Lundy's Lane and Other Poems Part 8

And when Grief comes thou shalt have suffered more Than all the deepest woes of all the world; Joy, dancing in, shall find thee nourished with mirth; Wisdom shall find her Master at thy door; And Love shall find thee crowned with love empearled; And death shall touch thee not but a new birth.

II

Be strong, O warring soul! For very sooth Kings are but wraiths, republics fade like rain, Peoples are reaped and garnered as the grain, And that alone prevails which is the truth: Be strong when all the days of life bear ruth And fury, and are hot with toil and strain: Hold thy large faith and quell thy mighty pain: Dream the great dream that buoys thine age with youth.

Thou art an eagle mewed in a sea-stopped cave: He, poised in darkness with victorious wings, Keeps night between the granite and the sea, Until the tide has drawn the warder-wave: Then from the portal where the ripple rings, He bursts into the boundless morning,--free!

RETROSPECT

This is the mockery of the moving years; Youth's colour dies, the fervid morning glow Is gone from off the foreland; slow, slow, Even slower than the fount of human tears To empty, the consuming shadow nears That Time is casting on the worldly show Of pomp and glory. But falter not;--below That thought is based a deeper thought that cheers.

Glean thou thy past; that will alone inure To catch thy heart up from a dark distress; It were enough to find one deed mature, Deep-rooted, mighty 'mid the toil and press; To save one memory of the sweet and pure, From out life's failure and its bitterness.

FROST MAGIC

I

Now, in the moonrise, from a wintry sky, The frost has come to charm with elfin might This quiet room; to draw with symbols bright Faces and forms in fairest charactery Upon the cas.e.m.e.nt; all the thoughts that lie Deep hidden in my heart's core he would tell, How the red shoots of fancy strike and swell, How they are watered, what soil nourished by.

With eerie power he piles his atomies, Incrusted gems, star-glances overborne With lids of sleep pulled from the moth's bright eyes, And forests of frail ferns, blanched and forlorn, Where Oberon of unimagined size Might in the silver silence wind his horn.

II

With these alone he draws in magic lines, Faces that people dreams, and chiefly one Happy and brilliant as the northern sun, And by its darling side there gleams and shines One of G.o.d's children with the laughing signs Of dimples, and glad accents, and sweet cries, That angels are and heaven's memories: The wizard thus my soul's estate divines;

All it holds dear he sets alone apart, Etches the past in likeness of dim groves Silvered in quiet rime and with rare art, In crystal spoils and fairy treasure-troves, He draws the picture of the happy heart, By those who love it most, whom most it loves.

IN SNOW-TIME

I have seen things that charmed the heart to rest: Faint moonlight on the towers of ancient towns, Flattering the soul to dream of old renowns; The first clear silver on the mountain crest Where the lone eagle by his chilly nest Called the lone soul to brood serenely free; Still pools of sunlight shimmering in the sea, Calm after storm, wherein the storm seemed blest.

But here a peace deeper than peace is furled, Enshrined and chaliced from the changeful hour; The snow is still, yet lives in its own light.

Here is the peace which brooded day and night, Before the heart of man with its wild power Had ever spurned or trampled the great world.

TO A CANADIAN LAD KILLED IN THE WAR

O n.o.ble youth that held our honour in keeping, And bore it sacred through the battle flame, How shall we give full measure of acclaim To thy sharp labour, thy immortal reaping?

For though we sowed with doubtful hands, half sleeping, Thou in thy vivid pride hast reaped a nation, And brought it in with shouts and exultation, With drums and trumpets, with flags flashing and leaping.

Let us bring pungent wreaths of balsam, and tender Tendrils of wild-flowers, lovelier for thy daring, And deck a sylvan shrine, where the maple parts The moonlight, with lilac bloom, and the splendour Of suns unwearied; all unwithered, wearing Thy valor stainless in our heart of hearts.

THE CLOSED DOOR

_The dew falls and the stars fall, The sun falls in the west, But never more Through the closed door, Shall the one that I loved best Return to me: A salt tear is the sea, All earth's air is a sigh, But they never can mourn for me With my heart's cry, For the one that I loved best Who caressed me with her eyes, And every morning came to me, With the beauty of sunrise, Who was health and wealth and all, Who never shall answer my call, While the sun falls in the west, The dew falls and the stars fall._

BY A CHILD'S BED

She breathed deep, And stepped from out life's stream Upon the sh.o.r.e of sleep; And parted from the earthly noise, Leaving her world of toys, To dwell a little in a dell of dream.

Then brooding on the love I hold so free, My fond possessions come to be Clouded with grief; These fairy kisses, This archness innocent, Sting me with sorrow and disturbed content: I think of what my portion might have been; A dearth of blisses, A famine of delights, If I had never had what now I value most; Till all I have seems something I have lost; A desert underneath the garden shows, And in a mound of cinders roots the rose.

Here then I linger by the little bed, Till all my spirit's sphere, Grows one half brightness and the other dead, One half all joy, the other vague alarms; And, holding each the other half in fee, Floats like the growing moon That bears implicitly Her lessening pearl of shadow Clasped in the crescent silver of her arms.

ELIZABETH SPEAKS

(Aetat Six)

Now every night we light the grate And I sit up till _really_ late; My Father sits upon the right, My Mother on the left, and I Between them on an ancient chair, That once belonged to my Great-Gran, Before my Father was a man.

We sit without another light; I really, truly never tire Watching that s.p.a.ce, as black as night, That hangs behind the fire; For there sometimes, you know, The dearest, queerest little sparks, Without a sound creep to and fro; Sometimes they form in rings Or lines that look like many things, Like skipping ropes, or hoops, or swings: Before you know what you're about, They all go out!

My Father says that they are gnomes, Beyond the grate they have their homes, In a tall, black, and windy town, Behind a door we cannot see.

Often when it's time for bed The children run away instead, Out through the door to see our fire, Then their angry parents come With every candle in the town, The beadle with his lantern too, And search and rummage up and down, To catch the children as they play, Between the rows of new-mown hay, And bring them home; (They must be, O, so very small, How do they capture them at all?

But then they must be very _dear_); When they can find no more They blow a horn we cannot hear, And march with the beadle at their head, Right through the little open door, Then close it tight and go to bed.

My Mother says that may be so; (They both agree they're _gnomes_, you know).

She says, she thinks that every night, The gnomes have had a fearful fight; Their valiant General has been slain, And all the soldiers leave the camp To dig his grave upon the plain; They drag the General on a gun; Every bandsman has a lamp And there's a torch for every one, They dig his grave with bayonets And wrap him grandly in his flag, Then they gather in a ring, The band plays very soft and low, And all the soldiers sing.

(Of course we cannot hear, you know,) Then some one calls "The enemy comes!"

They m.u.f.fle up their pipes and drums; Every soldier in a fright Puts out his light.

Then hand in hand, and very still, They clamber up the dark, dark hill And hold their breath tight--tight.