Flint and Feather: Collected Verse Part 9

You trusted I could feel My arm as strong as steel, So still your upturned face, so calm your breath, While circling eddies curled, While laughing rapids whirled From boulder unto boulder, till they dashed themselves to death.

Your splendid eyes aflame Put heaven's stars to shame, Your G.o.d-like head so near my lap was laid-- My hand is burning where It touched your wind-blown hair, As sweeping to the rapids verge, I changed my paddle blade.

The boat obeyed my hand, Till wearied with its grand Wild anger, all the river lay aswoon, And as my paddle dipped, Thro' pools of pearl it slipped And swept beneath a sh.o.r.e of shade, beneath a velvet moon.

To-night, again dream you Our spirit-winged canoe Is listening to the rapids purling past?

Where, in delirium reeled Our maddened hearts that kneeled To idolize the perfect world, to taste of love at last.

THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS

Into the rose gold westland, its yellow prairies roll, World of the bison's freedom, home of the Indian's soul.

Roll out, O seas! in sunlight bathed, Your plains wind-tossed, and gra.s.s enswathed.

Farther than vision ranges, farther than eagles fly, Stretches the land of beauty, arches the perfect sky, Hemm'd through the purple mists afar By peaks that gleam like star on star.

Fringing the prairie billows, fretting horizon's line, Darkly green are slumb'ring wildernesses of pine, Sleeping until the zephyrs throng To kiss their silence into song.

Whispers freighted with odour swinging into the air, Russet needles as censers swing to an altar, where The angels' songs are less divine Than duo sung twixt breeze and pine.

Laughing into the forest, dimples a mountain stream, Pure as the airs above it, soft as a summer dream, O! Lethean spring thou'rt only found Within this ideal hunting ground.

Surely the great Hereafter cannot be more than this, Surely we'll see that country after Time's farewell kiss.

Who would his lovely faith condole?

Who envies not the Red-skin's soul,

Sailing into the cloud land, sailing into the sun, Into the crimson portals ajar when life is done?

O! dear dead race, my spirit too Would fain sail westward unto you.

IN THE SHADOWS

I am sailing to the leeward, Where the current runs to seaward Soft and slow, Where the sleeping river gra.s.ses Brush my paddle as it pa.s.ses To and fro.

On the sh.o.r.e the heat is shaking All the golden sands awaking In the cove; And the quaint sand-piper, winging O'er the shallows, ceases singing When I move.

On the water's idle pillow Sleeps the overhanging willow, Green and cool; Where the rushes lift their burnished Oval heads from out the tarnished Emerald pool.

Where the very silence slumbers, Water lilies grow in numbers, Pure and pale; All the morning they have rested, Amber crowned, and pearly crested, Fair and frail.

Here, impossible romances, Indefinable sweet fancies, Cl.u.s.ter round; But they do not mar the sweetness Of this still September fleetness With a sound.

I can scarce discern the meeting Of the sh.o.r.e and stream retreating, So remote; For the laggard river, dozing, Only wakes from its reposing Where I float.

Where the river mists are rising, All the foliage baptizing With their spray; There the sun gleams far and faintly, With a shadow soft and saintly, In its ray.

And the perfume of some burning Far-off brushwood, ever turning To exhale All its smoky fragrance dying, In the arms of evening lying, Where I sail.

My canoe is growing lazy, In the atmosphere so hazy, While I dream; Half in slumber I am guiding, Eastward indistinctly gliding Down the stream.

NOCTURNE

Night of Mid-June, in heavy vapours dying, Like priestly hands thy holy touch is lying Upon the world's wide brow; G.o.d-like and grand all nature is commanding The "peace that pa.s.ses human understanding"; I, also, feel it now.

What matters it to-night, if one life treasure I covet, is not mine! Am I to measure The gifts of Heaven's decree By my desires? O! life for ever longing For some far gift, where many gifts are thronging, G.o.d wills, it may not be.

Am I to learn that longing, lifted higher, Perhaps will catch the gleam of sacred fire That shows my cross is gold?

That underneath this cross--however lowly, A jewel rests, white, beautiful and holy, Whose worth can not be told.

Like to a scene I watched one day in wonder:-- A city, great and powerful, lay under A sky of grey and gold; The sun outbreaking in his farewell hour, Was scattering afar a yellow shower Of light, that aureoled

With brief hot touch, so marvellous and shining, A hundred steeples on the sky out-lining, Like network threads of fire; Above them all, with halo far outspreading, I saw a golden cross in glory heading A consecrated spire:

I only saw its gleaming form uplifting, Against the clouds of grey to seaward drifting, And yet I surely know Beneath the seen, a great unseen is resting, For while the cross that pinnacle is cresting, An Altar lies below.

Night of Mid-June, so slumberous and tender, Night of Mid-June, transcendent in thy splendour Thy silent wings enfold And hush my longing, as at thy desire All colour fades from round that far-off spire, Except its cross of gold.

MY ENGLISH LETTER

When each white moon, her lantern idly swinging, Comes out to join the star night-watching band, Across the grey-green sea, a ship is bringing For me a letter, from the Motherland.

Naught would I care to live in quaint old Britain, These wilder sh.o.r.es are dearer far to me, Yet when I read the words that hand has written, The parent sod more precious seems to be.

Within that folded note I catch the savour Of climes that make the Motherland so fair, Although I never knew the blessed favour That surely lies in breathing English air.

Imagination's brush before me fleeing, Paints English pictures, though my longing eyes Have never known the blessedness of seeing The blue that lines the arch of English skies.

And yet my letter brings the scenes I covet, Framed in the salt sea winds, aye more in dreams I almost see the face that bent above it, I almost touch that hand, so near it seems.

Near, for the very grey-green sea that dashes 'Round these Canadian coasts, rolls out once more To Eastward, and the same Atlantic splashes Her wild white spray on England's distant sh.o.r.e.

Near, for the same young moon so idly swinging Her threadlike crescent bends the selfsame smile On that old land from whence a ship is bringing My message from the transatlantic Isle.

Thus loves my heart that far old country better, Because of those dear words that always come, With love enfolded in each English letter That drifts into my sun-kissed Western home.