Part 5

Thy sisters of the early summer-time Were masquers in this carnival of pleasure; Each in her turn unrolled her golden treasure, And thou hast but the ashes of the prime; 'Tis life's own malice That brings the peasant of a race sublime To feed her flock around her ruined palace.

Yet for withstanding thus the autumn's dart Some deeper pansy-insight will atone; It comes to souls neglected and alone, Something that prodigals in pleasure's mart Lose in the whirl; The peasant child will have a purer heart Than the vain favourite of the vanished earl.

And far above this tragic world of ours There is a world of a diviner fashion, A mystic world, a world of dreams and passion That each aspiring thing creates and dowers With its own light; Where even the frail spirits of trees and flowers Pause, and reach out, and pass from height to height.

Here will we claim for thee another fief, An upland where a glamour haunts the meadows, Snow peaks arise enrobed in rosy shadows, Fairer the under slopes with vine and sheaf And shimmering lea; The paradise of a simple old belief, That flourished in the Islands of the Sea.

A snow-cool cistern in the fairy hills Shall feed thy roots with moisture clear as dew; A ferny shield to temper the warm blue That heaven is; a thrush that thrills To answer his mate, And when above the ferns the shadow fills, Fireflies to render darkness consolate.

Here muse and brood, moulding thy seed and die And re-create thy form a thousand fold, Mellowing thy petals to more lucent gold, Till they expand, tissues of amber sky; Till the full hour, And the full light and the fulfilling eye Shall find amid the ferns the perfect flower.

THE HEIGHT OF LAND

Here is the height of land: The watershed on either hand Goes down to Hudson Bay Or Lake Superior; The stars are up, and far away The wind sounds in the wood, wearier Than the long Ojibway cadence In which Potan the Wise Declares the ills of life And Chees-que-ne-ne makes a mournful sound Of acquiescence. The fires burn low With just sufficient glow To light the flakes of ash that play At being moths, and flutter away To fall in the dark and die as ashes: Here there is peace in the lofty air, And Something comes by flashes Deeper than peace;-- The spruces have retired a little space And left a field of sky in violet shadow With stars like marigolds in a water-meadow.

Now the Indian guides are dead asleep; There is no sound unless the soul can hear The gathering of the waters in their sources.

We have come up through the spreading lakes From level to level,-- Pitching our tents sometimes over a revel Of roses that nodded all night, Dreaming within our dreams, To wake at dawn and find that they were captured With no dew on their leaves; Sometimes mid sheaves Of braken and dwarf-cornel, and again On a wide blue-berry plain Brushed with the shimmer of a bluebird's wing; A rocky islet followed With one lone poplar and a single nest Of white-throat-sparrows that took no rest But sang in dreams or woke to sing,-- To the last portage and the height of land--: Upon one hand The lonely north enlaced with lakes and streams, And the enormous targe of Hudson Bay, Glimmering all night In the cold arctic light; On the other hand The crowded southern land With all the welter of the lives of men. But here is peace, and again That Something comes by flashes Deeper than peace,--a spell Golden and inappellable That gives the inarticulate part Of our strange being one moment of release That seems more native than the touch of time, And we must answer in chime; Though yet no man may tell The secret of that spell Golden and inappellable.

Now are there sounds walking in the wood, And all the spruces shiver and tremble, And the stars move a little in their courses. The ancient disturber of solitude Breathes a pervasive sigh, And the soul seems to hear The gathering of the waters at their sources; Then quiet ensues and pure starlight and dark; The region-spirit murmurs in meditation, The heart replies in exaltation And echoes faintly like an inland shell Ghost tremors of the spell; Thought reawakens and is linked again With all the welter of the lives of men.

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 noble deed to foster noble thought, And noble thought to image noble 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 shore 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 noble deed and noble 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 assured, O Earth, Of your burden of passionate men, For without them who would dream the dreams That encompass 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 shield between the silver seas It flashes back the hauteur of the sun; Yet teems with humblest beauties, still a part Of its Titanic 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 grass and flowers. And, O! the myriad-miracle of the grain Cresting the hill, brimming 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 passion 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.