A Treasury of Canadian Verse, with Brief Biographical Notes

BLISS CARMAN

Theodore H. Rand

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ

THE sun goes down, and over all

These barren reaches by the tide

Such unelusive glories fall,

I almost dream they yet will bide

Until the coming of the tide.

And yet I know that not for us,

By any ecstasy of dream,

He lingers to keep luminous

A little while the grievous stream,

Which frets, uncomforted of dream—

A grievous stream, that to and fro

Athrough the fields of Acadie

Goes wandering, as if to know

Why one beloved face should be

So long from home and Acadie.

Was it a year, or lives ago,

We took the grasses in our hands,

And caught the summer flying low

Over the waving meadow lands,

And held it there between our hands?

The while the river at our feet—

A drowsy inland meadow stream—

At set of sun the after-heat

Made running gold, and in the gleam

We freed our birch upon the stream.

There down along the elms at dusk

We lifted dripping blade to drift,

Through twilight scented fine like musk,

Where night and gloom awhile uplift,

Nor sunder soul and soul adrift.

And that we took into our hands

Spirit of life or subtler thing—

Breathed on us there, and loosed the bands

Of death, and taught us, whispering,

The secret of some wonder-thing.

Then all your face grew light, and seemed

To hold the shadow of the sun;

The evening faltered, and I deemed

That time was ripe, and years had done

Their wheeling underneath the sun.

So all desire and all regret,

And fear and memory, were naught;

One to remember or forget

The keen delight our hands had caught;

Morrow and yesterday were naught.

The night has fallen, and the tide ...

Now and again comes drifting home,

Across these aching barrens wide,

A sigh like driven wind or foam:

In grief the flood is bursting home.

OH, the shambling sea is a sexton old,

And well his work is done.

With an equal grave for lord and knave,

He buries them every one.

Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,

He makes for the nearest shore;

And God, who sent him a thousand ship,

Will send him a thousand more;

But some he'll save for a bleaching grave,

And shoulder them in to shore,—

Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,

Shoulder them in to shore.

Oh, the ships of Greece and the ships of Tyre

Went out, and where are they?

In the port they made, they are delayed

With the ships of yesterday.

He followed the ships of England far,

As the ships of long ago;

And the ships of France they led him a dance,

But he laid them all arow.

Oh, a loafing, idle lubber to him

Is the sexton of the town;

For sure and swift, with a guiding lift,

He shovels the dead men down.

But though he delves so fierce and grim,

His honest graves are wide,

As well they know who sleep below

The dredge of the deepest tide.

Oh, he works with a rollicking stave at lip,

And loud is the chorus skirled;

With the burly note of his rumbling throat

He batters it down the world.

He learned it once in his father's house,

Where the ballads of eld were sung;

And merry enough is the burden rough,

But no man knows the tongue.

Oh, fair, they say, was his bride to see,

And wilful she must have been,

That she could bide at his gruesome side

When the first red dawn came in.

And sweet, they say, is her kiss to those

She greets to his border home;

And softer than sleep her hand's first sweep

That beckons, and they come.

Oh, crooked is he, but strong enough

To handle the tallest mast;

From the royal barque to the slaver dark,

He buries them all at last.

Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,

He makes for the nearest shore;

And God, who sent him a thousand ship,

Will send him a thousand more;

But some he'll save for a bleaching grave,

And shoulder them in to shore,—

Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,

Shoulder them in to shore.

LOVE built a crimson house—

I know it well—

That he might have a home

Wherein to dwell.

Poor Love that roved so far

And fared so ill,

Between the morning star

And the Hollow Hill,

Before he found the vale

Where he could bide,

With memory and oblivion

Side by side.

He took the silver dew

And the dun red clay,

And behold when he was through

How fair were they!

The braces of the sky

Were in its girth

That it should feel no jar

Of the swinging earth;

That sun and wind might bleach

But not destroy

The house that he had builded

For his joy.

"Here will I stay," he said,

"And roam no more,

And dust when I am dead

Shall keep the door."

There trooping dreams by night

Go by, go by.

The walls are rosy white

In the sun's eye.

The windows are more clear

Than sky or sea;

He made them after God's

Transparency.

It is a dearer place

Than Kirk or inn;

Such joy on joy as there

Has never been.

HACK and Hew were the sons of God

In the earlier earth than now;

One at his right hand, one at his left,

To obey as he taught them how.

And Hack was blind and Hew was dumb,

But both had the wild, wild heart;

And God's calm will was their burning will,

And the gist of their toil was art.

They made the moon and the belted stars,

They set the sun to ride;

They loosed the girdle and veil of the sea,

The wind and the purple tide.

Both flower and beast beneath their hands

To beauty and speed outgrew,—

The furious fumbling hand of Hack,

And the glorying hand of Hew.

Then, fire and clay, they fashioned a man,

And painted him rosy brown;

And God Himself blew hard in his eyes:

"Let them burn till they smoulder down!"

And "There!" said Hack, and "There!" thought Hew,

"We'll rest, for our toil is done."

But "Nay," the Master Workman said,

"For your toil is just begun.

"And ye who served me of old as God

Shall serve me anew as man,

Till I compass the dream that is in my heart,

And perfect the vaster plan."

And still the craftsman over his craft,

In the vague white light of dawn,

With God's calm will for his burning will,

While the mountain day comes on,

Yearning, wind-swift, indolent, wild,

Toils with those shadowy two,—

The faltering restless hand of Hack,

And the tireless hand of Hew.

THIS is the white winter day of his burial.

Time has set here of his toiling the span

Earthward, naught else. Cheer him out through the portal,

Heart-beat of Boston, our utmost in man!

Out in the broad open sun be his funeral,

Under the blue for the city to see.

Over the grieving crowd mourn for him, bugle!

Churches are narrow to hold such as he.

Here on the steps of the temple he builded,

Rest him a space, while the great city square

Throngs with his people, his thousands, his mourners;

Tears for his peace and a multitude's prayer.

How comes it, think you, the town's traffic pauses

Thus at high noon? Can we wealthmongers grieve?

Here in the sad surprise greatest America

Shows for a moment her heart on her sleeve.

She who is said to give life-blood for silver,

Proves, without show, she sets higher than gold

Just the straight manhood, clean, gentle, and fearless,

Made in God's likeness once more as of old.

Once more the crude makeshift law overproven,—

Soul pent from sin will seek God in despite.

Once more the gladder way wins revelation,—

Soul bent on God forgets evil outright.

Once more the seraph voice sounding to beauty,

Once more the trumpet tongue bidding, no fear!

Once more the new, purer plan's vindication,—

Man be God's forecast, and Heaven is here.

Bear him to burial, Harvard, thy Hero!

Not on thy shoulders alone is he borne;

They of the burden go forth on the morrow,

Heavy and slow, through a world left forlorn.

No grief for him, for ourselves the lamenting;

What giant arm to stay courage up now?

March we a thousand file up to the City,

Fellow with fellow linked,—he taught us how!

Never dismayed at the dark nor the distance!

Never deployed for the steep nor the storm!

Hear him say, "Hold fast, the night wears to morning!

This God of promise is God to perform."

Up with thee, heart of fear, high as the heaven!

Thou hast known one wore this life without stain.

What if for thee and me,—Street, Yard, or Common,—

Such a white captain appear not again!

Fight on alone! Let the faltering spirit

Within thee recall how he carried a host,

Rearward and van, as Wind shoulders a dust-heap;

One Way till strife be done, strive each at his most.

Take the last vesture of beauty upon thee,

Thou doubting world; and with not an eye dim

Say, when they ask if thou knowest a Saviour,

"Brooks was His brother, and we have known him."

For the Centenary of the birth of Shelley

UP by the idling reef-set bell

The tide comes in;

And to the idle heart to-day

The wind has many things to say;

The sea has many a tale to tell

His younger kin.

For we are his, bone of his bone,

Breath of his breath;

The doom tides sway us at their will;

The sky of being rounds us still;

And over us at last is blown

The wind of death.

A hundred years ago to-day

There came a soul,

A pilgrim of the perilous light,

Treading the spheral paths of night,

On whom the word and vision lay

With dread control.

Now the pale summer lingers near,

And talks to me

Of all her wayward journeyings,

And the old, sweet, forgotten things

She loved and lost and dreamed of here

By the blue sea.

The great cloud-navies, one by one,

Bend sails and fill

From ports below the round sea-verge;

I watch them gather and emerge,

And steer for havens of the sun

Beyond the hill.

The grey sea-horses troop and roam;

The shadows fly

Along the wind-floor at their heels;

And where the golden daylight wheels,

A white gull searches the blue dome

With keening cry.

And something, Shelley, like thy fame

Dares the wide moon

In that sea-rover's glimmering flight,

As if the Northland and the night

Should hear thy splendid valiant name

Put scorn to scorn.

III

Thou heart of all the hearts of men,

Tameless and free,

And vague as that marsh-wandering fire,

Leading the world's outworn desire

A night march down this ghostly fen

From sea to sea!

Through this divided camp of dream

Thy feet have passed,

As one who should set hand to rouse

His comrades from their heavy drowse;

For only their own deeds redeem

God's sons at last.

But the dim world will dream and sleep

Beneath thy hand,

As poppies in the windy morn,

Or valleys where the standing corn

Whispers when One goes forth to reap

The weary land.

O captain of the rebel host,

Lead forth and far!

Thy toiling troopers of the night

Press on the unavailing fight;

The sombre field is not yet lost,

With thee for star.

Thy lips have set the hail and haste

Of clarions free

To bugle down the wintry verge

Of time forever, where the surge

Thunders and crumbles on a waste

And open sea.

Did the cold Norns who pattern life

With haste and rest

Take thought to cheer their pilgrims on

Through trackless twilights vast and wan,

Across the failure and the strife,

From quest to quest,—

Set their last kiss upon thy face,

And let thee go

To tell the haunted whisperings

Of unimaginable things,

Which plague thy fellows with a trace

They cannot know?

So they might fashion and send forth

Their house of doom,

Through the pale splendor of the night,

In vibrant, hurled, impetuous flight,

A resonant meteor of the North

From gloom to gloom.

I think thou must have wandered far

With Spring for guide,

And heard the sky-born forest flowers

Talk to the wind among the showers,

Through sudden doorways left ajar

When the wind sighed;

Thou must have heard the marching sweep

Of blown white rain

Go volleying up the icy kills,—

And watched with Summer when the hills

Muttered of freedom in their sleep

And slept again.

Surely thou wert a lonely one,

Gentle and wild;

And the round sun delayed for thee

In the red moorlands by the sea,

When Tyrian Autumn lured thee on,

A wistful child,

To rove the tranquil, vacant year,

From dale to dale;

And the great Mother took thy face

Between her hands for one long gaze,

And bade thee follow without fear

The endless trail.

And thy clear spirit, half forlorn,

Seeking its own,

Dwelt with the nomad tents of rain,

Marched with the gold-red ranks of grain,

Or ranged the frontiers of the morn,

And was alone.

One brief perturbed and glorious day!

How couldst thou learn

The quiet of the forest sun,

Where the dark, whispering rivers run

The journey that hath no delay

And no return?

And yet within thee flamed and sang

The dauntless heart,

Knowing all passion and the pain

On man's imperious disdain,

Since God's great part in thee gave pang

To earth's frail part.

It held the voices of the hills

Deep in its core;

The wandering shadows of the sea

Called to it,—would not let it be;

The harvest of those barren rills

Was in its store.

Thine was a love that strives and calls

Outcast from home,

Burning to free the soul of man

With some new life. How strange, a ban

Should set thy sleep beneath the walls

Of changeless Rome!

VII

More soft, I deem, from spring to spring,

Thy sleep would be

Where this far western headland lies

With its imperial azure skies,

Under thee hearing beat and swing

The eternal sea.

Where all the livelong brooding day

And all night long,

The far sea-journeying wind should come

Down to the doorway of thy home,

To lure thee ever the old way

With the old song.

But the dim forest would so house

Thy heart so dear,

Even the low surf of the rain,

Where ghostly centuries complain,

Might beat against thy door and rouse

No heartache here.

For here the thrushes, calm, supreme,

Forever reign,

Whose gloriously kingly golden throats

Regather their forgotten notes

In keys where lurk no ruin of dream,

No tinge of pain.

And here the ruthless noisy sea,

With the tide's will,

The strong grey wrestler, should in vain

Put forth his hand on thee again—

Lift up his voice and call to thee,

And thou be still.

For thou hast overcome at last;

And fate and fear

And strife and rumour now no more

Vex thee by any wind-vexed shore,

Down the strewn ways thy feet have passed

Far, far from here.

VIII

Up by the idling, idling bell