The clear stream glimmers before them;
 The faint night falters o’er them;
 Lashed lightly bark to bark,
 They glide the windless dark.
Late grows the night. No fear
 While the skilful captives steer!
 Sleeps the tired warrior, sleeps
 The chief; and the river creeps.

V

In the town of the Melicite
 The unjarred peace is sweet,
 Green grows the corn and great,
 And the hunt is fortunate.
This many a heedless year
 The Mohawks come not near.
 The lodge-gate stands unbarred;
 Scarce even a dog keeps guard.
No mother shrieks from a dream
 Of blood on the threshold stream,—
 But the thought of those mute guides
 Is where the sleeper bides!

VI

Gets forth those caverned walls
 No roar from the giant Falls,
 Whose mountainous foam treads under
 The abyss of awful thunder.
But—the river’s sudden speed!
 How the ghost-grey shores recede!
 And the tearless pilots hear
 A muttering voice creep near.
A tremor! The blanched waves leap.
 The warriors start from sleep.
 Faints in the sudden blare
 The cry of their swift despair,
And the captives’ death-chant shrills ...
 But afar, remote from ills,
 Quiet under the quiet skies
 The Melicite village lies.

THE WOOD FROLIC

The Morning Star was bitter bright, the morning sky was grey;
 And we hitched our teams and started for the woods at break of day.
 Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!
Along the white and winding road the sled-bells jangled keen
 Between the buried fences, the billowy drifts between.
 Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!
So crisp sang the runners, and so swift the horses sped,
 That the woods were all about us ere the sky grew red.
 Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!
The bark hung ragged on the birch, the lichen on the fir,
 The lungwort fringed the maple, and grey moss the juniper.
 Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!
So still the air and chill the air the branches seemed asleep,
 But we broke their ancient visions as the axe bit deep.
 Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!
With the shouts of the choppers and the barking of their blades,
 How rang the startled valleys and the rabbit-haunted glades!
 Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!
The hard wood and the soft wood, we felled them for our use;
 And chiefly, for its scented gum, we loved the scaly spruce;
 Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!
And here and there, with solemn roar, some hoary tree came down,
 And we heard the rolling of the years in the thunder of its crown.
 Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!
So, many a sled was loaded up above the stake-tops soon;
 And many a load was at the farm before the horn of noon;
 Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!
And ere we saw the sundown all yellow through the trees,
 The farmyard stood as thick with wood as a buckwheat patch with bees;
 Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!
And with the last-returning teams, and axes burnished bright,
 We left the woods to slumber in the frosty shadowed night.
 Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!
And then the wide, warm kitchen, with beams across the ceiling,
 Thick hung with red-skinned onions, and homely herbs of healing!
 Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!
The dishes on the dresser-shelves were shining blue and white,
 And o’er the loaded table the lamps beamed bright.
 Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!
Then, how the ham and turkey and the apple-sauce did fly,
 The heights of boiled potatoes and the flats of pumpkin-pie!
 Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!
With bread-and-cheese and doughnuts fit to feed a farm a year!
 And we washed them down with tides of tea and oceans of spruce beer.
 Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!
At last the pipes were lighted and the chairs pushed back,
 And Bill struck up a sea-song on a rather risky tack;
 Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!
And the girls all thought it funny—but they never knew ’twas worse,
 For we gagged him with a doughnut at the famous second verse.
 Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!
Then someone fetched a fiddle, and we shoved away the table,
 And ’twas jig and reel and polka just as long as we were able,
 Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!
Till at last the girls grew sleepy, and we got our coats to go.
 We started off with racing-teams and moonlight on the snow;
 Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!
And soon again the winter world was voiceless as of old,
 Alone with all the wheeling stars, and the great white cold.
 Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!

CANADIAN STREAMS

O rivers rolling to the sea
 From lands that bear the maple-tree,
 How swell your voices with the strain
 Of loyalty and liberty!
A holy music, heard in vain
 By coward heart and sordid brain,
 To whom this strenuous being seems
 Naught but a greedy race for gain.
O unsung streams—not splendid themes
 Ye lack to fire your patriot dreams!
 Annals of glory gild your waves,
 Hope freights your tides, Canadian streams!
St. Lawrence, whose wide water laves
 The shores that ne’er have nourished slaves!
 Swift Richelieu of lilied fame!
 Niagara of glorious graves!
Thy rapids, Ottawa, proclaim
 Where Daulac and his heroes came!
 Thy tides, St. John, declare La Tour,
 And, later, many a loyal name!
Thou inland stream, whose vales, secure
 From storm, Tecumseh’s death made poor!
 And thou small water, red with war,
 ’Twixt Beaubassin and Beauséjour!
Dread Saguenay, where eagles soar,
 What voice shall from the bastioned shore
 The tale of Roberval reveal,
 Or his mysterious fate deplore?
Annapolis, do thy floods yet feel
 Faint memories of Champlain’s keel,
 Thy pulses yet the deed repeat
 Of Poutrincourt and d’Iberville?
And thou far tide, whose plains now beat
 With march of myriad westering feet,
 Saskatchewan, whose virgin sod
 So late Canadian blood made sweet?
Your bulwark hills, your valleys broad,
 Streams where de Salaberry trod,
 Where Wolfe achieved, where Brock was slain,—
 Their voices are the voice of God!
O sacred waters! not in vain,
 Across Canadian height and plain,
 Ye sound us in triumphant tone
 The summons of your high refrain,

 

 

AVE!

AVE!

AN ODE FOR THE CENTENARY OF SHELLEY’S BIRTH

I

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

II

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

III

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

IV

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

V

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

VI

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

VII

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

VIII

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

IX

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

X

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

XI

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

XII

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

XIII

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

XIV

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

XV

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

XVI

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

XVII

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

XVIII

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

XIX

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

XX

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

XXI

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

XXII

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

XXIII

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

XXIV

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

XXV

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

XXVI

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

XXVII

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

XXVIII

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

XXIX

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

XXX

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

XXXI

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

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