LAKE LYRICS AND OTHER POEMS J LAKE LYRICS AND OTHER ^ BY WILLIAM WILFRED CAMPBELL. ITIW. ST. JOHN, N. B. J. & A. McMillan. 1889. ^ ^ 166753 ^^->W'-> o.. 5k ^O/rif -M/i LA) a) Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, in the year .889, By WILLIAM WILFRED CAMPBP:LL. In the Office of the Minister of Agriculture, at Ottawa. CONTENTS. PRELUDE: Vapor and Blue. PART I. PAG. To the Lakes, 13 A Lake Memory, ■ . , 15 The Winter Lakes, 16 Keziah, 18 Morning on the Beach, 22 The Heart of the Lakes, 23 A Day of Mists, • .... 25 Dawn in the Island Camp, 27 By Huron's Shore, , 28 How Spring Came, 31 In the River Bay, 32 Lake Huron, 35 To the Blackberry, 36 Manitou, 30 Autumn's Chant, 41 The Flight of the Gulls, 44 A Lyric of Weariness, 46 August Evening on the Beach, Lake Huron, 48 Invocation to the Lakes, 51 A Lyric 53 At the Landing, 54 Sunset, Lake Huron, 56 On the Ledge, 58 The Legend of Restless River, 60 The Legend of Dead Man's Lake 65 Ode, To the Lakes, 6^ Ode, To Thunder Cape, 72 Dan'l and Mat, 76 August Night on Georgian Bay, yq The Tides of Dawn, 80 Crags, . , 81 Medwayosh, , , . . ,, , , gj, At the River's Mouth, . . . ". ' . . ^ . . . 83 (5) ^ Contents. PART 11. '"^°« Snow, "^ Canadian Folksong, °9 To a Robin in November 5' In the Study 93 On Christmas Eve 94 By the Fire, 95 Little Blue Eyes and Golden Hair, 9* Barberries, . " 9 The Passing Year, 99 A Winter's Night '°° Old Voices, '°' February, *°* Midwinter Night's Dream 'o6 On a March Morning, '°7 Sunbeams, ^°9 Before the Dawn, ^^^ The Dewdrop "^ Indian Summer, ^'3 To a Clump of Moss ; Rododactulos, "4 The Meadow Spring, ^^5 PART III. LaEarus, ..." 9 The Hebrew Father's Prayer, ^^4 Ode, To Tennyson, ^'^^ Ode, Canada to Great Britain, »32 Ode, To the Nineteenth Century, • ^3^ Ode, To a Meadow Brook, H® Alone, ■ • ^^^ Ballade of Two Riders, ^44 A Lyric of Love • • • • '^8 The Phantoms of the Boughs on the Window, 151 Titan ;54 Isolation, Infancy, *5^ Knowledge, . »«» PRELUDE. VAPOR AND BL UE. Domed with the azure of heaven ^ Floored ivith a pavement of pearl, Clothed all about with a brightyiess Soft as the eyes of a girl, Girt with a magical girdle, Rimmed with a vapor of rest — These are the inlaiid waters, These are the lakes of the west. Voices of slumberous music. Spirits of mist and of flame. Moonlit memories left here By gods who long ago came, And vanishing left but an echo In silence of moon- dim caves, Where haze-wrapt the August 7iight slumbers, Or the wild heart of October raves. 9 IQ ' Vapor and Blue, Here where the jewels of nature Are set in the light of God's smile ; Far from the world's wild throbbing, I will stay me and rest me awhile. And store in my heart old music. Melodies gathered and sung By the genies of love and of beauty When the heart of the world was young. PART I. LAKE LYRICS. To the Lakes. 13 TO THE LAKES. Blue, limpid, mighty, restless lakes, God's mirrors underneath the sky, Low rimmed in woods and mists, where wakes. Through murk and moon, the marsh bird's cry. Where ever on, through drive and drift, 'Neath blue and grey, through hush and moan, Your ceaseless waters ebb and lift Past shores of century-crumbling stone. And under ever-changing skies. Swell, throb, and break on kindling beach ; Where fires of dawn responsive rise, In answer to your mystic speech. Past lonely haunts of gull and loon, ; Past solitude of land-locked bays, Whose bosoms rise to meet the moon. Beneath their silvered film of haze, 14 • ' To the Lakes. Where mists and fogs in ghostly bands, Vague, dim, moon-clothed in spectral light; Drift in from far-off haunted lands, Across the silences of night. A Lake Memory, 15 A LAKE MEMORY. The lake comes throbbing in with voice of pain Across these flats, athwart the sunset's glow, I see her face, I know her voice again, Her lips, her breath, O God, as long ago. To live the sweet past over I would fain, As lives the day in the red sunset's fire, That all these wild, wan marshlands now would stain, With the dawn's memories, loves and flushed desire. I call her back across the vanished years, Nor vain — a white-armed phantom fills her place ; Its eyes the wind-blown sunset fires, its tears This rain of spray that blows about my face. l6 ' ' The V^inter Lakes. THE WINTER LAKES. Out in a world of death far to the northward lying, Under the sun and the moon, under the dusk and the day ; Under the glimmer of stars and the purple of sunsets dying, Wan and waste and white, stretch the great lakes away. Never a bud of spring, never a laugh of summer, Never a dream of love, never a song of bird; But only the silence and white, the shores that grow chiller and dumber, Wherever the ice winds sob, and the griefs of winter are heard. Crags that are black and wet out of the gray lake looming, Under the sunset's flush and the pallid, faint glimmer 6f dawn ; The Winter Lakes. 17 Shadowy, ghost-like shores, where midnight surfs are booming Thunders of wintry woe over the spaces wan. Lands that loom like specters, whited regions of winter, Wastes of desolate woods, deserts of water and shore; A world of winter and death, within these regions who enter, Lost to summer and life, go to return no more. Moons that glimmer above, waters that lie white under. Miles and miles of lake far out under the night ; Foaming crests of waves, surfs that shoreward thunder. Shadowy shapes that flee, haunting the spaces white. Lonely hidden bays, moon-lit, ice-rimmed, winding, Fringed by forests and crags, haunted by shadowy shores; Hushed from the outward strife, where the mighty surf is grinding Death and hate on the rocks, as sandward and landward it roars, j8 , " Keziah. KEZIAH. •* Keziah ! Keziah ! " The blue lake is rocking, Out over it's bosom the white gulls are flocking, Far down in the west the dim islands are lying, While through the hushed vapors the shores are replying: '• Keziah! Keziah!" A vine-clambered cabin with blue skies that bound it, Wild glamor of forest, lake, shoreland around it ; Far calling of birds, mists rising and falling, While through the hushed silence a wierd voice is calling : "Keziah! Keziah!" She went down the shore-path her dark eyes were dreaming, The sheen of her hair in the sunlight was gleaming, The snow of her neck like the lake's snowy foaming, Keziah. lo And a man's promise met her down there in the gloaming : "Keziah! Keziah!" . ' She went in her girlhood, her innocent sweetness, She went in her trusting glad woman's completeness, She went with a hope and returned with a sorrow, A horrible dread of the coming to-morrow : "Keziah! Keziah!" The old woman moaneth, her meagre form swayeth, " God's curse of all curses on him who betrayeth," O poor foolish girl-heart, dead, past our reproving, God's hate on the base heart that played with her loving. "Keziah! Keziah!" " O never, O never, while human hearts falter Weak penitent prayers at the foot of God's altar, Nor man's choking creeds nor heaven's dread thunder, 20 Kcziah. Can wipe out the curse from the lives thn sleep under. "Keziah! Keziah ! " The girl like a flower caught late in life's snowing, Too full of love's summer for October's blowing, Died quick in her shame, the mother her sadness, Wore out into bitterness, sorrow, then madness. "Keziah! Keziah!" Years after she'd sit by the hut door at even, When vapors were soft over lake shore and heaven, And dream in her madness a girl-figure coming, With youth's dreamy beauty in out of the gloaming. "Keziah! Keziah!" Dead, gone, these long years by the hut-side she's sleeping. Where over it's dead walls the red vines are creeping. But the fish^r-folk say that at summer eves falling, Keziah. %% In out of the stillness they hear a voice calling : "Keziah! Keziah ! " And over the lake with its glamor of vapors, Through which the faint stars soon will glimmer like tapers, FVom the dim islands lit with the purpled day's dying, Like a far, caverned echo a faint voice replying: " Keziah ! Keziah ! " 22 . Morning on the Beach. MORNING ON THE BEACH. (Lake Huron, June.) See the night is beginning to fail, The stars have lost half of their glow; As though all the flowers in a garden did pale, When a rose is beginning to blow. ,, And the breezes that herald the dawn. Blown round from the caverns of day ; Lift the film of dark from the heavens bare lawn, Cool and sweet as they come up this way. And this mighty swayed bough of the lake Rocks cool where the morning hath smiled; While the dim, misty dome of the world scarce awake Blushes rose, like the cheek of a child. The Heart of the Lakesi a$ thp: heart of the lakes. Therk are crags that loom like spectres Half under the sun and the mist; There are beaches that gleam and glisten, There are ears that open to listen, And lips held up to be kissed. There are miles and miles of waters That throb like a woman's breast, With a glad harmonious motion Like happiness caught at rest, As if a heart beat under In love with its own glad rest ; Beating and beating forever, Outward to east and to west. There are forests that kneel forever, Robed in the dreamiest haze That God sends down in the summer 24 The Heart of the Lakes. To mantle the gold of its days, Kneeling and leaning forever In winding and sinuous bays. There are birds that like smoke drift over, With a strange and bodeful cry, Into the dream and the distance Of the marshes that southward lie, With their lonely lagoons and rivers, Far under the reeling sky. A Day of Mists. 25 A DAY OF MISTS. The crags and the low shores kneel Like ghosts, in the fogs that reel, And glide, and shiver, and feel For the shores with their shadowy hands. Earth and heaven are grey ; The worlds of waters are grey, And out in the fog-haunted day A spectre— the lighthouse— stands. And far from some caverned shore, There cometh the distant roar Oi the lake-surf's beat and din ; While wraith-like over the land. From low white isles of sand Of far off Michigan, The fogs come drifting in. I stand in the shrouded day. But my heart is far away 26 A Day of Mists. With a grave in a lonely bay, Where the crags like eaglets cling; Anfl under the drive and drift Of the vapors that sometime lift, And loom, and lower, and shift, The lake-birds scream and sing. Dawn in the Island Camp. ^7 DAWN IN THE ISLAND CAMP. Red in the mists of the morning, Angry, colored with fire, Beats the great lake in its beauty, Rocks tlie wild lake in its ire. Tossing fi-om headland to headland, Tipped with the glories of dawn, With gleaming, wide reaches of beaches, That stretch out far, wind-swept and wan. Behind, the wild tangle of island, Swept and drenched by the gales of the night; In front, lone stretches of water Flame-bathed by the incoming light : Dim the dark reels and dips under, Night wavers and ceases to be; As God send" the manifold mystery 0{ the morning and lake round to me. 28 ' By Huron's J^ore. BY HURON'S SHORE. Hfre amid the smoke of cities, Where far heaven never pities Earth, and kisses her with flowers ; Through the weary, sunless hours, How I long for Huron's shore : How I long for Huron's beaches. Where the wind-swept, shining reaches Wind in mists and are no more. How I long for sky and water, Where is never dearth of thought, or Lack of love for heaven's blue ; Where all nature loveth true. By the sky-rimmed, shining floor, By the black, wet caverned ledges. By the sands where windy sedge is Kissed by Huron evermore. By Huro7i^s Shore. ^9 How I long for dawns in-blowing, For the day-bloom, ruddier growing, Into morning's perfect flower; Watched in sweet, wind rustled hour, Spirit-wrapt, by Huron's shore, Where the stars die out like tapers, And the islands, clad in vapors, Rise at heaven's opened door. Where the great lake's shining bosom Rocks like some blue, petalled blossom. Blossomed 'mid the night's sv/ee^ care, Wind-shook in the morning air ; How I long for Huron's shore, Just to watch the dawns uprising, Over wave and crag, surprising Earth to life and love once more. How I long for suns, low- setting, Through the even's vaulted fretting, Till the stars resumed their marches Past the sky's grea' vaulted arches, 30 By Huron^s Shore, Over earth's cathedral floor. Then it was we stood together, She and I, while God's glad weather Haze-wrapt heaven, wave and shore. O to stand by Huron's beaches, By those glorious, sun-bathed reaches, In that dream of light and mist. Earth-embraced and heaven-kissed, Just to stand by Huron's shore, Just to know the old thoughts banished, Just to dream a face long vanished, — Vanished, dead, to come no more. How Spring Came, 31 , HOW SPRING CAME. (To the Lake Region.) No passionate cry came over the desolate places, No answering call from iron-bound land to land; But dawns and sunsets fell on mute, dead faces. And noon and night, death crept from strand to strand. 'Till love breathed out across the wasted reaches, And dipped in rosy dawns from desolate deeps; And woke with mystic songs the sullen beaches, And flamed to life the pale, mute, death-like sleeps. Then the warm i.outh, with amorous breath inblowing, Breathed soft o'er breast of wrinkled lake and mere ; And faces white from scorn of the north's snowing, Now rosier grew to greet the kindling year. 32 ' hi the River Bay. IN THE RIVER BAY. Alone I pause in morning dream Upon the border of the stream, Where all the summer melts away, In mists of wood and sky and bay ; And voices of the morning wake In whispers from the distant lake. With dews down fallen from the night, The alders scintilate in light. Reflected in the river pool, The woods bend restful, sweet and cool. And hidden in their heart away, A thrush sends forth his roundelay, Echo'd in the airs above. Filling all heaven and earth with love. Above me in the darkling wood, Through dusks of morning solitude, Drifting in many a watery moon. The river chants a sleepy tune. In the River Bay. . 30 Far out in front, in shining curves, Where, sun-cuirassed, his soft tide swerves, And all the dreams of morninj> brood. His shores wind, mirroring in his flood. With half-shut eyes I muse and see This morning picture dreamily. Then throbbeth up within my heart (Which seemeth nature's counterpart), A wish to stay and dream for aye, The morning by this river-bay, To stay forever and forget The new desire and old regret. The doubt, the sorrow, and the curse, The passions that our spirits nurse; To never dream in morning's fires • The ghosts of vanished, dead desires; To never read in kindling skies The sadness of reproachful eyes : Refined, removed of all earth's dross, It's strife, its sorrow, and its loss, 34 . ' Jf^ ^hc River Bay. To be a little child for aye, Mist-cradled in this river-bay. The dream is sweet but all too soon, Is lost it's vision, hushed it's rune ; For up along the river-wall I hear my comrades gaily call : The dream is broken, life reclaims, To darker fancies, sterner aims. I leave my restful river-bay. And worldward once more wend my way. Lake Huron. 35 LAKE HURON. (October.) Miles and miles of lake and forest, Miles and miles of sky and mist, Marsh and shoreland where the rushes Rustle, wind and water kissed ; Where the lake's great face is driving, Driving, drifting into mist. Miles and miles of crimson glories, Autumn's wondrous fires ablaze; Miles of shoreland red and golden. Drifting into dream and haze ; Dreaming where the woods and vapors. Melt in myriad misty ways. Miles and miles of lake and forest, Miles and miles of sky and mist. Wild birds calling where the rushes Rustle, wind and water kissed ; Where the lake's great face is driving, Driving, drifting into mist. 36 ' To the Blackberry. TO THE BLACKBERRY. I FIND thee by the country side, With angry mailed thorn ; When first with dreamy woods and skies The summer time is born. By every fence and woodland path ,, Thy milk-white blossom blows ; In lonely haunts of mist and dream, The summer airs enclose. And when the freighted August days Far into Autumn lean ; Sweet, luscious, on the laden branch, Thy ripened fruit is seen. Dark gypsy of the glowing year, Child of the sun and rain, While dreaming by thy tangled path, Xh^re comes to me again, To the lUackberry. 37 The memory of a liappy l)()y, Barefooted, freed from school, Wlio plucked your rich lip-staining fruit, By road-ways green and cool. And tossed in glee his ragged cap, With laughter to the sky ; Oblivious in the glow of youth, How the mad world went by ; Nor cared in realms of summer time, By haunts of bough and vine, If Nicholas lost the Volga, Or Bismark held the Rhine. O time when shade with sun was blent, So like an April shower ; Life has its flower and thorn and fruit, But thou wert all its flower. When every day Nepenthe lent, To drown its deepest sorrow, 38 To the Blackberry. And evening skies but prophesied A glorious skied to-morrow. O, long gone days of sunlit youth, I'd live through years of pain, Once more life's fate of thorn and fruit To dream your flower again. Manitoii, 39 MANITOU. (The Island sacred to the Memory of Manitou in Lake Huron.) Girdled by Huron's throbbing and thunder, Out on the drift and Hft of its blue; Walled by mists from the world asunder, Far from all hate and passion and wonder, Lieth the isle of the Manitou. Here, where the surfs of the great lake trample, Thundering time-worn caverns through. Beating on rock-coasts aged and ample; Reareth the Manitou's mist- walled temple, Floored with forest and roofed with blue. Gray crag-battlements, seared and broken, Keep these passes for ages to come; Never a watchword here is spoken, Never a single sign or token. From hands that are motionless, lips that are dumb. 40 Manitou. Only the Sun-god rideth over, Marking the seasons with track of flame ; Only the wild-fowl float and hover — Flocks of clouds whose white wings cover Spaces on spaces without a name. Year by year the ages onward Drift, but it lieth out here alone ; Earthward the mists and the earth-mists sunward, Starward the days, and the nights blown dawnward, Whisper the forests, the beaches make moan. Far from the world and its passions fleeting, 'Neath quiet of noon-day and stillness of star, Shore unto shore each sendeth greeting; Where the only woe is the surf's wild beating That throbs from the maddened lake afar. Au/iimn's Chant. 41 AUTUMN'S CHANT. From the far-off, mighty rivers, Drifting, shifting, glad-life givers, Throbbing, pulsing, to the lakes ; From the far-off, blue-peaked mountains, From the forest-girdled fountains. Where the sunlight leaps and shakes ; From the spaces wild and dreary, From the cornlands far and near, Comes the Autumn's miserere, Comes the death song of the year. Comes the music of far voices, Where the season rich, rejoices, Half reluctant now to go : — Over lands of dreams and vaj)ors. Where wild hosts with half burnt tapers Light her to the days of snow ; Over fields all yellow, burning 42 'Autiimn^s Chant. With their store of ruddy heat, Under forests, ripe and turning Red and gold beneath her feet. From the golden, undulating Wheat fields, where the glad, pulsating Gleam of mowers, moves along — Through the day so rich and heavy, Belled with bees a pollened bevy, Jargoning their honied song; Comes the music of far voices Dying, swelling, here to me; Thuswise all the earth rejoices At the year's maturity. From far, northern lakes a clanging Note of wild-geese, where low-hanging Mists drift over marshes bleak ; In a world of smoke and shadow, Where, far over wild lake-meadow, Sunsets burn on field and creek ; Comes with all the lakes far moaning Autum7i's Chant. On some bare coast bleak and drear, Voices wild and sweet intoning Music of the dying year. From the forest rich and gleaming, Where the old year sitteth dreaming By a smoky, curling brook; Hour by hour new wonders learning Like to one who sitteth turning Pages of some magic book : Sound of nuts and dead leaves falling, Lonely note of crows and jays, Lowing herd and squirrel calling, Chanteth sweet of Autumn days. 43 44 The Flight of the Gulls. THE FLIGHT OF THE GULLS. Out over the spaces, The sunny, blue places, Of water and sky ; Where day on day merges In nights that reel by ; Through calms and through surges, Through stormings and lulls, O, follow, Follow, The flight of the gulls. With wheeling and reeling. With skirtiming and stealing, We wing with the wind, Out over the heaving Of gray waters, leaving The lands far behind And dipping ships' hulls. O, follow, Follow, The flight of the gulls. The Flight of the (hills, nil Up over the thunder Of reefs that lie under, And dead sailors' graves; Like snowflakes in summer, . Like blossoms in winter, We float on the waves, And the shore-tide that |3ulls. O, follow, Follow, ■ The flight of the gulls. Would you know the wild vastness Of the lakes in their fastness, Their heaven's blue span ; Then come to this region, From the dwellings of man. Leave the life-care behind you, That nature annuls, And follow, Follow, The flight of the gulls. 46 A Lyric of Weariness, A LYRIC OF WEARINESS. Sweeter to listen thy singing Than wearisome babble of men ; To hearken down close to thy singing, Thy bells so tumultuous, ringing. On marshlands and wind-tangled fen. Full- wearied, to drink in and listen The ripple of waters that glisten. Forgetting the babble of men. Forgetting the gibe and the sneenng; The pettiness, rancor and fray Of a world whose birth and appearing, Whose jealousies, struggles, and jeering. And curses are but for a day. Close-brother to bud and to blossom Low-cradled in summer's warm bosom, I drink the sweet peace of the day. A Lyric of Weariness. The mad world may buckle its armor, May gird itself strong to the strife ; It may heat its wierd furnaces warmer, Yea seven times seven still warmer, Till the white flame slays like a knife: But dead to it's curse and ambition, I listen the waves' soft petition, And rest me apart from the strife. O brothers, what matter, what reason, To struggle a few weary hours? Better be one of the bees in The blossoms one sweet little season. To gather the honey of flowers. To gather the sunshine and sweetness. And round out life's litde completeness, Passing away with the hours. 48 Augusi Evening on the Beach, Lake Huron. AUGUST EVENING ON THE BEACH, LAKE HURON. A LURID flush of sunset sky, An angry sketch of gleaming- lake, I will remember till I die The sound, of pines that sob and sigh, Of waves upon the beach that break. 'Twas years ago, and yet it seems, O love, but only yesterday We stood in holy sunset dreams, While all the day's diaphonous gleams Sobbed into silence bleak and gray. We scarcely knew, but our two souls Like night and day rushed into one; The stars came out in gleaming shoals : While, like a far-off bell that tolls, Came voices from the wave-dipped sun. August Evening on the lieach, Lake Huron. 49 We scarcely knew, but hand in hand, With subtle sense, was closer pressed ; As we two walked in that old land Forever new, whose shining strand Goes gleaming round the world's great breast. What was it sweet our spirits spoke ? No outward sound of voice was heard. But was it bird or angel broke The silence, till a dream voice woke And all the night was music-stirred ? What was it, love, did mantle us, Such fire of incense filled our eyes ? The moon-light was not ever thus : Such star-born music rained on us, We grew so glad and wonder-wise. But this, O love, was long ago, Although it seems but yesterday The moon rose in her silver glow. As she will rise on nights of woe, On hands uplift, on hearts that pray. 50 August Evcnii'g on the Beach, Lake Huron. A lurid flush of sunset sky, An an^ry sketch of gleaming lake ; I will remember till I die, The sound of pines that sob and sigh, Of waves upon the beach that break. Invocation to the Lakes, 51 INVOCATION TO THE LAKHS. I i-OVK thee, lakes, and all thy glorious world, Blue, wrinkled, mist-encircled 'neath the sky. And far unto thy realm of waves impearled My heart, bird-like, doth fly. Thou art to me as love to lover sad. As sun to flower, as husband unto wife ; I think of thee and all the hours are glad. And dead are pain and strife. Thou comest to me as cooling draught to one. Hot parched and faint with unassuaged thirst; My spirit tranced within thy air and sun P'orgets the world is cursed. Thou knowest nor hate, nor death, nor sin, nor pain, Nor woeful partings, bitterness and tears ; But only days that sleep to wake again, Across thy golden years. 52 Invocation to the Lakes. Within thy r'-- mv borders nought takes shape Of weird an.. . .a, sorrow at the heart's core: . Thou holdest only love of cape for cape, Of murmurous shore for shore. From sky and wave I drink thy nectared draught, From jewelled brim that stars of heaven span : When, lo, 'tis love for God my heart hath quaffed. And sympathy for man. ' A Lyric, |^ A LYRIC. I WOULD bring you a song, O lakes : A song of delight and desire ; A song of the spring that wakes, Of the warm red light that shakes F'ar over your white ice-pyre. I would breathe you a song, O lakes; A song of the love that thrills The heart of the year, and breaks The fetters of winter, and slakes The thirst of the season in rills. I would breathe you a. song, O lakes ; And the bountiful answer you give, And the love and music it wakes, Trances my spirit and makes Me thankful to God that I live. 5^ ■ j^/ the Landhig. AT THE LANDING. I CANNOT hear you owning Your mighty love for me ; For all the lakes far moaning, For all the waves' intoning, Brings back a love to me : ., A love that might not be. The white-winged gulls were flying Across the purple light; Where all our day was dying On lands dim sunk and lying F'ar-off where loomed the night ; And dusk hours wheeled their flight. He stood where you are standing, The west enshrined his brow ; Across the white, scarred landing, Wave after wave was stranding, Ai the Landing. 55 Then back with moan and sough ; He spoke as you spoke now. He told what you are tehing, While a sweet, undreamed of pain Up in my heart was welling; He told the tale whose telling- Can ne'er be told again : O love, but all in vain ! Forgive, this sudden feeling, This strange outburst of woe, This woman -weakness stealing O'er me, as though days, reeling, Brought back the long ago ; For love remembers so. I could not have you speaking Your love, like his, to me ; While shores white moan were making, And all my heart was breaking, For a love that could not be ; • • O, love, it might not be ! 56 Sunset, Lake Huron. SUNSET, LAKE HURON. (September.) .• The sunbeams fall in golden flakes, Like snow-banks flamed the clouds are furled ; The soft light shakes On wave that breaks On wave, far round the gleaming world. • Great brown, bare rocks, wet, purple dyed. By sunsets beams hedge in this realm Of sky and wide, Bleak sweep of tide. Grey, tossed, scarce-plowed by keel or helm. The east looms dark, the red day dips Down under gleaming rock and wave, In hushed eclipse, While grey night slips The cerements of her shrouded gr^ve. Simset, Lake Huron. 57 And buildeth up her arches dark, From ruins of the dim dead day, Till earth may mark Each luminous spark, Of stars that far in heaven stray. And weaveth with her phantom hands (Blind, dumb, save for the moon's white wreath, And rude wind bands From Eblis lands) A shroud for the great lake beneath; That beats and moans, a prisoned thing, Rock-manacled beneath the night; And tells each shore, Forever more Its sorrow in the pallid light. 58 0)1 the Ledge. • ON THE LEDGE. I LIE out here on a ledge with the surf on the rocks below me, The hazy sunlight above and the whisj)ering forest behind I I lie and listen, O lake, to the legends and songs you throw me, Out of the murmurous moods of your multitudinous mind. I lie and listen a sound like voices of distant thunder, The roar and throb of your life in your rock wall's mighty cells; Then after a softer voice that comes from the beaches under, A chiming of waves on rocks, a laughter of silver bells. A glimmer of bird-like boats, that loom from the far horizon; Oil the Ledge. 59 That scud and tack and dip under the gray and the blue ; A single gull that floats and skims the. waters, and flies on Till she is lost like a dream, in the haze of the distance, too. A steamer that rises a smoke, then after a tall, dark funnel, That moves like a shadow across your water and sky's gray edge; A dull, hard beat of a wave that diggeth himself a tunnel, Down in the crevices dark under my limestone ledge. And here I lie on my ledge, and listen the songs you sing me, Songs of vapor and blue, songs of island and shore ; And strange and glad are the hopes and sweet are the thoughts you bring me, Out of the throbbing depths and wells of your heart's great store. 6o The Legend of Restless River. THE LEGEND OF RESTLESS RIVER. Into the vague unrest Of Huron's mighty breast, Runneth the Restless River. Into the north and west, Out of the forest's rest Its face is set forever. Moons wane through spaces white, As marsh-birds wheel their flight, As dawns reel into night, And souls from souls dissever ; But over the sands to the bay, Past the forests that pray, The river it ruinieth forever. It was a curse and worse, A curse on the Restless River; Moons and moons ago, 7 he Legend of Restless River. 6i Before the ages of snow, And ice, and rains that shiver, Came the curse of the Resdess River. What was this terrible curse? Never in tale or verse, Did singer or chief rehearse ; Warrior sang it never ; But only the Manitou, Who knoweth all things, knew, The moons and ages through, The secret of Resdess River. Where other. streams might sleep. In eddies cool and deep, Beneath where cascades leap • In sunny snowy surges ; With never a dreaming place. With never a breathing space. In one wild tortuous race. Its maddened tide it urges. 62 The Legend of Resiless River, Why this horrible dread, This fear of the midnight dead, When tlie atars peer overhead, Out of lone spaces winging ? Men said that the stars and moon At the silence of midnight noon, Never mirrored themselves in its singing. That its song was only a moan; .. For a sin it could never atone, Of all earth's waters alone, It runs in the darkness forever ; And that never the song of bird, Save only in sadness, is heard On the shores of the Restless River. Men say, at noon of day. In thickets far away, Where skies are dim and gray. And birches stir and shiver, ' That out of the gloomy air, The JA'gnid of Restless River, A voice goes up in i)rayer, From the shores of the Restless River Whatever its sin hath been, Its shores are just as green, And over it kindly lean (jreat forests heavenward growing; And its waters are just as sweet. And its tides more strong and fleet Than any river flowing. But for all its outward mirth And the glow that spans its girth, Its voices from air and earth, Its walls of leaves that quiver; Men say an awful curse And dread as death, and worse, Hangs over the Resdess River. And the dreamy Indian girl, As she sees its waters curl, In many a silver whirl, 63 64 The Legend 0/ Rt'stlcss River. Hath pity on Restless River, For she knows that long ago, Its tides that once were slow, By reason of some dread woe, Went suddenly swift forever ; That a dread and unknown curse, For a sin, or something worse, Was laid on the Restless River. The Legend of Dead Man's Lake. 65 THE LEGEND OF DEAD MAN'S LAKE.* EvKR a }?ray haze vvakcth the morn, In a rejjion that all forsake, And the noons they follow the desolate noons, On the shores of the Dead Man's Lake. 'Tis a world of forest all withered and bleak, Where never a leaf doth grow ; But a grey mist broods over water and woods, Twixt heaven and earth below ; And never a sound in all the world round, But the desolate call of a crow. "■ Dead Man's Lake, a lonely sheet of water that lies in a desolate region of the Indian Peninsula, between l-ake Huron and Georgian Bay. It is situ- ated in a forest of dead pines and hemlocks, blighted by bush fires long before the memory of any living man, and this adds materially to the desolation 'of an already dreary region of swamp and rock. The Indians have a legend that a chief was treacherously murdered on this lake, and that his body still lies with upturned face at the bottom. Hence its name and the dread curse they believe hangs over the vicinity, which they always shun. 66 The Legend of Dead Mans Lake, And there in a mist, by clammy winds kissed, Wliere never a creature is seen, All fringed in with weeds and dank marsh reeds The lake it lieth between. The golden summers they go and they come ; The seasons they wake and they sleep ; The partridge drum, and the wild bees' hum, Are heard over meadow and deep ; But never the golden summers that come, Or the seasons that sleep and wake. Can waken the rest that broods on the breast Of the desolate Dead Man's Lake. There is never a ray of the sun by day. But ever that horrible haze. That hangs like a shroud or the ghost of a cloud All about the dread hush of its days : And ever the moon at her midnight noon, Haifa cloak doth her cloud-veil make. As she peers with a pallid and startled look In the boypm of Pead Man's Lake. The Legend of Dead Man's Lake. 67 And ever, 'tis said, that she seeth a dread, White face of a long-dead man, That floateth down there, with the weeds in its hair, And a look so fixed and wan; Like the ghost of a hate, that lieth in wait. Through the years that it longeth to span. And ever at midnight, white and drear, When the dim moon sheddeth her light, Will the startled deer, as they speed by here. Slacken their phantomlike flight; And into the shade that the forest hath made, A wider circle they take; For they dread lest their tread wake the sleep of the dead In the bosom of Dead Man's Lake. And as long as it lies with that prayer in its eyes. And that curse on its white-sealed lips. Will the lake lie wan, and the 3/ears drift on, In their' horrible, hushed eclipse, 68 The Legend of Dead Maiis Lake. Will the lake lie under the stranj^c mute wonder or the moon as she pallidly dips ; Will the song of the bird there never be heard, Nor the musie of wind-swept tree, But only the dread of the skies overhead, That the mists will never set free, From the terrible spell that there ever will dwell As long as the ages be. And there it lies and holdeth the skies, In a tranee they never can break. While the years, they follow the desolate years, On the shores of the Dead Man's Lake. To the Lakes. (^^ Ode. TO THE LAKES. (In June.; MAGIC region of blue waters throbbino-, O blown wave-garden, 'neath the north world's span ; Wild paradise, girt in by crag-walls, robbing All earth of beauty since the world began ; 1 dream again your voice of beaches sobbing And crave a boon more sweet than gift of man ; — Once more in the ripe heart of golden summer, To drift upon your blue pearled wimpling breast; To watch God's dawn, bud, bloom, a flushed incomer,' To see him die with fl; mes in thy hushed west ; ' To even know the entranced silence dumber. Because of heart awe-hushed and lii)s love-pressed. To watch the dimmed day deepen into e\'en, The flush of sunset melt in pallid gold ; yo To the Lakes. While the pale planets blossom out in heaven ; To feel the under silence trance and hold The night's great heartbeats ; soul-washed, nature- shriven, To feel the mantle of silence lold on fold. To know the horologe of nature timing The dawning or the golden heart of noon, To hear in spirit magic bells set chiming On silver continents of the rising moon ; Tn read in sky, wave, wood, God's poet rhyming In mystic rhythm nature's eternal rune. And so forget the sorrow and the glory, The passion and the pain that men call life ; To let the past go like a long-told story. The long-forgotten and the Ion ^-dead strife ; But just to drift here while the /ears grow hoary. Dead to earth's living with all it's anguish rife. And know no voice save that of beaches chanting, No eye save June's own glorious dome of blue; To the Lakes. yi And so be dead to all the strife and canting, The violence of souls that were untrue ; And only know one love, the mighty panting Of your great heart that throbs your being- through, 72 To Tliuiider Cape. Odk. TO thundp:r cape.^ Storm-beaten cliff, thou mighty cape of thunder ; Rock-Titan of the north, whose feet the waves beat under ; Cloud-reared, mist-veiled, to all the world a wonder, Shut out in thy wild solitude asunder, O Thunder Cape, thou mighty cape of storms. About thy base, like wo that naught assuages, Throughout the years the wild lake raves and rages ; One after one, time closes up weird pages ; But firm thou standest, unchanged, through the ages, O Thunder Cape, thou awful cape of storms. Upon thy ragged front, the storm's black anger. Like eagle clings, amid the elements' clangor : ^= Thimder Cape, an immense clitT of basaltic inck, lliirtetMi liinulrcd feel high, guards the entrance to Thunder Uay, Lake Superior. To ThiDider Cape. 73 About thee feels the hike's soft sensuous huiguor; But dead ahke to having- and to anger, Thou towerest bleak, O mighty cape of storms. Year in, year out, the summer rain's soft beating, Thy front hath known, the winter's snow and sleeting • But unto each thou givest contemj)tuous greeting. These hurt thee not through seasons fast and Heeting ; O proud, imperious, rock-ribbed cape of storms. In August nights, when on thy under beaches. The lake to caverns- time-wierd legend teaches ; And moon-pearled waves to shadowed shores send speeches. Far into heaven, thine awful darkness reaches, O'ershadowing night ; thou ghostly cape of storms. In wild October, when the lake is booming It's madness at thee, and the north is dooming The season to fiercest hate, still unconsuming, Over the strife, thine awful front is looming; Like death in life, thou awful cape of storms. 74 ^^0 'nmnder Cape. Across thy rest the wild bee's noonday humming, And sound of martial hosts to battle drumming, Are one to thee — no date knows thine incoming; The earliest years belong to thy life's summing, O ancient rock, thou aged cape of storms. O thou so old, within thy sage discerning, What sorrows, hates, what dead past loves still-burning, Couldst thou relate, thine ancient pages turning ; O thou, who seemest ever new lores learning, O unforgetting, wondrous cape of storms. O tell me what wild past lies here enchanted ; What borders thou dost guard, what regions haunted ? What type of man a little era flaunted. Then passed and slept? O tell me thou undaunted, Thou aged as eld, O mighty cape of storms. O speak, if thou canst speak, what cities sleeping? What busy streets? what laughing and what weeping? What vanished deeds and hopes like dust upheaping, Hast thou long held within thy silent keeping? O wise old cape, thou rugged cape of storms. To Tfmyider Cape. y. These all have passed, as all that's living passes • Our thoughts they wither as the centuries' grasses That bloom and rot in bleak, wild lake morasses • ' But still thou loomest where Superior glasses Himself in surge and sleep, O cape of storms. And thou wilt stay when we and all our dreaming Lie low in dust. The age's last moon-beaming Will shed on thy wild front it's final gleaming • For last of all that's real and all that's seeming Thou still wilt linger, mighty cape of storms.' 76 Dmil and Mat. DAN'L AND MAT. Haint never heard of the Renshaws ? Two brothers, Dan'l and Mat, Lived down the sliores ol Huron, On an ishuid tliey called Bii;- Hat; Where the waves run high'rn mountains, And the beaches is foggy and flat. Dan'l was tall and strappin'. But Mat he was scraggy and lean : Alius half-dead with the agy, Caused by the liver or spleen. But the 'fection betwixt them two brothers Was a tarnal fine sight ter be seen. They war'nt never j^roperly edicated, Least not in the reg'lar way Of colleges, churches, and mectins ; Ihiu/ a)id Mai 77 Hut J Ih-i ilu.y was a 'splctivc long way Ahead in livin' and actin' Of nios'n of those who j)ray. Histories, h*es you nii-ht call them, Hut such stories them fellers could tell - Beat old Robertson Cruiser, And 'Rahian ni^t^hts as well; An all of the gospellest truth, sir. As them as heerd em could tell. Night after night, down at Masons', As drinkin an smokin we sat ; Magination, not lies, sir, For no un ud contradict flat. When Mat ud coroborate Dan'l, An Dan'l ud swear by Mat. An once when a half tool feller, Stood up an said t'was all rot ; Ef it had'nt a bin fer Dan'l (A tarnation tighter when hot), ■jH DatCl and Mai. I believe as the crowd in the barroom Would a murdered that chap on the spot. Dead, yes, gone these years, sir, Out fishin and caught in a scjuall ; Each tried ter resky the other, But the lake as, is hard on us all, Washed their bodies ashore next mornin, High and dry up, and that 's all. But ef lovin yer brother means heaven, They've got it an mor'n that, For you'll find them away down the shore there, On the island that's called Big Hat; And Mat he lies close up to Dan'l, An Dan'l he 's sleepin by Mat. August Alii hi on Cror^ian Bay. 79 AUGUST NMC.HT, ON CKORGIAN HAY. Thf-: day (Irt'anis out, the nij^ht is broodinj; in, Across this world of vapor, wood, and wave. Thinj^s bhir and dim. Cool silvery rii)j)les lave The sands and rustling' reed-beds. Now bej;^in Nijj^ht's dreamy choruses, the murmurous din Of sleepy voices. Tremulous, one by one, The stars Ijlink in. The dusk drives out the sun ; And all the world the hosts of darkness win. Anon, through mists, the harvest moon will come. With breathing flames, above the forest edge ; Flooding the silence in a silvern dream : Conquering the night and all it's voices dumb, With unheard melodies While all agleam, Low flutes the lake along the lustrous sedge. 8o The Tides of Dawn, THE TIDES OF DAWN. How cool across tlic lake's pearled, heavinj^^ floor, The spirit winds of morning steal in here : Dim mists of darkness rise from marsh and mere, And ])allid j)hantoms- brood at morning's door. Beyond yon east the surfs of dawning roar, To break in liame-waves on night's sombre beach ; The heart still hears their impetuous, golden speech, Imploring morn the daylight to restore. Soon, soon, across the night's gray, ruined walls, Will flood and surge the crimson tides of morn ; Bathing the east and all the dusks forlorn ; Soon, soon, across the dawn's white silence falls Glory and music, morning's song and fire : The waking world leaps to the day's desire. Crags. 8 1 CRAGS.* Gaunt, huge, misshapen, 'neath the northern night, These wild lake crags loom black against the sky, While at their feet the restless waters sigh And beat and moan amid the fitful light. Here no life comes or takes it's shadowy flight. No voice save winds that shoreward faint and die ; But ever through their weird rifts tow'ring high, The moon with ray of gold the lake doth smite. Men call them warrior-souls to adamant turned Doomed through these thousand years that since have burned, To guard the prisoned souls that wander here ; So, dead to hate and waste, the centuries' storms, True to their trust, they lift their awful forms, And keep these passes bleak, these regions drear. *Among the Ojibway nations there is a legend that the lime-stone crag-cliffs on the shores of the great American lakns, are Indian warriors eternally fixed in stone by Nana Boza (Hiawatha) to keep guard over the spirits of bad Indians who are doomed to roam for ever these desolate wilds. 8 2 Mcdwayosh MKDWAYOSH. A WORM) of (hiwii, wluTC sky and water mcrjj^c In far, dim vaj)()r.s, niin^linj; blue in blue, Where low -rimmed shores shimmer like gold shol through Some misty fabric. Lost in dreams, I urge With languid oar my skiff through sunny surge, That rings its musie round the rocks and sands, i*assing to siK.'nc(?, where far lying lands Loom blue and i)urj)ling from the morning's verge. ] linger in dreams, and through my dreaming comes. Like sound of suffering heard through battle drums, An anguished call of sad, heart-broken speech ; As if some wild lake sj)irit, hjng ago Soul-wronged, through hundn.'d years its wounded woe Moans out in vain across each wasted beach. At the River's Mouth. 83 AT THK RIVP:R'S MOUTH. A vvoki.i) of mist and sky and watery waste Of windy reed-beds, where the river sifts Its silent waters, dreainin^^ as it drifts By hazy shores, nnniindful of the liaste Oi its old lonj^in^s when a wild wan life, Panting for some dim fiitnre, it s|)ed on, A ,t.leaniin^ ^host, far under dusk and dawn, Stahbinjr the misty midni^rju, like a knife. And now like one from madckmed dream awake. Its wild, impetuous passion spent and old, It threads a world of thiujus that only seem ; Min.irlin^r at last with is lon^r-wished-for lake, Mid such a |)eace not even love foretold, Where only dream-^ods fold their win^^s and dream. PART II. SNOWFLAKES AND SUNBEAMS. S7l07i V. 87 SNOW. Down out of heaven, Frost-kissed And wind driven, Flake upon flake, Over forest and lake, Cometh the snow. Folding the forest, Folding the farms, In a mande of white ; And the river's great arms, Kissed by the chill night From clamor to rest, Lie all white and shrouded Upon the world's breast. Falling so slowly Down from above, So white, hushed, and holy, Folding the city 88 . Snow. Like the great pity Of God in His love ; Sent down out of heaven On its sorrow and crime, Blotting them, folding them Under its rime. Fluttering, rustling, Soft as a breath, The whisper of leaves, The low pinions of death. Or the voice of the dawning, When day has its birth, Is the music of silence It makes to the earth. Thus down out of heaven, Frost- kissed And wind-driven, Flake upon flake. Over forest and lake, Cometh the snow. Canadian Folksorig. go CANADIAN FOLKSONG. The doors are shut, the windows fast ; Outside the gust is driving past, Outside the shivering ivy dings, While on the liob the kettle sings. Margery, Margery, make the tea, Singeth the kettle merrily. The streams are hushed up where they flowed, The ponds are frozen along the road, The catde are housed in shed and byre. While singeth the ketde on the fire. Margery, Margery, make the tea, Singeth the ketde merrily. The fisherman on the bay in his boat Shivers and buttons up his coat ; The traveller stops at the tavern door. And the ketde answers the chimney's roar. Margery, Margery, make the tea, Singeth the ketde merrily. QO Canadian Folksong. The firelight dances ujion the wall, Footsteps are heard in the outer liall ; A kiss and a welcome that fill the room, And the kettle sings in the glimmer and gloom. Margery, Margery, make the tea, Singeth the kettle merrily. To a Robin in November. 91 TO A ROBIN IN NOVEMBER. Sweet, sweet, and tlie soil listeiiiiii»; heaven I'eels In one blue eestasy above thy sonr. In tlie red lieart of all the openini;^ year, In the hushed murmur of low dreamint>; fields Hunj4' under heaven 'twixt dim blue and blue; Where the younj^^ Summer, purpled and i)earled in dew, Mirrors herself in June, and knows no wrong. Sweet, sweet, throwing thy lack of fear Back to the heart of God, till heaven feels The throbbing of earth's music through and through. Dreaming in song, — great pulsing-hearted hills, Cradling the daw^n in mists and purple veils Of vapors, over pearls of lakes and brooks Girdled about the neck of half the world, When the red birth oi the young dreaming June 92 To a Robin in November. Kisses the lands with gales, and murmurs, and trills Of melody, lips that blossom with tales Of music and color and form and beauty of looks And snowy argosies in heaven furled, All summer set to one sweet, warbled tune. And thou, red-throated, comest back to me Here in the bare November bleak and chill, Breathing the red-ripe of the lusty June Over the rime of withered field and mere ; O heart of music, while I dream of thee. Thou gladdest note in the dead Summer's tune, Great God! thou liest dead outside my sill, Starved of the last chill berry on thy tree, Like some sweet instrument left all unstrung. The melodious orchestra of all the year. Dead with the sweet dead summer thou had'st sung; Dead with the dead year's voices and clasp of hands ; Dead with all music and love and laughter and light ; While chilly and bleak comes up the winter night. And shrieks the gust across the leafless lands. In the Study. ^^ IN THE STUDY. Out over my study, All ashen and ruddy, . Sinks the December sun: And high up over « The chimney's soot cover, The winter night wind has begun. Here in the red embers I dream old Decembers, Until the low moan of the blast, Like a voice out of Ghost-land, ; Or memory's lost-land, Seems to conjure up wraiths from the past. Then into the room Through the firelight and gloom, Some one steals, — let the night wind grow bleak, And ever so coldly, — Two white arms enfold me, And a sweet face is close to my cheek. 94 On Chris imas Eve. ON CHRISTMAS EVE. In byre and barn the mows are brim with sheaves, Where stealeth in with phosphorescent tread The ghmmering moon, and, 'neath his wattled eaves, The kennelled hound unto the darkness grieves His chilly straw, and from his gloom-lit shed, The wakeful cock proclaims the midnight dread. With mullioned windows, 'mid its skeleton trees. Beneath the moon the ancient manor stands ; Old gables rattle in the midnight breeze, Old elms make answer to the moaning seas Beyond the moorlands, on the wintry sands. While drives the gust along the leafless lands. By the Fire, ' g^ BY THE FIRE. Hear the wind over the chimney, How it whistles and croons and sings, And the flames and sparks fly upward. As if borne on unseen wings. The moon Hke a silver crescent Peers under the elm-tree bough, And the city of frost on the window pane Is illuminated now. I cower and fancy and fancy, Till far in the middle night, The hopes of a vanished past lie dead. Like the ashes dead and white. 96 Little Blue Eyes and Golden Hair. LITTLE BLUE EYES AND GOLDEN HAIR. Little blue eyes and golden hair Sits like a fairy beside my chair, And gazes with owlish look on the fire, Where the great log crackles upon his pyre ; And down in my heart there broods a prayer — God bless blue eyes and golden hair. Little blue eyes and golden hair Chatters and laughs and knows no care ; Though far outside the night is bleak, And under the eaves the shrill winds shriek And rattle the elm boughs chill and bare — God bless blue eyes and golden hair. Little blue eyes and golden hair, Taken all sudden and unaware. Caught in the toils of the drowsy god, Little Blue Eyes and Golden Hair. 97 Has gone on a trip to the Land of Nod ; Half fallen in my lap she lies, With a warp of dreams in her lash-hid eyes ; And deep in my heart still broods that prayer - God bless blue eyes and golden hair. 98 ' Barberries, BARBERRIES. Barberries clustering on the bare walls, What is the beauty with which you glow ? What are the blushes of secrets you know ? Flaming each spot where my footstep falls, Barberries clustering on the bare walls. Barberries clustering on the bare walls, I know two lips as red as your red; Two cheeks as blushing with love unsaid, A heart whose glowing your glow recalls; Barberries clustering on the bare walls. Flame with it, flame with it, over your walls, Whisper my love of it, round the bleak year ; 'Till love makes summer of winter drear. And heart holds heart in the sweetest of thralls; Barberries clustering on the bare walls. The Passinjr Year. ^ THE PASSING YEAR. I.IKK vikings iamc the rude blasts of November Clianting al„ucl the death song „f the year • Sadder and bleaker can,e the pale December ' With haggard woods and fitful dying ember,' And leaves all dead and sere, Withered and sere. I sit alone where the bright hearth-logs glean.ing into the gusty night red sj-arks do send • The chinmey's n,oan doth answer to my dreaming. And the old year hath to „,e all the seeming Of a familiar friend. An old but vanished friend. Bloweth the winter, fi-om his forest leaping Loud Boreas cometh from bleak arctic field Cometh with whi,e gust in the midnight sweeping. And findeth the Old Year like some Norse-king. sleeping Upon his battle shield, With white locks, on his shield. loo A Winicr's Night. A WINTER'S NIGHT. Shadowy white, Over the fields are the sleeping fences, Silent and still in the fading light, As the wintry night commences. The forest lies On the edge of the heavens, bearded and brown ; He pulls still closer his cloak, and sighs, As the evening winds come down. The snows are wound As a winding sheet on the river's breast, And the shivering blast goes wailing round. As a spirit that cannot rest. Calm sleeping night ! Whose jewelled couch reflects the million stars That murmur silent music in their flight — Q, naught thy fair sleep mars. A Winter's Ni^ht. lor And all a dream — • Thy si)aiij,ded forest in its frosty sleep, Thy pallid moon that shetls its misty beam, And looming wraiths that o'er the moorlands creep. As through the night The trailing snows wind as a funeral train, And softly through the murky morning light *The dim grey day comes stealing up again. I02 ' Old Voices. OLD VOICES. I STAND on the confines of the past to-night — The world that is gone before ; And in the dim flicker ol the parlor light Old shadows steal before my sight From its strange and misty shore. And bygone murmurs are in my ears, And sweet lips touch my cheeks ; And old, old tunes, that no one hears, Now steal to me from the sad old years, And sweet words that no one speaks. But only the rythm of an old-time tune, That steals down the halls of time ; And comes so soft, like the far- off rune Of a stream that sleeps through the afternoon, Or a distant evening chime. Old Voices, ' 103 And in the silence that intervenes Sad voices whisper low; Come back once more to the loved old scenes — To the dim old region of boyhood's dreams — To the sweet world you used to know. I04 February. FEBRUARY. Thou chilly month of wind Lnd rain, Of drifting at the whited pane, 'Twixt winter's birth and winter's wane; Thou shrouded month of muffled snows. Of gales from far-off arctic floes, When winter dieth of his woes ; Dost thou not through thine ice-bound girth, Hear, in the warmer heart of earth, The young spring dreaming of its birth. When, stealing through thy mailed, strong Ice-armor, comes the sweet low song Of pied wind flowers, their streams along. With sweet first- thoughts and prophesies Of warm, wet winds and soft, blue skies And meadows all a green surprise? February. jq_ O, go thy way with gust and blow,— For all thy looks of wintry woe, Thou had'st a warm heart 'neath thy snow. And all thy bluster and thy gust A softer nature did encrust, Which had the whole year's hopes in trust; io6 Midwinter NighVs Dream. MIDWINTER NIGHT'S DREAM. The snows outside are white and white, The gusty flue shouts through the night, And by the lonely chimney light I sit and dream of summer. The orchard bough creaks in the blast, That like a ghost goes shrieking past, And coals are dying fast and fast, But still I dream of summer. 'Tis not the voice of falling rain, Or dream wind blown through latticed pane, When earth will laugh in green again, That makes me dream of summer. But hopes will then have backward flown, Like fleets of promise long out-blown. And Love once more will greet his own, — This is my dream of summer. On a March Morning, 107 ON A MARCH MORNING. • Our elm is heavy with ice, , The mountain is hid in a mist, And the heaven is grey Above, and away, Where the vapors the hill-tops have kissed. The fields are bleak patches of white, Our stream is still shut in his prison ' Of ice and of snow, And the sun, half-aglow, Scarce over the forest is risen. But there is something abroad in the air, Perchance 'tis the spirit of spring. That fills me with fancies Of blue skies and pansies, And songs that the meadow brooks sing. io8 On a March Morning. Some spirit the season has sent, With visions of blossom and leaf, And song — as a token. Of feeling unspoken, In this time of the aged winter's grief. Sunbeams. ' 109 SUx\BEAMS. They weave a web of light and shade In leafy nooks at noon, And in the caverns of night they spin The white locks of the moon. They build the walls of nature's house, Each smites with a golden bar; They climb down at night on silver strands. And each is tied to a star; And then at dawn they softly steal In the east, through their golden door, And weave a woof of roseate hues On the ocean's shimmering floor. And every pearl of lustrous tint, And every gem divine, That borrows its light from the ocean's night, Is the child of their airy mine. no Sunbeams. And whether by niglit or whether by day They loosen their shining skein. It falls down out of the heaven's deep In a silver or golden rain. Before the Dawn. m BEFORE THE DAWN. One hour before the flush of dawn, That all the rosy daylight weaves, Here in my bed, far overhead I hear the swallows in the eaves. I cannot see, but well I know. That out around the dusky grey, Across dark lakes and voiced streams, The blind, dumb vapors feel their way. And here and there a star looks down Out of the fog that holds the- sea In its embrace, while up the lands, Some cock makes music lustily. And out within the dreamy woods, Or in some clover blossomed lawn. The blinking robin pipes his mate To wake the music of the dawn. 112 The Deivdrop. THE DEWDROP. I FELL from heaven at golden dawn Like a tear from the sky's blue deep ; I fell in the cell of a lily's bell, And woke all the world from sleep. The cock called out from his drowsy shed, The humming-bee woke to his feast, And sleep blew off from the eyes of men, As the mists blew out of the east. Phoebus harnessed his snorting steeds, And let down his golden bars, And strewed the fields of heaven with red. As the night blew out with the stars. Then Helios rose from his streams in the east, And smote on the doors of day, And the worker arose from his rest to toil, And the priest in his cell to pray. Indian Summer. 113 INDIAN SUMMER. Along the line of smoky hills The crimson forest stands, And all the day the blue-jay calls Throughout the autumn lands. Now by the brook the maple leans With all his ^dory spread, And all the sumachs on the hills Have turned their green to red. Now by great marshes wrapt in mist, Or past some river's mouth, Throughout the long, still autumn day Wild birds are flying south. 114 To a Clump of Moss. TO A CLUMP OF MOSS. Low thou slccpcst, where the wood is deepest, Green and cool, In the great shady gloom of the wood, Beside some pool. To thee is given the dew of heaven Alone to drink, Out of the crystal flagons the night Lets down from the heaven's brink. RODODACTULOS. The night blows outward in a mist, And all the world the sun has kissed. Along the golden rim of sky, A thousand snow-piled vapors lie. And by the wood and mist-clad stream, The Maiden Morn stands still to dream- The Meadow Spring. nc THE MEADOW SPRING. Here, in a deep, blue cavern of the sun, Like some lost jewel, in the tangled grass I lie, where cloudlets ever pass and pass, And o'er my breast the unseen breezes run. Deep in my crystal heart, fallen one by one From out the burnished quiver of the sky, The sunbeams' golden shafted arrows lie. O, dreamer of the summer lands, but come, And, bending down, gaze on my silent face, When from the sky's high dome all clouds are furled. And I will show yot, by the season's grace, What I by subdest charm have conjured here— A universe of beauty in a tear — A mirrored glimpse of all the glowing world. PART III. OTHER POEMS. Lazarus. ug LAZARUS. O, Father Abram, I can never rest, Here in thy bosom in the whitest heaven, Where love blooms on through days without an even ; For up through all the paradises seven, There comes a cry from 'some fierce, anguished breast. A cry that comes from out of hell's dark night, A piercing cry of one in agony, That reaches me here in heaven white and high ; A call of anguish that doth never die ; Like dream -waked infant wailing for the light. O, Father Abram, heaven is love and peace. And God is good ; eternity is rest. Sweet would it be to lie upon thy breast And know no diought but loving to be blest Save for that cry that never more will cease. I2Q Lazarus. It comes to me above the angel-lyres, The chanting praises of the cherubim ; It comes between my upward gaze and Him, All-blessed Christ. \ voice from the vague dim, "6>, Lazarus, come and ease me of these Jires'' "O, Lazarus, I have called thee all these years, It is so long for me to reach to thee, Across the ages of this mighty sea, That loometh dark, dense, like eternity ; Which I have bridged by anguished prayers aiid tears. " Which I have bridged by knowledge of God's love. That even penetrates this anguished glare ; A gleami7ig ray, a tremulous, star-built stair, A road by which love- hungered souls may fare Past hate and doubt, to heaven and God above.'' So calleth it ever upward unto me. It creepeth in through heaven's golden doors. Lazarus. 121 It echoes all along the saphire floors, , Like smoke of sacrifice, it soars and soars. It fills the vastness of eternity. Until my sense of love is waned and dimmed, The music-rounded spheres do clash and jar, No more those spirit-calls from star to star, The harmonies that float and melt afar, The belts of light by which all heaven is rimmed. No more I hear the beat of heavenly wings, The seraph chanting in my rest-tuned ear ; I only know a cry, a prayer, a tear, That rises from the depths up to me here; A soul that to me suppliant leans and clings. O, Father Abram, thou must bid me go Into the spaces of the deep abyss ; Where far from us and our God-given bliss, Do dwell those souls that have done Christ amiss; For through my rest I hear that upward wo. 122 Lazarus. I hear it crying through the heavenly alght, When curved, hung in space, the million moons Lean planet-ward, and infinite space attunes Itself to silence, as from drear gray dunes, A cry is heard along the shuddering light, Of wild dusk -bird, a sad, heart-curd'ling cry. So comes to me that call from out hell's coasts ; I see an infinite shore with gaping ghosts ; This is no heaven, with all it's shining hosts ; This is no heaven until that hell doth die. So spake the soul of Lazarus, and from thence. Like new-fledged bird from its sun-jewelled nest, Drunk with the music of the young year's quest ; He sank out into heaven's gloried breast, Spaceward turned, toward darkness dim, immense. Hell ward he moved like radiant star shot out From heaven's blue with rain of gold at even', When Orion's train and that mysterious seven Lazarus. 1 23 Move on in mystic range from heaven to heaven. Hellward he sank, followed by radiant rout. The liquid floor of heaven bore him up, With unseen arms, as in his feathery flight, Ke floated down toward the infinite night ; But each way downward, on the left and right, He saw each moon of heaven like a cup Of liquid, misty fire that shone afar From sentinel towers of heaven's batdements ; But onward, winged by love's desire intense, And sank, space-swallowed, into the immense. While with him ever widened heaven's bar. 'Tis ages now long-gone since he went out, Christ-urged, love-driven, across the jasper walls, But hellward still he ever floats and falls. And ever nearer come those anguished calls; And far behind he hears a glorious shout. 124 ^^^ Hebrew Father's Prayer. THE HEBREW FATHER'S PRAYER. O Thou, just One, who givest gifts to men, Who holdest light and darkness in thy hand, Who alone can Wight and bless, whose strong command Can make a garden of a darksome fen : O Thou who lovest all and hatest none. Look down, compassionate, I pray, on me. Not for myself but for the sake of one, The little child that smileth at my knee. Men say we come of a dark, cursed race, Who fell in bitterness from out thy word, • Who slew Thy blessed Son — a ruthless horde — And gave Him gall to drink, and smote His face: O Thou who knowest all, let not this blight. This awful blight come down ; but if it be. Send it on my dark life, not her's so bright. The little child that smileth at my knee. The Hebrew Father's Prayer. 125 Thou knowest I have sinned and fallen short Of all thy laws, that I was reared in hate And bitterness as dread as their's who wait, In gloom and darkness round hell's baleful court. But pity, Lord, O pity my distress, Let all thy righteous sentence fall on me, Consume me utterly, if Thou wilt bless The litde child that smileth at my knee. O take me, Lord, and make me what Thou wilt, Give me to drink whole centuries of wo. For her dear sake who is as driven snow, . Plunge agony's cruel sword clean to the hilt: Heap on me all, O what would I not bear: For deepest hell were heaven indeed to me, To know that thou didst have her in thy care. The litde child that smileth at my knee. Then spake God's angel, answering thus, " Old man. Thy love so white hath burnt out all thy sin. Where thy child goes thou too shalt enter in. Heaven hath no hate for thee in all it's plan. 126 The Hebrew Father's Prayer. God made love strong that it might whiten all. Might conquer all, and make all thereby free. Thou lovest thy God in loving that one small, Unconscious child that smileth at thy knee. Ode to Tennyson. 127 ODE TO TENNYSON. Great Bard, thou Merlin of these latter clays, Who wovest thy magic songs in looms of thought, From out the dim threads of the misty past ; Sweetest and strongest in song since Milton sang, Or Shakespeare by his Avon dreamed of Lear; Thine Arthur with his helm of gleaming light, Hath sent a wind of thought about the world ; A glory like the glory of the Grail, To lead men higher to our Lord Divine. To thee, great aj)6d, round the shining world, Across Atlantic and his fogs and gloom. And gleaming breast — a mirror of moon and stars. And dawns and sunsets, when the ruddy sun Drives, flaming, his fiery car from east to west, Across the vapors of the upper deep, I pay this humble tribute to thy song. My master, nor I shame to call thee so. But rather glory to have drunk from thee, 128 Ode to Tennyson. And thy deep springes of sonj>^, as Virj^^il did, Greater than I. from that old Grecian bard Who sanj;^ in dark, immortal soni^s for men. As here upon our western continent, The great St. Lawrence, all night long, Hows north Into the mighty waters of his gulf. And sings a glorious song to all his shores, Caught by the dawn and breathed across the world ; So sang he mighty songs, great songs of light, That streamed through all the caverns of his thought, And brimmed the mighty rivers of his brain. Or Milton, blind, the bard of newer days, The glorious Homer of our own loved tongue. Who sang in lofty strains of heavenly wars. Of light and dark, when heaven and hell arrayed Against each other, Satan downward fell, A baleful star, with constellation dire, Into the dread abysses of the deep. Or sang he sweeter musiced-pastoral lays, Like him of Mantua, sweet-voiced Roman bard. Who sang of sylvan woods and breezy farms ; Ode to Inmyson. 129 Great shady beeches where some shepherd f)iped His amorous strains amid his fleecy flocks. O father poet, let me call thee so, I, thy disciple, sitdng at thy feet, Thou master of song in all its varied chords, Bird lyrist of the music of our time, Had I thy voice, or his, our own loved dead, Who here by winding Charles 'neath western skies, Like John on Patmos, saw the inner light, And breathed to men the music of his dream; Thou like the eagle, he the soaring lark. Thy brother bard in song, cleaving the air, So near to heaven heard the angels sing And brought some echo back, down here to men. Had I his voice or thine I would aspire. As binds attempt to cleave the edge of clouds, Away above them in the upper air ; To be a voice to thee, a nameless voice, Voice of the new west calling to the east. To tell thee of this wondrous western world ; Voice of the future calling to the past, 130 Ode to Tennyson. t « O'er silent lakes and rivers round the world, To where thou dwellest in thy English halls, With mighty ruins of the ivied past, With all its chronicles of wars and kings And greater, for the web of all the past Is wove in mystic colors, we may take And many of these patterns make our own ; And so make strong the future from the past. Great bard, thou ever seemest unto me, In all the broils and turmoils of the state; Like some aged Lear of truth and holy light. Wandering amid a wreck of men and kings And broken swords of honor, — worn out creeds, And all the vanished dream of England's past. A voice of anguish for the trampled right, A voice of warning for the future good ; That goes so like a breath of midnight wind, Blown through a lonely haunted place of tombs. And there thou walkest, white-haired, aged, bent, About the night of life, with one vain call, Ode to Tennysofi. i^i Heard mid the turmoil of" the lower world, For some Cordelia of the purer past. And more, for thou art also unto me Like some lost knight of the jrreat order gone ; Sir Bedivere last of the table round, Or Arthur himself, dying of all his wounds, Not wounds^of flesh alone, but wounds of sins, Wounds of the heart for those who were untriic. So the old order goes, last baron great Of England's greatness, states dissolve and wane And governments decline, old customs die ; But memory in men is never dead, And character and greatness all remain, Like stars set in the firmament of time, To shine for all days on. A star thou art Of greatest magnitude and from thy light, Thou too Shalt build a ring of lesser lights, To burn forever in thy radiance. Reflecting all thy glory to the world. 132 Canada to Great Britain, Ode. CANADA TO GREAT BRITAIN. (1887.) Great mother of nations, whose hand Holds half the world's sway in its grasp; With commerce's shimmering band Encircling all earth in thy clasp. , Thou breaker of fetters and thralls, Thou maker of wars and of peace; The mighty sea waves for thy walls, The people of earth thine increase. The shock of the ages unfelt. Thou brood of the Saxon and Dane ; Unmoved while old monarchies melt. Still strong while the centuries wane. From the land of the north and the west. From the land of the maple and pine ; O'er Atlantic's broad billowy breast, To the tribute of song, I add mine. Canada to Great tritain. 133 To the surging of voice and of heart, Over mountain, plain, ocean and sea; Where half the wide earth hath her part. In rendering of tribute to thee. Outblown by each favoring wind, Thy war-bristling armaments toss; Thou guardian of either far Ind., Defender of Crescent and Cross. Beneath the broad wing of thy sway, All creeds, tongues and nations keep tryst; Greece, Araby, Egypt, Cathay, Mohammed, Brahm, Budda, and CHRIST. Thou wielder of strength tested long, Thou builder of days yet to be; The strong and the weak and the strong, The future and past, meet in thee. Not built was thy power in a day. Not a sudden upheaval thy might; 134 Canada to Great Britain. But slowly, like dawn's brightening ray, It grew from the centuries' night. But thou, beloved, honored and great, Who hast so much good in thy power ; Earth's Lazarus lies at thy gate, O pass him not by; 'tis thine hour! With the torch of the age in thy hands, God given — then be it Christ-spent; From all continents, nations, all lands. Are truth-seeking eyes on thee bent. Go give them the light that they want, Go teach them what God hath taught thee Not lies, hatred, meanness, and cant, But the knowledge that maketh all free. And more, by the gifts of thy past, By thine unswerving trust in thy God ; To the winds all old tyrannies cast, Lay down the old sceptre of blood. Canada to Great Britain. Take up the new sceptre of peace, Show mightier deeds can be done, In wisdom, and batdes surcease, Than Agincourt, Waterloo won. Old bitterness, sorrow and wrong. The centuries' murmur and groan ; Cannot be forgot, like a song. In the smoke of a cannon out-blown. Show the dark age of serfdom is past, Show the better, the stronger, the true Where freedom bright halo will cast On old truths that forever are new. Where sciences' blindlings may grope. In the gleam of faith's uprisen sun; Where a common sweet freedom and hope. Will weld all thy peoples in one. 135 136 Ode, to the Nineteenth Century. ODE TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Dim dawn of a nobler future, late night of a holier past; Twilight of truth's torches wasted, bread on the waters long cast; Time long weary of gleaning old husks from the fields that are bleak, Age dead to the oracles uttered, and the droning of lips that still speak. Age of little that 's earnest, age of nothing that 's strong, Age of wills that are broken, true to no passion long ; With the dregs of a cup for a draught, and a feeble complaint for a song. Small lakes where once was an ocean, little stars where once was a sun ; Wheels in confusion of wheels, where once the great circle was one. Ode to the Nineteenth Century, 137 What are our dreams of the future, what have we left of the past ? What are we dreaming or doing, how shall we meet the next blast? Politics, politics, politics : ruin, confusion and rout, In, chicanery, lying, model reformers when out. Loud-mouthed babblings of honour, pratings of victories won, Maggots that crawl in the foulness of a carcass out under the sun ! Modern civilization, widening; what doth it mean? Better a healthy barbarism, than this last age hath been ; With its social and moral lepers, crying ; unclean ! unclean ! Empires, monarchies, states ; all are one of a kind ; Strife of atoms with atoms, blind ones leading the blind. Litde is anchored on justice, little is honest or wise; Passions buffeting passions, 'till God shall open their eyes. 138 Ode, to the Nineteenth Century. Each hath a grain of knowledge, each hath a spark of truth, Hidden in dark and confusion, buried in ruin and ruth. Parties and sects and parties; despots, the curse of the earth ; Chaining up knowledge and reason, crippling children at birth. Wide is the wisdom of God, wide as the bounds of the world, Would ye take it and hide it under a napkin furled. Petty, weak dreams of an hour, puerile reforms of a week; Are there not plans and plans outside the ends ye seek? Ye, who seek to compass the deeds of all time in a day, Ye, who trust in yourselves, scorning to wait or to pray; Ode to the Nineteenth Century, . 139 Are there not suns and suns where yours are dimmed in the grey ? Ye who take one plot out of the gardens of God, Hedge it about with a creed, and water and tend its sod. Are there not flowers and flowers that blossom outside of your ken? Are there not seeds wide sown thick as the thoughts of men? Think not yours are all under the breadth of the blue, There are flowers as fair just as holy of hue. 140 Qde to a Meadow Brook. ODE TO A MEADOW BROOK. Dream on, dream on, enamoured of thy lot, Thou child of summer 'mid thy fields and trees, Where haply in some low, wind-cradled spot, Red, sunbeam-kissed, and garnered sweet of bees, Bright clovers nod, loved by each languid breeze. Dream on, dream on, by gables, nooks and farms, Where gladness smiles and beauty never flees, Outside of all that hates and all that harms. Unmindful of our life and its vague weak alarms. Dream on, dream on, 'neath gentle skies low furled, By soft tongued airs and honied blossoms blest, Across the bosom of the under world, Where sunbeams kiss through its green throbbing vest. Thou art a part of nature, on her breast, A prattling infant thou wilt ever lie, Ode to a Meadow Brook. 141 Drawing all music from her mighty rest, Sweet melodies though old yet never die, But mingle their glad dream with wood and field and sky. Dream on, dream on, and tell all time thy love; Of earth and all her misty, leafy dress, Of sun and moon and stars, blue heaven above, Too tranced in love's sweet self-forgetfulness, To dream how much thine own glad life doth bless All things in meadow, marsh and leafy wold. Nor maketh thus its own glad music less, (Like human love that waneth wan and cold) But folds and clasps all else in its sweet shining fold. 142 Alone. ALONE. Here in the night I sit alone, Where far above the aged roof, Half mossed, and half with vines o'er-grown, The starlight weaves a silver woof, And falls in flakes where all unknown, Out in the night I sit alone. Here all alone where only comes The moon's white feet before the dawn, I sit and list the dreary hums Of night sounds where all life is gone, While night its lonely cycle sums. And wait a step that never comes. 'Tis only for a ghost I wait, The wraith of something gone before, Some past, some sweet, long-dreamed-of state, Whose memory is my only store; Like Lazarus at the rich man's gate, Here 'neath the stars I watch and wait. Alone. lAx I watch and wait, but never comes The voice I long had loved to hear, Through weary hours the cricket hums Weird music, and the night is drear, And while its lonely cycle sums, I wait a step that never comes. 144 Ballade of Two Riders. BALLADE OF TWO RIDERS. Galloping, galloping, galloping, over the sunset world, Out of the past and its strife into the future hurled, Out of the past and its cry into the misty to-be, Two riders gallop alone, out to the northland sea. Far from the dunes behind cometh the world's vain call, But these two gallop alone past the shadows that fall, Into a region of mists that far to the northward lies ; Her world but the dream of his face, his sun but the light of her eyes. " O love, to gallop alone, out here in this weird, wild land, Where the winds of remembrance blow not over the shifting sand ; Where the deeds that are done are dead, and the past lies buried behind; Ballade of Two Riders. 145 With hate that is cruel and strong, and fate that is crippled and blind. Never to know again the scoff and the wounding jest, The voice of morning that wakens the pang in the sorrowful breast ; But loved face dreaming on loved face, into the misty to-be, Galloping, galloping, galloping, out to the northward sea." What doth she see in his face? What is it he readeth in hers ? Speed like the wind their chargers, needing nor whip nor spurs. "O love, lean nearer, lean nearer:" in vain dead phantoms arise. "O love, draw closer, draw closer:" he drinks but the light of her eyes. Far over the dunes and the dusk-lands, the murmur of human life 146 Ballade of Two Riders. Goes up from the strong and the weary, the old and the young in the strife; The cry of the '^'^i-hearted, the sob of the vanquished ones, The dim, far curfew and matins of dying and waking suns, But dead to the surge and the tumult, visage loved visage upon, Wrapt in their love, these lovers for ever and ever ride on. Galloping, galloping, galloping, knowing not morning or noon, Only escaped to the night out of the dim afternoon ; Like wraiths of themselves that are dead, into the dusk and the mist, Galloping, galloping, galloping, shadow and sunbeam kissed. Face on face illumined, set to the seaward sun. Galloping, galloping, galloping, ride these two lovers as one. Ballade of Two Riders. 147 What are the sights and the sounds unto their eyes and their ears? What is the world with its woes, its doubts, its cares and its fears ? Battle and battle's surcease, silence and thunder of May startle the world, but deaf they ride to the seaward sun. "O love, lean nearer, lean nearer;" the days of the past are dead, •' O love, draw closer, draw closer ; " the even forever is red. 148 A Lyric of Love. A LYRIC OF LOVE. Up out of the lower abysms, the regions of woe, Sprang, flame-like, a voice, from the pit fires that lower and glow. O, soul of my soul, thou purest, thou heavenly one, Sin-bound to this flame through the ages my being was run. Till out of the gates of the morning thou camest afar, Down here to the dusk and the moan, like the the flight of a star. Thou camest adown through the ether from morn- ing and bliss, To find me, and cool my parched spirit with kiss upon kiss. For love were not love that could die, being planted in thee, A Lyric of Love. 149 Not God nor the angels in heaven could keep thee from me. The creatures of burning did taunt me through ages of night, Till thou camest down here and withered them all with thy light. Till wasting like sea gnomes at clangor of dawn- waking bell, They shuddering fled to the confines of nethermost hell. Thy white arms about me, were cooling like drift- ings of snow. Thine eyes on mine eyes like seas on volcanoes below. Thy soul healed the woe of my soul through the ages of hours, Thy lips on my lips like the dewy sweet freshness of flowers. 150 A Lyric of Love. Till hell were no longer a hell, but a heaven below, O love, with the strength of thy love thou slewest my woe. Thou slewest my hate of God and the angels above, And sprouted a germ that blossomed, O love, into love. Thou didst 'lumine the darkness, and through the long nights of the years. Thou didst quench out the flame from my heart with the rain of thy tears. Till with clinking of chain upon chain, loosed the manacled fires, That prisoned my spirit in fetters of demon desires. They loosen ! those hell-bonds, from oflf me, like falling of clod, O, hide me, pure love, in thy soul, thou takest me back to my God. The Phantoms of the Boughs 07i the Window. 1 5 1 THE PHANTOMS OF THE BOUGHS ON THE WINDOW. I sit before my fire in the waning April light, Where like an awful genie comes the shadow of the night. 4 Outside the naked elms moan the vanished season's griei; And a windy, pallid flicker throws in ghastly, dim relief^ The phantoms of the boughs on the window. To the fire I draw my chair, but I know that they are there, Those terrible, wan ghosts of the dead, gone year's despair. And I try to dream of hope, but my heart can only grope. In the darkness, like a drowning man who clutches for a rope, With those phantoms of the boughs on my window. 152 The Phantoms of the Boughs on the Window. For they seem so like the ghosts of my own de- parted dreams, Where the skeleton remains of the life that only seems : For they also nestled blossoms, and the birds sang on each bough, And the sunbeams wove each girdle, but what re- maineth now But the phantoms of the boughs on the window? So I had my summer's youth, when I dreamed life was a truth. And I dared with laughing lips the approach of fate and ruth : But the visions are all fled, with the skies no longer red, And I bow my lonely head, for my genius it is dead, Like the phantoms of the boughs on the window. The summer comes aga^'n, and the music of the rain, The Pha.itoms of the Boughs on the Window. 153 Will warm the elms back to the life that they would fain : And the robins they will sing, where the cool, green banners fling, But to me no joys will wing, but the dead boughs only cling, Like the phantoms of the boughs at the window^ And I know if one were dead, on the lonely cham- ber bed, And a sad soul were divorced from the sorrow that men wed : If a heart were still and silent from the fretting and the care : I know they would be there, as if mocking mute despair, The phantoms of the boughs on the window. 154 Titan, TITAN. Titan — he loves a breezy hilL Away above us in the clouds, Where sun and wind are never still, And fold it round with misty shrouds. He loves the great world stretching out Into dim sky ; he loves the flowers And trees, the brooks that laugh and shout, And often he will sit for hours And gaze into the distant rim Of all things made of earth and air. That rounds the horizon vague and dim, Until his great, deep eyes do wear A look of awe, in thoughts of One, Invisible, Eternal, Great, Who built from out the burning sun, This glorious world with all its state. And through the clouds, that like a crown Of snow encircle his hill's great head, Titan, Sometimes the sun in peering^ down Will find him sleeping on his bed Of clover lawn, with blossoms that strew Themselves like love, and round him wave, And all the night the winds blow through His dreams as through a cave. Brawny, huge-limbed, in frame and mind True type of man, in heart a boy, Who loves the music of the wind, Who yet is innocent in joy. Whose heart is not a cavern of doubt And dark foul hates, with passions rife; His dreams are all of flowers about. His life is part of nature's life. Though great in strength of manly form,. His heart is truest tenderness, Strong as the spirit of the storm, Soft as the rain drops when they press, : X55 156 Titan. With cooling lips the parched flowers That peer like young birds from their nest, Mouths gaping for the much-loved showers, That cool and nourish Nature's breast. And there I know he sits at dawn Fresh from his cave of sleep, with eyes Clear as the sky above, the lawn Resplendent with a thousand dyes. A line of red that lights the east And widens over sky and sea In purple and gold, and snowy fleeced, Where mountain peaks loom high and free. And when pale May with tears the earth Has watered, and the rosier June To balm and bloom has given birth, And strung the world to rarest tune, Then I shall hie to Titan's hill Where far above among the clouds Titan. The sun and wind are never still, But fold it round with misty shrouds. And there 'mid lawns and j^rassy nooks, The great world stretching far below, Here, far from men and care and books, Where only streams of nature flow. And he shall teach me. he who drinks Where nature's fountains brimming run, Who Wged in thought the burning links That bind the great zones of the sun. Whose nightly torches are the stars That look with ever-trusting eyes Across the midnight's gloomy bars, And he will make me strong and wise. 157 158 Isolation. ISOLATION. To be alone, O God, to he alone, And never know the touch of kindly hand; Like some lone tree far out on barren sand Where only nights and desert winds make moan, Whence love and light and sympathy are flown ; To be like riven pine on blasted land. To take no part in all earth's struggling band, To be alone, O (iod, to be alone. To never know the common lot or part, To hold no place in any human heart, To pluck no flowers where love's wide bloom is sown — If there be hell, 'tis isolation drear, To never know a kiss, a sob, a tear; To be alone, O God, to be alone. hifancy. 159 INFANCY. Weak, helpless wanderer from an unknown shore, Frail infant bark, but lately set adrift On life's rough waves, beneath it's angry lift. To dare its strife, and meet its tempest roar, Thy very weakness were thy richest store. Thou puny tyrant, love's own gladdest gift, Thou blossom fallen down the world's blue rift. How thou dost coil about the heart's deep core. O crowing lips and dimpled, clinging hands. Clear, laughing eyes and chubby, baby face, This world without thee were an empty place. Thou makest paradise of all earth's lands. And bring'st a boon no other joys can grant, Thou latest bond in love's sweet covenant. i6o Knowledge. KNOWLEDGE. We are so quick to teach, so slow to learn, And life is such a strange, mysterious school, Wherein the soul hath neither law nor rule, Save intuitions from the heart, that burn And scathe the spirit, restless to discern That which is weak, and what is wholly strong, What lifteth up and beareth all along — The one great law on which all lives do turn. Go on dull spirit, tread thy purblind path, And nature, loving all, and hating none, Who grope in blindness toward the eternal sun, In some far-distant human aftermath, The struggle done, and darkness over-past, Will give thee peace in knowledge at the last.