Fundy’s tumbling troughs and tide-worn caves, While red Minudie’s flats were drowned with din And rough Chignecto’s front oppugned the waves, How blithely with the refluent foam I raced Inland along the radiant chasm, exploring The green solemnity with boisterous haste; My pulse of joy outpouring To visit all the creeks that twist and shine From Beauséjour to utmost Tormentine.

VIII

And after, when the tide was full, and stilled A little while the seething and the hiss, And every tributary channel filled To the brim with rosy streams that swelled to kiss The grass-roots all a-wash and goose-tongue wild And salt-sap rosemary,--then how well content I was to rest me like a breathless child With play-time rapture spent,-- To lapse and loiter till the change should come And the great floods turn seaward, roaring home.

IX

And now, O tranquil marshes, in your vast Serenity of vision and of dream, Wherethrough by every intricate vein have passed With joy impetuous and pain supreme The sharp fierce tides that chafe the shores of earth In endless and controlless ebb and flow, Strangely akin you seem to him whose birth One hundred years ago With fiery succour to the ranks of song Defied the ancient gates of wrath and wrong.

X

Like yours, O marshes, his compassionate breast, Wherein abode all dreams of love and peace, Was tortured with perpetual unrest. Now loud with flood, now languid with release, Now poignant with the lonely ebb, the strife Of tides from the salt sea of human pain That hiss along the perilous coasts of life Beat in his eager brain; But all about the tumult of his heart Stretched the great calm of his celestial art.

XI

Therefore with no far flight, from Tantramar And my still world of ecstasy, to thee, Shelley, to thee I turn, the avatar Of Song, Love, Dream, Desire and Liberty; To thee I turn with reverent hands of prayer And lips that fain would ease my heart of praise, Whom chief of all whose brows prophetic wear The pure and sacred bays I worship, and have worshipped since the hour When first I felt thy bright and chainless power.

XII

About thy sheltered cradle, in the green Untroubled groves of Sussex, brooded forms That to the mother’s eye remained unseen,-- Terrors and ardours, passionate hopes, and storms Of fierce retributive fury, such as jarred Ancient and sceptred creeds, and cast down kings, And oft the holy cause of Freedom marred With lust of meaner things, With guiltless blood, and many a frenzied crime Dared in the face of unforgetful Time.

XIII

The star that burns on revolution smote Wild heats and change on thine ascendant sphere, Whose influence thereafter seemed to float Through many a strange eclipse of wrath and fear, Dimming awhile the radiance of thy love. But still supreme in thy nativity, All dark, invidious aspects far above, Beamed one clear orb for thee,-- The star whose ministrations just and strong Controlled the tireless flight of Dante’s song.

XIV

With how august contrition, and what tears Of penitential unavailing shame, Thy venerable foster-mother hears The sons of song impeach her ancient name, Because in one rash hour of anger blind She thrust thee forth in exile, and thy feet Too soon to earth’s wild outer ways consigned,-- Far from her well-loved seat, Far from her studious halls and storied towers And weedy Isis winding through his flowers.

XV

And thou, thenceforth the breathless child of change, Thine own Alastor, on an endless quest Of unimagined loveliness, didst range, Urged ever by the soul’s divine unrest. Of that high quest and that unrest divine Thy first immortal music thou didst make, Inwrought with fairy Alp, and Reuss, and Rhine, And phantom seas that break In soundless foam along the shores of Time, Prisoned in thine imperishable rhyme.

XVI

Thyself the lark melodious in mid-heaven; Thyself the Protean shape of chainless cloud, Pregnant with elemental fire, and driven Through deeps of quivering light, and darkness loud With tempest, yet beneficent as prayer; Thyself the wild west wind, relentless strewing The withered leaves of custom on the air, And through the wreck pursuing O’er lovelier Arnos, more imperial Romes, Thy radiant visions to their viewless homes.

XVII

And when thy mightiest creation thou Wert fain to body forth,--the dauntless form, The all-enduring, all-forgiving brow Of the great Titan, flinchless in the storm Of pangs unspeakable and nameless hates, Yet rent by all the wrongs and woes of men, And triumphing in his pain, that so their fates Might be assuaged,--oh then Out of that vast compassionate heart of thine Thou wert constrained to shape the dream benign.

XVIII

--O Baths of Caracalla, arches clad In such transcendent rhapsodies of green That one might guess the sprites of spring were glad For your majestic ruin, yours the scene, The illuminating air of sense and thought; And yours the enchanted light, O skies of Rome, Where the giant vision into form was wrought; Beneath your blazing dome The intensest song our language ever knew Beat up exhaustless to the blinding blue!--

XIX

The domes of Pisa and her towers superb, The myrtles and the ilexes that sigh O’er San Giuliano, where no jars disturb The lonely aziola’s evening cry, The Serchio’s sun-kissed waters,--these conspired With Plato’s theme occult, with Dante’s calm Rapture of mystic love, and so inspired Thy soul’s espousal psalm, A strain of such elect and pure intent It breathes of a diviner element.

XX

Thou on whose lips the word of Love became A rapt evangel to assuage all wrong, Not Love alone, but the austerer name Of Death engaged the splendours of thy song. The luminous grief, the spacious consolation Of thy supreme lament, that mourned for him Too early haled to that still habitation Beneath the grass-roots dim,-- Where his faint limbs and pain-o’erwearied heart Of all earth’s loveliness became a part,

XXI

But where, thou sayest, himself would not abide,-- Thy solemn incommunicable joy Announcing Adonais has not died, Attesting death to free but not destroy, All this was as thy swan-song mystical. Even while the note serene was on thy tongue Thin grew the veil of the Invisible, The white sword nearer swung,-- And in the sudden wisdom of thy rest Thou knewest all thou hadst but dimly guessed.

XXII

--Lament, Lerici, mourn for the world’s loss! Mourn that pure light of song extinct at noon! Ye waves of Spezzia that shine and toss Repent that sacred flame you quenched too soon! Mourn, Mediterranean waters, mourn In affluent purple down your golden shore! Such strains as his, whose voice you stilled in scorn, Our ears may greet no more, Unless at last to that far sphere we climb Where he completes the wonder of his rhyme!

XXIII

How like a cloud she fled, thy fateful bark, From eyes that watched to hearts that waited, till Up from the ocean roared the tempest dark-- And the wild heart love waited for was still! Hither and thither in the slow, soft tide, Rolled seaward, shoreward, sands and wandering shells And shifting weeds thy fellows, thou didst hide Remote from all farewells, Nor felt the sun, nor heard the fleeting rain, Nor heeded Casa Magni’s quenchless pain.

XXIV

_Thou_ heededst not? Nay, for it was not thou, That blind, mute clay relinquished by the waves Reluctantly at last, and slumbering now In one of kind earth’s most compassionate graves! Not thou, not thou,--for thou wert in the light Of the Unspeakable, where time is not. Thou sawest those tears; but in thy perfect sight And thy eternal thought Were they not even now all wiped away In the reunion of the infinite day!

XXV

There face to face thou sawest the living God And worshipedst, beholding Him the same Adored on earth as Love, the same whose rod Thou hadst endured as Life, whose secret name Thou now didst learn, the healing name of Death. In that unroutable profound of peace, Beyond experience of pulse and breath, Beyond the last release Of longing, rose to greet thee all the lords Of Thought, with consummation in their words.

XXVI

He of the seven cities claimed, whose eyes, Though blind, saw gods and heroes, and the fall Of Ilium, and many alien skies, And Circe’s Isle; and he whom mortals call The Thunderous, who sang the Titan bound As thou the Titan victor; the benign Spirit of Plato; Job; and Judah’s crowned Singer and seer divine; Omar; the Tuscan; Milton vast and strong; And Shakspeare, captain of the host of Song.

XXVII

Back from the underworld of whelming change To the wide-glittering beach thy body came; And thou didst contemplate with wonder strange And curious regard thy kindred flame, Fed sweet with frankincense and wine and salt, With fierce purgation search thee, soon resolving Thee to the elements of the airy vault And the far spheres revolving, The common waters, the familiar woods, And the great hills’ inviolate solitudes.

XXVIII

Thy close companions there officiated With solemn mourning and with mindful tears;-- The pained, imperious wanderer unmated Who voiced the wrath of those rebellious years; Trelawney, lion limbed and high of heart; And he, that gentlest sage and friend most true, Whom Adonais loved. With these bore part One grieving ghost, that flew Hither and thither through the smoke unstirred In wailing semblance of a wild white bird.

XXIX

O heart of fire, that fire might not consume, For ever glad the world because of thee; Because of thee for ever eyes illume A more enchanted earth, a lovelier sea! O poignant voice of the desire of life, Piercing our lethargy, because thy call Aroused our spirits to a nobler strife Where base and sordid fall, For ever past the conflict and the pain More clearly beams the goal we shall attain!

XXX

And now once more, O marshes, back to you From whatsoever wanderings, near or far, To you I turn with joy for ever new, To you, O sovereign vasts of Tantramar! Your tides are at the full. Your wizard flood, With every tribute stream and brimming creek, Ponders, possessor of the utmost good, With no more left to seek;-- But the hour wanes and passes; and once more Resounds the ebb with destiny in its roar.

XXXI

So might some lord of men, whom force and fate And his great heart’s unvanquishable power Have thrust with storm to his supreme estate, Ascend by night his solitary tower High o’er the city’s lights and cries uplift. Silent he ponders the scrolled heaven to read And the keen stars’ conflicting message sift, Till the slow signs recede, And ominously scarlet dawns afar The day he leads his legions forth to war.

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