Wilfred Campbell

“ For they are nature’s children, in their faces I see that sweet obedience to the sky That marks these dwellers of the wilding places, Who with the season’s being live and die; Knowing no love but of the wind and sun, Who still are nature’s when their life is done.
They are a part of all the haze-filled hours, The happy, happy world all drenched with light, The far-off, chiming click-clack of the mowers, And yon blue hills whose mists elude my sight, And they to me will ever bring in dreams Far mist-clad heights and brimming rain-fed streams. ”

“ And those were cold, stern men I went with there, Who held their lives as men do hold a gift Not worth the keeping; men who told dread tales, That made a madness in me of that waste And all its hellish, lonely solitude, And set my heart abeating for the south, Until that awful desolation ringed My reason round, and shrunk my fearful heart. Yea, Father, I had saved them but for this;— Why did they send me on alone, ahead, Poor me, the only weak one of that band, Who was too much of coward to show my fear? Why did life give me that mad fear of death, To make me selfish at the very last? ”

“ Words, words are empty,—were life built on words, How rich the poor would grow, the weak be strong, The hateful loving, and the scornful weak, The king would be a peasant, and the poor A king in his own right; the murderer, red From his foul guilt, would pass to God’s own breast, And all damned things, long damned of earth’s consent, And some dread law, much older far than we, Would blossom righteous under heaven’s face. ”

“ When she withdraws herself from man’s rude peering Into the virgin secrets of her heart, Out from the realms of hate and doubt and fearing, Unto her life of dreams, shut out, apart.
Where no soul reaches save some kindred spirit, Some late-born satyr caged in human form, Some child of that old order who inherit The haunting beauty of the ages’ storm.
Strange children, smitten with the dream of seeing The glory that lies under this mad life; The folds of midnight back of all this being, The majesty of sleep behind the strife. ”

“ I am the cup whose beaded brim The wine of living holds or spills: I stand upon the morning’s rim, When day grows rose and night is dim.
There comes a freshness from the floor Of ocean and the night-bathed land; A spirit swings each roseate door With winnowing wings and odours bland: Rose flames enkindle heaven’s floor, And the grey mists are night no more. [Pg 136]
I stand upon the morning’s verge, And feel the glorious waking world; Afar I hear life’s thundering surge On morning’s beaches maddening hurled, In flame-tinged beauty, where the verge Of ocean sings melodious dirge. ”

“ Comest thou in with thy rude, kindly bluster, The wintry glow of fagots on pale fires; Thy lonesome woodlands in a ragged cluster About the earth’s shrunk edge, with dreary spires Of tree-tops loomed athwart the chilly sky; Where late the low night-wind went haunting by. [Pg 144]
I love thee, Month, for all thy cold north blowing; I greet thee, friend, for all thy frosty mood; With mantling blood I meet thy slanted snowing, O’er withered field or by the leafless wood, Whose damp earth-floors with rain-bleached leaves are stained, And frosty nuts that rich November rained. ”

“ There forever and forever, Will no demon-hate dissever Peace and sleep and rest and dream; There is neither fear nor fret there When the tired children get there, Only dews and pallid beam Fall in gentle peace and sadness Over long surcease of madness, From hushed skies that gleam and gleam: In the longed-for, sought-for home Of the children of the foam.
There the streets are hushed and restful, And of dreams is every breast full, With the sleep that tired eyes wear; There the city hath long quiet From the madness and the riot, From the failing hearts of care ”

“ I reared my trunk and built my tent of green, And spread my boughs to gusty storm and sun, And knew spring’s joy and autumn’s leafy pride; And now the winter of all my days has come, When, leafless, budless, I must lie me low; And be a senseless mound where life will climb, In springs to come, unconscious of my sleep.
“Nor, Augur, am I sad, nor hold desire To lengthen out my days beyond their time; For when the timbers of the house are rotten The roof-tree sinks, and the old walls refuse To keep the winters out; then comes the time When the householder packs his goods to go. ”

“ In one dread moment all the sky grew dark, The hideous rain, the panic, the red rout, Where love lost love, and all the world might mark The city overwhelmed, blotted out [Pg 88] Without one cry, so quick oblivion came, And life passed to the black where all forget; But she,—we know not of her house or name,— In love’s sweet musings doth lie dreaming yet.
The dread hell passed, the ruined world grew still, And the great city passed to nothingness: The ages went and mankind worked its will. ”

“ Till Arthur, God and all the Table Round, Were but a nebulous mist before his eyes, In which the splendour of her beauty shone.
Henceforth the years would rise and wane and die, And glory come and glory pass away, And battles pass as in a troubled dream, And Arthur be a ghost, and his knights ghosts;— The castles and the lists and the mad fights, Sacking of cities, scourging of country-sides, All dreams before his eyes;—all, save her love. ”

“ You bring to earth a long-lost, olden beauty, When filling summer with your slumb’rous sound; You banish stress and strife and barren duty, Brimming with joyance all the world around.
I gaze upon your shining face at morning, When woods are fresh and dews are on the grass; And light and love, the night and darkness scorning, Fill earth with song from each bush where I pass.
I gaze upon your misty face at even, Athwart the golden chambers of the west, When ever-changing glories of the heaven Build up a broken splendour in thy breast. ”

“ Mere mocks of human that do play a part, Are but behind the mask a living death, A muffled night that murmurs of the light, A dread despair where lips have muttered hope.
Still fared we north across that frozen waste Of icy horror ringed with awful night, To seek the living in a world of death; And as we fared a terror grew and grew About my heart like madness, till I dreamed A vague desire to flee by night and creep, By steel-blue, windless plain and haunted wood, And wizened shore and headland, once more south. ”

“ The bearded swamps are breathing A mist from meres afar, And grimly the Great Bear circles Under the pale Pole Star.
There is never a voice in Heaven, Nor ever a sound on earth, Where the spectres of winter are rising Over the night’s wan girth. [Pg 142]
There is slumber and death in the silence, There is hate in the winds so keen; And the flash of the north’s great sword-blade Circles its cruel sheen.
The world grows agèd and wintry, Love’s face peakèd and white; And death is kind to the tired ones Who sleep in the north to-night. ”

“ No demon dread can overthrow, No dreams of evil e’er affright: To battle with my fate I go, Across the days of strife and woe.
No frosts of wintry age can chill, No deeps of midnight swirl me down; The fires of Spring my being thrill, The dreams of morning fence me round: By blue, blue brooks that never chill, I climb for aye a summer hill. [Pg 140]
I climb and listen to a song, Sung by a bird at Summer’s dawn, A song that holds no note of wrong, Dreamed from the world where love hath gone: I listen, listen till that song, Like God’s voice, makes the years more strong. ”

“ Wide is the arch of the night, blue spangled with fire, From wizened edge to edge of the shrivelled-up earth, Where the chords of the dark are as tense as the strings of a lyre Strung by the fingers of silence ere sound had birth, With far-off, alien echoes of morning and mirth, That reach the tuned ear of the spirit, beaten upon By the soundless tides of the wonder and glory of dawn. ”

“ And then to me, “You go, for you are young And strong, and life throbs quickest in your veins, And you have eyes more strong to see, for ours Are dimmed by the dread frost-mists of this land; And creep out there beyond yon gleaming ledge, And bring me word of what you there may see. [Pg 67] And if you meet no sign of mast or sail, Or hull or wreck, or mark of living soul, Then we will turn our faces to the south; For this great ocean’s vastness hems us in, And death here nightly creeps from strand to strand, And binds with girth of black the gleaming world.” ”

“ From day to day still hushed the season’s mood, The streams stayed in their runnels shrunk and dry; Suns rose aghast by wave and shore and wood, And all the world, with ominous silence, stood In weird expectancy:
When one strange night the sun like blood went down, Flooding the heavens in a ruddy hue; Red grew the lake, the sere fields parched and brown, Red grew the marshes where the creeks stole down, But never a wind-breath blew. ”

“ For days and days, and long, lone, loveless nights, We set our faces toward the arctic sky, And threaded wastes of that lone wilderness, Beyond the lands of summer and glad spring, Beyond the regions kind of flower and bird, Past glint horizons of auroral gleams, A haunted world of winter’s wizened sleep, Where death, a giant, aged, and stark and wan, Kept fast the entrance of those sunless caves, Where hides the day beyond the icy seas. ”

“ For that old law that rules all from the first Hath given each thing its place: and what is life, But the quick flame that leaps up from the hearth, Until the brand it feeds on is consumed? And what art thou, O Augur, what am I, That thou shouldst play the god and I the fool, And dream that thou canst hold the keys of being, And in some fabled existence yet to be, Canst lease me joy or sorrow at thy will? ”

“ When snows melt out and Winter breaks his chain, And earth, released from her shrivelled woe, Wakens beneath the warm suns come again, And thawed streams widen in their overflow, And woods with song and buddings gladder grow; ’Tis then I love to loose me from this life, Its cares, its gridings, and its sordid strife, And roam, kin-child with all earth’s souls that glow. ”

“ Forever and forever, Like leaves before the wind, They leave the wan, white gleaming Of the dawning far behind.
Their only peace is darkness, Their rest to hasten on Into the heart of midnight, Forever from the dawn. Across far phantom ice-floes The eye of night may mark These horror-haunted were-wolves Who hound them to the dark.
All through this hideous journey, They are the souls of men Who in the far dark-ages Made Europe one black fen. [Pg 101] They fled from courts and convents, And bound their mortal dust With demon wolfish girdles Of human hate and lust. ”

“ O Augur, dost thou not know I am old, With wrinkled winter writ about my face, A trembling at the fingers and the knees, Like some old, cunning instrument whose force Is rattled out, fit only to be stored Within the dusty chambers of the past, Where wintry key-hole moanings tune in vain The coffined mem’ries from their dusty sleep, Where chance a heatless ray may fall at morn, Nor startle the wainscot-gnawing, nor the dull, Eternal presence of that lifeless past. ”

“ There is a land where summer, spring, nor winter, Nor noon, nor night, nor morning’s holy prime, Nor love, nor hate, nor hope can ever enter, A dreamless land, beyond the date of time; A land of eld and age and hoary rime, Of sleep’s long frosts, where sword and armour rust, And shackles fall from hands that turn to dust. ”

“ Past the headlands grim and sombre, Past the shores of mist and slumber, Leagues on leagues no man may number, Soundings none can mark; [Pg 12]
While the olden voices calling, One by one behind are falling; Into silence dread, appalling, Drift we to the dark.
Far behind, the sad eyes yearning, Hands that wring for our returning, Lamps of love yet vainly burning: Past the headlands stark! Through the wintry snows and sleeting, On our pallid faces beating, Through the phantom twilight fleeting. Drive we to the dark.
Without knowledge, without warning, Drive we to no lands of morning ”

“ Out here across this wind-blown land, Where all is great and glad and new, I feel my spirit’s wings expand Like eagle’s under heaven’s blue: Great with the strength of sea and land, I grasp life’s problems in my hand. ”

“ I wander by the shade of woods, In roadways brown and wet with dew— The great cool, leafy solitudes; My heart grows great and lonely too, With the large wisdom of the woods, Full of the morning’s haunted moods.
The world grows faint and far away, As morning grows a dream at noon; Here the great silences do pray, With spread arms in a voiceless swoon: The fields gleam out and far away Across the hum and hush of day. ”

“ O happy, happy stream, drift softly, slowly, Through sunlit hours in musical, sweet ways, Thine are the haunts all unprofaned and holy, Far from earth’s life and all its maddened maze.
Thine is the peace, the glory and the splendour, That mother nature gives unto her own; Thine are the dreams, all glad, elusive, tender, With which she veils herself, remote, alone. ”