Sonnets and Other Verse Part 4

What time and cost conspired to trace Her lineaments of perfect grace!

IN WAREHOUSE AND OFFICE.

How can the man whose uneventful days, Each like the other, are obscurely spent Amid the mill's dead products, keep his gaze Upon a lofty goal serenely bent?

Or he who sedulously tells and groups Their minted shadows with deft finger-tips?

Or who above the shadow's shadow stoops, And dips his pen and writes, and writes and dips?

How can he? Yet some such have been and are, Prophets and seers in deed, if not in word, And poets of a faery land afar, By incommunicable music stirred; Feasting the soul apart with what it craves, Their occupation's masters, not its slaves.

H. M. S. "DREADNOUGHT."

t.i.tanic craft of many thousand tons, A smaller Britain free to come and go, Relying on thy ten terrific guns To daunt afar the most presumptuous foe; Thick-panoplied with plates of hardened steel, Equipped with all the engin'ry of death, Unrivalled swiftness in thy ma.s.sive keel, Annihilation latent in thy breath.

"Dreadnought" thy name. And yet, for all thy size And strength, the ocean might engulf thy prow, Or the swift red torpedo of the skies, The lightning, blast thy boast-emblazoned brow; Thou hast thy use, but Britain's sons were wise To put their trust in better things than thou.

THE REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA.

From Lapland to the land of Tamerlane, Kamchatka to the confines of the Turk, The spirit tyrants never can restrain When once awake is mightily at work.

Liberty, frantic with a fearful hope, Out of long darkness suddenly arisen, Maddens the dull half-human herds who grope And rend the bars of their ancestral prison.

Over the wan lone steppe her couriers speed, The secret forest echoes her command, She smites the sword that made her children bleed, And Death and Havoc hold the famished land.

But G.o.d overrules, and oft man's greatest good Is won through nights of dread and days of blood.

TEA'S APOLOGIA.

Loved by a host from Noah's days till now, Extolled by bards in many a glowing line, My purple rival of the mantling brow May laugh to scorn this swarthy face of mine.

I care not: many a weary pain I cure; Cold, heat and thirst I harmlessly abate; I bless the weak, the aged and the poor; And I have known the favor of the great.

I've cheered the minds of mighty poets gone; Philosophers have owned my solace true; Shy Cowper was my sweet Anacreon; Keen Hazlitt craved "whole goblets" of my brew; De Quincey praised my stimulating draught; What cups of me old Doctor Johnson quaffed!

A WISH.

When my time comes to quit this pleasing scene, And drop from out the busy life of men; When I shall cease to be where I have been So willingly, and ne'er may be again; When my abandoned tabernacle's dust With dust is laid, and I am counted dead; Ere I am quite forgotten, as I must Be in a little while, let this be said:

He loved this good G.o.d's world, the night and day, Men, women, children (these he loved the best); Pictures and books he loved, and work and play, Music and silence, soberness and jest; His mind was open, and his heart was gay; Green be his grave, and peaceful be his rest!

ALONE WITH NATURE.

The rain came suddenly, and to the sh.o.r.e I paddled, and took refuge in the wood, And, leaning on my paddle, there I stood In mild contentment watching the downpour, Feeling as oft I have felt heretofore, Rooted in nature, that supremest mood When all the strength, the peace, of solitude, Sink into and pervade the being's core.

And I have thought, if man could but abate His need of human fellowship, and find Himself through Nature, healing with her balm The world's sharp wounds, and growing in her state, What might and greatness, majesty of mind, Sublimity of soul and G.o.dlike calm!

THE WORKS OF MAN AND OF NATURE.

Man's works grow stale to man: the years destroy The charm they once possessed; the city tires; The terraces, the domes, the dazzling spires Are in the main but an attractive toy-- They please the man not as they pleased the boy; And he returns to Nature, and requires To warm his soul at her old altar fires, To drink from her perpetual fount of joy.

It is that man and all the works of man Prepare to pa.s.s away; he may depend On naught but what he found her stores among; But she, she changes not, nor ever can; He knows she will be faithful to the end, For ever beautiful, for ever young.

A DAY REDEEMED.

I rose, and idly sauntered to the pane, And on the March-bleak mountain bent my look; And standing there a sad review I took Of what the day had brought me. What the gain To Wisdom's store? What holds had Knowledge ta'en?

I mused upon the lightly-handled book, The erring thought, and felt a stern rebuke: "Alas, alas! the day hath been in vain!"

But as I gazed upon the upper blue, With many a twining jasper ridge up-ploughed, Sudden, up-soaring, swung upon my view A molten, rolling, sunset-laden cloud: My spirit stood, and caught its glorious hue-- "Not lost the day!" it, leaping, cried aloud.

OUTREMONT.

Far stretched the landscape, fair, without a flaw, Down to one silver sheet, some stream or cloud, Through glamorous mists. Midway, an engine ploughed Across the scene. In meditative awe I stood and gazed, absorbed in what I saw, Till sweet-breathed Evening came, the pensive-browed, And creeping from the city, spread her shroud Over the sunlit slopes of Outremont.

Soon the mild Indian summer will be past, November's mists soon flee December's snows; The trees may perish, and the winter's blast Wreck the tall windmills; these weak eyes may close; But ever will that scene continue fast Fixed in my soul, where richer still it grows.

THE NEW OLD STORY.

Hard by an ancient mansion stood an oak; For centuries, 'twas said, it had been there: The old towers crumbled 'neath decay's slow stroke, While, hall by hall, upgrew a palace fair; Lives and momentous eras waxed and waned, Old barons died, and barons young and gay Ruled in their stead, and still the oak remained, And each new spring seemed older not a day.

The vesture of the spirit of mankind,-- Forms and beliefs, like meteors, rise and set; The spirit too doth change; but o'er the mind This old Evangel holds young lordship yet; And here among Canadian snows we bring Each Christmastide our tribute to the King.