Spirituality

Far in the east the rain-clouds sweep and harry,
Down the long haggard hills, formless and low,
Far in the west the shell-tints meet and marry,
Piled gray and tender blue and roseate snow;
East - like a fiend, the bolt-breasted, streaming
Storm strikes the world with lightning and with hail;
West - like the thought of a seraph that is dreaming,
Venus leads the young moon down the vale.

Through the lake furrow between the gloom and bright'ning
Firm runs our long canoe with a whistling rush,
While Potàn the wise and the cunning Silver Lightning
Break with their slender blades the long clear hush;
Soon shall I pitch my tent amid the birches,
Wise Potàn shall gather boughs of balsam fir,
While for bark and dry wood Silver Lightning searches;
Soon the smoke shall ...

I

O fairest flower no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken Primrose fading timelesslie,
Summers chief honour if thou hadst outlasted
Bleak winters force that made thy blossome drie;
For he being amorous on that lovely die
That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss
But kill’d alas, and then bewayl’d his fatal bliss.

II

For since grim Aquilo his charioter
By boistrous rape th’ Athenian damsel got,
He thought it toucht his Deitie full neer,
If likewise he some fair one wedded not,
Thereby to wipe away th’ infamous blot,
Of long-uncoupled bed, and childless eld,
Which ‘mongst the wanton gods a foul reproach was held.

III

So mounting up in ycie-pearled carr,
Through middle empire of the freezing aire
He wanderd long,...

She must be honest, both in thought and deed,
Of generous impulse, and above all greed;
Not seeking praise, or place, or power, or pelf,
But life's best blessings for her higher self,
Which means the best for all.
    She must have faith,
To make good friends of Trouble, Pain, and Death,
And understand their message.
    She should be
As redolent with tender sympathy
As is a rose with fragrance.
    Cheerfulness
Should be her mantle, even though her dress
May be of Sorrow's weaving.
    On her face
A loyal nature leaves its seal of grace,
And chastity is in her atmosphere.
Not that chill chastity which seems austere
(Like untrod snow-peaks, lovely to behold
Till once attained - then barren, loveless, cold);
But the white flame that feeds up...

Shepherd That cry’s from the first cuckoo of the year
I wished before it ceased.

Goatherd Nor bird nor beast
Could make me wish for anything this day,
Being old, but that the old alone might die,
And that would be against God’s Providence.
Let the young wish. But what has brought you here?
Never until this moment have we met
Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap
From stone to stone.

Shepherd. I am looking for strayed sheep;
Something has troubled me and in my trouble
I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone,
For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble
And make the daylight sweet once more; but when
I had driven every rhyme into its place
The sheep had gone from theirs.

Goatherd. I know right well
What turned so good a ...

(For the Rev. Edward F. Garesche, S. J.)



There was a little maiden
In blue and silver drest,
She sang to God in Heaven
And God within her breast.

It flooded me with pleasure,
It pierced me like a sword,
When this young maiden sang:    "My soul
Doth magnify the Lord."

The stars sing all together
And hear the angels sing,
But they said they had never heard
So beautiful a thing.

Saint Mary and Saint Joseph,
And Saint Elizabeth,
Pray for us poets now
And at the hour of death.

Bright scenes must all depart as they've departed,
Unshadowed years will fly as they have flown,
And fairer visions leave us silent-hearted,
Keen, lashing blasts must blow as they have blown.

Old mem'ries must grow dim and fade away,
Across the world's wide wastes the sun shall set,
Thou shalt press forward on thy toil-trod way,
Nor leave me one, just one, one sad regret.

Ah, where shall I be then?--forgot--estranged,
When years have rolled their glory at thy feet,
When friends and kindred all, yea, all have changed
And others come their chosen one to greet.

And yet what prayer from me could now implore,
Could crave for all it would, for words have fled?
May Heaven preserve thee as thou wast before,
And multiply all blessings on thy head.

When I a verse shall make,
Know I have pray'd thee,
For old religion's sake,
Saint Ben to aid me.

Make the way smooth for me,
When I, thy Herrick,
Honouring thee, on my knee
Offer my lyric.

Candles I'll give to thee,
And a new altar,
And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be
Writ in my psalter.

    Along the way
    He walked that day,
Watching shapes that reveries limn,
    And seldom he
    Had eyes to see
The moment that encompassed him.

    Bright yellowhammers
    Made mirthful clamours,
And billed long straws with a bustling air,
    And bearing their load
    Flew up the road
That he followed, alone, without interest there.

    From bank to ground
    And over and round
They sidled along the adjoining hedge;
    Sometimes to the gutter
    Their yellow flutter
Would dip from the nearest slatestone ledge.

    The smooth sea-line
    With a metal shine,
And flashes of white, and a sail thereon,
    He would also descry
    With a half-wrapt eye
Between the projects he mused upon.

  ...

A Conversation

We talked with open heart, and tongue
Affectionate and true,
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Matthew seventy-two.

We lay beneath a spreading oak,
Beside a mossy seat;
And from the turf a fountain broke
And gurgled at our feet.

`Now, Matthew!' said I, `let us match
This water's pleasant tune
With some old border-song, or catch
That suits a summer's noon;

`Or of the church-clock and the chimes
Sing here beneath the shade
That half-mad thing of witty rhymes
Which you last April made!'

In silence Matthew lay, and eyed
The spring beneath the tree;
And thus the dear old man replied,
The grey-haired man of glee:

`No check, no stay, this streamlet fears,
How merrily it goes!

No more: the end is sudden and abrupt,
Abrupt, as without preconceived design
Was the beginning; yet the several Lays
Have moved in order, to each other bound
By a continuous and acknowledged tie
Though unapparent, like those Shapes distinct
That yet survive ensculptured on the walls
Of palaces, or temples, 'mid the wreck
Of famed Persepolis; each following each,
As might beseem a stately embassy,
In set array; these bearing in their hands
Ensign of civil power, weapon of war,
Or gift to be presented at the throne
Of the Great King; and others, as they go
In priestly vest, with holy offerings charged,
Or leading victims drest for sacrifice.
Nor will the Power we serve, that sacred Power,
The Spirit of humanity, disdain
A ministration humble but since...

No more: the end is sudden and abrupt,
Abrupt, as without preconceived design
Was the beginning; yet the several Lays
Have moved in order, to each other bound
By a continuous and acknowledged tie
Though unapparent, like those Shapes distinct
That yet survive ensculptured on the walls
Of palaces, or temples, 'mid the wreck
Of famed Persepolis; each following each,
As might beseem a stately embassy,
In set array; these bearing in their hands
Ensign of civil power, weapon of war,
Or gift to be presented at the throne
Of the Great King; and others, as they go
In priestly vest, with holy offerings charged,
Or leading victims drest for sacrifice.
Nor will the Power we serve, that sacred Power,
The Spirit of humanity, disdain
A ministration humble but since...

Jean de Breboeuf, a priest of the Jesuit Order, came to Canada as a missionary to the Indians about the year 1625. He belonged to an old and honourable French family that had given many sons to the army, and was a man of great physical strength, one who possessed an iron will, that was yet combined with sweetness and gentleness of temper.

He lived with the Indians for many years, and spoke the dialects of different tribes, though his mission was chiefly to the Hurons. By them he was much beloved.

At the time of the uprising of the Iroquois in 1649, there was a massacre of the Hurons at the little mission village of St. Louis upon the shores of Georgian Bay. There Jean de Breboeuf, refusing to leave his people, met death by torture at the hands of the conquering Iroquois. Lalement, his friend, a priest of the same ord...

Her younger sister, that Speranza hight.

England puts on her purple, and pale, pale
    With too much light, the primrose doth but wait
To meet the hyacinth; then bower and dale
    Shall lose her and each fairy woodland mate.
April forgets them, for their utmost sum
Of gift was silent, and the birds are come.

The world is stirring, many voices blend,
    The English are at work in field and way;
All the good finches on their wives attend,
    And emmets their new towns lay out in clay;
Only the cuckoo-bird only doth say
Her beautiful name, and float at large all day.

Everywhere ring sweet clamours, chirrupping,
    Chirping, that comes before the grasshopper;
The wide woods, flurried with the pulse of spring,
    Shake out their wrink...

When my last long-beer has vanished and the truth is left unsaid;
When each sordid care is banished from my chair and from my bed,
And my common people sadly murmur: "'Arry Lawson dead,"

When the man I was denounces all the things that I was not,
When the true souls stand like granite, while the souls of liars not,
When the quids I gave are counted, and the trays I cadged forgot;

Shall my spirit see the country that it wrote for once again?
Shall it see the old selections, and the common street and lane?
Shall it pass across the Black Soil and across the Red Soil Plain?

Shall it see the gaunt Bushwoman "slave until she's fit to drop",
For the distant trip to Sydney, all depending on the crop?
Or the twinkling legs of kiddies, running to the lollie-shop?

Sh...

Such as the youth, who came to Clymene
To certify himself of that reproach,
Which had been fasten'd on him, (he whose end
Still makes the fathers chary to their sons),
E'en such was I; nor unobserv'd was such
Of Beatrice, and that saintly lamp,
Who had erewhile for me his station mov'd;
When thus by lady: "Give thy wish free vent,
That it may issue, bearing true report
Of the mind's impress; not that aught thy words
May to our knowledge add, but to the end,
That thou mayst use thyself to own thy thirst
And men may mingle for thee when they hear."

"O plant! from whence I spring! rever'd and lov'd!
Who soar'st so high a pitch, thou seest as clear,
As earthly thought determines two obtuse
In one triangle not contain'd, so clear
Dost see contingencies, ...

Know, that I would accounted be
True brother of a company
That sang, to sweeten Ireland's wrong,
Ballad and story, rann and song;
Nor be I any less of them,
Because the red-rose-bordered hem
Of her, whose history began
Before God made the angelic clan,
Trails all about the written page.
When Time began to rant and rage
The measure of her flying feet
Made Ireland's heart begin to beat;
And Time bade all his candles flare
To light a measure here and there;
And may the thoughts of Ireland brood
Upon a measured quietude.
Nor may I less be counted one
With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson,
Because, to him who ponders well,
My rhymes more than their rhyming tell
Of things discovered in the deep,
Where only body's laid asleep.
For the elemental c...

        God had called us, and we came;
            Our loved Earth to ashes left;
        Heaven was a neighbor's house,
            Open to us, bereft.

        Gay the lights of Heaven showed,
            And 'twas God who walked ahead;
        Yet I wept along the road,
            Wanting my own house instead.

        Wept unseen, unheeded cried,
            "All you things my eyes have kissed,
        Fare you well!    We meet no more,
            Lovely, lovely tattered mist!

        Weary wings that rise and fall
            All day long above the fire!"--
        Red with heat was every wall,
            Rough with heat was every wire--

        "Fare you well, you little winds
            That the flying embers chase!
...

The hills are clad in purple and in gold,
The ripened maize is gathered in the shock,
The frost has kissed the nuts, their shells unfold,
And fallen leaves are floating on the lock.

The flowers their many-colored petals drop;
But seed-pods full and ripe they leave behind,
A prophecy of more abundant crop,
And proof that nature in decay is kind.

But still the dahlia blooms, and pansies, too;
The golden-rod still rears its yellow crest.
The sumach bobs are now of crimson hue,
The luscious grape has donned its purple vest.

The forest trees, so long arrayed in green,
Wear now a robe like Joseph's coat of old,
Brighter than that on eastern satrap seen,
Tho' clad was he in purple and fine gold.

The woodbine twined about the giant oak
Ble...