* A Distributed Proofreaders Canada eBook * This eBook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the eBook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the eBook. If either of these conditions applies, please contact an FP administrator before proceeding. This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE. Title: Many Moods Date of first publication: 1932 Author: E. J. Pratt Date first posted: July 5, 2016 Date last updated: July 5, 2016 Faded Page eBook #20160707 This eBook was produced by: Al Haines MANY MOODS By E. J. PRATT TORONTO THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LTD. AT ST MARTIN'S HOUSE 1932 _To_ VIOLA _and_ CLAIRE CONTENTS A Reverie on a Dog Sea-gulls The Way of Cape Race Erosion The Sea-Cathedral A Prairie Sunset The Depression Ends Out of Step The Man and the Machine A Puzzle Picture The Parable of Puffsky From Stone to Steel Old Age Blind A Legacy The Decision The Lost Cause To an Enemy Whither? The Highway Putting Winter to Bed Cherries A Feline Silhouette The Child and the Wren Frost A November Landscape Magic Comrades One Hour of Life Horizons Doors The Armistice Silence Dreams Time-Worn To Angelina, an Old Nurse Jock o' the Links Tatterhead The Convict Holocaust The Drag-Irons A Lee-Shore The Pursuit The Fugitive The 6000 The Ritual MANY MOODS A REVERIE ON A DOG We know the symptoms well: that sudden stitch, We call it, in the side, and the cold rheum That fills the corners of the eyes; the twitch Of nerves, and those hot spasms that consume The strength which would endure the duller pains In creaking joints and knotted sinews. Time Accounts for it, pouring his chilling rime, Instead of blood, through arteries and veins And hardening up the walls. It's just old age, Plying her tendon needles through and through, That knits the tangles in the cartilage. Easy to see why she should come to men Under the stress of three score years and ten, But why to dogs and least of all to you. To-night it's hard for me to understand You are the same great fellow that I knew, As freedom to the sea as to the land. There is the same wide forehead; the same wise Reflection in your brown and tolerant eyes; The deep curl lustre of your shaggy coat; The massive jet circumference of your throat; Your heave of shoulders, length of back--but these, Reminders of your prime, may not disguise That in the effort of that laboured thump Your tail declared lumbago in the rump; Nor make me disbelieve how ill at ease You feel placing your head upon my knees, For when I spoke your name, your forelegs told As plain as speech itself that you were old. Not years--but fifteen weeks--it seems to be: The span of a canine biography. We had you as a pup, a ball of fur, Without a bone in your anatomy. No leopard's cub was ever livelier. I do not know the kind of lubrication that Was rendered to your gristle from your fat. You tied yourself in skeins and then untied, Or with your teeth into a stick you hung, Like a blood-leech to a swimmer, as we swung You over water from a schooner's side. A whistle acted like a hidden spring, Releasing inward levers, wheels and traps; Your leaps were antics of a crazy thing, Your barks--a series of percussion caps. And you were brought up somewhat like a child: We teased and petted you and leathered you, And sent you to your kennel, tethered you, And put you on short rations for your wild And freakish ways; and often did we turn You with a broomstick out of doors To howl the livelong night that you might learn To have respect for kitchen mats and floors. You don't forget the evening when you kept Your vigil waiting till the household slept, Crept up the stairs, entered the attic, stole Into a cupboard, and began to chew The life out of a silver-buckled shoe. You caught it like a muskrat without warning; You tore the clasp and uppers from the sole, And then slept on the carnage till the morning, When Aunt Marie with her keen tongue and keener Strap, sauntered in, and with a master-stroke That caught you flush upon the quarters, woke Your conscience to its first high misdemeanour. But when you grew to adult strength and size, We thought it most absurd to scandalise Your judgment with such capers as debase The minds of other dogs about the place. What greater training nonsense can be known Than this--to whistle for a dog full-grown, Especially if old and adipose, And bid him stand upon his two hind legs, Silent with forepaws drooping as he begs A lump of sugar placed upon his nose, While someone counted up to five or six; Or dress him up in scarlet coat and pants, And make him balance on one leg or dance As if he were a monkey: now, these tricks Might well pertain to Poms or Pekingese And other breeds of sofa pedigrees, But not to you who, scorning a command, The circus gesture of a whip or hand, But just for fun, would never hesitate To make a clear leap at a five-foot gate, Jump from the bow-sprit to the sea or take A two-mile morning swim across a lake; Or--what we thought the greatest sport of all-- To fight your way out to the last high wall Of breakers, place your fine retrieving grip On anything we flung--a rope or chip; And what a sight as you emerged and laid It at our feet! and how the rainbows played Above the rising showers as you tried To drown us with salt water from your hide! You never fought with smaller dogs: your pride Regarded wrangling as undignified. But once when a half-bred conceited pup, A Dachshund or a poodle broke your nap One afternoon with his infernal yap; When for a solid hour he kept it up, Presuming on your patience--then we saw You lose your temper. Not being worth a bite, Much less the honour of a serious fight, He took a blow from your contemptuous paw Which drove him deep into a snow-drift where You held him without benefit of air, Until, at length released, he scrambled out With what was left to him of wind and limb, And disappeared in one vertiginous rout As if the devil himself were after him. Now in the course of years it came to pass This little strip of shoreline grew to fame, Merely as habitation for your name, When a great kennel of the ribbon class, Whose carriage of the head and vertebrae Announced but one--your own--paternity, Delivered to the world a score of males-- Those champions that crashed the fairs, and made Competitors from other nations fade Into a group of sorry draggle-tails. So in these less known parts your blood prevails Over the mix of anonymity, For no one here may question dogs whose sires First drew from such a regal pedigree To fortify their biologic fires. And other habits that were bred within Required no hand of mine to discipline: Indeed our human sense lagged far behind The deep uncanny wisdom of your kind. Call it a second sight or just plain scent, A calculation or presentiment, You never were, as we have been, storm-blind, Nor felt our herded judgment when with head Bent down we followed hard where no one led, Circling upon our tracks with that arrest Of will when east was north and north was west, And when the winds lied in their throats to tell Us it was night before the evening fell. The way you hit direction was our wonder: Like a Saint Bernard you could find your man And dig him out; or with the roads snowed under, Go out into the bush and fetch a span Of horses home. Blindfolded you could tell The folk from one another by their smell, Identify the owner by a sniff At a shoe-lace or a mitt, and when your tail Began to wag, we knew it without fail, That racing down the wind our herring skiff Was making for the cove--before an eye Could spot it from the fleet, or could descry The cut of jib or colour of the sail. How did it happen too that in default Of words you had a language all your own With many a modulation, many a tone? How much of tameless fury for assault Was held in the potential of your growl Awakened by a distant timber howl? Your notes ran the full gamut from a roar That fell only below the leonine Down to the soft insistence of a whine That begged admittance at the kitchen door. And, in between, varieties of bark Expressive of annoyance or delight, With those domestic gutturals that mark A mutual recognition and a fight. But this I know, however much I tried To give the tongue canine its shadings, yet The vocal meaning would be poor beside The drama of your silent alphabet. Here was the cipher in epitome Of all our human moods from "A" to "Z(ed)". In your cocked ears and gently tilted head Attention had its perfect simile. What disciplined submission as you tried To feign indifference though your dilated Nostrils, sniffing the oven air, belied The patience in your haunches as you waited: And what oblivion when you lay curled Upon the flagstone in the summer shade; What drowsy misconception of a world Where stores are always full and bad debts paid! But tongue and ear and eye and nostril fail To measure the expression of the tail. For every curve and angle known to Science Lay in its lines--the one that stiffly barred A tramp's suspicious entrance to the yard Looked like a level ramrod of defiance: Only one cause could make it deadlier straight-- We saw it on occasions when you stood, Sniffing the wolf within the husky blood, When the grey fellow came too near the gate. And then that most abject configuration, The tail between the legs, which means disgrace To other dogs I know, but in your case The final symbol for complete damnation. That day--now let me recollect--I've long Forgotten the real nature of the deed, Some piece of mischief rather than a wrong Done with intent I'll readily concede. But like a fool I hurled at you a word Hard as a granite fragment for it stirred The self-respect within your own dog soul; It made you slink away without a sound, With lowered flanks and head close to the ground, As though you searched for the last burial hole. And when I saw the way your tail became The figure of your mood, I had no doubt That even Adam when he was cast out Knew not such deep contrition in his shame. But I shall not attempt to picture all The many joyous movements when it curved In gentle oscillation at a call To those tremendous lateral sweeps reserved For high ecstatic moments when the ship Came into harbour from a five-months' trip: For joining in our welcome to the crew Your tail out-did your bark in the halloo, And as it thudded on your sides, the slam Had power enough to flatten out a ram. Hanged be the man who first tried to defame An instrument of speech so eloquent As this--by dubbing it with such a name That from the dawn of monkeys it has meant A carryover fussing at the end: For I am sure that when you greet a friend It is the tail itself that wags the dog, And not a vulgar spinal epilogue. Enough of this--I must reform my ways, And speak of acts which seven years ago Broke in upon the passage of our days, Doings of yours which stirred the village so, When from the wharf we watched you wondering What caused your frantic movements to and fro Behind the five young swimmers, shepherding Their strange and headlong struggle to the beach;-- The way in which you crisscrossed on your track, Snapping at something that you could not reach, Dived and came up, swam forward and swam back, But ever at the youngsters' plunging feet; Till someone pointed out in full retreat, A fin shaped like a cutlass, and we knew That underneath the furrow was a blue Torpedo shark making its baffled way Back to the deeper waters of the bay. Do you remember too your own wild fear You would not reach the children at their play Through the high palings of the field, the day You managed with that mighty spring to clear The fence, made for the charging Hereford, caught Him by the muzzle with four fangs, held on And worried him until his wind was gone, When with his nostrils clogged with blood, you brought Him to his knees. And many another deed There was of this like scale which would have won A barrow full of stars, had it been done By men, but being natural to your breed The acts have slipped your knowledge and concern; For who upon this troubled earth could earn Such wages for such service measureless And yet demand so little in return-- A caribou-bone of marrow for your share At supper; a soft word, or the caress Of a child's arms and the great debt was square. And there were other days of bitterness Whose salt was like the sea, but where no less Your royal kinship with our hearts was shown-- The failures where the will was strong to save, As on that winter night you took that brave Dive through the ice-crack, but came up alone; No pulse next day beat slower than your own At the enigma of the open grave. So here you are, your head upon my knees; Your joints are stiff, your blood is running cold; How strange it is, in all these fantasies, I had forgotten that you had grown old. Old... Well! Here is your last great bond with men, This year will seal it fast, or perhaps another; Your fifteen years is our three score and ten; Give me the paw, old chap--and now, the other. SEA-GULLS For one carved instant as they flew, The language had no simile-- Silver, crystal, ivory Were tarnished. Etched upon the horizon blue, The frieze must go unchallenged, for the lift And carriage of the wings would stain the drift Of stars against a tropic indigo Or dull the parable of snow. Now settling one by one Within green hollows or where curled Crests caught the spectrum from the sun, A thousand wings are furled. No clay-born lilies of the world Could blow as free As those wild orchids of the sea. THE WAY OF CAPE RACE Lion-hunger, tiger-leap! The waves are bred no other way; It was their way when the Norseman came, It was the same in Cabot's day: A thousand years will come again, When a thousand years have passed away-- Galleon, frigate, liner, plane, The muster of the slain. They have placed the light, fog-horn and bell Along the shore: the wardens keep Their posts--they do not quell The roar; they shorten not the leap. The waves still ring the knell Of ships that pass at night, Of dreadnaught and of cockle-shell: They do not heed the light, The fog-horn and the bell-- Lion-hunger, tiger-leap! EROSION It took the sea a thousand years, A thousand years to trace The granite features of this cliff, In crag and scarp and base. It took the sea an hour one night, An hour of storm to place The sculpture of these granite seams Upon a woman's face. THE SEA-CATHEDRAL Vast and immaculate! No pilgrim bands In ecstasy before the Parian shrines Knew such a temple built by human hands With this transcendent rhythm in its lines. Like an epic on the north Atlantic stream It moved, and fairer than a Phidian dream. Rich gifts unknown to kings were duly brought At dawn and sunset and at cloudless noons, Gifts from the sea-gods and the sun who wrought Cascades and rainbows; flung them in festoons Over the spires, with emerald, amethyst, Sapphire and pearl out of their fiery mist. And music followed when a litany, Begun with the ring of foam bells and the purl Of linguals as the edges cut the sea, Crashed upon a rising storm with whirl Of floes from far-off spaces where Death rides The darkened belfries of the evening tides. Within the sunlight, vast, immaculate! Beyond all reach of earth in majesty, It passed on Southwards slowly to its fate-- To be drawn down by the inveterate sea, Without one chastening fire made to start From altars built around its polar heart. A PRAIRIE SUNSET What alchemist could in one hour so drain The rainbow of its colours, smelt the ore From the September lodes of heaven, to pour This Orient magic on a Western plain, And build the miracle before our eyes Of castellated heights and colonnades, Carraran palaces, and cavalcades Trooping through a city in the skies! A northern cloud became a temple spire, A southern reach showed argosies on fire, And in the centre, with unhurried feet, Came priests and paladins, soon to descend To earth with swinging censers to attend The god of harvests down amidst his wheat. And scarcely less resplendent was the passing, When with the night winds rising on the land, The hosts were led by a Valkyrian hand To their abodes, accompanied by the massing Of amber clouds touched with armorial red, By thrones dissolving, and by spirals hurled From golden plinths, announcing to the world That Day, for all its blazonry, was dead. And when, like a belated funeral rite, The last pale torch was smothered by the night, The mind's horizon like the sky was stripped Of all illusion but a fable told Of gods that died, of suns and worlds grown cold, In some extinct Promethean manuscript. THE DEPRESSION ENDS If I could take within my hand The rod of Prospero for an hour, With space and speed at my command, And astro-physics in my power, Having no reason for my scheme Beyond the logic of a dream To change a world predestinate From the eternal loom of fate, I'd realise my mad chimera By smashing distaff and the spinner, And usher in the golden era With an apocalyptic dinner. I'd place a table in the skies No earthly mind could visualise: No instruments of earth could bound it-- 'Twould take the light-years to go round it. And to this feast I would invite Only the faithful, the elect-- The shabby ones of earth's despite, The victims of her rude neglect, The most unkempt and motley throng Ever described in tale or song. All the good lads I've ever known From the twelve winds of sea and land Should hear my shattering bugle tone And feel its summoning command. No one should come who never knew A famine day of rationed gruel, Nor heard his belly like a flue Roaring with wind instead of fuel: No self-made men who proudly claim To be the architects of fame; No major-generals iron-shod Who stalk through life as on parade, Wearing their badges and gold braid, And throwing out their chests to God; No profiteers whose double chins Are battened on the Corn-Exchange, While continental breadlines range Before the dust of flour-bins. These shall not enter, nor shall those Who soured with the sun complain Of all their manufactured woes, Yet never had an honest pain: Not these--the well-groomed and the sleeked, But all the gaunt, the cavern-cheeked, The waifs whose tightened belts declare The thinness of their daily fare; The ill-starred from their natal days, The gaffers and the stowaways, The road-tramps and the alley-bred Who leap to scraps that others fling, With luck less than the Tishbite, fed On manna from the raven's wing. This dinner, now years overdue, Shall centre in a barbecue. Orion's club--no longer fable-- Shall fall upon the Taurus head. No less than Centaurs shall be led In roaring pairs forth from their stable And harnessed to the Wain to pull The mighty carcass of the bull Across the tundras to the table, Where he shall stretch from head to stern, Roasted and basted to a turn. I'd have the Pleiades prepare Jugged Lepus (to the vulgar _hare_), Galactic venison just done From the corona of the sun, Hoof jellies from Monoceros, Planked tuna, shad, stewed terrapin, And red-gut salmon captured in The deltas of the Southern Cross. Devilled shrimps and scalloped clams, Flamingoes, capons, luscious yams And cherries from Hesperides; And every man and every beast, Known to the stars' directories For speed of foot and strength of back, Would be the couriers to this feast-- Mercury, Atlas, Hercules, Each bearing a capacious pack. I would conscript the Gemini, Persuading Castor to compete With Pollux on a heavy wager, Buckboard against the sled, that he, With Capricornus could not beat His brother mushing Canis Major. And on the journey there I'd hail Aquarius with his nets and pail, And Neptune with his prong to meet us At some point on the shores of Cetus, And bid them superintend a cargo Of fresh sea-food upon the Argo-- Sturgeon and shell-fish that might serve To fill the side-boards with _hors d'oeuvres_. And worthy of the banquet spread Within this royal court of night, A curving canopy of light Shall roof it myriad-diamonded. For high above the table head Shall sway a candelabrum where, According to the legend, dwelt a Lady seated in a chair With Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Busy braiding up her hair. Sirius, the dog-star, shall be put Immediately above the foot, And central from the cupola Shall hang the cluster--Auriga, With that deep sapphire-hearted stella, The loveliest of the lamps, Capella. For all old men whose pilgrim feet Were calloused with life's dust and heat, Whose throats were arid with its thirst, I'd smite Jove's taverns till they burst, And punch the spigots of his vats, Till flagons, kegs and barrels all Were drained of their ambrosial As dry as the Sahara flats. For toothless, winded ladies who, Timid and hesitating, fear They might not stand the barbecue (Being so near their obsequies), I'd serve purees fresh from the ear Of Spica with a mild ragout-- To satisfy the calories-- Of breast of Cygnus stiffened by The hind left leg of Aries, As a last wind-up before they die. And I would have no wardens there, Searching the platters for a reason To seize Diana and declare That venison is out of season. For all those children hunger-worn From drought or flood and harvest failing, Whether from Nile or Danube hailing, Or Yang-tse or the Volga born, I'd communise the total yields Of summer in the Elysian fields, Gather the berries from the shrubs To crown souffles and syllabubs. Dumplings and trifles and _éclaires_ And roly-polies shall be theirs; Search as you may, you will not find One dash of oil, one dish of prunes To spoil the taste of the macaroons, And I would have you bear in mind No dietetic aunt-in-law, With hook-nose and prognathic jaw, Will try her vain reducing fads Upon these wenches and these lads. Now that these grand festivities Might start with holy auspices, I would select with Christian care, To offer up the vesper prayer, A padre of high blood--no white Self-pinched, self-punished anchorite, Who credits up against his dying His boasted hours of mortifying, Who thinks he hears a funeral bell In dinner gongs on principle. He shall be left to mourn this night, Walled in his dim religious light: Unto this feast he shall not come To breathe his gloom. No! rather some Sagacious and expansive friar, Who beams good-will, who loves a briar, Who, when he has his fellows with him Around a board, can make a grace Sonorous, full of liquid rhythm, Boom from his lungs' majestic bass; Who, when requested by his host To do the honours of a toast, Calls on the clan to rise and hold Their glasses to the light a minute, Just to observe the mellow gold And the rare glint of autumn in it. Now even at this hour he stands, The benison upon his face, In his white hair and moulded hands, No less than in his spoken grace. "We thank thee for this table spread In such a hall, on such a night, With such unusual stores of bread, O Lord of love! O Lord of light! We magnify thy name in praise At what thy messengers have brought, For not since Galilean days Has such a miracle been wrought. The guests whom thou hast bidden come, The starved, the maimed, the deaf and dumb, Were misfits in a world of evil, And ridden hard by man and devil. The seven years they have passed through Were leaner than what Israel knew. Dear Lord, forgive my liberty, In telling what thou mayst not know, For it must seem so queer to thee, What happens on our earth below: The sheep graze on a thousand hills, The cattle roam upon the plains, The cotton waits upon the mills, The stores are bursting with their grains, And yet these ragged ones that kneel To take thy grace before their meal Are said to be thy chosen ones, Lord of the planets and the suns! Therefore let thy favours fall In rich abundance on them all. May not one stomach here to-night Turn traitor on its appetite. Take under thy peculiar care The infants and the aged. Bestow Upon all invalids a rare Release of their digestive flow, That they, with health returned, may know A hunger equal to the fare, And for these mercies, Lord, we'll praise Thee to the limit of our days." He ended. The salubrious feast Began: with inundating mirth It drowned all memories of earth: It quenched the midnight chimes: nor ceased It till the wand of Prospero, Turning its magic on the east, Broke on a master-charm, when lo! Answering the summons of her name, Fresh from the surf of Neptune came Aurora to the Portico. OUT OF STEP (1931 A.D.) When the celestial dance was planned For star and constellation, A mighty baton took command Of perfect orchestration. We praised the Master of the skies For sun and moon and planet-- The ellipse was lovely to our eyes, So gracefully he ran it. But when the human dancers met, This year--about two billion-- They fumbled with their minuet, And CRASH went their pavilion! THE MAN AND THE MACHINE By right of fires that smelted ore Which he had tended years before, The man whose hands were on the wheel Could trace his kinship through her steel, Between his body warped and bent In every bone and ligament, And this "eight-cylinder" streamlined, The finest model yet designed. He felt his lesioned pulses strum Against the rhythm of her hum, And found his nerves and sinews knot With sharper spasm as she climbed The steeper grades, so neatly timed From storage tank to piston shot-- This creature with the panther grace, This man with slag upon his face. A PUZZLE PICTURE Back of the shell the armour plate, Behind the armour plate the shell, Back of a wall a flame of hate, Behind the hate a sentinel. Within a strident word a smart, And held within the smart a blow, And central to the blow a heart Smouldering up against a foe. Puzzle--find the antidote, When the heart can thus distil Out of the rancour of the throat Such poison from a syllable. THE PARABLE OF PUFFSKY Puffsky knew not how to live, But only how to sell, And strange it is--this truth to tell-- That he was never known to give And never known to buy. Crack salesman of his time, He kept financiers wondering why He found such means to multiply His wealth yet never parted with a dime. He sold by night, he sold by day, Sold long, sold short, sold anyway; He'd sell his teeth, he'd sell his eyes: it made No difference to his trade No matter what he sold-- Bottles, gases, oils or foods-- The other fellow took the goods, But Puffsky took the gold. And yet alas! One night it came to pass That just the hour that Puffsky died, He still assumed the bargaurrole, For, shambling up to God, he tried To dicker with his soul. And the good Lord sized him up and down, And looked him through and through, As he would a parvenu; And then replied with darkening frown, As Puffsky wedged his foot against the door, "Sirrah--you may think it strange, But on the floor Of this Exchange We neither barter, buy nor sell, And neither dime nor rusty sou Have we to offer you": And whereupon the Lord adjusted well A glittering monocle, And said: "Hence--try thy game in hell". So without further argument, Thither Puffsky went. Then Satan with a hoarse and bronchial laugh-- Amazed that such a spirit could exist-- Appointed a commission, Composed of two professors on his staff, A chemist and a pessimist, To make report upon the apparition; To estimate Its size and weight, Specific gravity, And value in Gehenna currency. And from the laboratory retort Came back this joint report-- "Both size and weight Are indeterminate. It is a watered soul That hath a swollen diaphragm, Gaseous, but non-inflammable When mixed with coal, Therefore in hell Not worth a current damn". FROM STONE TO STEEL From stone to bronze, from bronze to steel Along the road-dust of the sun, Two revolutions of the wheel From Java to Geneva run. The snarl Neanderthal is worn Close to the smiling Aryan lips, The civil polish of the horn Gleams from our praying finger tips. The evolution of desire Has but matured a toxic wine, Drunk long before its heady fire Reddened Euphrates or the Rhine. Between the temple and the cave The boundary lies tissue-thin: The yearlings still the altars crave As satisfaction for a sin. The road goes up, the road goes down-- Let Java or Geneva be-- But whether to the cross or crown, The path lies through Gethsemane. OLD AGE So poor again--with all that plunder taken; Your mountain stride, your eagle vision--gone! And the _All Hail_ of your voice in a world forsaken Of song and curving wings and the laughter of dawn. So little is left; I cannot be persuaded It is your hand that shakes; your step that falls; Your will, once statured on the crags, now faded To the round of a wheeled chair and four dull walls. And yet to-day as I watched your pale face yearning, When the sun's warmth poured through the open door, And something molten in your soul was burning Memorial raptures life could not restore; I knew, by some high trick of sight and hearing, Your heart was lured beyond the window sills, Adventuring where the valley mists were clearing, And silver horns were blowing on the hills. BLIND It was your boast before the darkness fell, That you could measure all your love, and chart The return of mine so surely as to tell Both boundary and trespass in my heart. But when the dawn and the meridian Entered their sudden fusion with the night; When roses and anemones began To grow as winter rushes in your sight; I wondered by what navigator's sign, By what vicarious starlight, you could trace Horizons which were never yours nor mine, Until your wistful fingers sought my face. A LEGACY The will she made contained no room for strife, For twisted words concerning gold or lands, For all the wealth that she had saved from life Was such as lay within her folded hands. She would have been less rich with other store, And we the poorer if she had not willed Only her heart, and then gone out the door, Leaving that cupboard on the latch and filled. THE DECISION (To L.R., a college athlete who died May, 1913.) You left the field and no one heard A murmur from you. We, With burning look and stubborn word, Challenged the Referee-- Why he forbade you to complete The run, hailing you back Before your firm and eager feet Were halfway round the track; Unless he had contrived, instead, To start you on a race, With an immortal course ahead, And daybreak on your face. THE LOST CAUSE Although with heart as keen and speed as swift As ancient courier had or argonaut, You followed every quest that light had caught Within its web; yet day with niggard thrift Withdrew its crimsons, causing greys to sift Like ashes through your hands, till what you thought Brave banners in the west were phantoms wrought Merely of space and its amorphous drift. Still let the heart take counsel of the feet, Whose loyal sinews bore it up to greet The night: for though the frugal game denies The goal--one flaming pennant from the sun-- It won't refuse, after your baffled run, The long cool wash of stars upon your eyes. TO AN ENEMY Some passionate hour before my own deep stripe Has taken on its healing, I shall trace Him out, and with clean linen I shall wipe The stain from that raw cut upon his face; And with the hand that smote him I shall turn The audit strong against him, offering Once more a wound for wound and burn for burn Out of the heart's own codeless bargaining. And he, with wound adjuring wound, shall draw His equal measure to the sacrament From an old well to which some mortals went When, with their thirsts ablaze, they looked and saw An Orient form uplifted in the skies, And quenched their hate in his forgiving eyes. WHITHER? A million years or so, they say, This world of ours will tire Of all its burdens, and one day Perish through frost or fire. No soul will then remain alive, And all things good therein-- Faith, love, or valour will survive As little as its sin. But I know one whose heart possessed A love that won't expire, Should Fate provide no sterner test Than time or frost or fire. THE HIGHWAY What aeons passed without a count or name, Before the cosmic seneschal, Succeeding with a plan Of weaving stellar patterns from a flame, Announced at his high carnival An orbit--with Aldebaran! And when the drifting years had sighted land, And hills and plains declared their birth Amid volcanic throes, What was the lapse before the marshal's hand Had found a garden on the earth, And led forth June with her first rose? And what the gulf between that and the hour, Late in the simian-human day, When Nature kept her tryst With the unfoldment of the star and flower-- When in her sacrificial way Judaea blossomed with her Christ! But what made our feet miss the road that brought The world to such a golden trove, In our so brief a span? How may we grasp again the hand that wrought Such light, such fragrance, and such love, O star! O rose! O Son of Man? PUTTING WINTER TO BED Old Winter with an angry frown Restationed on his head his crown, And grew more obdurate, As rumours every day had flown From some officials near the throne That he might abdicate. Fixing his rivals with his eyes, He thumped his chest and slapped his thighs, And ground his Arctic heel, Splintering the dais, just to show That he was lord of ice and snow, With sinews of wrought steel. His patience had been sorely tried By a recent blow dealt to his pride, When March, the stripling, dared To jeer at him with callow yells, And shake the hoary icicles From off the royal beard. Then at a most indecent time, The lusty youngster nearing prime, Gaining in reach and height, Had called out Winter to his face To meet him in a neutral place, And join in single fight. The gage accepted, Winter drew First blood, then beat him black and blue With Nordic thrust and swing, Till March at last, the wily fox, Clipped him on the equinox, And bashed him round the ring; And would have clearly had him down, Captured his domain and crown, When three parts through the bout, Had not the king with a trick malign, Cracked him on the nether sign, And March was counted out. So now, with an Alaskan ire, He donned in full his white attire, Lord of the Polar waste, And claimed before those flabby-thewed Contenders of a Southern brood, He would not be displaced. And yet before the week was passed, Neuralgic headaches thick and fast Were blinding him with tears; Despite the boast, he needed rest To stop that panting in his breast, That buzzing in his ears. He wandered to a frozen brook Beneath dank willows where he took His usual noon-day nap; He heard dull subterranean calls, Narcotic sounds from crystal falls, The climbing of the sap. He laid his head against a stump, One arm reclined upon a clump Of glaciated boulders; The other held his side--he had Pleuritic pains and very bad Rheumatic hips and shoulders. A sorry sight indeed he lay, A god-like being in decay-- Dead leaves were all around him: His favourite cave of ice was streaming, And many a fallen trunk was steaming, The day that April found him. With one glance at his swollen feet, Her diagnosis was complete, That dropsy had set in: She felt his pulse--"Lord, what a rate! His heart is in a parlous state, And colic roars within. "O shame, that March should thus surprise him, Without a thought to acclimatise him Towards a mellow age; I know another way benign To lead him through an anodyne Into his hermitage". She spent the morning in the search For twigs of alder and of birch And shoots of pussy willow; She wove these through a maze of fern, Added some moss on her return, And made the downiest pillow. Then with a bath of rain and sleet, She took the chilblains from his feet With tender lubrication: She poulticed out the angry spots, The kinks and cramps and spinal knots, And all discoloration. So with her first aid rendered, she Began her ancient sorcery, Quietly to restore His overburdened mind to sleep, Dreamless and passionless and deep, Out of her wild-wood lore. It took three days to get his throat Clear of that wheezy guttural note, His brain to vaporise; She conjured him at last to rest, Folded his hands across his breast And sealed up both his eyes. Then over his lank form she threw The lightest coverlet she knew, Brought from her deepest glades-- The whites and greys of quiet mood, Pale pinks and yellows all subdued With brown and purple shades; The choicest of her tapestries, Spring beauties and anemones Plucked from the winter grass, Wake-robins too: with these she took Trout-lilies from a woodland brook And cool hepaticas. With one thing more, her task was done-- Something she found hid from the sun Within a valley low; "Just what he needs, dawn fresh and white-- The north wind brought it over-night-- A counterpane of snow. "So now this makes his bed complete". She doubled it across his feet, And tucked it neatly in; Then taking on a mood austere, Kneeling, she whispered in his ear, A word of discipline. "Take heed! Before you enter sleep, Swear by your honour you will keep A vow which I propose: Listen--an oath, which if you break, 'Twill carry for you in its wake A multitude of woes. "For eight months now, without demur, You give your promise not to stir, And not to roar or wail, Or send your north wind with its snow, Or yet the east whose vapours blow Their shuddering sleet and hail. "So help you then for evermore-- If you so much as cough or snore, My seven younger sisters, Who follow after me in turn, Are under strict command to burn Your body up with blisters. "Of autumn, too, you must beware, For if you rise to scent the air, Our Indian-summer maid Will plague you past what you endure, Until you think your temperature One hundred Centigrade. "But if you keep this honest vow, I pledge their virtue, here and now, To rouse you in December; Then you may come on Christmas Day With furs and bells, reindeer and sleigh-- But, hand on heart--remember!" And now, to make the pledge come true, She walked around the king and drew Three circles on his breast; Murmured a charm, then bending down, She graciously removed the crown, And left him to his rest. CHERRIES "I'll never speak to Jamie again"-- Cried Jennie, "let alone wed, No not till blackbirds' wings grow white, And crab-apple trees grow cherries for spite, But I'll marry Percy instead." But Jamie met her that self-same day, Where crab-apple trees outspread, And poured out his heart like a man insane, And argued until he became profane, That he never meant what he said. Now strange as it seems, the truth must be told, So wildly Jamie pled, That cherries came out where the crab-apples grew, And snow-winged blackbirds came down from the blue, And feasted overhead. A FELINE SILHOUETTE They faced each other, taut and still; Arched hickory, neck and spine; Heads down, tails straight, with hair of quill, The fence--the battleline. The slits within their eyes describe The nature of their feud; Each came to represent a tribe Which never was subdued. One minute just before they fought, Before their blood called--"Time", One told the other what he thought In words I cannot rhyme. They hit each other in mid-air In one terrific bound, And even yet, as I'm aware, They have not struck the ground. THE CHILD AND THE WREN (To Claire) It took three weeks to make them friends-- The wren in fear the maid molest Those six white eggs within the nest She built up at the gable-ends. What fearful language might be heard (If only English she could speak) On every day of the first week, All from the throat of that small bird! The scolding died away, and then The fear was followed by surprise At such sky-blue within the eyes, That travelled from the girl to wren. But that third week! I do not know-- It's neither yours to tell nor mine-- Some understanding glance or sign Had passed between them to and fro; For never was her face so flushed, Never so brilliant blue her eye At any gift that I could buy, As at the news when in she rushed To tell us that the wren had come, With flutter and hop and gurgling sound, From gable to tree, to shrub, to ground, Right to her hand to get a crumb. FROST The frost moved up the window-pane Against the sun's advance, In line and pattern weaving there Rich scenes of old romance-- Armies on the Russian snows, Cockade, sword, and lance. It spun a web more magical, Each moment creeping higher, For marble cities crowned the hills With turret, fane and spire, Till when it struck the flaming sash, The Kremlin was on fire. A NOVEMBER LANDSCAPE November came today and seized the whole Of the autumnal store of reds, and left But drabs and yellows on a land bereft Of bird and leaf, of body and of soul. Outside my window now rain-winds patrol The earth; last August elms and birches seem Like half-remembered legends in a dream; Melodious myths--the thrush and oriole. Such strange delusions when November weaves The sense of desolation and regret Through clay and stubble, through dead ferns and leaves As here lie sodden on the ground: and yet This was the story told six months ago, When April lured the crocus through the snow. MAGIC To order sun and stars to change their course, To gather flowers from the Arctic snows, Command a stream flow upward to its source, Or make a desert blossom as a rose: These things Aladdin taught us; and we saw How to distil a rapture from a moan, And override the sternest natural law By straight appeal to a more sovereign throne. More than a dream to-night--that miracle. Winter has bridged the autumn back to spring; For suddenly you entered and your spell Had power to start a desert blossoming: But tarry long--the instant you depart, Sand will resume its drift about my heart. COMRADES You--that could not stand the dust Of a day's dry weather, Nor in high winds Shoulder a load together, Without a faith that was broken, And a love consumed By the hot marl of words That were spoken-- Do you not know that a hemlock root Will enfold you together, Though fair be the sky Or foul be the weather? To that same bed you shall come, When the ear shall be deaf And the lips be dumb; Where under the turf, Not a note shall be heard, From the cry of a wren To the thunder of surf. ONE HOUR OF LIFE This little face will never know-- Cut of wind or bite of snow: The sea will never wind its sheet Around those pallid hands and feet. Nor shall its sleeping heart, grown cold After a pulse of life, unfold That futile challenge on the face Of one who with a last embrace Could only cheat the earth to save The plunder for another grave: But in that hour of battle she Forgot the patience of the sea. HORIZONS You would not come when you were near, And when the lamp was lit, And though you always knew I'd hear Your call and answer it. Now you would speed across the sea, To find the door ajar... The lamp is out, and as for me, I could not call so far. DOORS Daylight now is unavailing, You will come no more, Call of voice or bell unheeding Through life's open door. Only night may work the magic With its wand of sleep, Only when the hour is darkest And the dream is deep. Welcome then the unawakening, Should you come no more But when voice or bell is calling Through another door. THE ARMISTICE SILENCE Since Death breathed on those youthful hearts that burned Once in the fierce exchange of wounds, and healed All feuds with his own limitless forgiving; Should Life now wait on Death before it learned A sacrificial secret that concealed A reconciliation from the living? How comes it then, that in a kindred way, The hosts of alien dead should take salute From flags half-lowered, like ours, upon the staffs? And--like our own--upon Remembrance Day, The mothers of our foes should stand so mute Before the letters on their cenotaphs? DREAMS Your body slouched before a dying hearth, Your pulse just ticking in its faded case, A greyness as of chill December earth Recording ninety winters on your face; When suddenly as if discovering wings, Your spirit soared into a world of dream, And high romance shot through your voyaging, Like laughter rippling from a mountain stream. What if one hour could eighty seasons shed, And bring those youthful murmurs to your lips-- Just one slight drowsy tilting of your head Restore you to your seas and skies and ships; How should with deeper dream the ocean burn In amethyst upon its western foam, And lures unknown to earth arise to turn Those blanched hands on the tiller towards your home! TIME-WORN What magic long ago was in your footstep, That changed each night to day, And swung high noon to midnight every hour You went away. How long the time--is now beyond my telling, With days become as years, And that last pledge of your returning--seasons In arrears! I only know my heart is beating slowly: Come--and swift your feet! Or else there will be neither noon nor midnight When we meet. TO ANGELINA, AN OLD NURSE She lingers in our memory even yet, Like an aroma or an anecdote, Chipped from the 'nineties with her silhouette Begemmed with buttons from the shoes to throat; Her paper curls, her parlour pompadour, Her leg-o'-mutton sleeves, the shawl she wore; So trussed with cord and whalebone that she faced The near annihilation of her waist. Stark as a rampike under winter skies, She brooded on us with her deep-set eyes That never slept: mournful and thin was she, Like something borrowed from eternity. She never tucked us in our beds at night, But feared we should not see the next day's light; And when in course of time the morning broke, She could not understand it that we woke. She watched for every sneeze, for every whoop, And even breadcrumbs in our throats was croup. A lengthy spell of laughter was a fit, And she could always put a stop to it. Though healthy and as active as young beavers, She always saw in us a soil for fevers. When we were sound asleep within our cots, She'd listen to our breathing, bending down With many a murmur, many an anxious frown, And turn us over on the search for spots, Spots on the back and chest and diaphragm, Spots on the tongue and throat _ad nauseam_-- It might have been a sunburn or the glow Left over from a joy-ride in the snow, But measles, chicken-pox or scarlatina Was always present there to Angelina. And when, our stomachs full, we went to bed, Heavy with purloined cake instead of bread, And gave a bilious scream within our sleep, Or called her name--Lord, how her blood would creep! This was delirium--her greatest fear, The last of all the mortal ills that shocked her, She knew that the eternal imps were near, And sent at once for clergyman and doctor. That town of ours had no apothecary, And faith, for us he was not necessary. For Angelina had the cupboards stacked With every known and unknown medicine-- Hundreds of bottles, till the household smacked Of things malodorous, day out, day in; Powders and pills for every malady, Goose oil and turkey rhubarb, turpentine, And still more oil, pine syrup, senna tea, Sulphur and blackstrap, tonics for the spring, Liquids unnamed--acid and alkaline, And all most pungent and disquieting. She used not only standard remedies By which all mothers classify the seasons: She improvised for all emergencies And filled us up for most fictitious reasons Before the meals or after, on retiring, Or anytime when chilled or just perspiring; The moment that we felt unduly merry, It was our failing appetite, she said-- She touched our temples, charted out the head, And reached at once for essence of wild cherry. But then, her first and last line of defence, The utmost limit of her confidence, Was what she kept upon the highest board. 'Twas there her rancid Dead Sea salts were stored. This saturated brine she daily poured With senna down our throats in fixed routine. What mattered it to her that we should go At anytime into the world unseen, With spirits unprepared or hearts unclean; It satisfied her conscience quite to know That if we died, we died at least saline. And yet, we know, that failing Angelina, Our infancy and childhood would have been a Most dull and unheroic sort of thing. She gave to life its deepest flavouring, She taught us tastes, improved our deglutition. We loved her with a pale sardonic love-- The way she kept our thoughts on things above, Etherialised our bodies by attrition, The way she proved, despite our apprehensions, That all she did was with the best intentions. It's twenty-seven years ago today, That sainted Angelina passed away, Answering the summons of an evening bell. Her soul or wraith or whatsoe'er it be, That's left from her corporeality, Spun out upon its voyage. Whither? Well, It matters not: but this one thing we know, That most unhappy would the old nurse be, If somehow she were not allowed to go Throughout the nurseries of the nebulae, Stalking at will, administrative, grim, With spoon or cup in hand full to the brim With oil designed for the felicity Of young and fever-spotted cherubim. JOCK O' THE LINKS Ah Jock! I'm sure that as a right Good honest friend I ken ye, And damned be he that would indite A scornful word agen' ye: A self-controlled God-fearin' Scot, You fight with all that's evil, But every time you top your shot The odds are with the devil. A softer heart in human breast I do not know another, And many a time, in many a test, You've proved yourself a brother. That man, I'll swear, is not alive More temperate in speech, But every time you fan your drive I get beyond your reach. That God is partial to the plaid, Long-suffering, too, I've heard; I hope he was the day I had You stymied on the third; I cannot vouch for rumour, but One thing I trust is clear, That when He saw you miss your putt, He turned His one deaf ear. I'm thankful, too, that when you dub Your spoon, it's not on me You break your new steel-shafted club But on your Highland knee. And wise I have been to abstain From comments on your stance, With pibrochs crashing through your brain, Culloden through your glance. TATTERHEAD The old man's vacant stare was out to sea, His back against the bollards on the quay. His face was of that wind-taut grain As if his skin had never brooked A calm; as if his eyes had looked On nothing but the whip of salt and rain. Day after day He spent that way, Making no sound But the scratch of a jack-knife on the bung Of a Demerara sugar-keg, And an intermittent thump Against a loosened timber as his leg, Made up of cork and hickory, swung Upon the swivel of his rump. "They call that fellow--Tatterhead, A harmless, witless fellow", said Leopold to Theodore, As arm in arm they strolled along the shore. "A beastly, uneventful life indeed", Quoth Leopold, whose tender mouth Was sucking at a chocolate meraschino. "They say he cannot write or read", This from the lips of Theodore, Whose head was sleekly combed below A tilted Borsalino. "Come, let us go; these dreary rains!" So home they went--and with their deadly canes, They murdered dandelions by the score. But eighteen years before, one wild March night, When those young bloods, In the rose glow of candelabra light, And smooth with olive oil and Castile suds, Were drooling on their bibs, This weazened tar, through bonds of ice and hemp, Incorporate with a wheel, Had watched two shuddering jibs Dip to a plunging keel, In a northern strait--somewhere Within the track of Frobisher. THE CONVICT HOLOCAUST (Columbus, Ohio, 1930) Waiting their turn to be identified, After their fiery contact with the walls, Three hundred pariahs ranged side by side Upon the floors along the cattle stalls! The fires consumed their numbers with their breath, Charred out their names: though many of the dead Gave proof of valour, just before their death, That Caesar's legions might have coveted. But these, still subject to the law's commands, Received the last insignia of the cell: The guards went through them, straightened out their hands, And with the ink-brush got the thumb-prints well. THE DRAG-IRONS He who had learned for thirty years to ride The seas and storms in punt and skiff and brig, Would hardly scorn to take before he died His final lap in Neptune's whirligig. But with his Captain's blood he did resent, With livid silence and with glassy look, This fishy treatment when his years were spent-- To come up dead upon a grapnel hook. A LEE-SHORE Her heart cried out--"Come home, come home", When the storm beat in at the door, When the window showed a spatter of foam, And her ear rang with the roar Of the reef; and she called again, "Come home", To the ship in reach of the shore. "But not to-night", flashed the signal light From the Cape that guarded the bay, "No, not to-night", rang the foam where the white Hard edge of the breakers lay; "Keep away from the crash of the storm, at its height, Keep away from the land, keep away". "Come home", her heart cried out again, "For the edge of the reef is white." But she pressed her face to the window-pane, And read the flash of the signal light; Then her voice called out when her heart was slain, "Keep away, my love, to-night". THE PURSUIT One glance at my pursuer, and I fled. Monsters had chased me many times before, But nothing with this tongue and with this roar; For every time I turned my head, It changed its shape, A dragon now, and now a dinosaur, Now hound, now hippogriff, With flowing mane and mouth agape. It followed me from cliff to cliff, Through sea-weed on the shore, And out into the tide-- This hungry, fetid carnivore, Greenish-scaled and fire-eyed, This hound, this centipede, This terror of Satanic breed. It gained on me at every stride, Then struck--I do not know The part of me that took the blow; I thought it was my collar-bone; I woke, and heard a voice... "You sinner! Next time you eat roast duck for dinner, You sleep alone". THE FUGITIVE We reached the lake when day's last hours were strung To themes that made more deep the forest hush-- Whisper of leaf; the vesper of a thrush; The whirr of plover wings. A rainbow hung Above a waterfall. To north, age-old Hemlocks were tipped by blue of Tyrian dye. Through spruces jet against the western sky The level sun was pouring tides of gold. Along the shore a cry rose to assail His ear, distant, but loud enough to start Wild echoes from the hammers at his heart-- A deep recurrent baying at a trail. Of all invading discords, this--to break A sunset-thrush concerto on a lake. THE 6000 For creatures of this modern breed, Reared from the element of flame, Designed to match a storm for speed, Ionia would have found a name, Like Mercury or Bucephalus-- Some picturesque immortal label That lifts a story into fable, Out of the myths of Uranus; Then changed its root to demonise The nature of its strength and size With fictions out of Tartarus. Those giants of Vulcan, leather-skinned, Whose frightful stare monocular Made mad the coursers of the wind, And chased the light of the morning star Away from the Sicilian shore, Would have been terror-blind before This forehead which, had it been known In Greek or Scandinavian lore, Had turned the hierarchs to stone, Had battered down the Martian walls, Reduced to dust Jove's arsenals, Or rammed the battlements of Thor. His body black as Erebus Accorded with the hue of night; His central eye self-luminous Threw out a cone of noon-day light, Which split the gloom and then flashed back The diamond levels of the track. No ancient poet ever saw Just such a monster as could draw The Olympian tonnage of a load Like this along an iron road; Or ever thought that such a birth-- The issue of an inventor's dream-- With breath of fire and blood of steam, Could find delivery on this earth. In his vast belly was a pit, Which even Homer would admit, Or Dante, searching earth and hell, Possessed no perfect parallel. Evolved from no Plutonian forge, The tender, like a slave, that followed, Conveyed bitumen to his gorge, Which on the instant it was swallowed Ran black through crimson on to white. Above the mass floated a swirl Of crystal shapes, agate and pearl And rose, like imps a-chase, and light As thistledown, while the blast roared With angry temperatures that soared To seven hundred Fahrenheit. Outside, the engine's dorsal plate, Above the furnace door ajar, Revealed the boiler's throbbing rate, By dial fingers animate, Like pulses at the jugular. For every vital inch of steel, A vibrant indicator read Two hundred pounds plus twenty-five, Waiting for the hour to drive Their energy upon the wheel In punches from the piston head. And there another one supplied The measure of the irrigation, Whereby the lubricating tide, Through linear runs and axle curves, Made perfect his articulation. And ramifying copper wire Made up the system of his nerves, In keeping with his lungs of fire. Now with his armoured carapace On head and belly, back and breast, The Taurian prepared to face The blurring stretches of the west. To him it was of no concern The evening gale was soon to turn To the full stature of a storm That would within an hour transform The ranges for a thousand miles, Close up all human thoroughfares, Sweep down through canyons and defiles, And drive the cougars to their lairs. A lantern flashed out a command, A bell was ringing as a hand Clutched at a throttle, and the bull, At once obedient to the pull, Began with bellowing throat to lead By slow accelerating speed Six thousand tons of caravan Out to the spaces--there to toss The blizzard from his path across The prairies of Saskatchewan. THE RITUAL I She took her name beneath according skies With ringing harbour cheers, and in the lee Of hills derived her birthright to the sea-- The adoration of a thousand eyes. Each bulwark ran its way from stern to prow, With the slim tracery of a sea-gull's wing, And--happy augury for the christening-- The bottle broke in rainbows on her bow. Beyond the port in roll and leap and curl, In the rich hues of sunlight on the spray, And in the march of tides--swept down the bay The pageant of the morning, to the skirl Of merry pipers as the rising gale Sounded a challenge to her maiden sail. II She left her name under revolted skies, Before the break of day, upon a rock Whose long and sunken ledge met the full shock Of an Atlantic storm, and with the cries Of the curlews issuing from dark caves, Accompanied by the thud of wings from shags That veered down from their nests upon the crags To pounce on bulwarks shattered by the waves. And the birthright that was granted for a brief, Exultant hour with cheers and in the lee Of hills was now restored unto the sea, Amidst the grounded gutturals of the reef, And with the grind of timbers on the sides Of cliffs resounding with the march of tides. PRINTED BY WALTER LEWIS, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND * * * * * By E. J. PRATT Newfoundland Verse The Witches' Brew Titans The Iron Door The Roosevelt and the Antinoe Verses of the Sea [The end of _Many Moods_ by E. J. Pratt]