Lundy's Lane and Other Poems Part 3

Here on the uplands where the air is clear We think of life as of a stormy scene,-- Of tempest, of revolt and desperate shock; And here, where we can think, on the bright uplands Where the air is clear, we deeply brood on life Until the tempest parts, and it appears As simple as to the shepherd seems his flock: A Something to be guided by ideals-- That in themselves are simple and serene-- Of n.o.ble deed to foster n.o.ble thought, And n.o.ble thought to image n.o.ble deed, Till deed and thought shall interpenetrate, Making life lovelier, till we come to doubt Whether the perfect beauty that escapes Is beauty of deed or thought or some high thing Mingled of both, a greater boon than either: Thus we have seen in the retreating tempest The victor-sunlight merge with the ruined rain, And from the rain and sunlight spring the rainbow.

The ancient disturber of solitude Stirs his ancestral potion in the gloom, And the dark wood Is stifled with the pungent fume Of charred earth burnt to the bone That takes the place of air.

Then sudden I remember when and where,-- The last weird lakelet foul with weedy growths And slimy viscid things the spirit loathes, Skin of vile water over viler mud Where the paddle stirred unutterable stenches, And the canoes seemed heavy with fear, Not to be urged toward the fatal sh.o.r.e Where a bush fire, smouldering, with sudden roar Leaped on a cedar and smothered it with light And terror. It had left the portage-height A tangle of slanted spruces burned to the roots, Covered still with patches of bright fire Smoking with incense of the fragrant resin That even then began to thin and lessen Into the gloom and glimmer of ruin.

'Tis overpast. How strange the stars have grown; The presage of extinction glows on their crests And they are beautied with impermanence; They shall be after the race of men And mourn for them who snared their fiery pinions, Entangled in the meshes of bright words.

A lemming stirs the fern and in the mosses Eft-minded things feel the air change, and dawn Tolls out from the dark belfries of the spruces.

How often in the autumn of the world Shall the crystal shrine of dawning be rebuilt With deeper meaning! Shall the poet then, Wrapped in his mantle on the height of land, Brood on the welter of the lives of men And dream of his ideal hope and promise In the blush sunrise? Shall he base his flight Upon a more compelling law than Love As Life's atonement; shall the vision Of n.o.ble deed and n.o.ble thought immingled Seem as uncouth to him as the pictograph Scratched on the cave side by the cave-dweller To us of the Christ-time? Shall he stand With deeper joy, with more complex emotion, In closer commune with divinity, With the deep fathomed, with the firmament charted, With life as simple as a sheep-boy's song, What lies beyond a romaunt that was read Once on a morn of storm and laid aside Memorious with strange immortal memories?

Or shall he see the sunrise as I see it In shoals of misty fire the deluge-light Dashes upon and whelms with purer radiance, And feel the lulled earth, older in pulse and motion, Turn the rich lands and the inundant oceans To the flushed color, and hear as now I hear The thrill of life beat up the planet's margin And break in the clear susurrus of deep joy That echoes and reechoes in my being?

O Life is intuition the measure of knowledge And do I stand with heart entranced and burning At the zenith of our wisdom when I feel The long light flow, the long wind pause, the deep Influx of spirit, of which no man may tell The Secret, golden and inappellable?

NEW YEAR'S NIGHT, 1916

The Earth moans in her sleep Like an old mother Whose sons have gone to the war, Who weeps silently in her heart Till dreams comfort her.

The Earth tosses As if she would shake off humanity, A burden too heavy to be borne, And free of the pest of intolerable men, Spin with woods and waters Joyously in the clear heavens In the beautiful cool rains, Bearing gladly the dumb animals, And sleep when the time comes Glistening in the remains of sunlight With marmoreal innocency.

Be comforted, old mother, Whose sons have gone to the war; And be a.s.sured, O Earth, Of your burden of pa.s.sionate men, For without them who would dream the dreams That encompa.s.s you with glory, Who would gather your youth And store it in the jar of remembrance, Who would comfort your old heart With tales told of the heroes, Who would cover your face with the cerecloth All rustling with stars, And mourn in the ashes of sunlight, Mourn your marmoreal innocency?

FRAGMENT OF AN ODE TO CANADA

This is the land!

It lies outstretched a vision of delight, Bent like a s.h.i.+eld between the silver seas It flashes back the hauteur of the sun; Yet teems with humblest beauties, still a part Of its t.i.tanic and ebullient heart.

Land of the glacial, lonely mountain ranges, Where nothing haps save vast aeonian changes, The slow moraine, the avalanche's wings, Summer and Sun,--the elemental things, Pulses of Awe,--Winter and Night and the lightnings.

Land of the pines that rear their dusky spars A ready midnight for the earliest stars.

The land of rivers, rivulets, and rills, Straining incessant everyway to the sea With their white thunder harnessed in the mills, Turning one wealth to another wealth perpetually; Spinning the lightning with dynamic spindles, Till some far city dowered with fire enkindles.

The land of fruit, fine-flavoured with the frost, Land of the cattle, the deep-chested host, The happy-souled, that contemplate the hours, Their dew-laps buried in the gra.s.s and flowers.

And, O! the myriad-miracle of the grain Cresting the hill, br.i.m.m.i.n.g the level plain, The miracle of the flower and milk and kernel, Nurtured by sun-fire and frost-fire supernal, Until the farmer turns it in his hand, The million-millioned miracle of the land.

And yet with all these pastoral and heroic graces, Our simplest flowers wear the loveliest faces; The sparrows are our most enraptured singers, And round their songs the fondest memory lingers; Our forests tower and tremble, star-enchanted, Their roots are by the timid spirits haunted Of hermit thrushes,--tranced is the air, Ever in doubt when they shall sing or where; The mountains may with ice and avalanche wrestle, Far down their rugged steeps dimple and nestle The still, translucent, turquoise-hearted tarns.

And Thou, O Power, that 'stablishest the Nation, Give wisdom in the midst of our elation; Who are so free that we forget we are-- That freedom brings the deepest obligation: Grant us this presage for a guiding star, To lead the van of Peace, not with a craven spirit, But with the consciousness that we inherit What built the Empire out of blood and fire, And can smite, too, in pa.s.sion and with ire.

Purge us of Pride, who are so quick in vaunting Thy gift, this land, that is in nothing wanting; Give Mind to match the glory of the gift, Give great Ideals to bridge the sordid rift Between our heritage and our use of it.

Then in some day of terror for the world, When all the flags of the Furies are unfurled, When Truth and Justice, wildered and unknit, Shall turn for help to this young, radiant land, We shall be quick to see and understand: What shall we answer in that stricken hour?

Shall the deep thought be pregnant then with power?

Shall the few words spring swift and grave and clear?

Use well the present moment. They shall hear.

August, 1911.

FANTASIA

Here in Samarcand they offer emeralds, Pure as frozen drops of sea-water, Rubies, pale as dew-ponds stained with slaughter, Where the fairies fought for a king's daughter In the elfin upland.

Here they sell you jade and calcedony, And the matrix of the turquoise, Spheres of onyx held in eagles' claws, But they keep the gems as far asunder From the dull stones as the lightning from the thunder; They can never come together On the mats of Turkish leather In the booths of Samarcand.

Here they sell you b.a.l.l.s of nard and honey, And squat jars of clarid b.u.t.ter, And the cheese from Kurdistan.

When you offer Frankish money, Then they scowl and curse and mutter, Deep in Kurdish or Persan For they want your heart out and my hand In the booths of Samarcand.

They would sell your heart's blood separate, In a jar with a gold brim, With a text of burning hatred Coiled around the rim; They would sell my hand upon a beam of teak wood, In the other scale a feather curled; They would sell your heart upon a silver balance Weighed against the world.

But your heart could never touch my hand, They could never come together On the mats of Turkish leather In the booths of Samarcand.

THE LOVER TO HIS La.s.s

Crown her with stars, this angel of our planet, Cover her with morning, this thing of pure delight, Mantle her with midnight till a mortal cannot See her for the garments of the light and the night.

How far I wandered, worlds away and far away, Heard a voice but knew it not in the clear cold, Many a wide circle and many a wan star away, Dwelling in the chambers where the worlds were growing old.

Saw them growing old and heard them falling Like ripe fruit when a tree is in the wind; Saw the seraphs gather them, their clarion voices calling In rounds of cheering labour till the orchard floor was thinned.

Saw a whole universe turn to its setting, Old and cold and weary, gray and cold as death, But before mine eyes were veiled in forgetting, Something always caught my soul and held its breath.

Caught it up and held it, now I know the reason; Governed it and soothed it, now I know why; Nurtured it and trained it and kept it for the season When new worlds should blossom in the springtime sky.

How have they blossomed, see the sky is like a garden!

Ah! how fresh the worlds look hanging on the slope!

Pluck one and wear it, Love, and ask the Gardener's pardon, Pluck out the Pleiads like a spray of heliotrope.

See Aldebaran like a red rose clamber, See brave Betelgeux pranked with poppy light; This young earth must float in floods of amber Glowing with a crocus flame in the dells of night.

O you cannot cheat the soul of an inborn ambition, 'Tis a naked viewless thing living in its thought, But it mounts through errors and by valleys of contrition Till it conquers destiny and finds the thing it sought.

Crown her with stars, this angel of our planet, Cover her with morning, this thing of pure delight, Mantle her with midnight till a mortal cannot See her for the garments of the light and the night.

THE GHOST'S STORY