Duncan Campbell Scott

“ Wind, you are sometimes strong and great,
You frighten the ships at sea,
Now come floating your delicate freight
Out of the lilac tree.
Wind, you must waver a gossamer sail
To ferry a scent so light,
Will you carry my love a message as frail
Through the hawk-haunted night?
For my heart is sometimes strange and wild,
Bitter and bold and free,
I scare the beautiful timid child,
As you frighten the ships at sea;{9}
But now when the hawks are piercing the air,
With the golden stars above,
The only thing my heart can bear
Is a lilac message of love. ”

“ Lest her will should weaken and make her heart a slave.
If she could be here where all the world is eager
For dear love with the primal Eden sway,
Where the blood is fire and no pulse is thin or meagre,
All the heart of all the world beats one way!
There is the land of fraud and fame and fashion,
Joy is but a gaud and withers in an hour,
Here is the land of quintessential passion,
Where in a wild throb Spring wells up with power.
She would hear the partridge drumming in the distance,
Rolling out his mimic thunder in the sultry noons ”

“ Latulipe was crying softly on Hans’s shoulder.
It was September, and around Viger the harvest was nearly finished. The days were clear as glass; already the maples were stroked with fire, with the lustre of wine and gold; early risers felt the keener air; the sunsets reddened the mists which lay light as lawn on the low fields. But Paul Arbique thought and spoke of Sedan alone, the place where he was born, of the Meuse, the bridges, of his father’s farm, just without the walls of the city, and of his boyhood, and the friends of his youth. ”

“ Wise Potàn shall gather boughs of balsam fir,
While for bark and dry wood Silver Lightning searches;
Soon the smoke shall hang and lapse in the moist air.
Soon shall I sleep—if I may not remember
One who lives far away where the storm-cloud went;
May it part and starshine burn in many a quiet ember,
Over her towered city crowned with large content;
Dear God, let me sleep, here where deep peace is,
Let me own a dreamless sleep once for all the years,
Let me know a quiet mind and what heart ease is,
Lost to light and life and hope, to longing and to tears. ”

“ Pedestaled there, flecked with the linden shadows,
A guardian statue carved in purest stone,
Love and Mnemosyne; Mnemosyne
Mothering the Truant to an all-cherishing breast,
The wells of lore deepening her eyes, would speak—
But Love hath laid his hand upon her lips.
DIRGE FOR A VIOLET.
Here was a happy flower,
Born in sun and shower,
In the meadow;
Sorrow was her dower,
And shadow.
Bid the gentle mole
Dig his deepest hole,
For her rest;
Sleep has charmed her soul,
Sleep is best. ”

“ Be faithful to the ebb and flow that bring
The outer tide of Spirit to trouble and swing
The inlet of thy being. Learn to know
These powers, and life with all its venom and show
Shall have no force to dazzle thee or sting:
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! ”

“ This last was a favorite with Charles; he could not sing himself, but he accompanied the music by making wild movements with his arms, tramping heavily up and down before the piano, and shouting out so loudly as to wake Philippe, “Aux armes, citoyens!” On fine summer evenings Philippe and Adèle would walk up and down the road, watching the marsh fire-flies, and pausing on the bridge to hear the fish jump in the pool, and the deep, vibrant croak of the distant frogs. It was not always Philippe who walked there with Adèle; he sometimes sat on the veranda and watched her walk with some one else. ”

“ Over the field the bright air clings and tingles,
In the gold sunset while the red wind swoops;
Upon the nibbled knolls and from the dingles,
The sheep are gathering in frightened groups.
From the wide field the laggards bleat and follow,
A drover hurls his cry and hooting laugh;
And one young swain, too glad to whoop or hollo,
Is singing wildly as he whirls his staff.
Now crowding into little groups and eddies
They swirl about and charge and try to pass;
The sheep-dog yelps and heads them off and steadies
And rounds and moulds them in a seething mass. ”

“ But here where human passions pulse in power,
She will transcend our Shakespeare’s art,
From Desdemona to a smothered flower,
Will leap the tragic heart.
And memory will recall in keener mood
The precinct fair where passion grew,
The stars within the water in the wood,
The moonlit grove, the odorous dew.
The voice that throbbed along the summer dark
Will float and pause and thrill,
In lonely cadence silvern as the lark,
To fail below the hill. ”

“ The gold-moted wood-pools pellucid as her eyen;
Memories and ghost-forms of the days departed
People all the forest lone in the dead of night;
While Potàn and Silver Lightning sleep, the happy-hearted,
Troop they from their fastnesses upon my sight.
Once when the tide came straining from the Lido,
In a sea of flame our gondola flickered like a sword,
Venice lay abroad builded like beauty's credo,
Smouldering like a gorget on the breast of the Lord:
Did she mourn for fame foredoomed or passion shattered
That with a sudden impulse she gathered at my side? ”

“ He had knocked at the door and was admitted. “Ah!” said Madame Laroque, “it is the young men who can conquer.” But the next moment Monsieur Jourdain came out, and, strangely enough, was so bewildered as to forget to put on his hat. It was not this young man who could conquer.
“There is something mysterious about that young person,” said Madame Laroque between her teeth.
“Yes,” replied Cuerrier, “very mysterious—she minds her own business.”
“Bah!” said the widow, “who can tell what her business is, she who comes from no one knows where? ”

“ Sorrow is come like a swallow to nest,
Winging him up from the wind and the foam;
Mine is the heart that he loves the best,
He dreams of it when he dreams of home.
Strange! in the daylight off he flies,
Swift to the south away to the sea ”

“ If the old man was a favorite with the elder people of Viger, he was a yet greater favorite with the children. No small portion of his earnings went toward the purchase of sugar candy for their consumption. On summer afternoons he would lay out a row of sweet lumps on his window-sill and pretend to be absorbed by his work, as the children, with much suppressed laughter, darted around the corner of his cabin, bearing away the spoils. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That my heart would break if he left his nest,
And dwelt in the strange land down by the sea.
A SONG.
’Tis autumn and down in the fields
The buckwheat is browning still:
Gather yourself in your cloak,
The winter is over the hill. ”

“ And feel the lulled earth, older in pulse and motion,
Turn the rich lands and the inundant oceans
To the flushed color, and hear as now I hear
The thrill of life beat up the planet's margin
And break in the clear susurrus of deep joy
That echoes and reëchoes in my being?
O Life is intuition the measure of knowledge
And do I stand with heart entranced and burning
At the zenith of our wisdom when I feel
The long light flow, the long wind pause, the deep
Influx of spirit, of which no man may tell
The Secret, golden and inappellable? ”

“ Who is this François Xavier, who returns suddenly and fills the whole room? Can it be so? A vague feeling of jealousy springs up in Victor. Can this be the one of Josephine’s choosing? Yes, true it is; he calls her José. José, just like Madame Labrosse.
But he is going now, and he is very loath to go; but he will be back some day soon, and off he goes. And by and by away goes Madame Labrosse, “just for a moment,” she says. They are alone now as they have never been before. Josephine sits with the blood coming into her face, wondering what Victor will say. Victor also wonders what he will say. ”

“ Waxed deep, deep,
What we bear is best;
Just ones,
I give thee sleep.
First Traveller:
Keep up your spirits, I know
There's a cabin under the hill,
The fellow will make a roaring fire;
We'll heat our hands and drink our fill
And go warm to our heart's desire!
Second Traveller:
The door is open,—Heigho!
This pair will claim neither crown nor groat,
The man has gripped his garden spade
As if he would dig his grave in the snow;
The boy has the face of a saint, I trow;
His brow says, "I was not afraid!"
First Traveller:
Ah well, these things must be, you know! ”

“ That wheel was our curse, and it will follow us if you don’t leave it alone. And think of Monsieur Farlotte; if he finds out what you are working at he will not go to France—I know him; he will believe it his duty to stay here and help us, as he did when father was alive. Guy, Guy, listen to me!”
But Guy was bending over the model, absorbed in its labyrinths. In vain did Marie argue with him, try to persuade him, and threaten him; she attempted to lock the attic door and keep him out, but he twisted the lock off, and after that the door was always open. ”

“ Madame Laroque wondered how Mademoiselle Viau would come, whether in a cab, with her trunks and boxes piled around her, or on foot, and have her belongings on a cart. She watched every approaching vehicle for two weeks in vain; but one morning she saw that a curtain had been put up on the window opposite, that it was partly raised, and that a geranium was standing on the sill. ”