Spirituality

I come from nothing; but from where
Come the undying thoughts I bear?
    Down, through long links of death and birth,
    From the past poets of the earth.
My immortality is there.

I am like the blossom of an hour.
But long, long vanished sun and shower
    Awoke my breath i' the young world's air.
    I track the past back everywhere
Through seed and flower and seed and flower.

Or I am like a stream that flows
Full of the cold springs that arose
    In morning lands, in distant hills;
    And down the plain my channel fills
With melting of forgotten snows.

Voices, I have not heard, possessed
My own fresh songs; my thoughts are blessed
    With relics of the far unknown.
    And mixed with memories not my own
The sweet streams...

How long had I sat there and had not beheld
The gleam of the glow-worm till something compelled!...

The heaven was starless, the forest was deep,
And the vistas of darkness stretched silent in sleep.

And late 'mid the trees had I lingered until
No thing was awake but the lone whippoorwill.

And haunted of thoughts for an hour I sat
On a lichen-gray rock where the moss was a mat.

And thinking of one whom my heart had held dear,
Like terrible waters, a gathering fear.

Came stealing upon me with all the distress
Of loss and of yearning and powerlessness:

Till the hopes and the doubts and the sleepless unrest
That, swallow-like, built in the home of my breast,

Now hither, now thither, now heavenward flew,
Wild-winged as the wind...

How fond the rustic's ear at leisure dwells
On the soft soundings of his village bells,
As on a Sunday morning at his ease
He takes his rambles, just as fancies please,
Down narrow balks that intersect the fields,
Hid in profusion that its produce yields:
Long twining peas, in faintly misted greens;
And wing'd-leaf multitudes of crowding beans;
And flighty oatlands of a lighter hue;
And speary barley bowing down with dew;
And browning wheat-ear, on its taper stalk,
With gentle breezes bending o'er the balk,
Greeting the parting hand that brushes near
With patting welcomes of a plenteous year.
Or narrow lanes, where cool and gloomy-sweet
Hedges above-head in an arbour meet,
Meandering down, and resting for awhile
Upon a moss-clad molehill or a stile;
...

From the dark chambers of dejection freed,
Spurning the unprofitable yoke of care,
Rise, Gillies, rise; the gales of youth shall bear
Thy genius forward like a winged steed.
Though bold Bellerophon (so Jove decreed
In wrath) fell headlong from the fields of air,
Yet a rich guerdon waits on minds that dare,
If aught be in them of immortal seed,
And reason govern that audacious flight
Which heavenward they direct. Then droop not thou,        
Erroneously renewing a sad vow
In the low dell 'mid Roslin's faded grove:
A cheerful life is what the Muses love,
A soaring spirit is their prime delight.

    I

    O wonderful and wingèd flow'r,
    That hoverest in the garden-close,
    Finding in mazes of the rose,
    The beauty of a Summer hour!

    O symbol of Impermanence,
    Thou art a word of Beauty's tongue,
    A word that in her song is sung,
    Appealing to the inner sense!

    Of that great mystic harmony,
    All lovely things are notes and words -
    The trees, the flow'rs, the songful birds,
    The flame-white stars, the surging sea,

    The aureate light of sudden dawn,
    The sunset's crimson afterglow,
    The summer clouds, the dazzling snow,
    The brooks, the moonlight chaste and wan.

    Lacking (who knows?) a cloud, a tree,
    A streamlet's purl, the ocean's roar
    From Nature's multi...

The Pagan's myths through marble lips are spoken,
And ghosts of old Beliefs still flit and moan
Round fane and altar overthrown and broken,
O'er tree-grown barrow and gray ring of stone.

Blind Faith had martyrs in those old high places,
The Syrian hill grove and the Druid's wood,
With mother's offering, to the Fiend's embraces,
Bone of their bone, and blood of their own blood.

Red altars, kindling through that night of error,
Smoked with warm blood beneath the cruel eye
Of lawless Power and sanguinary Terror,
Throned on the circle of a pitiless sky;

Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcasting
All heaven above, and blighting earth below,
The scourge grew red, the lip grew pale with fasting,
And man's oblation was his fear and woe!

Then thr...

MUSKOKA

A stream of tender gladness,
Of filmy sun, and opal tinted skies;
Of warm midsummer air that lightly lies
In mystic rings,
Where softly swings
The music of a thousand wings
That almost tones to sadness.

Midway 'twixt earth and heaven,
A bubble in the pearly air, I seem
To float upon the sapphire floor, a dream
Of clouds of snow,
Above, below,
Drift with my drifting, dim and slow,
As twilight drifts to even.

The little fern-leaf, bending
Upon the brink, its green reflection greets,
And kisses soft the shadow that it meets
With touch so fine,
The border line
The keenest vision can't define;
So perfect is the blending.

The far, fir trees that cover
The brownish hills with needles green and gold,

Gone to thy Heavenly Father's rest!
The flowers of Eden round thee blowing,
And on thine ear the murmurs blest
Of Siloa's waters softly flowing!
Beneath that Tree of Life which gives
To all the earth its healing leaves
In the white robe of angels clad,
And wandering by that sacred river,
Whose streams of holiness make glad
The city of our God forever!
Gentlest of spirits! not for thee
Our tears are shed, our sighs are given;
Why mourn to know thou art a free
Partaker of the joys of heaven?
Finished thy work, and kept thy faith
In Christian firmness unto death;
And beautiful as sky and earth,
When autumn's sun is downward going,
The blessed memory of thy worth
Around thy place of slumber glowing!
But woe for us! who linger still
With fe...

The gods are dead; but still for me
Lives on in wildwood brook and tree
Each myth, each old divinity.

For me still laughs among the rocks
The Naiad; and the Dryad's locks
Drop perfume on the wildflower flocks.

The Satyr's hoof still prints the loam;
And, whiter than the wind-blown foam,
The Oread haunts her mountain home.

To him, whose mind is fain to dwell
With loveliness no time can quell,
All things are real, imperishable.

To him - whatever facts may say -
Who sees the soul beneath the clay,
Is proof of a diviner day.

The very stars and flowers preach
A gospel old as God, and teach
Philosophy a child may reach;

That cannot die; that shall not cease;
That lives through idealities
Of Beauty, ev'n as Rome...

AN INDIAN TRADITION; VERSIFIED FROM SCHOOLCRAFT


It was a day of festive-mirth,
    And bright the Indian wigwams shone,
For 'twas a chieftain's bridal-day,
    And gladness dwelt in every tone;
But ere the glow of sunset hours
    Upon the western hills was shed,
Deep sadness rested on those bowers -
    The bride was numbered with the dead.

Days passed; and still beside her tomb
    The stricken lover bowed his head;
And-nightly, through the forest's gloom
    The stars beheld him with his dead.
In vain did grey-haired chieftains urge
    The youthful hunter to the chase; -
He heard, yet heeded not their words,
    For grief had chained him to the place.

They laid his war-club by his side,
    His bow and arrows, too, they br...

Between the green bud and the red
Youth sat and sang by Time, and shed
From eyes and tresses flowers and tears,
From heart and spirit hopes and fears,
Upon the hollow stream whose bed
Is channelled by the foamless years;
And with the white the gold-haired head
Mixed running locks, and in Time’s ears
Youth’s dreams hung singing, and Time’s truth
Was half not harsh in the ears of Youth.

Between the bud and the blown flower
Youth talked with joy and grief an hour,
With footless joy and wingless grief
And twin-born faith and disbelief
Who share the seasons to devour;
And long ere these made up their sheaf
Felt the winds round him shake and shower
The rose-red and the blood-red leaf,
Delight whose germ grew never grain,
And passion dyed in its ...

A Poem In Twelve Books


Stop playing, poet! may a brother speak?
’Tis you speak, that’s your error. Song’s our art:
Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts
Instead of draping them in sighs and sounds.
True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up!
But why such long prolusion and display,
Such turning and adjustment of the harp,
And taking it upon your breast at length,
Only to speak dry words across its strings?
Stark-naked thought is in request enough,
Speak prose and holloa it till Europe hears!
The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark,
Which helps the hunter’s voice from Alp to Alp,
Exchange our harp for that, who hinders you?

But here’s your fault; grown men want thought, you think;
Thought’s what they me...

The heron-billed pale cattle-birds
That feed on some foul parasite
Of the Moroccan flocks and herds
Cross the narrow Straits to light
In the rich midnight of the garden trees
Till the dawn break upon those mingled seas.
Often at evening when a boy
Would I carry to a friend --
Hoping more substantial joy
Did an older mind commend --
Not such as are in Newton's metaphor,
But actual shells of Rosses' level shore.
Greater glory in the Sun,
An evening chill upon the air,
Bid imagination run
Much on the Great Questioner;
What He can question, what if questioned I
Can with a fitting confidence reply.

They left their home of summer ease
Beneath the lowland’s sheltering trees,
To seek, by ways unknown to all,
The promise of the waterfall.

Some vague, faint rumor to the vale
Had crept, perchance a hunter’s tale,
Of its wild mirth of waters lost
On the dark woods through which it tossed.

Somewhere it laughed and sang; somewhere
Whirled in mad dance its misty hair;
But who had raised its veil, or seen
The rainbow skirts of that Undine?

They sought it where the mountain brook
Its swift way to the valley took;
Along the rugged slope they clomb,
Their guide a thread of sound and foam.

Height after height they slowly won;
The fiery javelins of the sun
Smote the bare ledge; the tangled shade
With rock and vine their steps delay...

To make a fairer,
A kinder, a more constant world than this;
To make time longer
And love a little stronger,

To give to blossoms
And trees and fruits more beauty than they bear,
Adding to sweetness
The aye-wanted completeness,

To say to sorrow,
"Ease now thy bosom of its snaky burden";
(And sorrow brightened,
No more stung and frightened),

To cry to death,
"Stay a little, O proud Shade, thy stony hand";
(And death removing
Left us amazed loving);--

For this and this,
O inward Spirit, arm thyself with power;
Be it thy duty
To give a body to beauty.

Thine to remake
The world in thy hid likeness, and renew
The fading vision
In spite of time's derision.

Be it thine, O spirit,
The worl...

Back to where the roses rest
Round a shrine of holy name,
(Yes -- they knew me when I came)
More of peace and less of fame
Suit my restless heart the best.

Back to where long quiets brood,
Where the calm is never stirred
By the harshness of a word,
But instead the singing bird
Sweetens all my solitude.

With the birds and with the flowers
Songs and silences unite,
From the morning unto night;
And somehow a clearer light
Shines along the quiet hours.

God comes closer to me here --
Back of ev'ry rose leaf there
He is hiding -- and the air
Thrills with calls to holy prayer;
Earth grows far, and heaven near.

Every single flower is fraught
With the very sweetest dreams,
Under clouds or under gleams
Changeful...

I

To barren heath, bleak moor, and quaking fen,
Or depth of labyrinthine glen;
Or into trackless forest set
With trees, whose lofty umbrage met;
World-wearied Men withdrew of yore;
(Penance their trust, and prayer their store
And in the wilderness were bound
To such apartments as they found,
Or with a new ambition raised;
That God might suitably be praised.

II

High lodged the 'Warrior', like a bird of prey;
Or where broad waters round him lay:
But this wild Ruin is no ghost
Of his devices buried, lost!
Within this little lonely isle
There stood a consecrated Pile;
Where tapers burned, and mass was sung,
For them whose timid Spirits clung
To mortal succour, though the tomb
Had fixed, for ever fixed, their doom!

Out of the heart of the city begotten
Of the labour of men and their manifold hands,
Whose souls, that were sprung from the earth in her morning,
No longer regard or remember her warning,
Whose hearts in the furnace of care have forgotten
Forever the scent and the hue of her lands;

Out of the heat of the usurer's hold,
From the horrible crash of the strong man's feet;
Out of the shadow where pity is dying;
Out of the clamour where beauty is lying,
Dead in the depth of the struggle for gold;
Out of the din and the glare of the street;

Into the arms of our mother we come,
Our broad strong mother, the innocent earth,
Mother of all things beautiful, blameless,
Mother of hopes that her strength makes tameless,
Where the voices of grief and of battle are...