Friendship

I met Hosea Job on Randolph Street
Who said to me: "I'm going for the train,
I want you with me."

    And it happened then
My mind was hard, as muscles of the back
Grow hard resisting cold or shock or strain
And need the osteopath to be made supple,
To give the nerves and streams of life a chance.
Hosea Job was just the osteopath
To loose, relax my mood. And so I said
"All right" - and went.

        Hosea was a man
Whom nothing touched of danger, or of harm.
His life was just a rare-bit dream, where some one
Seems like to fall before a truck or train -
Instead he walks across them. Or you see
Shadows of falling things, great buildings topple,
Pianos skid like bulls from hellish corners
And chase the oblivious fool who stands and smiles.

Around the castle turrets fiercely moaned the autumn blast,
And within the old lords daughter seemed dying, dying fast;
While o'er her couch in frenzied grief the stricken father bent,
And in deep sobs and stifled moans his anguish wild found vent.

"Oh cheer thee up, my daughter dear, my Maude, he softly said,
As tremblingly he strove to raise that young and drooping head;
'I'll deck thee out in jewels rare in robes of silken sheen,
Till thou shalt be as rich and gay as any crowned queen."

"Ah, never, never!" sighed the girl, and her pale cheek paler grew,
While marble brow and chill white hands were bathed in icy dew;
"Look in my face - there thou wilt read such hopes are folly all,
No garment shall I wear again, save shroud and funeral pall."

"My Maude thou'rt...

Gourd was taken to task when she understood the limitations the garden patch had placed upon her people.

It was early fall and the dancers of the vegetable kingdom paraded their charms in bright, full regalia. Across the earth in splotches of colour, the tomatoes scented a good fall. So, too, the kingly husks of corn and the melons, spinach and cucumber in turn eyed the approaching season in growing faith. Each had a succulent function and dangled their inviting flesh to the beholder.

But, alas, what did gourd promise? She was deeply conscious of lacking the forward brightness of tomato and pumpkin. She lacked leafy greens so evidently prized and when her fellow vegetables covered the brown soil in preparation for the fine day they would bask across a kitchen table, it was almost too much for the sensitive gourd to s...

As from the darkening gloom a silver dove
Upsoars, and darts into the eastern light,
On pinions that nought moves but pure delight,
So fled thy soul into the realms above,
Regions of peace and everlasting love;
Where happy spirits, crown'd with circlets bright
Of starry beam, and gloriously bedight,
Taste the high joy none but the blest can prove.
There thou or joinest the immortal quire
In melodies that even heaven fair
Fill with superior bliss, or, at desire,
Of the omnipotent Father, cleav'st the air
On holy message sent, What pleasure's higher?
Wherefore does any grief our joy impair?

("À toi, toujours à toi.")

[XXXIX., 1823]


To thee, all time to thee,
My lyre a voice shall be!
Above all earthly fashion,
    Above mere mundane rage,
Your mind made it my passion
    To write for noblest stage.

Whoe'er you be, send blessings to her - she
Was sister of my soul immortal, free!
My pride, my hope, my shelter, my resource,
When green hoped not to gray to run its course;
She was enthronèd Virtue under heaven's dome,
My idol in the shrine of curtained home.

Think not, oh master of the well-tilled field,
This earth is only thine; for after thee,
When all is sown and gathered and put by,
Comes the grave poet with creative eye,
And from these silent acres and clean plots,
Bids with his wand the fancied after-yield,
A second tilth and second harvest, be,
The crop of images and curious thoughts.

There was a curious quiet for a space
Directly following: and in the face
Of one rapt listener pulsed the flush and glow
Of the heat-lightning that pent passions throw
Long ere the crash of speech. - He broke the spell -
The host: - The Traveler's story, told so well,
He said, had wakened there within his breast
A yearning, as it were, to know the rest -
That all unwritten sequence that the Lord
Of Righteousness must write with flame and sword,
Some awful session of His patient thought -
Just then it was, his good old mother caught
His blazing eye - so that its fire became
But as an ember - though it burned the same.
It seemed to her, she said, that she had heard
It was the Heavenly Parent never erred,
And not the earthly one that had such...

(TERCENTENARY, 1608-1908)

"Stops of various Quills."--LYCIDAS.


What need of votive Verse
To strew thy Laureat Herse
With that mix'd Flora of th' Aonian Hill?
Or Mincian vocall Reed,
That Cam and Isis breed,
When thine own Words are burning in us still?

Bard, Prophet, Archimage!
In this Cash-cradled Age,
We grate our scrannel Musick, and we dote:
Where is the Strain unknown,
Through Bronze or Silver blown,
That thrill'd the Welkin with thy woven Note?

Yes,--"we are selfish Men":
Yet would we once again
Might see Sabrina braid her amber Tire;

Or watch the Comus Crew
Sweep down the Glade; or view
Strange-streamer'd Craft from Javan or Gadire!

Or could we catch once more,
High up, the Clang and Roa...

How many paltry, foolish, painted things,
That now in Coaches trouble eu'ry Street,
Shall be forgotten, whom no Poet sings,
Ere they be well wrap'd in their winding Sheet?
Where I to thee Eternitie shall giue,
When nothing else remayneth of these dayes,
And Queenes hereafter shall be glad to liue
Vpon the Almes of thy superfluous prayse;
Virgins and Matrons reading these my Rimes,
Shall be so much delighted with thy story,
That they shall grieve, they liu'd not in these Times,
To haue seene thee, their Sexes onely glory:
    So shalt thou flye aboue the vulgar Throng,
    Still to suruiue in my immortall Song.

    Shall I sing you a song, not short and not long,
    Of a story-book fairy who hides all among
    The covers and leaves of your pictures and prints,
    And colors them all with such beautiful tints?

First he kisses the girls with the fairest of curls
Then they blush like red roses and each head whirls.
In each little eye drops a bit of blue sky,
And colors each frock with a wonderful dye.

    His breathing I ween is the wonderful sheen,
    That clothes trees and meadows with loveliest green,
    The buttercups bold, it need hardly be told,
    Are gilded by him with the finest of gold.

    It is he I suppose who paints the red rose,
    And the rest of the flowers which every one knows,
    And the same red will do (or a similar hue),

[Footnote: In the Grand River, at Brantford, July 30th, 1875, Miss Jessie Hamilton, adopted daughter of C.H. Waterous, Esq., Brantford, aged 14 years and 3 months, and Miss Ella E. Murton, only daughter of John W. Murton, Esq., Hamilton, aged 14 years.]


    The morning dawned without a cloud,
But evening came with pall and shroud, -
With muffled step, and bated breath,
And mournful whisperings of - death!

            *            *            *

    Young lips, that in the morning sung
The summer's opening flowers among,
Were hushed and cold; - young, laughing eyes,
That met the dawn with sweet surprise,
Were darkly sealed; - young feet, that pressed
The dewy turf with glad unrest,
Were cold and stirless, never more
To tread the paths they trod ...

(Written during sickness).

Soul -
    Oh! say must I leave this world of light
    With its sparkling streams and sunshine bright,
    Its budding flowers, its glorious sky?
    Vain 'tis to ask me - I cannot die!

Angel -
    But, sister, list! in the realms above,
    That happy home of eternal love,
    Are flowers more fair, and skies more clear
    Than those thou dost cling to so fondly here.

Soul -
    Ah! yes, but to reach that home of light
    I must pass through the fearful vale of night;
    And my soul with alarm doth shuddering cry -
    O angel, I tell thee, I dare not die!

Angel -
    Ah! mortal beloved, in that path untried
    Will I be, as ever, still at thy side,
    T...

This was my dream: I saw a Forest
Old as the earth, no track nor trace
Of unmade man. Thou, Soul, explorest,
Though in a trembling rapture, space
Immeasurable! Shrubs, turned trees,
Trees that touch heaven, support its frieze
Studded with sun and moon and star:
While, oh, the enormous growths that bar
Mine eye from penetrating past
Their tangled twins where lurks, nay, lives
Royally lone, some brute-type cast
I’ the rough, time cancels, man forgives.

On, Soul! I saw a lucid City
Of architectural device
Every way perfect. Pause for pity,
Lightning! nor leave a cicatrice
On those bright marbles, dome and spire,
Structures palatial, streets which mire
Dares not defile, paved all too fine
For human footstep’s smirch, not thine,
Proud soli...

He is not desolate whose ship is sailing
Over the mystery of an unknown sea,
For some great love with faithfulness unfailing
Will light the stars to bear him company.

Out in the silence of the mountain passes,
The heart makes peace and liberty its own -
The wind that blows across the scented grasses
Bringing the balm of sleep - comes not alone.

Beneath the vast illimitable spaces
Where God has set His jewels in array,
A man may pitch his tent in desert places
Yet know that heaven is not so far away.

But in the city - in the lighted city -
Where gilded spires point toward the sky,
And fluttering rags and hunger ask for pity,
Grey Loneliness in cloth-of-gold, goes by.

1

Ah, heedless girl! why thus disclose
What ne'er was meant for other ears;
Why thus destroy thine own repose,
And dig the source of future tears?


2

Oh, thou wilt weep, imprudent maid,
While lurking envious foes will smile,
For all the follies thou hast said
Of those who spoke but to beguile.


3

Vain girl! thy lingering woes are nigh,
If thou believ'st what striplings say:
Oh, from the deep temptation fly,
Nor fall the specious spoiler's prey.


4

Dost thou repeat, in childish boast,
The words man utters to deceive?
Thy peace, thy hope, thy all is lost,
If thou canst venture to believe.


5

While now amongst thy female peers
Thou tell'st again the soothing ta...

When rain-drops, glistening from the thatch,
Like drops of silver run,
Our old blind grandame lifts the latch,
To feel the cheering sun.

She sees no rainbow in the sky,
But when the cuckoo sung,
She thought upon the years gone by,
When she was blithe and young.

But God, who comforts want and age,
Shall be her only friend,
And bless her till her pilgrimage
In silent dust shall end.

Long had our dull forefathers slept supine,
Nor felt the raptures of the tuneful Nine;
Till Chaucer first, the merry bard, arose,
And many a story told in rhyme and prose.
But age has rusted what the poet writ,
Worn out his language, and obscur'd his wit;
In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh, in vain.

Old Spenser next, warm'd with poetic rage,
In ancient tales amus'd a barb'rous age;
An age that yet uncultivate and rude,
Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursu'd
Through pathless fields, and unfrequented floods,
To dens of dragons and enchanted woods.
But now the mystic tale, that pleas'd of yore,
Can charm an understanding age no more;
The long-spun allegories fulsome grow.
While the dull moral lies too plain b...

Oh! I know a certain woman who is reckoned with the good,
But she fills me with more terror than a raging lion could.
The little chills run up and down my spine whene'er we meet,
Though she seems a gentle creature and she's very trim and neat.

And she has a thousand virtues and not one acknowledged sin,
But she is the sort of person you could liken to a pin.
And she pricks you, and she sticks you, in a way that can't be said -
When you seek for what has hurt you, why, you cannot find the head.

But she fills you with discomfort and exasperating pain -
If anybody asks you why, you really can't explain.
A pin is such a tiny thing - of that there is no doubt -
Yet when it's sticking in your flesh, you're wretched till it's out!

She is wonderfully observing.    When ...