FROM plains that reel to southward, dim, The road runs by me white and bare; Up the steep hill it seems to swim Beyond, and melt into the glare. Upward half way, or it may be Nearer the summit, slowly steals A hay-cart, moving dustily With idly clacking wheels.
By his cart's side the wagoner Is slouching slowly at his ease, Half-hidden in the windless blur
Of white dust puffing to his knees. This wagon on the height above,
From sky to sky on either hand, Is the sole thing that seems to move In all the heat-held land.
Beyond me in the fields the sun
Soaks in the grass and hath his will; I count the marguerites one by one; Even the buttercups are still. On the brook yonder not a breath
Disturbs the spider or the midge. The water-bugs draw close beneath
The cool gloom of the bridge.
Where the far elm-tree shadows flood Dark patches in the burning grass, The cows, each with her peaceful cud, Lie waiting for the heat to pass. From somewhere on the slope near by Into the pale depth of the noon A wandering thrush slides leisurely His thin revolving tune.
In intervals of dreams I hear
The cricket from the droughty ground; The grasshoppers spin into mine ear
A small innumerable sound.
I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze : The burning sky-line blinds my sight; The woods far off are blue with haze; The hills are drenched in light.
And yet to me not this or that
Is always sharp or always sweet;
In the sloped shadow of my hat
I lean at rest, and drain the heat;
Have the rough years, so big with death and ill,
Gone lightly by and left them smiling yet?
Wild black-eyed Jeanne whose tongue was never still,
Old wrinkled Picaud, Pierre and pale Lisette,
The homely hearts that never cared to
While life's wide fields were filled with rush and change.
And where is Jacques, and where is Verginie ?
I cannot tell; the fields are all a blur. The lowing cows whose shapes I scarcely
Oh, do they wait and do they call for her? And is she changed, or is her heart still clear
As wind or morning, light as river foam? Or have life's changes borne her far from here,
And far from rest, and far from help and home?
Ah comrades, soft, and let us rest awhile, For arms grow tired with paddling many a mile.
The woods grow wild, and from the rising shore
The cool wind creeps, the faint wood odors steal;
Like ghosts adown the river's blackening floor
The misty fumes begin to creep and reel. Once more I leave you, wandering toward the night,
Sweet home, sweet heart, that would have held me in ;
Whither I go I know not, and the light
Is faint before, and rest is hard to win. Ah, sweet ye were and near to heaven's gate;
But youth is blind and wisdom comes too late.
Blacker and loftier grow the woods, and hark!
The freshening roar! The chute is near
And dim the canyon grows, and inky dark The water whispering from the birchen prow.
ONCE ye were happy, once by many a shore,
Wherever Glooscap's gentle feet might stray,
Lulled by his presence like a dream, ye lay
Floating at rest; but that was long of yore. He was too good for earthly men; he bore Their bitter deeds for many a patient day, And then at last he took his unseen way. He was your friend, and ye might rest no
And now, though many hundred altering years
Have passed, among the desolate northern
Still must ye search and wander querulously,
Crying for Glooscap, still bemoan the light With weird entreaties, and in agony With awful laughter pierce the lonely night.
THE CITY OF THE END OF THINGS
BESIDE the pounding cataracts Of midnight streams unknown to us, 'Tis builded in the dismal tracts And valleys huge of Tartarus. Lurid and lofty and vast it seems; It hath no rounded name that rings, But I have heard it called in dreams The City of the End of Things.
Its roofs and iron towers have grown None knoweth how high within the night, But in its murky streets far down A flaming terrible and bright Shakes all the stalking shadows there, Across the walls, across the floors, And shifts upon the upper air From out a thousand furnace doors; And all the while an awful sound Keeps roaring on continually, And crashes in the ceaseless round Of a gigantic harmony.
Through its grim depths reëchoing, And all its weary height of walls, With measured roar and iron ring, The inhuman music lifts and falls. Where no thing rests and no man is, And only fire and night hold sway,
The beat, the thunder, and the hiss Cease not, and change not, night nor day.
And moving at unheard commands, The abysses and vast fires between, Flit figures that, with clanking hands, Obey a hideous routine.
They are not flesh, they are not bone, They see not with the human eye, And from their iron lips is blown A dreadful and monotonous cry. And whoso of our mortal race Should find that city unaware, Lean Death would smite him face to face, And blanch him with its venomed air; Or, caught by the terrific spell,
Each thread of memory snapped and cut, His soul would shrivel, and its shell Go rattling like an empty nut.
It was not always so, but once, In days that no man thinks upon, Fair voices echoed from its stones, The light above it leaped and shone. Once there were multitudes of men That built that city in their pride, Until its might was made, and then They withered, age by age, and died; And now of that prodigious race Three only in an iron tower, Set like carved idols face to face, Remain the masters of its power; And at the city gate a fourth, Gigantic and with dreadful eyes, Sits looking toward the lightless north, Beyond the reach of memories: Fast-rooted to the lurid floor, A bulk that never moves a jot, In his pale body dwells no more Or mind or soul, - an idiot!
But some time in the end those three Shall perish and their hands be still, And with the masters' touch shall flee Their incommunicable skill. A stillness, absolute as death, Along the slacking wheels shall lie, And, flagging at a single breath, The fires shall smoulder out and die. The roar shall vanish at its height, And over that tremendous town
The silence of eternal night
Shall gather close and settle down.
All its grim grandeur, tower and hall, Shall be abandoned utterly,
Hers was the love of wilding things; To hear a squirrel chir
In the golden rowan of Menalowan Was joy enough for her.
She sleeps on the hill with the lonely sun, Where in the days that were,
The golden rowan of Menalowan So often shadowed her.
The scarlet fruit will come to fill, The scarlet spring to stir
The golden rowan of Menalowan, And wake no dream for her.
Only the wind is over her grave, For mourner and comforter;
And "Golden Rowan, of Menalowan," Is all we know of her.
SPRING SONG
MAKE me over, mother April, When the sap begins to stir! When thy flowery hand delivers All the mountain-prisoned rivers,
And thy great heart beats and quivers To revive the days that were, Make me over, mother April, When the sap begins to stir!
Take my dust and all my dreaming, Count my heart-beats one by one, Send them where the winters perish; Then some golden noon recherish And restore them in the sun,
Flower and scent and dust and dreaming, With their heart-beats every one!
Set me in the urge and tide-drift Of the streaming hosts a-wing! Breast of scarlet, throat of yellow, Raucous challenge, wooings mellow Every migrant is my fellow, Making northward with the spring. Loose me in the urge and tide-drift Of the streaming hosts a-wing!
Shrilling pipe or fluting whistle, In the valleys come again; Fife of frog and call of tree-toad, All my brothers, five or three-toed, With their revel no more vetoed, Making music in the rain; Shrilling pipe or fluting whistle, In the valleys come again.
Give me the old clue to follow, Through the labyrinth of night! Clod of clay with heart of fire, Things that burrow and aspire, With the vanishing desire, For the perishing delight, Only the old clue to follow, Through the labyrinth of night!
Make me over, mother April, When the sap begins to stir! Fashion me from swamp or meadow, Garden plot or ferny shadow, Hyacinth or humble burr! Make me over, mother April, When the sap begins to stir!
Let me hear the far, low summons, When the silver winds return; Rills that run and streams that stammer, Goldenwing with his loud hammer, Icy brooks that brawl and clamor Where the Indian willows burn; Let me hearken to the calling, When the silver winds return,
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