Duncan Campbell Scott

“ With a song of mine in her heart?
SONG.
The wind is wild to-night,
In the dark he turns and stirs,
Or he falls into dream and quiet,
In the gloomy heart of the firs.
He springs upon the trees,
And he shakes the sleeping nest ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then leaps tiger-sudden;—the leaves
Shudder up into heaps and are caught
High as the branch where they hung
Over the oriole’s nest.
Down in the sodden field,
A blind man is gathering his roots,
Guided and led by a girl ”

“ 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. ”

“ Where the sheeted wraiths like ghosts go
Through the gloomy rift.
Sing me a song of the ringing blade,
Of the snarl and shatter the light ice makes,
Of the whoop and the swing of the snow-shoe raid
Through the cedar brakes. ”

“ When she hears the airy ring
Of the master that she owns,
How, amorphous bulk, she shrinks,
How she trails and leers and winks,
Just a moment of gray rags,
Ere the wind has pounced and packed
All her baggage and her bags
Into limbo, and the dust
Rises in a smoke, and wracked
Drives the cloud in shreds and shags.
43Laughter falling coolly clear,
Widens air and broaches sun,
Comes as healing to a fear
But of self and shadow spun:
Self, a lantern-candle, throws
Hugeous spottings on the wall ”

“ The war-cry of the triumphant Iroquois.
16Now clothed with many an ancient flap and fold,
And wrinkled like an apple kept till May,
She weighs the interest-money in her palm,
And, when the Agent calls her valiant name,
Hears, like the war-whoops of her perished day,
The lads playing snow-snake in the stinging cold. ”

“ Heard where Nature moulds her young,
44Will the fancy fail to brew
Noisome liquor for the tongue.
Heighten mind and heighten life,
Heighten comment above lure,
Heighten laughter above strife,
Bred to scourge the fancy pure.
Then will come the days of men,
When the mind will govern power ”

“ Beauty is not feof to death;
(Ah, no—no!)
Beauty lives in essence free,
In the inner heart we see
Beauty’s immortality. THIS BOOK IS PRINTED DURING OCTOBER 1898 BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS
Footnotes
1. The Woman who Conquers.
Transcriber’s Note On Page 55, it was not clear if the following line should end with a comma or a semi-colon:
Of the snarl and shatter the light ice makes, On Page 20, it was not clear if fail should read fall:
To fail below the hill. ”