Chapter 6 of 7 · 3958 words · ~20 min read

Part 6

For saucy sprite, and noble dame, And many a dainty maid of them Will greet me in your mirror frame, And share your kisses laid on them.

And yet, sometimes I fancy, dear, You hold me as the best of them. So I'm content if I appear To-night with all the rest of them.

THE CITY AND THE SEA

To none the city bends a servile knee; Purse-proud and scornful, on her heights she stands, And at her feet the great white moaning sea Shoulders incessantly the grey-gold sands,-- One the Almighty's child since time began, And one the might of Mammon, born of clods; For all the city is the work of man, But all the sea is God's.

And she--between the ocean and the town-- Lies cursed of one and by the other blest: Her staring eyes, her long drenched hair, her gown, Sea-laved and soiled and dank above her breast. She, image of her God since life began, She, but the child of Mammon, born of clods, Her broken body spoiled and spurned of man, But her sweet soul is God's.

FIRE-FLOWERS

And only where the forest fires have sped, Scorching relentlessly the cool north lands, A sweet wild flower lifts its purple head, And, like some gentle spirit sorrow-fed, It hides the scars with almost human hands.

And only to the heart that knows of grief, Of desolating fire, of human pain, There comes some purifying sweet belief, Some fellow-feeling beautiful, if brief. And life revives, and blossoms once again.

A TOAST

There's wine in the cup, Vancouver, And there's warmth in my heart for you, While I drink to your health, your youth, and your wealth, And the things that you yet will do. In a vintage rare and olden, With a flavour fine and keen, Fill the glass to the edge, while I stand up to pledge My faith to my western queen.

Then here's a Ho! Vancouver, in wine of the bonniest hue, With a hand on my hip and the cup at my lip, And a love in my life for you. For you are a jolly good fellow, with a great, big heart, I know; So I drink this toast To the "Queen of the Coast." Vancouver, here's a Ho!

And here's to the days that are coming, And here's to the days that are gone, And here's to your gold and your spirit bold, And your luck that has held its own; And here's to your hands so sturdy, And here's to your hearts so true, And here's to the speed of the day decreed That brings me again to you.

LADY ICICLE

Little Lady Icicle is dreaming in the north-land And gleaming in the north-land, her pillow all a-glow; For the frost has come and found her With an ermine robe around her Where little Lady Icicle lies dreaming in the snow.

Little Lady Icicle is waking in the north-land, And shaking in the north-land her pillow to and fro; And the hurricane a-skirling Sends the feathers all a-whirling Where little Lady Icicle is waking in the snow.

Little Lady Icicle is laughing in the north-land, And quaffing in the north-land her wines that overflow; All the lakes and rivers crusting That her finger-tips are dusting, Where little Lady Icicle is laughing in the snow.

Little Lady Icicle is singing in the north-land, And bringing from the north-land a music wild and low; And the fairies watch and listen Where her silver slippers glisten, As little Lady Icicle goes singing through the snow.

Little Lady Icicle is coming from the north-land, Benumbing all the north-land where'er her feet may go; With a fringe of frost before her And a crystal garment o'er her, Little Lady Icicle is coming with the snow.

THE LEGEND OF QU'APPELLE VALLEY

I am the one who loved her as my life, Had watched her grow to sweet young womanhood; Won the dear privilege to call her wife, And found the world, because of her, was good. I am the one who heard the spirit voice, Of which the paleface settlers love to tell; From whose strange story they have made their choice Of naming this fair valley the "Qu'Appelle."

She had said fondly in my eager ear-- "When Indian summer smiles with dusky lip, Come to the lakes, I will be first to hear The welcome music of thy paddle dip. I will be first to lay in thine my hand, To whisper words of greeting on the shore; And when thou would'st return to thine own land, I'll go with thee, thy wife for evermore."

Not yet a leaf had fallen, not a tone Of frost upon the plain ere I set forth, Impatient to possess her as my own-- This queen of all the women of the North. I rested not at even or at dawn, But journeyed all the dark and daylight through-- Until I reached the Lakes, and, hurrying on, I launched upon their bosom my canoe.

Of sleep or hunger then I took no heed, But hastened o'er their leagues of waterways; But my hot heart outstripped my paddle's speed And waited not for distance or for days, But flew before me swifter than the blade Of magic paddle ever cleaved the Lake, Eager to lay its love before the maid, And watch the lovelight in her eyes awake.

So the long days went slowly drifting past; It seemed that half my life must intervene Before the morrow, when I said at last-- "One more day's journey and I win my queen!" I rested then, and, drifting, dreamed the more Of all the happiness I was to claim,-- When suddenly from out the shadowed shore, I heard a voice speak tenderly my name.

"Who calls?" I answered; no reply; and long I stilled my paddle blade and listened. Then Above the night wind's melancholy song I heard distinctly that strange voice again-- A woman's voice, that through the twilight came Like to a soul unborn--a song unsung.

I leaned and listened--yes, she spoke my name, And then I answered in the quaint French tongue, "Qu'Appelle? Qu'Appelle?" No answer, and the night Seemed stiller for the sound, till round me fell The far-off echoes from the far-off height-- "Qu'Appelle?" my voice came back, "Qu'Appelle? Qu'Appelle?" This--and no more; I called aloud until I shuddered as the gloom of night increased, And, like a pallid spectre wan and chill, The moon arose in silence in the east.

I dare not linger on the moment when My boat I beached beside her tepee door; I heard the wail of women and of men,-- I saw the death-fires lighted on the shore. No language tells the torture or the pain, The bitterness that flooded all my life,-- When I was led to look on her again, That queen of women pledged to be my wife. To look upon the beauty of her face, The still closed eyes, the lips that knew no breath; To look, to learn,--to realize my place Had been usurped by my one rival--Death. A storm of wrecking sorrow beat and broke About my heart, and life shut out its light Till through my anguish some one gently spoke, And said, "Twice did she call for thee last night."

I started up--and bending o'er my dead, Asked when did her sweet lips in silence close. "She called thy name--then passed away," they said, "Just on the hour whereat the moon arose."

Among the lonely Lakes I go no more, For she who made their beauty is not there; The paleface rears his tepee on the shore And says the vale is fairest of the fair. Full many years have vanished since, but still The voyageurs beside the campfire tell How, when the moonrise tips the distant hill, They hear strange voices through the silence swell. The paleface loves the haunted lakes they say, And journeys far to watch their beauty spread Before his vision; but to me the day, The night, the hour, the seasons are all dead. I listen heartsick, while the hunters tell Why white men named the valley The Qu'Appelle.

THE ART OF ALMA-TADEMA

There is no song his colours cannot sing, For all his art breathes melody, and tunes The fine, keen beauty that his brushes bring To murmuring marbles and to golden Junes.

The music of those marbles you can hear In every crevice, where the deep green stains Have sunken when the grey days of the year Spilled leisurely their warm, incessant rains

That, lingering, forget to leave the ledge, But drenched into the seams, amid the hush Of ages, leaving but the silent pledge To waken to the wonder of his brush.

And at the Master's touch the marbles leap To life, the creamy onyx and the skins Of copper-coloured leopards, and the deep, Cool basins where the whispering water wins

Reflections from the gold and glowing sun, And tints from warm, sweet human flesh, for fair And subtly lithe and beautiful, leans one-- A goddess with a wealth of tawny hair.

GOOD-BYE

Sounds of the seas grow fainter, Sounds of the sands have sped; The sweep of gales, The far white sails, Are silent, spent and dead.

Sounds of the days of summer Murmur and die away, And distance hides The long, low tides, As night shuts out the day.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

(These miscellaneous poems are all of later date.)

IN GREY DAYS

Measures of oil for others, Oil and red wine, Lips laugh and drink, but never Are the lips mine.

Worlds at the feet of others, Power gods have known, Hearts for the favoured round me Mine beats, alone.

Fame offering to others Chaplets of bays, I with no crown of laurels, Only grey days.

Sweet human love for others, Deep as the sea, God-sent unto my neighbour-- But not to me.

Sometime I'll wrest from others More than all this, I shall demand from Heaven Far sweeter bliss.

What profit then to others, Laughter and wine? I'll have what most they covet-- Death, will be mine.

BRANDON

(ACROSTIC)

Born on the breast of the prairie, she smiles to her sire--the sun, Robed in the wealth of her wheat-lands, gift of her mothering soil, Affluence knocks at her gateways, opulence waits to be won. Nuggets of gold are her acres, yielding and yellow with spoil, Dream of the hungry millions, dawn of the food-filled age, Over the starving tale of want her fingers have turned the page; Nations will nurse at her storehouse, and God gives her grain for wage.

THE INDIAN CORN PLANTER

He needs must leave the trapping and the chase, For mating game his arrows ne'er despoil, And from the hunter's heaven turn his face, To wring some promise from the dormant soil.

He needs must leave the lodge that wintered him, The enervating fires, the blanket bed-- The women's dulcet voices, for the grim Realities of labouring for bread.

So goes he forth beneath the planter's moon With sack of seed that pledges large increase, His simple pagan faith knows night and noon, Heat, cold, seedtime and harvest shall not cease.

And yielding to his needs, this honest sod, Brown as the hand that tills it, moist with rain, Teeming with ripe fulfilment, true as God, With fostering richness, mothers every grain.

THE CATTLE COUNTRY

Up the dusk-enfolded prairie, Foot-falls, soft and sly, Velvet cushioned, wild and wary, Then--the coyote's cry.

Rush of hoofs, and roar and rattle, Beasts of blood and breed, Twenty thousand frightened cattle, Then--the wild stampede.

Pliant lasso circling wider In the frenzied flight-- Loping horse and cursing rider, Plunging through the night.

Rim of dawn the darkness losing Trail of blackened soil; Perfume of the sage brush oozing On the air like oil.

Foothills to the Rockies lifting Brown, and blue, and green, Warm Alberta sunlight drifting Over leagues between.

That's the country of the ranges, Plain and prairie land, And the God who never changes Holds it in His hand.

AUTUMN'S ORCHESTRA

(INSCRIBED TO ONE BEYOND SEAS)

Know by the thread of music woven through This fragile web of cadences I spin, That I have only caught these songs since you Voiced them upon your haunting violin.

THE OVERTURE

October's orchestra plays softly on The northern forest with its thousand strings, And Autumn, the conductor wields anon The Golden-rod-- The baton that he swings.

THE FIRS

There is a lonely minor chord that sings Faintly and far along the forest ways, When the firs finger faintly on the strings Of that rare violin the night wind plays, Just as it whispered once to you and me Beneath the English pines beyond the sea.

MOSSES

The lost wind wandering, forever grieves Low overhead, Above grey mosses whispering of leaves Fallen and dead. And through the lonely night sweeps their refrain Like Chopin's prelude, sobbing 'neath the rain.

THE VINE

The wild grape mantling the trail and tree, Festoons in graceful veils its drapery, Its tendrils cling, as clings the memory stirred By some evasive haunting tune, twice heard.

THE MAPLE

It is the blood-hued maple straight and strong, Voicing abroad its patriotic song.

Its daring colours bravely flinging forth The ensign of the Nation of the North.

HARE-BELL

Elfin bell in azure dress, Chiming all day long, Ringing through the wilderness Dulcet notes of song. Daintiest of forest flowers Weaving like a spell-- Music through the Autumn hours, Little Elfin bell.

THE GIANT OAK

And then the sound of marching armies 'woke Amid the branches of the soldier oak, And tempests ceased their warring cry, and dumb The lashing storms that muttered, overcome, Choked by the heralding of battle smoke, When these gnarled branches beat their martial drum.

ASPENS

A sweet high treble threads its silvery song, Voice of the restless aspen, fine and thin It trills its pure soprano, light and long-- Like the vibretto of a mandolin.

FINALE

The cedar trees have sung their vesper hymn, And now the music sleeps-- Its benediction falling where the dim Dusk of the forest creeps. Mute grows the great concerto--and the light Of day is darkening, Good-night, Good-night. But through the night time I shall hear within The murmur of these trees, The calling of your distant violin Sobbing across the seas, And waking wind, and star-reflected light Shall voice my answering. Good-night, Good-night.

THE TRAIL TO LILLOOET

Sob of fall, and song of forest, come you here on haunting quest, Calling through the seas and silence, from God's country of the west. Where the mountain pass is narrow, and the torrent white and strong, Down its rocky-throated canyon, sings its golden-throated song.

You are singing there together through the God-begotten nights, And the leaning stars are listening above the distant heights That lift like points of opal in the crescent coronet About whose golden setting sweeps the trail to Lillooet.

Trail that winds and trail that wanders, like a cobweb hanging high, Just a hazy thread outlining mid-way of the stream and sky, Where the Fraser River canyon yawns its pathway to the sea, But half the world has shouldered up between its song and me.

Here, the placid English August, and the sea-encircled miles, There--God's copper-coloured sunshine beating through the lonely aisles Where the waterfalls and forest voice for ever their duet, And call across the canyon on the trail to Lillooet.

CANADA

(ACROSTIC)

Crown of her, young Vancouver; crest of her, old Quebec; Atlantic and far Pacific sweeping her, keel to deck. North of her, ice and arctics; southward a rival's stealth; Aloft, her Empire's pennant; below, her nation's wealth. Daughter of men and markets, bearing within her hold, Appraised at highest value, cargoes of grain and gold.

THE LIFTING OF THE MIST

All the long day the vapours played At blindfold in the city streets, Their elfin fingers caught and stayed The sunbeams, as they wound their sheets Into a filmy barricade 'Twixt earth and where the sunlight beats.

A vagrant band of mischiefs these, With wings of grey and cobweb gown; They live along the edge of seas, And creeping out on foot of down, They chase and frolic, frisk and tease At blind-man's buff with all the town.

And when at eventide the sun Breaks with a glory through their grey, The vapour-fairies, one by one, Outspread their wings and float away In clouds of colouring, that run Wine-like along the rim of day.

Athwart the beauty and the breast Of purpling airs they twirl and twist, Then float away to some far rest, Leaving the skies all colour-kiss't-- A glorious and a golden West That greets the Lifting of the Mist.

THE HOMING BEE

You are belted with gold, little brother of mine, Yellow gold, like the sun That spills in the west, as a chalice of wine When feasting is done.

You are gossamer-winged, little brother of mine, Tissue winged, like the mist That broods where the marshes melt into a line Of vapour sun-kissed.

You are laden with sweets, little brother of mine, Flower sweets, like the touch Of hands we have longed for, of arms that entwine, Of lips that love much.

You are better than I, little brother of mine, Than I, human-souled, For you bring from the blossoms and red summer shine, For others, your gold.

THE LOST LAGOON

It is dusk on the Lost Lagoon, And we two dreaming the dusk away, Beneath the drift of a twilight grey, Beneath the drowse of an ending day, And the curve of a golden moon.

It is dark in the Lost Lagoon, And gone are the depths of haunting blue, The grouping gulls, and the old canoe, The singing firs, and the dusk and--you, And gone is the golden moon.

O! lure of the Lost Lagoon,-- I dream to-night that my paddle blurs The purple shade where the seaweed stirs, I hear the call of the singing firs In the hush of the golden moon.

THE TRAIN DOGS

Out of the night and the north; Savage of breed and of bone, Shaggy and swift comes the yelping band, Freighters of fur from the voiceless land That sleeps in the Arctic zone.

Laden with skins from the north, Beaver and bear and raccoon, Marten and mink from the polar belts, Otter and ermine and sable pelts-- The spoils of the hunter's moon.

Out of the night and the north, Sinewy, fearless and fleet, Urging the pack through the pathless snow, The Indian driver, calling low, Follows with moccasined feet.

Ships of the night and the north, Freighters on prairies and plains, Carrying cargoes from field and flood They scent the trail through their wild red blood, The wolfish blood in their veins.

THE KING'S CONSORT

Love, was it yesternoon, or years agone, You took in yours my hands, And placed me close beside you on the throne Of Oriental lands?

The truant hour came back at dawn to-day, Across the hemispheres, And bade my sleeping soul retrace its way These many hundred years.

And all my wild young life returned, and ceased The years that lie between, When you were King of Egypt, and The East, And I was Egypt's queen.

I feel again the lengths of silken gossamer enfold My body and my limbs in robes of emerald and gold. I feel the heavy sunshine, and the weight of languid heat That crowned the day you laid the royal jewels at my feet.

You wound my throat with jacinths, green and glist'ning serpent-wise, My hot, dark throat that pulsed beneath the ardour of your eyes; And centuries have failed to cool the memory of your hands That bound about my arms those massive, pliant golden bands.

You wreathed around my wrists long ropes of coral and of jade, And beaten gold that clung like coils of kisses love-inlaid; About my naked ankles tawny topaz chains you wound, With clasps of carven onyx, ruby-rimmed and golden bound.

But not for me the Royal Pearls to bind about my hair, "Pearls were too passionless," you said, for one like me to wear, I must have all the splendour, all the jewels warm as wine, But pearls so pale and cold were meant for other flesh than mine.

But all the blood-warm beauty of the gems you thought my due Were pallid as a pearl beside the love I gave to you; O! Love of mine come back across the years that lie between, When you were King of Egypt--Dear, and I was Egypt's Queen.

WHEN GEORGE WAS KING

Cards, and swords, and a lady's love, That is a tale worth reading, An insult veiled, a downcast glove, And rapiers leap unheeding. And 'tis O! for the brawl, The thrust, the fall, And the foe at your feet a-bleeding.

Tales of revel at wayside inns, The goblets gaily filling, Braggarts boasting a thousand sins, Though none can boast a shilling. And 'tis O! for the wine, The frothing stein, And the clamour of cups a-spilling.

Tales of maidens in rich brocade, Powder and puff and patches, Gallants lilting a serenade Of old-time trolls and catches. And 'tis O! for the lips And the finger tips, And the kiss that the boldest snatches.

Tales of buckle and big rosette, The slender shoe adorning, Of curtseying through the minuet With laughter, love, or scorning. And 'tis O! for the shout Of the roustabout, As he hies him home in the morning.

Cards and swords, and a lady's love, Give to the tale God-speeding, War and wassail, and perfumed glove, And all that's rare in reading. And 'tis O! for the ways Of the olden days, And a life that was worth the leading.

DAY DAWN

All yesterday the thought of you was resting in my soul, And when sleep wandered o'er the world that very thought she stole To fill my dreams with splendour such as stars could not eclipse, And in the morn I wakened with your name upon my lips.

Awakened, my beloved, to the morning of your eyes, Your splendid eyes, so full of clouds, wherein a shadow tries To overcome the flame that melts into the world of grey, As coming suns dissolve the dark that veils the edge of day.

Cool drifts the air at dawn of day, cool lies the sleeping dew, But all my heart is burning, for it woke from dreams of you; And O! these longing eyes of mine look out and only see A dying night, a waking day, and calm on all but me.

So gently creeps the morning through the heavy air, The dawn grey-garbed and velvet-shod is wandering everywhere To wake the slumber-laden hours that leave their dreamless rest, With outspread, laggard wings to court the pillows of the west.

Up from the earth a moisture steals with odours fresh and soft, A smell of moss and grasses warm with dew, and far aloft The stars are growing colourless, while drooping in the west, A late, wan moon is paling in a sky of amethyst.

The passing of the shadows, as they waft their pinions near, Has stirred a tender wind within the night-hushed atmosphere, That in its homeless wanderings sobs in an undertone An echo to my heart that sobbing calls for you alone.