Lundy's Lane and Other Poems Part 12

I would have you look over my shoulder Ere the long, dark year is colder, And mark that as memory grows older, The brighter it pulses and gleams.

And if I should try to render The tissues of fugitive splendour That fled down the wind of living, Will they read it some day in the future, And be conscious of an awareness In our old lives, and the bareness Of theirs, with the newest pa.s.sions In the last fad of the fashions?

How often have we risen without daylight When the day star was hidden in mist, When the dragon-fly was heavy with dew and sleep, And viewed the miracle pre-eminent, matchless, The prelusive light that quickens the morning.

O crystal dawn, how shall we distill your virginal freshness When you steal upon a land that man has not sullied with his intrusion, When the aboriginal shy dwellers in the broad solitudes Are asleep in their innumerable dens and night haunts Amid the dry ferns, in the tender nests Pressed into shape by the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the Mother birds?

How shall we simulate the thrill of announcement When lake after lake lingering in the starlight Turn their faces towards you, And are caressed with the salutation of colour?

How shall we transmit in tendril-like images, The tenuous tremor in the tissues of ether, Before the round of colour buds like the dome of a shrine, The preconscious moment when love has fluttered in the bosom, Before it begins to ache?

How often have we seen the even Melt into the liquidity of twilight, With pa.s.sages of t.i.tian splendour, Pellucid preludes, exquisitely tender, Where vanish and revive, thro' veils of the ashes of roses, The crystal forms the breathless sky discloses.

The new moon a slender thing, In a snood of virgin light, She seemed all shy on venturing Into the vast night.

Her own land and folk were afar, She must have gone astray, But the G.o.ds had given a silver star, To be with her on the way.

I can feel the wind on the prairie And see the bunch-gra.s.s wave, And the sunlights ripple and vary The hill with Crowfoot's grave, Where he "pitched off" for the last time In sight of the Blackfoot Crossing, Where in the sun for a pastime You marked the site of his tepee With a circle of stones. Old Napiw Gave you credit for that day.

And well I recall the weirdness Of that evening at Qu'Appelle, In the wigwam with old Sakimay, The keen, acrid smell, As the kinnikinick was burning; The planets outside were turning, And the little splints of poplar Flared with a thin, gold flame.

He showed us his painted robe Where in primitive pigments He had drawn his feats and his forays, And told us the legend Of the man without a name, The hated Blackfoot, How he lured the warriors, The young men, to the foray And they never returned.

Only their ghosts Goaded by the Blackfoot Mounted on stallions: In the night time He drove the stallions Reeking into the camp; The women gasped and whispered, The children cowered and crept, And the old men shuddered Where they slept.

When Sakimay looked forth He saw the Blackfoot, And the ghosts of the warriors, And the black stallions Covered by the night wind As by a mantle.

I remember well a day, When the sunlight had free play, When you worked in happy stress, While grave Ne-Pah-Pee-Ness Sat for his portrait there, In his beaded coat and his bare Head, with his mottled fan Of hawk's feathers, A Man!

Ah Morris, those were the times When you sang your inconsequent rhymes Sprung from a careless fountain:

"_He met her on the mountain, He gave her a horn to blow, And the very last words he said to her Were, 'Go 'long, Eliza, go.'_"

Foolish,--but life was all, And under the skilful fingers Contours came at your call-- Art grows and time lingers;-- But now the song has a change Into something wistful and strange.

And one asks with a touch of ruth What became of the youth And where did Eliza go?

He met her on the mountain, He gave her a horn to blow, The horn was a silver whorl With a mouthpiece of pure pearl, And the mountain was all one glow, With gulfs of blue and summits of rosy snow.

The cadence she blew on the silver horn Was the meaning of life in one phrase caught, And as soon as the magic notes were born, She repeated them once in an afterthought.

They heard in the crystal pa.s.ses, The cadence, calling, calling, And faint in the deep creva.s.ses, The echoes falling, falling.

They stood apart and wondered; Her lips with a wound were aquiver, His heart with a sword was sundered, For life was changed forever When he gave her the horn to blow: But a shadow arose from the valley, Desolate, slow and tender, It hid the herdsmen's chalet, Where it hung in the emerald meadow, (Was death driving the shadow?) It quenched the tranquil splendour Of the colour of life on the glow-peaks, Till at the end of the even, The last sh.e.l.l-tint on the snow-peaks Had pa.s.sed away from the heaven.

And yet, when it pa.s.sed, victorious, The stars came out on the mountains, And the torrents gusty and glorious, Clamoured in a thousand fountains, And even far down in the valley, A light re-discovered the chalet.

The scene that was veiled had a meaning, So deep that none might know; Was it here in the morn on the mountain, That he gave her the horn to blow?

Tears are the crushed essence of this world, The wine of life, and he who treads the press Is lofty with imperious disregard Of the burst grapes, the red tears and the murk.

But nay! that is a thought of the old poets, Who sullied life with the pa.s.sional bitterness Of their world-weary hearts. We of the sunrise, Joined in the breast of G.o.d, feel deep the power That urges all things onward, not to an end, But in an endless flow, mounting and mounting, Claiming not overmuch for human life, Sharing with our brothers of nerve and leaf The urgence of the one creative breath,-- All in the dim twilight--say of morning, Where the florescence of the light and dew Haloes and hallows with a crown adorning The brows of life with love; herein the clue, The love of life--yea, and the peerless love Of things not seen, that leads the least of things To cherish the green sprout, the hardening seed; Here leans all nature with vast Mother-love, Above the cradled future with a smile.

Why are there tears for failure, or sighs for weakness, While life's rhythm beats on? Where is the rule To measure the distance we have circled and clomb?

Catch up the sands of the sea and count and count The failures hidden in our sum of conquest.

Persistence is the master of this life; The master of these little lives of ours; To the end--effort--even beyond the end.

Here, Morris, on the plains that we have loved, Think of the death of Akoose, fleet of foot, Who, in his prime, a herd of antelope From sunrise, without rest, a hundred miles Drove through rank prairie, loping like a wolf, Tired them and slew them, ere the sun went down.

Akoose, in his old age, blind from the smoke Of tepees and the sharp snow light, alone With his great grandchildren, withered and spent, Crept in the warm sun along a rope Stretched for his guidance. Once when sharp autumn Made membranes of thin ice upon the sloughs, He caught a pony on a quick return Of prowess and, all his instincts cleared and quickened, He mounted, sensed the north and bore away To the Last Mountain Lake where in his youth He shot the sand-hill-cranes with his flint arrows.

And for these hours in all the varied pomp Of pagan fancy and free dreams of foray And crude adventure, he ranged on entranced, Until the sun blazed level with the prairie, Then paused, faltered and slid from off his pony.

In a little bluff of poplars, hid in the bracken, He lay down; the populace of leaves In the lithe poplars whispered together and trembled, Fluttered before a sunset of gold smoke, With inters.p.a.ces, green as sea water, And calm as the deep water of the sea.

There Akoose lay, silent amid the bracken, Gathered at last with the Algonquin Chieftains.

Then the tenebrous sunset was blown out, And all the smoky gold turned into cloud wrack.

Akoose slept forever amid the poplars, Swathed by the wind from the far-off Red Deer Where dinosaurs sleep, clamped in their rocky tombs.

Who shall count the time that lies between The sleep of Akoose and the dinosaurs?

Innumerable time, that yet is like the breath Of the long wind that creeps upon the prairie And dies away with the shadows at sundown.

What we may think, who brood upon the theme, Is, when the old world, tired of spinning, has fallen Asleep, and all the forms, that carried the fire Of life, are cold upon her marble heart-- Like ashes on the altar--just as she stops, That something will escape of soul or essence,-- The sum of life, to kindle otherwhere: Just as the fruit of a high sunny garden, Grown mellow with autumnal sun and rain, Shrivelled with ripeness, splits to the rich heart, And looses a gold kernel to the mould, So the old world, hanging long in the sun, And deep enriched with effort and with love, Shall, in the motions of maturity, Wither and part, and the kernel of it all Escape, a lovely wraith of spirit, to lat.i.tudes Where the appearance, throated like a bird, Winged with fire and bodied all with pa.s.sion, Shall flame with presage, not of tears, but joy.

THE END