GOING NORTH

I

White Porches

Just as we left the avenue
I saw a golden butterfly
Flutter against the windshield.
I felt the motor take the breeze,
As gaily as a yacht might do
Upon some tidal river of the seas.
We sailed a broad grey asphalt
Out past the red brick houses,
And fringy, ragged outskirts
To where the fields begin.
And Pickering, Whitby, Oshawa,
Flashed by like friendly postscripts
Of the Town's lengthy scroll,
With dusty little detours,
And cobblestone communities
To break the highway's hundred miles
Of river-like content.
We smiled at sleepy Main Streets,
And joyous village gardens,
And sprawling crimson orchards,
Heavy with ripened fruit.

Each mile or two a butterfly
Danced near the blazing windshield,
"The same gold butterfly!" we said,
"And the same village street!"

We passed a hundred porches,
Ancient and modern porches,
And some of them were white ones,
And those we loved the best.
Many a bed of phlox we passed,
Lilac and pink and white,
And they were gardens of delight
Along our asphalt river-front—
Sheer gardens of delight.
We loved all purple calicoes
On cheerful, ambling ladies,
Their morning work already done,
Sauntering through a mile of sun
Up to the general store.
Sometimes they sat on porches,
Narrow but shining porches,
Serenely shelling peas.
"Just what is life," we wondered,
"For those who sit contented
Throughout the magic summer
On these pale country porches,
Patching—knitting—talking—
Serenely shelling peas?"

II

Grey Willows

Then we turned north.
A railway train rushed by us;
The blue-bloused engineer
Hung from his stifling cab,
Waving a careless hand.
And in a moment we had lost
All thought of shining porches
And sleepy village streets.
This was a thinner world
Of smaller, leaner orchards;
Taller, barer houses;
Drier, keener air.
Here and there grey willows,
With an eerie whisper,
Bent above a narrow stream
That languidly slipped by.
And over us the noon-day sky
Turned brazen. Stark tree trunks
Showed where bush fires had run,
Charred columns of lost forests
Dried by the sun into fantastic shapes,

This narrow stream,
Unnursed by tree-held snow,
Dwarfed by the fires, fifty years ago
Would have raced by us foaming,
Even in summer, through a world of green—
A lost green world of butterflies and fern,
And soft anemones in spring;
But now at every jagged, ugly turn
Only a brush heap where the woods had been.
The very soil is scorched—
Scorched the brown ferns
Descended from the ones that long ago
Were licked into a burning wind of flame.
Poor, narrow little stream,
Bereft of that green dream
That holds the snow! ...
There was a bit of rock a mile ago,
The preface of the North!

III

Bush Road

A soft swamp road,
For forty miles through bracken and through fern,
Smooth as a snake,
With turn on twisted turn—
Turns that meant few surprises;
Yet, as it wrinkled on its way,
The softly yielding earth that overlay its granite
Seemed to say
That once the lumber trails ran here,
And once the voyageur
Sang as he paddled down the foaming stream,
And once the woodmen came,
Great gangs of woodmen
With the axe and spike,
Who set up rude encampments.
Then, to hoarse shouts and orders,
To laughter and to oaths,
To roaring fires at night and whiskey-haunted songs,
The soft green forest fell.
It died robustly as it lived,
And had its will of singing and of strife,
An ardent, powerful, various sort of life;
A more heroic fate
Than this of late—
A trail up to the playground of the North,
A bracken-haunted, snaky road,
A soft surprise to strangers, a delight.

IV

Painted Rock

Then the North took us,
Forced us through rocky walls,
Tore at our tires,
Gave us no inch of earth
Upon our steady climb.
Yet even here, beside the cruel road,
Were scraggy plots of farm,
And wood-piles neatly stacked,
And shacks, and gloomy faces.
Then an acre of more fertile land,
Pine trees and woods,
And suddenly, like a blue cup held high,
The lake Mazinawa ...
All silence, silence, silence—
Dark colours filling the blue cup.
And, like a purple stain against the sunset,
The great rock of Mazinawa,
Sacred to Indian tribes how long ago!
A thousand years ago?
Why should one care to know!

It looms up larger than I dreamed;
Roadways of rock
And canyons full of light;
Niched balconies for pines bent all one way;
Small birds in flight,
Dashing against the dark
Of that vast rocky flank,
Whose sides of iron seams,
Laid under golden lichen,
Have been a place of dreams
And of brute sacrifice.
What if it has a power to draw us near
As in the days of fear?
When from the rocklands of the Georgian Bay
Or through the bush roads whence we came to-day,
But then on foot, soft-padding all the way,
Or in the war canoes
They crowded to this small blue lake of theirs
And an old shrine ...
What are we floating towards
In this small, low canoe?
A naked, ceremonial singing past
Seems to reach out and whisper.

STUDY IN SHADOWS

The Rock at Bon Echo

I

Once in the twilight aisles of Amiens
I thought I knew what shadows were,
Creeping in golden dust and greying dust,
And trooping down dim flights of measured air,
Liquid in spacing, that those arches span.

II

But just last night, before the moon was up,
Our little boat stole close against these crags
That out-rear arches and reject the dark.
Yet gradually the purple of the rock
Melted before it; and again they came
Creeping in golden dust, and greying dust,
And crowding down those giant flights of stair
That open slowly as eternity,
To hold the feet of shadows, lost in night.

III

Then I remembered GÖtterdammerÜng—
How before doom falls on the gorgeous host,
Slowly there drifts across the empty stage
A smoke-cloud, lonely as a passing soul.
In very truth the gods return to you—
Great rock that blazes colour in the sun—
And, as in the Valhalla of old song,
Parade before our eyes the whole day long
And make a glorious end,
As with you they are folded in a sleep.
No cloud foretells their doom, but wings of birds
A moment sweep your side—then fall away.

NORTHERN GRAVEYARDS

Stony fields and lonely roads,
Meagre hamlets, very lean,
And most prosperous graveyards
Lying all between.

Each few miles a graveyard,
With its crouching column
And its urns and headstones,
Very dark and solemn.

But with what an accent!
Yellow, purple, red,
Lie the votive offerings
To this public dead.

Close beside the railway,
Where the smoke drifts high,
These are decked in garlands
For the passerby.

Even in the winter,
Breaking through the snow
Immortelles beguile us,
When the train runs slow.

They are strangely cheerful,
All these plots of ground
That have lost the loneliness
Of the living. Here abound

In a comradeship increasing
Those who in their hour
Reaped a dreary harvest,
Missed a magic flower.

Over them the smoke-wreaths,
Snow, and whispering grass,
And the voice of neighbours,
Sighing as they pass;

While the urns of iron
And the barbarous vases
Chant a willing ritual
To forgotten faces.

So they sleep together,
And their shades may say:
"Wave to us, O restless traveller!
We are glad to stay."

STONY LAKE

By southern seas I have seen purple stones
Throw back the shadows of the waves and hills.
On the Ægean, so the stories run,
Greek youths, with many a saffron-coloured sail,
Rode flame-like to the rhythm of the gale.

Again, on the bright shores of this small lake,
Purple of hills and pink of northern rocks.
To-day I met a sail-boat in the wind
And at its mast a brown Canadian boy—
He was as splendid as his mate of Troy.

TRADE

It might have been two hundred years ago,
For all the difference in her way or mine,
That her canoe, with paddle dipping slow,
Just as the sunset ran to embers low,
Stopped at my rocky door.

With fish and basketwork she plied her trade,
And I, to help a little money last,
Answered her barter with a coat I made
Of coloured wool—oh, many seasons past!
We were both satisfied!

SNAKE ISLAND

"Ages ago," my Indian says
(As we are fishing in a cove
Of this green island, with its trees and shacks),
"Here was wild grass and many snakes.
After a while they disappear,
For soon the white man comes, and makes
Houses like these to live in!"

So the old name is suddenly made new.
Snake Island! ...

Ages ago, perhaps, the trees were elfin
And tall grass towered to the skies,
Until, to all those narrow, screen-like eyes,
This was a dazzling fen,
Perplexed with tangled fern,
Peopled with glittering prey;
Dense borderland to where the black pools lay
Whose captives twist and turn.

Burrowing, boa-like, harlequin snakes,
Your day was brilliant and flashing enough!
Snakes casting skins in continuous slough,
Grass snakes and ring snakes, on dragon-flies bent.
Was there a charmer, with musical pipe,
Lured you a moment? Some Indian charm
Surely touched you with sorcery, gave you alarm,
Ere the people who meant to build houses like these
Came and killed you—
And killed the wild grass.

JUNIPER RING

Juniper ring on the granite rock,
Deep and green and perfectly planned;
Living with you I understand
Circle-magic of old.

You had a sister in mystery—
Was it only an April ago
That a crocus cup on a bed of snow
Promised eternal things?

It will be longer, Juniper,
Till earth declares you ready to break,
And you fade of the havoc her brown hands make
That are covered with mystic rings.

WHITE SLUMBER

Who has come to that farthest island
Beyond White Gull Bay?
There is a little tent among the birches
Since yesterday.
Those birches are the palest things
Even in the morning sun!
Among them the tent has suddenly blossomed,
As the white flower of a night-blooming cereus,
Silently, deep in some forest of sleep,
Might have done.
Who are they? What dreams must be theirs,
Who have found such a magical camp unawares?

CRIMSON POOL

Even you, dark pool—
Even you feel death.
On your soft brown surface
There are deep reflections
Of a fiery breath.
To the waiting forest
Death does not come creeping
As it comes to men;
It comes shouting, waving banners,
Burning out its way with torches,
Hanging garlands now and then.
All the green walls of your silence
Hung with crimson,
Even you, dark pool—
Even you feel death.
On your soft brown surface
There are deep reflections
Of a fiery breath.