Identity

About one third of a century ago there flourished in Canada three Scottish editors, all of whom were poets, McQueen of the Huron Signal, Goderich, who wrote a grand song on "Our Broad Lake," and McGeorge of the Streetsville Review. The following lines are on George Menzies who was a Woodstock editor.


        One day while passing 'long the road
        On a small book we almost trod,
        Its leaves were scattered o'er the ground,
        We picked them up and when we found

        The author's name, it did inspire
        Us with a very strong desire
        To read the little volume through,
        For most of it to us was new.

        He doth sing of land of heather
        And Canadian scenes together,
        He did adore Niagara's roar
        Wh...

    DIED - Early morning of September 5, 1876, and
in the gleaming dawn of "name and fame,"
Hamilton J. Dunbar.

Dead!    Dead!    Dead!
    We thought him ours alone;
And were so proud to see him tread
The rounds of fame, and lift his head
    Where sunlight ever shone;
But now our aching eyes are dim,
And look through tears in vain for him.

Name!    Name!    Name!
    It was his diadem;
Nor ever tarnish-taint of shame
Could dim its luster - like a flame
    Reflected in a gem,
He wears it blazing on his brow
Within the courts of Heaven now.

Tears!    Tears!    Tears!
    Like dews upon the leaf
That bursts at last - from out the years
The blossom of a trust appears
    That blooms above the grief;
And mother, br...

'Twas now the noon of night, and all was still,
Except a hapless Rhymer and his quill.
In vain he calls each Muse in order down,
Like other females, these will sometimes frown;
He frets, be fumes, and ceasing to invoke
The Nine, in anguish'd accents thus he spoke:
Ah what avails it thus to waste my time,
To roll in Epic, or to rave in Rhyme?
What worth is some few partial readers' praise.
If ancient Virgins croaking 'censures' raise?
Where few attend, 'tis useless to indite;
Where few can read, 'tis folly sure to write;
Where none but girls and striplings dare admire,
And Critics rise in every country Squire -
But yet this last my candid Muse admits,
When Peers are Poets, Squires may well be Wits;
When schoolboys vent their amorous flames in verse,
Matron...

        (Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.)



    Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell,
    Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.
    Both arms have mutinied against me--brutes.
    My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.

    I tried to peg out soldierly--no use!
    One dies of war like any old disease.
    This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.
    I have my medals?--Discs to make eyes close.
    My glorious ribbons?--Ripped from my own back
    In scarlet shreds. (That's for your poetry book.)

    A short life and a merry one, my brick!
    We used to say we'd hate to live dead old,--
    Yet now . . . I'd willingly be puffy, bald,
    And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys
    At least the jokes hurled ...

No rest--not one day in the seven for me?
Not one, from the maddening yoke to be free?
Not one to escape from the boss on the prowl,
His sinister glance and his furious growl,
The cry of the foreman, the smell of the shop,--
To feel for one moment the manacles drop?
--'Tis rest then you want, and you fain would forget?
To rest and oblivion they'll carry you yet.

The flow'rs and the trees will have withered ere long,
The last bird already is ending his song;
And soon will be leafless and shadeless the bow'rs...
I long, oh I long for the perfume of flow'rs!
To feel for a moment ere stripped are the trees,
In meadow lands open, the breath of the breeze.
--You long for the meadow lands breezy and fair?
O, soon enough others will carry you there.

I love a still conservatory
That's full of giant, breathless palms,
Azaleas, clematis and vines,
Whose quietness great Trees becalms
Filling the air with foliage,
A curved and dreamy statuary.

I like to hear a cold, pure rill
Of water trickling low, afar
With sudden little jerks and purls
Into a tank or stoneware jar,
The song of a tiny sleeping bird
Held like a shadow in its trill.

I love the mossy quietness
That grows upon the great stone flags,
The dark tree-ferns, the staghorn ferns,
The prehistoric, antlered stags
That carven stand and stare among
The silent, ferny wilderness.

And are they birds or souls that flit
Among the trees so silently,
And are they fish or ghosts that haunt
The still pools of the rockery! ...

Referring to the third verse of this poem, the Pall Mall Gazette of February 1, 1890, said: “One evening, just before his death-illness, the poet was reading this from a proof to his daughter-in-law and sister. He said: ‘It almost looks like bragging to say this, and as if I ought to cancel it; but it’s the simple truth; and as it’s truth, it shall stand.”’


At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
When you set your fancies free,
Will they pass to where by death, fools think, imprisoned,
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
Being who?

One who never tur...

I love the lyric muse!
For when mankind ran wild in grooves
Came holy Orpheus with his songs
And turned men's hearts from bestial loves,
From brutal force and savage wrongs;
Amphion, too, and on his lyre
Made such sweet music all the day
That rocks, instinct with warm desire,
Pursued him in his glorious way.

I love the lyric muse!
Hers was the wisdom that of yore
Taught man the rights of fellow man,
Taught him to worship God the more,
And to revere love's holy ban.
Hers was the hand that jotted down
The laws correcting divers wrongs;
And so came honor and renown
To bards and to their noble songs.

I love the lyric muse!
Old Homer sung unto the lyre;
Tyrtæus, too, in ancient days;
Still warmed by their immortal fire,
How...

Right gladly had the horses stirred,
When they the wished-for greeting heard,
The whip's loud notice from the door,
That they were free to move once more.
You think, those doings must have bred
In them disheartening doubts and dread;
No, not a horse of all the eight,
Although it be a moonless night,
Fears either for himself or freight;
For this they know (and let it hide,
In part, the offences of their guide)
That Benjamin, with clouded brains,
Is worth the best with all their pains;
And, if they had a prayer to make,
The prayer would be that they may take
With him whatever comes in course,
The better fortune or the worse;
That no one else may have business near them,
And, drunk or sober, he may steer them.
So, forth in dauntless mood they fare,...

'Now did you mark a falcon,
    Sister dear, sister dear,
Flying toward my window
    In the morning cool and clear?
With jingling bells about her neck,
    But what beneath her wing?
It may have been a ribbon,
    Or it may have been a ring.'--
            'I marked a falcon swooping
                At the break of day;
            And for your love, my sister dove,
                I 'frayed the thief away.'--

'Or did you spy a ruddy hound,
    Sister fair and tall,
Went snuffing round my garden bound,
    Or crouched by my bower wall?
With a silken leash about his neck;
    But in his mouth may be
A chain of gold and silver links,
    Or a letter writ to me.'--
            'I heard a hound, highborn sister,
                Stoo...

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

"Pipe a song about a Lamb!"
So I piped with merry cheer.
"Piper, pipe that song again;"
So I piped: he wept to hear.

"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer!"
So I sang the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

"Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read."
So he vanish'd from my sight;
And I pluck'd a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.

Night is on the downland, on the lonely moorland,
On the hills where the wind goes over sheep-bitten turf,
Where the bent grass beats upon the unplowed poorland
And the pine-woods roar like the surf.

Here the Roman lived on the wind-barren lonely,
Dark now and haunted by the moorland fowl;
None comes here now but the peewit only,
And moth-like death in the owl.

Beauty was here in on this beetle-droning downland;
The thought of a Caesar in the purple came
From the palace by the Tiber in the Roman townland
To this wind-swept hill with no name.

Lonely Beauty came here and was here in sadness,
Brave as a thought on the frontier of the mind,
In the camp of the wild upon the march of madness,
The bright-eyed Queen of the Blind.

Now where Beau...

From the idyll "Wild Thorn and Lily"

O Maytime woods! O Maytime lanes and hours!
And stars, that knew how often there at night
Beside the path, where woodbine odors blew
Between the drowsy eyelids of the dusk, -
When, like a great, white, pearly moth, the moon
Hung silvering long windows of your room, -
I stood among the shrubs! The dark house slept.
I watched and waited for - I know not what! -
Some tremor of your gown: a velvet leaf's
Unfolding to caresses of the Spring:
The rustle of your footsteps: or the dew
Syllabling avowal on a tulip's lips
Of odorous scarlet: or the whispered word
Of something lovelier than new leaf or rose -
The word young lips half murmur in a dream:

Serene with sleep, light visions weigh her eyes:
And underneath he...

I cannot die, who drank delight
From the cup of the crescent moon,
And hungrily as men eat bread,
Loved the scented nights of June.
The rest may die, but is there not
Some shining strange escape for me
Who sought in Beauty the bright wine
Of immortality?

Everythings looted, betrayed and traded,
black deaths wings overhead.
Everythings eaten by hunger, unsated,
so why does a light shine ahead?

By day, a mysterious wood, near the town,
breathes out cherry, a cherry perfume.
By night, on Julys sky, deep, and transparent,
new constellations are thrown.

And something miraculous will come
close to the darkness and ruin,
something no-one, no-one, has known,
though we've longed for it since we were children.

    AULD NIBOR,
    I'm three times doubly o'er your debtor,
    For your auld-farrent, frien'ly letter;
    Tho' I maun say't, I doubt ye flatter,
        Ye speak sae fair.
    For my puir, silly, rhymin clatter
        Some less maun sair.

    Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle;
    Lang may your elbuck jink and diddle,
    To cheer you thro' the weary widdle
        O' war'ly cares,
    Till bairn's bairns kindly cuddle
        Your auld, gray hairs.

    But Davie, lad, I'm red ye're glaikit;
    I'm tauld the Muse ye hae negleckit;
    An' gif it's sae, ye sud be licket
        Until yo fyke;
    Sic hauns as you sud ne'er be faiket,
        Be hain't who like.

    For me, I'm on Parnassus' brink,
    Rivin' the ...

On the margin of a lakelet,
    In a rugged mountain clime,
Where precipice and pinnacle
    Of countenance sublime,
Cast their weird, austere reflections
    In the water's glistening sheen,
I strolled in contemplative mood,
    Both pensive and serene.

As in a crystal mirror,
    In that lakelet's placid face,
I saw the mountains upside down,
    With all their pristine grace;
I saw each cliff and point of rocks,
    I saw the stately pine,
Inverted in fantastic form
    Below the water line.

I paused in admiration;
    And with calm complacency
I marveled at this photograph
    From nature's gallery;
And as my eyes surveyed the scene
    With solemn grandeur fraught,
This simile flashed through my mind
    As i...

Set your face toward the darkness tell of deserts weird and wide,
Where unshaken woods are huddled, and low, languid waters glide;
Turn and tell of deserts lonely, lying pathless, deep and vast,
Where in utter silence ever Time seems slowly breathing past
Silence only broken when the sun is flecked with cloudy bars,
Or when tropic squalls come hurtling underneath the sultry stars!
Deserts thorny, hot and thirsty, where the feet of men are strange,
And eternal Nature sleeps in solitudes which know no change.

Weakened with their lengthened labours, past long plains of stone and sand,
Down those trackless wilds they wandered, travellers from a far-off land,
Seeking now to join their brothers, struggling on with faltering feet,
For a glorious work was finished, and a noble task comp...