From: Charles G.D. Roberts

From: Charles G.D. Roberts, In Divers Tones (Boston: Lothrop, 1886).

The Pipes of Pan

Ringed with the flocking of hills, within shepherding watch of Olympus, Tempe, vale of the gods, lies in green quiet withdrawn; Tempe, vale of the gods, deep-couched amid woodland and woodland, Threaded with amber of brooks, mirrored in azure of pools, All day drowsed with the sun, charm-drunken with moonlight at midnight, Walled from the world forever under a vapour of dreams—,	6
Hid by the shadows of dreams, not found by the curious footstep, Sacred and secret forever, Tempe, vale of the gods. How, through the cleft of its bosom, goes sweetly the water Penëus! How by Penëus the sward breaks into saffron and blue!	10
How the long slope-floored beech-glades mount to the wind-wakened uplands, Where, through flame-berried ash, troop the hoofed Centaurs at morn! Nowhere greens a copse but the eye-beams of Artemis pierce it. Breathes no laurel her balm but Phœbus’ fingers caress. Springs no bed of wild blossom but limbs of dryad have pressed it.	15
Sparkle the nymphs, and the brooks chime with shy laughter and calls. Here is a nook. Two rivulets fall to mix with Penëus, Loiter a space, and sleep, checked and choked by the reeds. Long grass waves in the windless water, strown with the lote-leaf. Twist thro’ dripping soil great alder roots; and the air	20
Glooms with the dripping tangle of leaf-thick branches, and stillness Keeps in the strange-coiled stems, ferns, and wet-loving weeds. Hither comes Pan, to this pregnant earthy spot, when his piping Flags; and his pipes outworn breaking and casting away, Fits new reeds to his mouth with the weird earth melody in them,	25
Piercing, alive with a life able to mix with the god’s. Then, as he blows, and the searching sequence delights him, the goat-feet Furtive withdraw; and a bird stirs and flutes in the gloom Answering. Float with the stream the outworn pipes, with a whisper,— “What the god breathes on, the god never can wholly evade!”	30
God-breath lurks in each fragment forever. Dispersed by Penëus Wandering, caught in the ripples, wind-blown hither and there, Over the whole green earth and globe of sea they are scattered, Coming to secret spots, where in a visible form Comes not the god, though he come declared in his workings. And mortals Straying in cool of morn, or bodeful hasting at eve,	36
Or in the depths of noonday plunged to shadiest coverts, Spy them, and set to their lips; blow, and fling them away! Ay, they fling them away, —but never wholly! Thereafter Creeps strange fire in their veins, murmur strange tongues in their brain, Sweetly evasive; a secret madness takes them, —a charm-struck	41
Passion for woods and wild life, the solitude of the hills. Therefore they fly the heedless throngs and traffic of cities, Haunt mossed caverns, and wells bubbling ice-cool; and their souls Gather a magical gleam of the secret of life, and the god’s voice	45
Calls to them, not from afar, teaching them wonderful things.

The Tantramar Revisited

Summers and summers have come, and gone with the flight of the swallow; Sunshine and thunder have been, storm, and winter, and frost; Many and many a sorrow has all but died from remembrance, Many a dream of joy fall’n in the shadow of pain. Hands of chance and change have marred, or moulded, or broken,	5
Busy with spirit or flesh, all I most have adored; Even the bosom of Earth is strewn with heavier shadows, — Only in these green hills aslant to the sea, no change! Here where the road that has climbed from the inland valleys and wood lands, Dips from the hill-tops down, straight to the base of the hills,—	10
Here, from my vantage-ground, I can see the scattering houses, Strained with time, set warm in orchards, and meadows, and wheat, Dotting the broad bright slopes outspread to southward ane eastward, Wind-swept all day long, blown by the south-east wind. Skirting the sunbright uplands stretches a riband of meadow,	15
Shorn of the laboring grass, bulwarked well from the sea, Fenced on its seaward border with long clay dykes from the turbid Surge and flow of the tides vexing the Westmoreland shores. Yonder, toward the left, lie broad the Westmoreland marshes,— Miles on miles they extend, level, and grassy, and dim,	20
Clear from the long red sweep of flats to the sky in the distance, Save for the outlying heights, green-rampired Cumberland Point; Miles on miles outrolled, and the river-channels divide them, — Miles on miles of green, barred by the hurtling gusts. Miles on miles beyond the tawny bay is Minudie.	25
There are the low blue hills; villages gleam at their feet. Nearer a white sail shines across the water, and nearer Still are the slim, grey masts of fishing boats dry on the flats. Ah, how well I remember those wide red flats, above tide-mark Pale with scurf of the salt, seamed and baked in the sun!	30
Well I remember the piles of blocks and ropes, and the net-reels Wound with the beaded nets, dripping and dark from the sea! Now at this season the nets are unwound; they hang from the rafters Over the fresh-stowed hay in upland barns, and the wind Blows all day through the chinks, with the streaks of sunlight, and sways them	35
Softly at will; or they lie heaped in the gloom of a loft. Now at this season the reels are empty and idle; I see them Over the lines of the dikes, over the gossiping grass, Now at this season they swing in the long strong wind, thro’ the lonesome Golden afternoon, shunned by the foraging gulls.	40
Near about sunset the crane will journey homeward above them; Round them, under the moon, all the calm night long, Winnowing soft grey wings of marsh-owls wander and wander, Now to the broad, lit marsh, now to the dusk of the dike. Soon, thro’ their dew-wet frames, in the live keen freshness of morning,	45
Out of the teeth of the dawn blows back the awakening wind. Then, as the blue day mounts, and the low-shot shafts of the sunlight Glance from the tide to the shore, gossamers jewelled with dew Sparkle and wave, where late sea-spoiling fathoms of drift-net Myriad-meshed, uploomed sombrely over the land.	50
Well I remember it all. The salt raw scent of the margin; While, with men at the windlass, groaned each reel, and the net, Surging in ponderous lengths, uprose and coiled in its station; Then each man to his home, —well I remember it all! Yet, as I sit and watch, this present peace of the landscape,—	55
Stranded boats, these reels empty and idle, the hush, One grey hawk slow-wheeling above yon cluster of haystacks,— More than the old-time stir this stillness welcomes me home. Ah, the old-time stir, how once it stung me with rapture,— Old-time sweetness, the winds freighted with honey and salt!	60
Yet will I stay my steps and not go down to the marsh-land,— Muse and recall far off, rather remember than see,— Lest on too close sight I miss the darling illusion, Spy at their task even here the hands of chance and change.

From: Charles G.D. Roberts, Songs of the Common Day, and Ave: An Ode for the Shelley Centenary (Toronto: Briggs, 1893).

Prologue

Across the fog the moon lies fair. Transfused with ghostly amethyst, O white Night, charm to wonderment The cattle in the mist! Thy touch, O grave Mysteriarch,	5
Makes dull, familiar things divine. O grant of thy revealing gift Be some small portion mine! Make thou my vision sane and clear, That I may see what beauty clings	10
In common forms, and find the soul Of unregarded things!

The Salt Flats

Here clove the keels of centuries ago Where now unvisited the flats lie bare. Here seethed the sweep of journeying waters, where No more the tumbling floods of Fundy flow, And only in the samphire pipes creep slow	5
The salty currents of the sap. The air Hums desolately with wings that seaward fare, Over the lonely reaches beating low. The wastes of hard and meagre weeds are thronged With murmurs of a past that time has wronged;	10
And ghosts of many an ancient memory Dwell by the brackish pools and ditches blind, In these low-lying pastures of the wind, These marshes pale and meadows by the sea.

The Sower

A brown, sad-coloured hillside, where the soil Fresh from the frequent harrow, deep and fine, Lies bare; no break in the remote sky-line, Save where a flock of pigeons streams aloft, Startled from feed in some low-lying croft,	5
Or far-off spires with yellow of sunset shine; And here the Sower, unwittingly divine, Exerts the silent forethought of his toil. Alone he treads the glebe, his measured stride Dumb in the yielding soil; and though small joy	10
Dwell in his heavy face, as spreads the blind Pale grain from his dispensing palm aside, This plodding churl grows great in his employ;— Godlike, he makes provision for mankind.

The Pea-Fields

These are the fields of light, and laughing air, And yellow butterflies, and foraging bees, And whitish, wayward blossoms winged as these, And pale green tangles like a seamaid’s hair. Pale, pale the blue, but pure beyond compare,	5
And pale the sparkle of the far-off seas A-shimmer like these fluttering slopes of peas, And pale the open landscape everywhere. From fence to fence a perfumed breath exhales O’er the bright pallor of the well-loved fields,—	10
My fields of Tantramar in summer-time; And, scorning the poor feed their pasture yields, Up from the bushy lots the cattle climb To gaze with longing through the grey, mossed rails.

The Potato Harvest

A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky Washing the ridge; a clamour of crows that fly In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn To yon their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn;	5
A line of grey snake-fence, that zigzags by A pond and cattle; from the homestead nigh The long deep summonings of the supper horn. Black on the ridge, against that lonely flush, A cart, and stoop-necked oxen; ranged beside	10
Some barrels; and the day-worn harvest-folk, Here emptying their baskets, jar the hush With hollow thunders. Down the dusk hillside Lumbers the wain; and day fades out like smoke.

The Winter Fields

Winds here, and sleet, and frost that bites like steel. The low bleak hill rounds under the low sky. Naked of flock and fold the fallows lie, Thin streaked with meagre drift. The gusts reveal By fits the dim grey snakes of fence, that steal	5
Through the white dusk. The hill-foot poplars sigh, While storm and death with winter trample by, And the iron fields ring sharp, and blind lights reel. Yet in the lonely ridges, wrenched with pain, Harsh solitary hillocks, bound and dumb,	10
Grave glebes close-lipped beneath the scourge and chain, Lurks hid the germ of ecstasy—the sum Of life that waits on summer, till the rain Whisper in April and the crocus come.

In the Wide Awe and Wisdom of the Night

In the wide awe and wisdom of the night I saw the round world rolling on its way, Beyond significance of depth or height, Beyond the interchange of dark and day. I marked the march to which is set no pause,	5
And that stupendous orbit, round whose rim The great sphere sweeps, obedient unto laws That utter the eternal thought of Him. I compassed time, outstripped the starry speed, And in my still soul apprehended space,	10
Till, weighing laws which these but blindly heed, At last I came before Him face to face,— And knew the Universe of no such span As the august infinitude of Man.

Marsyas

A little grey hill-glade, close-turfed, withdrawn Beyond resort or heed of trafficking feet, Ringed round with slim trunks of the mountain ash. Through the slim trunks and scarlet bunches flash— Beneath the clear chill glitterings of the dawn—	5
Far off, the crests, where down the rosy shore The Pontic surges beat. The plains lie dim below. The thin airs wash The circuit of the autumn-coloured hills, And this high glade, whereon	10
The satyr pipes, who soon shall pipe no more. He sits against the beech-tree’s mighty bole,— He leans, and with persuasive breathing fills The happy shadows of the slant-set lawn. The goat-feet fold beneath a gnarlèd root;	15
And sweet, and sweet the note that steals and thrills From slender stops of that shy flute. Then to the goat-feet comes the wide-eyed fawn Hearkening; the rabbits fringe the glade, and lay Their long ears to the sound;	20
In the pale boughs the partridge gather round, And quaint hern from the sea-green river reeds; The wild ram halts upon a rocky horn O’erhanging; and, unmindful of his prey, The leopard steals with narrowed lids to lay	25
His spotted length along the ground. The thin airs wash, the thin clouds wander by, And those hushed listeners move not. All the morn He pipes, soft-swaying, and with half-shut eye, In rapt content of utterance,—	30
nor heeds The young God standing in his branchy place, The languor on his lips, and in his face, Divinely inaccessible, the scorn.

Ave!

(An Ode for the Centenary of Shelley’s Birth, [1892])

I
O tranquil meadows, grassy Tantramar, Wide marshes ever washed in clearest air, Whether beneath the sole and spectral star The dear severity of dawn you wear, Or whether in the joy of ample day	5
And speechless ecstasy of growing June You lie and dream the long blue hours away Till nightfall comes too soon, Or whether, naked to the unstarred night, You strike with wondering awe my inward sight,—	10
II
You know how I have loved you, how my dreams Go forth to you with longing, though the years That turn not back like your returning streams And fain would mist the memory with tears, Though the inexorable years deny	15
My feet the fellowship of your deep grass, O’er which, as o’er another, tenderer sky, Cloud phantoms drift and pass,— You know my confident love, since first, a child, Amid your wastes of green I wandered wild.	20
III
Inconstant, eager, curious, I roamed; And ever your long reaches lured me on; And ever o’er my feet your grasses foamed, And in my eyes your far horizons shone. But sometimes would you (as a stillness fell	25
And on my pulse you laid a soothing palm) Instruct my ears in your most secret spell; And sometimes in the calm Initiate my young and wondering eyes Until my spirit grew more still and wise.	30
IV
Purged with high thoughts and infinite desire I entered fearless the most holy place, Received between my lips the secret fire, The breath of inspiration on my face. But not for long these rare illumined hours,	35
The deep surprise and rapture not for long. Again I saw the common, kindly flowers, Again I heard the song Of the glad bobolink, whose lyric throat Pealed like a tangle of small bells afloat.	40
V
The pounce of mottled marsh-hawk on his prey; The flicker of sand-pipers in from sea In gusty flocks that puffed and fled; the play Of field-mice in the vetches;—these to me Were memorable events. But most availed	45
Your strange unquiet waters to engage My kindred heart’s companionship; nor failed To grant this heritage,— That in my veins for ever must abide The urge and fluctuation of the tide.	50
VI
The mystic river whence you take your name, River of hubbub, raucous Tantramar, Untamable and changeable as flame, It called me and compelled me from afar, Shaping my soul with its impetuous stress.	55
When in its gaping channel deep withdrawn Its waves ran crying of the wilderness And winds and stars and dawn, How I companioned them in speed sublime, Led out a vagrant on the hills of Time!	60
VII
And when the orange flood came roaring in From Fundy’s tumbling troughs and tide-worn caves, While red Minudie’s flats were drowned with din And rough Chignecto’s front oppugned the waves, How blithely with the refluent foam I raced	65
Inland along the radiant chasm, exploring The green solemnity with boisterous haste; My pulse of joy outpouring To visit all the creeks that twist and shine From Beauséjour to utmost Tormentine.	70
VIII
And after, when the tide was full, and stilled A little while the seething and the hiss, And every tributary channel filled To the brim with rosy streams that swelled to kiss The grass-roots all a-wash and goose-tongue wild	75
And salt-sap rosemary,—then how well content I was to rest me like a breathless child With play-time rapture spent,— To lapse and loiter till the change should come And the great floods turn seaward, roaring home.	80
IX
And now, O tranquil marshes, in your vast Serenity of vision and of dream, Wherethrough by every intricate vein have passed With joy impetuous and pain supreme The sharp, fierce tides that chafe the shores of earth	85
In endless and controlless ebb and flow, Strangely akin you seem to him whose birth One hundred years ago With fiery succour to the ranks of song Defied the ancient gates of wrath and wrong.	90
X
Like yours, O marshes, his compassionate breast, Wherein abode all dreams of love and peace, Was tortured with perpetual unrest. Now loud with flood, now languid with release, Now poignant with the lonely ebb, the strife	95
Of tides from the salt sea of human pain That hiss along the perilous coasts of life Beat in his eager brain; But all about the tumult of his heart Stretched the great calm of his celestial art.	100
XI
Therefore with no far flight, from Tantramar And my still world of ecstasy, to thee, Shelley, to thee I turn, the avatar Of Song, Love, Dream, Desire, and Liberty; To thee I turn with reverent hands of prayer	105
And lips that fain would ease my heart of praise, Whom chief of all whose brows prophetic wear The pure and sacred bays I worship, and have worshipped since the hour When first I felt thy bright and chainless power.	110
XII
About thy sheltered cradle in the green Untroubled groves of Sussex, brooded forms That to the mother’s eye remained unseen,— Terrors and ardours, passionate hopes, and storms Of fierce retributive fury, such as jarred	115
Ancient and sceptred creeds, and cast down kings, And oft the holy cause of Freedom marred With lust of meaner things, With guiltless blood, and many a frenzied crime Dared in the face of unforgetful Time.	120
XIII
The star that burns on revolution smote Wild heats and change on thine ascendant sphere, Whose influence thereafter seemed to float Through many a strange eclipse of wrath and fear, Dimming awhile the radiance of thy love.	125
But still supreme in thy nativity, All dark, invidious aspects far above, Beamed one clear orb for thee,— The star whose ministrations just and strong Controlled the tireless flight of Dante’s song.	130
XIV
With how august contrition, and what tears Of penitential, unavailing shame, Thy venerable foster-mother hears The sons of song impeach her ancient name, Because in one rash hour of anger blind	135
She thrust thee forth in exile, and thy feet Too soon to earth’s wild outer ways consigned,— Far from her well-loved seat, Far from her studious halls and storied towers And weedy Isis winding through his flowers.	140
XV
And thou, thenceforth the breathless child of change, Thine own Alastor, on an endless quest Of unimagined loveliness didst range, Urged ever by the soul’s divine unrest. Of that high quest and that unrest divine	145
Thy first immortal music thou didst make, Inwrought with fairy Alp, and Reuss, and Rhine, And phantom seas that break In soundless foam along the shores of Time, Prisoned in thine imperishable rhyme.	150
XVI
Thyself the lark melodious in mid-heaven; Thyself the Protean shape of chainless cloud, Pregnant with elemental fire, and driven Through deeps of quivering light, and darkness loud With tempest, yet beneficent as prayer;	155
Thyself the wild west wind, relentless strewing The withered leaves of custom on the air, And through the wreck pursuing O’er lovelier Arnos, more imperial Romes, Thy radiant visions to their viewless homes.	160
XVII
And when thy mightiest creation thou Wert fain to body forth,—the dauntless form, The all-enduring, all-forgiving brow Of the great Titan, flinchless in the storm Of pangs unspeakable and nameless hates,	165
Yet rent by all the wrongs and woes of men, And triumphing in his pain, that so their fates Might be assuaged,—oh then Out of that vast compassionate heart of thine Thou wert constrained to shape the dream benign.	170
XVIII
— O Baths of Caracalla, arches clad In such transcendent rhapsodies of green That one might guess the sprites of spring were glad For your majestic ruin, yours the scene, The illuminating air of sense and thought;	175
And yours the enchanted light, O skies of Rome, Where the giant vision into form was wrought; Beneath your blazing dome The intensest song our language ever knew Beat up exhaustless to the blinding blue!—	180
XIX
The domes of Pisa and her towers superb, The myrtles and the ilexes that sigh O’er San Giuliano, where no jars disturb The lonely aziola’s evening cry, The Serchio’s sun-kissed waters,—these conspired	185
With Plato’s theme occult, with Dante’s calm Rapture of mystic love, and so inspired Thy soul’s espousal psalm, A strain of such elect and pure intent It breathes of a diviner element.	190
XX
Thou on whose lips the word of Love became A rapt evangel to assuage all wrong, Not Love alone, but the austerer name Of Death engaged the splendours of thy song. The luminous grief, the spacious consolation	195
Of thy supreme lament, that mourned for him Too early haled to that still habitation Beneath the grass-roots dim,— Where his faint limbs and pain-o’erwearied heart Of all earth’s loveliness became a part,	200
XXI
But where, thou sayest, himself would not abide,— Thy solemn incommunicable joy Announcing Adonais had not died, Attesting death to free but not destroy, All this was as thy swan-song mystical.	205
Even while the note serene was on thy tongue Thin grew the veil of the Invisible, The white sword nearer swung,— And in the sudden wisdom of thy rest Thou knewest all thou hadst but dimly guessed.	210
XXII
— Lament, Lerici, mourn for the world’s loss! Mourn that pure light of song extinct at noon! Ye waves of Spezzia that shine and toss Repent that sacred flame you quenched too soon! Mourn, Mediterranean waters, mourn	215
In affluent purple down your golden shore! Such strains as his, whose voice you stilled in scorn, Our ears may greet no more, Unless at last to that far sphere we climb Where he completes the wonder of his rhyme!	220
XXIII
How like a cloud she fled, thy fateful bark, From eyes that watched to hearts that waited, till Up from the ocean roared the tempest dark— And the wild heart love waited for was still! Hither and thither in the slow, soft tide,	225
Rolled seaward, shoreward, sands and wandering shells And shifting weeds thy fellows, thou didst hide Remote from all farewells, Nor felt the sun, nor heard the fleeting rain, Nor heeded Case Magni’s quenchless pain.	230
XXIV
Thou heedest not? Nay, for it was not thou, That blind, mute clay relinquished by the waves Reluctantly at last, and slumbering now In one of kind earth’s most compassionate graves! Not thou, not thou,—for thou wert in the light	235
Of the Unspeakable, where time is not. Thou sawest those tears; but in thy perfect sight And thy eternal thought Were they not even now all wiped away In the reunion of the infinite day!	240
XXV
There face to face thou sawest the living God And worshipedst, beholding Him the same Adored on earth as Love, the same whose rod Thou hadst endured as Life, whose secret name Thou now didst learn, the healing name of Death.	245
In that unroutable profound of peace, Beyond experience of pulse and breath, Beyond the last release Of longing, rose to greet thee all the lords Of Thought, with consummation in their words:	250
XXVI
He of the seven cities claimed, whose eyes, Though blind, saw gods and heroes, and the fall Of Ilium, and many alien skies, And Circe’s Isle; and he whom mortals call The Thunderous, who sang the Titan bound	255
As thou the Titan victor; the benign Spirit of Plato; Job; and Judah’s crowned Singer and seer divine; Omar; the Tuscan; Milton, vast and strong; And Shakespeare, captain of the host of Song.	260
XXVII
Back from the underworld of whelming change To the wide-glittering beach thy body came; And thou didst contemplate with wonder strange And curious regard thy kindred flame, Fed sweet with frankincense and wine and salt,	265
With fierce purgation search thee, soon resolving Thee to the elements of the airy vault And the far spheres revolving, The common waters, the familiar woods, And the great hills’ inviolate solitudes.	270
XXVIII
Thy close companions there officiated With solemn mourning and with mindful tears,— The pained, imperious wanderer unmated Who voiced the wrath of those rebellious years; Trelawney, lion-limbed and high of heart;	275
And he, that gentlest sage and friend most true, Whom Adonais loved. With these bore part One grieving ghost, that flew Hither and thither through the smoke unstirred In wailing semblance of a wild white bird.	280
XXIX
O heart of fire, that fire might not consume, For ever glad the world because of thee; Because of thee for ever eyes illume A more enchanted earth, a lovelier sea! O poignant voice of the desire of life,	285
Piercing our lethargy, because thy call Aroused our spirits to a nobler strife Where base and sordid fall, For ever past the conflict and the pain More clearly beams the goal we shall attain!	290
XXX
And now once more, O marshes, back to you From whatsoever wanderings, near or far, To you I turn with joy for ever new, To you, O sovereign vasts of Tantramar! Your tides are at the full. Your wizard flood,	295
With every tribute stream and brimming creek, Ponders, possessor of the utmost good, With no more left to seek;— But the hour wanes and passes; and once more Resounds the ebb with destiny in its roar.	300
XXXI
So might some lord of men, whom force and fate And his great heart’s unvanquishable power Have thrust with storm to his supreme estate, Ascend by night his solitary tower High o’er the city’s lights and cries uplift.	305
Silent he ponders the scrolled heaven to read And the keen stars’ conflicting message sift, Till the slow signs recede, And ominously scarlet dawns afar The day he leads his legions forth to war.	310

From: Charles G.D. Roberts, New York Nocturnes and Other Poems (Boston: Lamson Wolffe, 1898).

A Nocturne of Consecration

I talked about you, Dear, the other night, Having myself alone with my delight. Alone with dreams and memories of you, All the divine-houred summer stillness through I talked of life, of love the always new,	5
Of tears, and joy,—yet only talked of you. To the sweet air That breathed upon my face The spirit of lilies in a leafy place, Your breath’s caress, the lingering of your hair,	10
I said—“In all your wandering through the dusk, Your waitings on the marriages of flowers Through the long, intimate hours When soul and sense, desire and love confer, You must have known the best that God has made.	15
What do you know of Her?” Said the sweet air— “Since I have touched her lips, Bringing the consecration of her kiss, Half passion and half prayer,	20
And all for you, My various lore has suffered an eclipse. I have forgot all else of sweet I knew.” To the wise earth, Kind, and companionable, and dewy cool,	25
Fair beyond words to tell, as you are fair, And cunning past compare To leash all heaven in a windless pool, I said—“The mysteries of death and birth Are in your care.	30
You love, and sleep; you drain life to the lees; And wonderful things you know. Angels have visited you, and at your knees Learned what I learn forever at her eyes, The pain that still enhances Paradise.	35
You in your breast felt her first pulses stir; And you have thrilled to the light touch of her feet, Blindingly sweet. Now make me wise with some new word of Her.” Said the wise earth—	40
“She is not all my child. But the wild spirit that rules her heart-beats wild Is of diviner birth And kin to the unknown light beyond my ken. All I can give to Her have I not given?	45
Strength to be glad, to suffer, and to know; The sorcery that subdues the souls of men; The beauty that is as the shadow of heaven; The hunger of love And unspeakable joy thereof.	50
And these are dear to Her because of you. You need no word of mine to make you wise Who worship at her eyes And find there life and love forever new!” To the white stars,	55
Eternal and all-seeing, In their wide home beyond the wells of being, I said—“There is a little cloud that mars The mystical perfection of her kiss. Mine, mine, She is,	60
As far as lip to lip, and heart to heart, And spirit to spirit when lips and hands must part, Can make her mine. But there is more than this,— More, more of Her to know. For still her soul escapes me unaware,	65
To dwell in secret where I may not go. Take, and uplift me. Make me wholly Hers.” Said the white stars, the heavenly ministers,— “This life is brief, but it is only one. Before to-morrow’s sun	70
For one or both of you it may be done. This love of yours is only just begun. Will all the ecstasy that may be won Before this life its little course has run At all suffice	75
The love that agonizes in you eyes? Therefore be wise. Content you with the wonder of love that lies Between her lips and underneath her eyes. If more you should surprise,	80
What would be left to hope from Paradise? In other worlds expect another joy Of Her, which blundering fate shall not annoy, Nor time nor change destroy.” So, Dear, I talked the long, divine night through,	85
And felt you in the chrismal balms of dew. The thing then learned Has ever since within my bosom burned— One life is not enough for love of you.

The Solitary Woodsman

When the grey lake-water rushes Past the dripping alder bushes, And the bodeful autumn wind In the fir-tree weeps and hushes,— When the air is sharply damp	5
Round the solitary camp, And the moose-bush in the thicket Glimmers like a scarlet lamp,— When the birches twinkle yellow, And the cornel bunches mellow,	10
And the owl across the twilight Trumpets to his downy fellow,— When the nut-fed chipmunks romp Through the maples’ crimson pomp, And the slim viburnum flushes	15
In the darkness of the swamp,— When the blueberries are dead, When the rowan clusters red, And the shy bear, summer-sleekened, In the bracken makes his bed,—	20
On a day there comes once more To the latched and lonely door, Down the wood-road striding silent, One who has been here before. Green spruce branches for his head,	25
Here he make his simple bed, Crouching with the sun, and rising When the dawn is frosty red. All day long he wanders wide With the gray moss for his guide,	30
And his lonely axe-stroke startles The expectant forest-side. Toward the quiet close of day Back to camp he takes his way, And about his sober footsteps	35
Unafraid the squirrels play. On his roof the red leaf falls, At his door the blue-jay calls, And he hears the wood-mice hurry Up and down his rough log walls;	40
Hears the laughter of the loon Thrill the dying afternoon,— Hears the calling of the moose Echo to the early moon. And he hears the partridge drumming,	45
The belated hornet humming,— All the faint, prophetic sounds That foretell the winter’s coming. And the wind about his eaves Through the chilly night-wet grieves,	50
And the earth’s dumb patience fills him, Fellow to the falling leaves.

From: Charles G.D. Roberts, The Iceberg, and Other Poems (Toronto: Ryerson, 1934).

The Iceberg

I was spawned from the glacier, A thousand miles due north Beyond Cape Chidley; And the spawning, When my vast, wallowing bulk went under,	5
Emerged and heaved aloft, Shaking down cataracts from its rocking sides, With mountainous surge and thunder Outraged the silence of the Arctic sea. Before I was thrust forth	10
A thousand years I crept, Crawling, crawling, crawling irresistibly, Hid in the blue womb of the eternal ice, While under me the tortured rock Groaned,	15
And over me the immeasurable desolation slept. Under the pallid dawning Of the lidless Arctic day Forever no life stirred. No wing of bird—	20
Of ghostly owl low winnowing Or fleet-winged ptarmigan fleeing the pounce of death,— No foot of backward-glancing fox Half glimpsed, and vanishing like a breath,— No lean and gauntly stalking bear,	25
Stalking his prey. Only the white sun, circling the white sky. Only the wind screaming perpetually. And then the night— The long night, naked, high over the roof of the world, Where time seemed frozen in the cold of space,—	31
Now black, and torn with cry Of unseen voices where the storm raged by, Now radiant with spectral light As the vault of heaven split wide	35
To let the flaming Polar cohorts through, And close ranked spears of gold and blue, Thin scarlet and thin green, Hurtled and clashed across the sphere And hissed in sibilant whisperings,	40
And died. And then the stark moon, swinging low, Silver, indifferent, serene, Over the sheeted snow. But now, an Alp afloat,	45
In seizure of the surreptitious tide, Began my long drift south to a remote And unimagined doom. Scornful of storm, Unjarred by thunderous buffeting of seas,	50
Shearing the giant floes aside, Ploughing the wide-flung ice-fields in a spume That smoked far up my ponderous flanks, Onward I fared, My ice-blue pinnacles rendering back the sun	55
In darts of sharp radiance; My bases fathoms deep in the dark profound. And now around me Life, and the frigid waters all aswarm. The smooth wave creamed	60
With tiny capelin and the small pale squid,— So pale the light struck through them. Gulls and gannets screamed Over the feast, and gorged themselves, and rose, A clamour of weaving wings, and hid	65
Momently my face. The great bull whales With cavernous jaws agape, Scooped in the spoil, and slept, Their humped forms just awash, and rocking softly,— Or sounded down, down to the deeps, and nosed	71
Along my ribbed and sunken roots, And in the green gloom scattered the pasturing cod. And so I voyaged on, down the dim parallels, Convoyed by fields	75
Of countless calving seals Mild-featured, innocent-eyed, and unforeknowing The doom of the red flenching knives. I passed the storm-racked gate Of Hudson Strait,	80
And savage Chidley where the warring tides In white wrath seethe forever. Down along the sounding shore Of iron-fanged, many-watered Labrador Slow weeks I shaped my course, and saw	85
Dark Mokkowic and dark Napiskawa, And came at last off lone Belle Isle, the bane Of ships and snare of bergs. Here, by the deep conflicting currents drawn, I hung,	90
And swung, The inland voices Gulfward calling me To ground amid my peers on the alien strand And roam no more. But then an off-shore wind,	95
A great wind fraught with fate, Caught me and pressed me back, And I resumed my solitary way. Slowly I bore South-east by bastioned Bauld,	100
And passed the sentinel light far-beaming late Along the liners’ track, And slanted out Atlanticwards, until Above the treacherous swaths of fog Faded from the view the loom of Newfoundland.	105
Beautiful, ethereal In the blue sparkle of the gleaming day, A soaring miracle Of white immensity, I was the cynosure of passing ships	110
That wondered and were gone, Their wreathed smoke trailing them beyond the verge. And when in the night they passed— The night of stars and calm, Forged up and passed, with churning surge	115
And throb of huge propellers, and long-drawn Luminous wake behind, And sharp, small lights in rows, I lay a ghost of menace chill and still, A shape pearl-pale and monstrous, off to leeward,	120
Blurring the dim horizon line. Day dragged on day, And then came fog, By noon, blind-white, And in the night	125
Black-thick and smothering the sight. Folded therein I waited, Waited I knew not what And heeded not, Greatly incurious and unconcerned.	130
I heard the small waves lapping along my base, Lipping and whispering, lisping with bated breath A casual expectancy of death. I heard remote The deep, far carrying note	135
Blown from the hoarse and hollow throat Of some lone tanker groping on her course. Louder and louder rose the sound In deepening diapason, then passed on, Diminishing, and dying,—	140
And silence closed around. And in the silence came again Those stealthy voices, That whispering of death. And then I heard	145
The thud of screws approaching. Near and more near, Louder and yet more loud, Through the thick dark I heard it,— The rush and hiss of waters as she ploughed	150
Head on, unseen, unseeing, Toward where I stood across her path, invisible. And then a startled blare Of horror close re-echoing,—a glare Of sudden, stabbing searchlights	155
That but obscurely pierced the gloom; And there I towered, a dim immensity of doom. A roar Of tortured waters as the giant screws,	160
Reversed, thundered full steam astern. Yet forward still she drew, until, Slow answering desperate helm, She swerved, and all her broadside came in view, Crawling beneath me;	165
And for a moment I saw faces, blanched, Stiffly agape, turned upward, and wild eyes Astare; and one long, quavering cry went up As a submerged horn gored her through and through, Ripping her beam wide open;	170
And sullenly she listed, till her funnels Crashed on my steep, And men sprang, stumbling, for the boats. But now, my deep foundations Mined by those warmer seas, the hour had come	175
When I must change. Slowly I leaned above her, Slowly at first, then faster, And icy fragments rained upon her decks. They my enormous mass descended on her,	180
A falling mountain, all obliterating,— And the confusion of thin, wailing cries, The Babel of shouts and prayers And shriek of steam escaping Suddenly died.	185
And I rolled over, Wallowing, And once more came to rest, My long hid bases heaved up high in air. And now, from fogs emerging,	190
I traversed blander seas, Forgot the fogs, the scourging Of sleet-whipped gales, forgot My austere origin, my tremendous birth, My journeyings, and that last cataclysm	195
Of overwhelming ruin. My squat, pale, alien bulk Basked in the ambient sheen; And all about me, league on league outspread, A gulf of indigo and green.	200
I laughed in the light waves laced with white,— Nor knew How swiftly shrank my girth Under their sly caresses, how the breath Of that soft wind sucked up my strength, nor how	205
The sweet, insidious fingers of the sun Their stealthy depredations wrought upon me. Slowly now I drifted, dreaming. I saw the flying-fish	210
With silver gleaming Flash from the peacock-bosomed wave And flicker through an arc of sunlit air Back to their element, desperate to elude The jaws of the pursuing albacore.	215
Day after day I swung in the unhasting tide. Sometimes I saw the dolphin folk at play, Their lithe sides iridescent-dyed, Unheeding in their speed	220
That long grey wraith, The shark that followed hungering beneath. Sometimes I saw a school Of porpoise rolling by In ranked array,	225
Emerging and submerging rhythmically, Their blunt black bodies heading all one way Until they faded In the horizon’s dazzling line of light. Night after night	230
I followed the low, large moon across the sky, Or counted the large stars on the purple dark, The while I wasted, wasted and took no thought, In drowsed entrancement caught;— Until one noon a wave washed over me,	235
Breathed low a sobbing sigh, Foamed indolently, and passed on; And then I knew my empery was gone; As I, too, soon must go. And well content I was to have it so.	240
Another night Gloomed o’er my sight, With cloud, and flurries of warm, wild rain. Another day, Dawning delectably	245
With amber and scarlet stain, Swept on its way, Glowing and shimmering with heavy heat. A lazing tuna rose And nosed me curiously,	250
And shouldered me aside in brusque disdain, So had I fallen from my high estate. A foraging gull Stooped over me, touched me with webbed pink feet, And wheeled and skreeled away,	255
Indignant at the chill. Last I became A little glancing globe of cold That slid and sparkled on the slow-pulsed swell. And then my fragile, scintillating frame	260
Dissolved in ecstasy Of many coloured light, And I breathed up my soul into the air And merged forever in the all-solvent sea.

The Squatter

Round the lone clearing Clearly the whitethroats call Across the marge of dusk and the dewfall’s coolness. Far up in the empty Amber and apple-green sky	5
A night-hawk swoops, and twangs her silver chord. No wind’s astir, But the poplar boughs breathe softly And the smoke of a dying brush-fire stings the air. The spired, dark spruces	10
Crowd up to the snake fence, breathless, Expectant till the rising of the moon. In the wet alders, Where the cold brook flows murmuring, The red cow drinks,—the cow-bell sounds tonk-tonk.	15
• • •
From his cabin door The squatter lounges forth, Sniffs the damp air, and scans the sky for rain. He has made his meal,— Fat bacon, and buckwheat cakes,	20
And ruddy-brown molasses from Barbados. His chores all done, He seats himself on the door-sill, And slowly fills his pipe, and smokes, and dreams. He sees his axe	25
Leaning against the birch logs. The fresh white chips are scattered over the yard. He hears his old horse Nosing the hay, in the log barn Roofed with poles and sheathed with sheets of birch-bark. Beyond the barn	31
He sees his buckwheat patch, Its pink-white bloom pale-gleaming through the twilight. Its honeyed fragrance Breathes to his nostrils, mingled	35
With the tang of the brushfire smoke, thinly ascending. Deepens the dusk. The whitethroats are hushed; and the night-hawk Drops down from the sky and hunts the low-flying night-moths. • • • The squatter is dreaming.	40
Vaguely he plans how, come winter, He’ll chop out another field, just over the brook. He’ll build a new barn Next year, a barn with a haymow, No more to leave his good hay outside in the stack.	45
He rises and stretches, Goes in and closes the door, And lights his lamp on the table beside the window. The light shines forth. It lights up the wide-strewn chips.	50
For a moment it catches the dog darting after a rabbit. It lights up the lean face Of the squatter as he sits reading, Knitting his brow as he spells out a month-old paper. • • • Slowly the moon,	55
Humped, crooked, red, remote, Rises, tangled and scrawled behind the spruce-tops. Higher she rises,— Grows round, and smaller, and white, And sails up the empty sky high over the sprure-tops.	60
She washes in silver, Illusively clear, the log barn, The lop-sided stack by the barn, and the slumbering cabin. She floods in the window,— And the squatter stirs in his bunk,	65
On his mattress stuffed with green fir-tips, balsamy scented. • • • From the dark of the forest The horned owl hoots, and is still. Startled, the silence descends, and broods once more on the clearing.

Frontispiece, from Charles G.D. Roberts, Poems (1907).