Duncan Campbell Scott

“ The mountains may with ice and avalanche wrestle,
Far down their rugged steeps dimple and nestle
The still, translucent, turquoise-hearted tarns.
And Thou, O Power, that 'stablishest the Nation,
Give wisdom in the midst of our elation;
Who are so free that we forget we are—
That freedom brings the deepest obligation:
Grant us this presage for a guiding star,
To lead the van of Peace, not with a craven spirit,
But with the consciousness that we inherit
What built the Empire out of blood and fire,
And can smite, too, in passion and with ire. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Thus only shalt thou live:
Give as we give who are hidden
In myriad dimples of rock and fern;
Give as we give unbidden
To tarn and rillet and burn,
Where the lake dreams,
Where the fall is hurled,
Striving to sweeten
The oceans of the world.
Should my song for a moment cease,
Silence fall in the woodland peace;
Should I wilfully check the flow
Bubbling and dancing up from below;
Say to my heart be still—be still,
Let the murmur die with the rill;
Then should the glittering, grey sea-things
Sigh as they wallow the under springs ”

“ Rome a wand of sweet-flag withered to the pith;
Growing, growing, all the glory going.
Palsy shakes the planets, frost has chilled the sun,
In a crushing silence the All is dead and done.
Growing, growing, all the glory going.
II
Going, going, all the glory growing,
See it stir and flutter; that is singing, hark!
Singing in the caverns of the primal dark.
Going, going, all the glory growing.
What is in the making, what immortal plan
Draws to its unfolding? 'Tis the Soul of man.
Going, going, all the glory growing. ”

“ Passion outsurges,
Sweeps far but converges:
Nothing is lost,
Sod or stone,
But comes to its own;
Bear well thy joy,
'Tis mixed with alloy,
Bear well thy grief,
'Tis a rich full sheaf:
Gather the souls that have passed in the night,
Theirs is the peace and the light.
The moon is gone, the dawning brings
A deeper dark with silver blent,
Above the wells where, myriad, springs
Light from the crimson orient;
The elms are born, the shadows creep,
Tremble and melt away—one sweep
The great soft color floods and flows,
Where under snow the roses sleep ”

“ That urges all things onward, not to an end,
But in an endless flow, mounting and mounting,
Claiming not overmuch for human life,
Sharing with our brothers of nerve and leaf
The urgence of the one creative breath,—
All in the dim twilight—say of morning,
Where the florescence of the light and dew
Haloes and hallows with a crown adorning
The brows of life with love; herein the clue,
The love of life—yea, and the peerless love
Of things not seen, that leads the least of things
To cherish the green sprout, the hardening seed ”

“ Plunge it as lightning plunges,
Stab them to life!
Give to those who grieve in secret,
Those who bear the sorrows of earth,
The deep unappeasable longings
Which beset them with throngings and throngings,
(As, on a windless night,
Through the fold of a dark mantle furled,
Gleams on our world, world after unknown world)
Give them peace,
Wide as the veil that hides God's face,
The pure plenitude of space,
In which our universe is but a glittering crease,—
Give them such peace. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every bandsman has a lamp
And there's a torch for every one,
They dig his grave with bayonets
And wrap him grandly in his flag,
Then they gather in a ring,
The band plays very soft and low,
And all the soldiers sing.
(Of course we cannot hear, you know,)
Then some one calls "The enemy comes!"
They muffle up their pipes and drums;
Every soldier in a fright
Puts out his light.
Then hand in hand, and very still,
They clamber up the dark, dark hill
And hold their breath tight—tight. ”

“ Sudden the torches cease to roar:
For cleaving the darkness remote and still
Comes a wind with a rushing, harp-like thrill,
The sound of wings hurled and furled and unfurled,
The wings of the Angel who gathers the souls from the wastes of the world.
DREAM VOYAGEURS
To ports of balm through isles of musk
The gentle airs are leading us;
To curtained calm and tents of dusk,
The wood-wild things unheeding us
Will share their hoards of hardihood,
Cool dew and roots of fern for food,
Frail berries full of the sun's blood. ”

“ The spruces have retired a little space
And left a field of sky in violet shadow
With stars like marigolds in a water-meadow.
Now the Indian guides are dead asleep;
There is no sound unless the soul can hear
The gathering of the waters in their sources.
We have come up through the spreading lakes
From level to level,—
Pitching our tents sometimes over a revel
Of roses that nodded all night,
Dreaming within our dreams,
To wake at dawn and find that they were captured
With no dew on their leaves ”

“ The early frost
Has nipped thy roots and tried thy tender stem,
Seared thy gold petals, all thy charm is lost.
Thyself the only sunshine: in obeying
The law that bids thee blossom in the world
Thy little flag of courage is unfurled;
Inherent pansy-memories are saying
That there is sun,
That there is dew and colour and warmth repaying
The rain, the starlight when the light is done. ”

“ 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? ”

“ When the dragon-fly was heavy with dew and sleep,
And viewed the miracle pre-eminent, matchless,
The prelusive light that quickens the morning.
O crystal dawn, how shall we distill your virginal freshness
When you steal upon a land that man has not sullied with his intrusion,
When the aboriginal shy dwellers in the broad solitudes
Are asleep in their innumerable dens and night haunts
Amid the dry ferns, in the tender nests
Pressed into shape by the breasts of the Mother birds? ”

“ Dawn-cool, dew-cool
Gleams the surface of my pool
Bird haunted, fern enchanted,
Where but tempered spirits rule;
Stars do not trace their mystic lines
In my confines;
I take a double night within my breast
A night of darkened heavens, a night of leaves,
And in the two-fold dark I hear the owl
Puff at his velvet horn
And the wolves howl.
Even daylight comes with a touch of gold
Not overbold,
And shows dwarf-cornel and the twin-flowers,
Below the balsam bowers,
Their tints enamelled in my dew-drop shield. ”

“ We sit without another light;
I really, truly never tire
Watching that space, as black as night,
That hangs behind the fire;
For there sometimes, you know,
The dearest, queerest little sparks,
Without a sound creep to and fro;
Sometimes they form in rings
Or lines that look like many things,
Like skipping ropes, or hoops, or swings:
Before you know what you're about,
They all go out!
My Father says that they are gnomes,
Beyond the grate they have their homes,
In a tall, black, and windy town,
Behind a door we cannot see. ”

“ With their white thunder harnessed in the mills,
Turning one wealth to another wealth perpetually;
Spinning the lightning with dynamic spindles,
Till some far city dowered with fire enkindles.
The land of fruit, fine-flavoured with the frost,
Land of the cattle, the deep-chested host,
The happy-souled, that contemplate the hours,
Their dew-laps buried in the grass and flowers. ”

“ Time will repeat his miracles of passion;
O turn once more.
O turn once more!
What heart is worth the longing for, the winning,
That is not moved by currents of surprise;
Who never breaks the silken thread in spinning,
Shows a bare spindle when the daylight dies;
The constant blood will yet flow full and tender ”

“ Vain is the dream, and deep with all derision—
Fate is stern and hard—fair and false and vain—
But what would life be worth without the vision,
Dark with sordid passion, pale with wringing pain? ”

“ 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! ”

“ And all the smoky gold turned into cloud wrack.
Akoose slept forever amid the poplars,
Swathed by the wind from the far-off Red Deer
Where dinosaurs sleep, clamped in their rocky tombs.
Who shall count the time that lies between
The sleep of Akoose and the dinosaurs?
Innumerable time, that yet is like the breath
Of the long wind that creeps upon the prairie
And dies away with the shadows at sundown. ”

“ On the dawn of the seventh morn;
For 'tis they who re-create the world
Whenever a child is born.
Give, Poet, give!
Give them songs that charm and fill
The soul with an alluring pleasure,
Prelusive to a deeper thrill,
A richer tone, a fuller measure ”

“ Cresting the hill, brimming the level plain,
The miracle of the flower and milk and kernel,
Nurtured by sun-fire and frost-fire supernal,
Until the farmer turns it in his hand,
The million-millioned miracle of the land.
And yet with all these pastoral and heroic graces,
Our simplest flowers wear the loveliest faces ”

“ Even from earth to the most secret place,
Where God and the supreme archangels are.
Shall we not prove, what thou hast faintly taught,
That all the powers of earth and air are one,
That one deep law persists from mole to sun?
Shall we not search the heart of God and find
That law empearled,
Until all things that are in matter and mind
Throb with the secret that began the world? ”

“ I suffered there and held a losing fight
Even to the grave;
And now I know that it was very right
To suffer and be brave.
THE LEAF
This silver-edged geranium leaf
Is one sign of a bitter grief
Whose symbols are a myriad more;
They cluster round a carven stone
Where she who sleeps is never alone
For two hearts at the core,
Bound with her heart make one of three,
A trinity in unity,
One sentient heart that grieves;
And myriad dark-leaved memories keep
Vigil above the triune sleep,—
Edged all with silver are the leaves.
A MYSTERY PLAY
CHARACTERS
The Father. ”

“ Into the gloom and glimmer of ruin.
'Tis overpast. How strange the stars have grown;
The presage of extinction glows on their crests
And they are beautied with impermanence;
They shall be after the race of men
And mourn for them who snared their fiery pinions,
Entangled in the meshes of bright words.
A lemming stirs the fern and in the mosses
Eft-minded things feel the air change, and dawn
Tolls out from the dark belfries of the spruces.
How often in the autumn of the world
Shall the crystal shrine of dawning be rebuilt
With deeper meaning! ”

“ Storm strikes the world with lightning and with hail;
West—like the thought of a seraph that is dreaming,
Venus leads the young moon down the vale.
Through the lake furrow between the gloom and bright'ning
Firm runs our long canoe with a whistling rush,
While Potàn the wise and the cunning Silver Lightning
Break with their slender blades the long clear hush ”