THE POTATO HARVEST

This violet eve is like a waveless stream
Celestial, from the rapt horizon’s brink,
Assuaging day with the diviner drink
Of temperate ecstasy, and dews, and dream.
The wine-warm dusks, that brim the valley, gleam
With here and there a lonely casement. Cease
The impetuous purples from the sky of peace,
Like God’s mood in tranquillity supreme.

The encircling uplands east and west lie clear
In thin aërial amber, threaded fine,—
Where bush-fires gnaw the bramble-thickets sere,—
With furtive scarlet. Through the hush benign
One white-throat voices, till the stars appear,
The benediction of the Thought Divine.

A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne
Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky
Washing the ridge; a clamour of crows that fly
In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn
To yon their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn;
A line of grey snake-fence, that zigzags by
A pond, and cattle; from the homestead nigh
The long deep summonings of the supper horn.

Black on the ridge, against that lonely flush,
A cart, and stoop-necked oxen; ranged beside
Some barrels; and the day-worn harvest-folk,
Here emptying their baskets, jar the hush
With hollow thunders. Down the dusk hillside
Lumbers the wain; and day fades out like smoke.

A little brown old homestead, bowered in trees
That o’er the Autumn landscape shine afar,
Burning with amber and with cinnabar.
A yellow hillside washed in airy seas
Of azure, where the swallow drops and flees.
Midway the slope, clear in the beaming day,
A barn by many seasons beaten grey,
Big with the gain of prospering husbandries.

In billows round the wide red welcoming doors
High piles the golden straw; while from within,
Where plods the team amid the chaffy din,
The loud pulsation of the thresher soars,
Persistent as if earth could not let cease
This happy proclamation of her peace.

The morning sky is white with mist, the earth
White with the inspiration of the dew.
The harvest light is on the hills anew,
And cheer in the grave acres’ fruitful girth.
Only in this high pasture is there dearth,
Where the gray thistles crowd in ranks austere,
As if the sod, close-cropt for many a year,
Brought only bane and bitterness to birth.

But in the crisp air’s amethystine wave
How the harsh stalks are washed with radiance now,
How gleams the harsh turf where the crickets lie
Dew-freshened in their burnished armour brave!
Since earth could not endure nor heaven allow
Aught of unlovely in the morn’s clear eye.

What touch hath set the breathing hills afire
With amethyst, to quench them with a tear
Of ecstasy? These common fields appear
The consecrated home of hopes past number.
So many visions, so entranced a slumber,
Such dreams possess the noonday’s luminous sphere,
That earth, content with knowing Heaven so near,
Hath done with aspiration and desire.

In these unlooked-for hours of Truth’s clear reign
Unjarring fitness hath surprised our strife.
This radiance, that might seem to cheat the view
With loveliness too perfect to be true,
But shows this vexed and self-delusive life
Ideals whereto our Real must attain.

Amber and blue, the smoke behind the hill,
Where in the glow fades out the Morning Star,
Curtains the Autumn cornfield, sloped afar,
And strikes an acrid savour on the chill.
The hilltop fence shines saffron o’er the still
Unbending ranks of bunched and bleaching corn
And every pallid stalk is crisp with morn,
Crisp with the silver Autumn morn’s distil.

Purple the narrowing alleys stretched between
The spectral shooks, a purple harsh and cold,
But spotted, where the gadding pumpkins run,
With bursts of blaze that startle the serene
Like sudden voices,—globes of orange bold,
Elate to mimic the unrisen sun.

Winds here, and sleet, and frost that bites like steel.
The low bleak hill rounds under the low sky.
Naked of flock and fold the fallows lie,
Thin streaked with meagre drift. The gusts reveal
By fits the dim grey snakes of fence, that steal
Through the white dusk. The hill-foot poplars sigh,
While storm and death with winter trample by,
And the iron fields ring sharp, and blind lights reel.

Yet in the lonely ridges, wrenched with pain,
Harsh solitary hillocks, bound and dumb,
Grave glebes close-lipped beneath the scourge and chain,
Lurks hid the germ of ecstasy—the sum
Of life that waits on summer, till the rain
Whisper in April and the crocus come.

Tons upon tons the brown-green fragrant hay
O’erbrims the mows beyond the time-warped eaves,
Up to the rafters where the spider weaves,
Though few flies wander his secluded way.
Through a high chink one lonely golden ray,
Wherein the dust is dancing, slants unstirred.
In the dry hush some rustlings light are heard,
Of winter-hidden mice at furtive play.

Far down, the cattle in their shadowed stalls,
Nose-deep in clover fodder’s meadowy scent,
Forget the snows that whelm their pasture streams,
The frost that bites the world beyond their walls.
Warm housed, they dream of summer, well content
In day-long contemplation of their dreams.

How shrink the snows upon this upland field,
Under the dove-grey dome of brooding noon!
They shrink with soft, reluctant shocks, and soon
In sad brown ranks the furrows lie revealed.
From radiant cisterns of the frost unsealed
Now wakes through all the air a watery rune—
The babble of a million brooks atune,
In fairy conduits of blue ice concealed.

Noisy with crows, the wind-break on the hill
Counts o’er its buds for summer. In the air
Some shy foreteller prophesies with skill—
Some voyaging ghost of bird, some effluence rare;
And the stall-wearied cattle dream their fill
Of deep June pastures where the pools are fair.

I hear the low wind wash the softening snow,
The low tide loiter down the shore. The night
Full filled with April forecast, hath no light.
The salt wave on the sedge-flat pulses slow.
Through the hid furrows lisp in murmurous flow
The thaw’s shy ministers; and hark! The height
Of heaven grows weird and loud with unseen flight
Of strong hosts prophesying as they go!

High through the drenched and hollow night their wings
Beat northward hard on winter’s trail. The sound
Of their confused and solemn voices, borne
Athwart the dark to their long Arctic morn,
Comes with a sanction and an awe profound,
A boding of unknown, foreshadowed things.

In the wide awe and wisdom of the night
I saw the round world rolling on its way,
Beyond significance of depth or height,
Beyond the interchange of dark and day.
I marked the march to which is set no pause,
And that stupendous orbit, round whose rim
The great sphere sweeps, obedient unto laws
That utter the eternal thought of Him.
I compassed time, outstripped the starry speed,
And in my still soul apprehended space,
Till, weighing laws which these but blindly heed,
At last I came before Him face to face,—
And knew the Universe of no such span
As the august infinitude of Man.

Back to the green deeps of the outer bay
The red and amber currents glide and cringe,
Diminishing behind a luminous fringe
Of cream-white surf and wandering wraiths of spray.
Stealthily, in the old reluctant way,
The red flats are uncovered, mile on mile,
To glitter in the sun a golden while.
Far down the flats, a phantom sharply gray,
The herring weir emerges, quick with spoil.
Slowly the tide forsakes it. Then draws near,
Descending from the farm-house on the height,
A cart, with gaping tubs. The oxen toil
Sombrely o’er the level to the weir,
And drag a long black trail across the light.

This is that black rock bastion, based in surge,
Pregnant with agate and with amethyst,
Whose foot the tides of storied Minas scourge,
Whose top austere withdraws into its mist.
This is that ancient cape of tears and storm,
Whose towering front inviolable frowns
O’er vales Evangeline and love keep warm—
Whose fame thy song, O tender singer, crowns.
Yonder, across these reeling fields of foam,
Came the sad threat of the avenging ships.
What profit now to know if just the doom,
Though harsh! The streaming eyes, the praying lips,
The shadow of inextinguishable pain,
The poet’s deathless music—these remain!

O deep of Heaven, ’tis thou alone art boundless,
’Tis thou alone our balance shall not weigh,
’Tis thou alone our fathom-line finds soundless,—
Whose infinite our finite must obey!
Through thy blue realms and down thy starry reaches
Thought voyages forth beyond the furthest fire,
And, homing from no sighted shoreline, teaches
Thee measureless as is the soul’s desire.
O deep of Heaven, no beam of Pleiad ranging
Eternity may bridge thy gulf of spheres!
The ceaseless hum that fills thy sleep unchanging
Is rain of the innumerable years.
Our worlds, our suns, our ages, these but stream
Through thine abiding like a dateless dream.

Through the still dusk how sighs the ebb-tide out
Reluctant for the reed-beds! Down the sands
It washes. Hark! Beyond the wan grey strand’s
Low limits how the winding channels grieve,
Aware the evasive waters soon will leave
Them void amid the waste of desolate lands,
Where shadowless to the sky the marsh expands,
And the noon heats must scar them, and the drought.

Yet soon for them the solacing tide returns
To quench their thirst of longing. Ah, not so
Works the stern law our tides of life obey!
Ebbing in the night watches swift away,
Scarce known are fled for ever is the flow;
And in parched channel still the shrunk stream mourns.

There lies a little city leagues away.
Its wharves the green sea washes all day long.
Its busy, sun-bright wharves with sailors’ song
And clamour of trade ring loud the live-long day.
Into the happy harbour hastening, gay
With press of snowy canvas, tall ships throng.
The peopled streets to blithe-eyed Peace belong,
Glad housed beneath these crowding roofs of grey.

’Twas long ago this city prospered so,
For yesterday a woman died therein.
Since when the wharves are idle fallen, I know,
And in the streets is hushed the pleasant din;
The thronging ships have been, the songs have been;—
Since yesterday it is so long ago.

Now, for the night is hushed and blind with rain,
My soul desires communion, Dear, with thee.
But hour by hour my spirit gets not free,—
Hour by still hour my longing strives in vain.
The thick dark hems me, even to the restless brain.
The wind’s confusion vague encumbers me.
Even passionate memory, grown too faint to see
Thy features, stirs not in her straitening chain.

And thou, dost thou too feel this strange divorce
Of will from power? The spell of night and wind,
Baffling desire and dream, dost thou too find?
Not distance parts us, Dear; but this dim force,
Intangible, holds us helpless, hushed with pain,
Dumb with the dark, blind with the gusts of rain!

Sharp drives the rain, sharp drives the endless rain.
The rain-winds wake and wander, lift and blow.
The slow smoke-wreaths of vapour to and fro,
Wave and unweave and gather and build again.
Over the far gray reaches of the plain,—
Grey miles on miles my passionate thought must go,—
I strain my sight, grown dim with gazing so,
Pressing my face against the streaming pane.

How the rain beats! Ah God! If love had power
To voice its utmost yearning, even tho’
Through time and bitter distance, not in vain,
Surely her heart would hear me at this hour,
Look through the years, and see! But would she know
The white face pressed against the streaming pane?

Its hand compassionate guards our restless sight
Against how many a harshness, many an ill!
Tender as sleep, its shadowy palms distil
Weird vapours that ensnare our eyes with light.
Rash eyes, kept ignorant in their own despite,
It lets not see the unsightliness they will,
But paints each scanty fairness fairer still,
And still deludes us to our own delight.

It fades, regathers, never quite dissolves.
And, ah! that life, ah! that the heart and brain
Might keep their mist and glamour, not to know
So soon the disenchantment and the pain!
But one by one our dear illusions go,
Stript and cast forth as time’s slow wheel revolves.

The fifers of these amethystine fields,
Whose far fine sound the night makes musical,
Now while thou wak’st and longing would’st recall
Joys that no rapture of remembrance yields,
Voice to thy soul, lone-sitting deep within
The still recesses of thine ecstasy,
My love and my desire, that fain would fly
With this far-silvering moon and fold thee in.

But not for us the touch, the clasp, the kiss,
And for our restlessness no rest. In vain
These aching lips, these hungering hearts that strain
Toward the denied fruition of our bliss,
Had love not learned of longing to devise
Out of desire and dream our paradise.

O solitary of the austere sky,
Pale presence of the unextinguished star,
That from thy station where the spheres wheel by,
And quietudes of infinite patience are,
Watchest this wet, grey-visaged world emerge,—
Cold pinnacle on pinnacle, and deep
On deep of ancient wood and wandering surge,—
Out of the silence and the mists of sleep;

How small am I in thine august regard!
Invisible,—and yet I know my worth!
When comes the hour to break this ’prisoning shard,
And reunite with Him that breathed me forth,
Then shall this atom of the Eternal Soul
Encompass thee in its benign control!

When the sombre lands are wrung,
And storms are out,
And giant woods give tongue,
I am the shout;
And when the earth would sleep,
Wrapped in her snows,
I am the infinite gleam of eyes that keep
The post of her repose.

I am the hush of calm,
I am the speed,
The flood-tide’s triumphing psalm,
The marsh-pool’s heed;
I work in the rocking roar
Where cataracts fall;
I flash in the prismy fire that dances o’er
The dew’s ephemeral ball.

I am the voice of wind
And wave and tree,
Of stern desires and blind,
Of strength to be;
I am the cry by night
At point of dawn,
The summoning bugle from the unseen height,
In cloud and doubt withdrawn.

I am the strife that shapes
The stature of man,
The pang no hero escapes,
The blessing, the ban;
I am the hammer that moulds
The iron of our race,
The omen of God in our blood that a people beholds,
The foreknowledge veiled in our face.

Tantramar! Tantramar!
I see thy cool green plains afar.
Thy dykes where grey sea-grasses are,
Mine eyes behold them yet.

But not the gladness breathed of old
Thy bordering, blue hill-hollows hold;
Thy wind-blown leagues of green unrolled,
Thy flats the red floods fret,

Thy steady-streaming winds—no more
These work the rapture wrought of yore,
When all thy wide bright strength outbore
My soul from fleshly bar.

A darkness as of drifted rain
Is over tide, and dyke, and plain.
The shadow-pall of human pain
Is fallen on Tantramar.

A little garden gay with phlox,
Blue corn-flowers, yellow hollyhocks,
Red poppies, pink and purple stocks,
Looks over Tantramar.

Pale yellow drops the road before
The hospitable cottage-door,—
A yellow, upland road, and o’er
The green marsh seeks the low red shore
And winding dykes afar.

Beyond the marsh, and miles away,
The great tides of the tumbling bay
Swing glittering in the golden day,
Swing foaming to and fro;
And nearer, in a nest of green,
A little turbid port is seen,
Where pitch-black fishing-boats careen,
Left when the tide runs low.

The little port is safe and fit.
About its wharf the plover flit,
The grey net-reels loom over it,
With grass about their feet.

In wave and storm it hath no part,
This harbour in the marshes’ heart;
Behind its dykes, at peace, apart
It hears the surges beat.

The garden hollyhocks are tall;
They tower above the garden wall,
And see, far down, the port, and all
The creeks, and marshes wide;

But Margery, Margery,
’Tis something further thou wouldst see!
Bid all thy blooms keep watch with thee
Across the outmost tide.

Bid them keep wide their starry eyes
To warn thee should a white sail rise,
Slow climbing up, from alien skies,
The azure round of sea.

He sails beneath a stormy star;
The waves are wild, the Isles afar;
Summer is ripe on Tantramar,
And yet returns not he.

Long, long thine eyes have watched in vain,
Waited in fear, and wept again.
Is it no more than lover’s pain
That makes thy heart so wild?

At dreams within the cottage door
The old man’s eyes are lingering o’er
The little port,—the far-off shore,—
His dear and only child.

And at her spinning-wheel within
The mother’s hands forget to spin.
With loving voice she calls thee in,—
Her dear and only child.

To leave the home-dear hearts to ache
Was not for thee, though thine should break.
For their dear sake, for their dear sake,
Thou wouldst not go with him.

But always wise, and strong, and free,
Is given to which of us to be?—
A gathering shadow, Margery,
Makes all thy daylight dim!

Yet surely soon will break the day
For which thine anxious waitings pray,—
His sails, athwart the yellow bay,
Shall cleave the sky’s blue rim.

To-night the wind roars in from sea;
The crow clings in the straining tree;
Curlew and crane and bittern flee
The dykes of Tantramar.

To-night athwart an inky sky
A narrowing sun dropped angrily,
Scoring the gloom with dreadful dye,
A bitter and flaming scar.

But ere night falls, across the tide
A close-reefed barque has been descried,
And word goes round the country-side—
‘The “Belle” is in the bay!’

And ere the loud night closes down
Upon that light’s terrific frown,
Along the dyke, with blowing gown,
She takes her eager way.

Just where his boat will haste to land,
On the open wharf she takes her stand.
Her pale hair blows from out its band.
She does not heed the storm.

Her blinding joy of heart they know
Who so have fared, and waited so.
She heeds not what the winds that blow;
She does not feel the storm.

But fiercer roars the gale. The night
With cloud grows black, with foam gleams white
The creek boils to its utmost height.
The port is seething full.

The gale shouts in the outer waves
Amid a world of gaping graves;
Against the dyke each great surge raves,
Blind battering like a bull.

The dyke! The dyke! The brute sea shakes
The sheltering wall. It breaks,—it breaks!
The sharp salt whips her face, and wakes
The dreamer from her dream.

The great flood lifts. It thunders in.
The broad marsh foams, and sinks. The din
Of waves is where her world has been;—
Is this—is this the dream?

—— One moment in that surging hell
The old wharf shook, then cringed and fell.
—— Then came a lonely hulk, the ‘Belle,’
And drove athwart the waste.
. . . . . . . . . .
They know no light, nor any star,
Those ruined plains of Tantramar.
And where the maid and lover are
They know nor fear nor haste.

After the flood on Tantramar
The fisher-folk flocked in from far.
They stopped the breach; they healed the scar.
Once more the marsh grew green.

But at the marsh’s inmost edge,
Where a tall fringe of flag and sedge
Catches a climbing hawthorn hedge,
A lonely hulk is seen.

It lies forgotten of all tides,
The grass grows round its bleaching sides,
An endless inland peace abides
About its mouldering age.

But in the cot-door on the height
An old man sits with fading sight,
And memories of one cruel night
Are all his heritage.

And at her spinning-wheel within
The mother’s hands forget to spin,—
So weary all her days have been
Since Margery went away.

—— Tantramar! Tantramar!
Until that sorrow fades afar,
Thy plains where birds and blossoms are
Laugh not their ancient way!

The valley of the winding water
Wears the same light it wore of old,
Still o’er the purple peaks the portals
Of distance and desire unfold.

Still break the fields of opening June
To emerald in their ancient way.
The sapphire of the summer heaven
Is infinite, as yesterday.

My eyes are on the greening earth,
The exultant bobolinks wild awing;
And yet, of all this kindly gladness,
My heart beholds not anything.