Duncan Campbell Scott
The Fifteenth of April
PALLID saffron glows the broken stubble,
Brimmed with silver lie the ruts,
Purple the ploughed hill;
Down a sluice with break and bubble
Hollow falls the rill;
Falls and spreads and searches,
Where, beyond the wood,
Starts a group of silver birches,
Bursting into blood.
Under Venus sings the vesper sparrow,
Down a path of rosy gold
Floats the slender moon;
Ringing from the rounded barrow
Rolls the robin’s tune;
Lighter than the robin—hark!
Quivering silver-strong
From the field a hidden shore-lark
Shakes his sparkling song.
Now the dewy sounds begin to dwindle,
Dimmer grow the burnished rills,
Breezes creep and halt,
Soon the guardian night shall kindle
In the violet vault,
All the twinkling tapers,
Touched with steady gold,
Burning through the lawny vapors
Where they float and fold.
Above St Irénée
I RESTED on the breezy height,
In cooler shade and clearer air,
Beneath a maple tree;
Below, the mighty river took
Its sparkling shade and sheening light
Down to the sombre sea,
And clustered by the leaping brook
The roofs of white St Irénée.
The sapphire hills on either hand
Broke down upon the silver tide,
The river ran in streams,
In streams of mingled azure-grey,
With here a broken purple band,
And whorls of drab, and beams
Of shattered silver light astray,
Where far away the south shore gleams.
I walked a mile along the height
Between the flowers upon the road,
Asters and golden-rod;
And in the gardens pinks and stocks,
And gaudy poppies shaking light,
And daisies blooming near the sod,
And lowly pansies set in flocks,
With purple monkshood overawed.
And there I saw a little child,
Between the tossing golden-rod,
Coming along to me;
She was a tender little thing,
So fragile-sweet, so Mary-mild,
I thought her name Marie;
No other name methought could cling
To any one so fair as she.
And when we came at last to meet,
I spoke a simple word to her,
“Where are you going, Marie?”
She answered, and she did not smile,
But oh! her voice,—her voice so sweet,
“Down to St Irénée,”
And so passed on to walk her mile,
And left the lonely road to me.
And as the night came on apace,
With stars above the darkened hills,
I heard perpetually,
Chiming along the falling hours,
On the deep dusk that mellow phrase,
“Down to St Irénée:”
It seemed as if the stars and flowers
Should all go there with me.
Off Rivière du Loup
O SHIP incoming from the sea
With all your cloudy tower of sail,
Dashing the water to the lee,
And leaning grandly to the gale;
The sunset pageant in the west
Has filled your canvas curves with rose,
And jewelled every toppling crest
That crashes into silver snows!
You know the joy of coming home
After long leagues to France or Spain;
You feel the clear Canadian foam
And the gulf water heave again.
Between these sombre purple hills
That cool the sunset’s molten bars,
You will go on as the wind wills,
Beneath the river’s roof of stars.
You will toss onward toward the lights
That spangle over the lone pier,
By hamlets glimmering on the heights,
By level islands black and clear:
You will go on beyond the tide,
Through brimming plains of olive sedge,
Through paler shallows light and wide,
The rapids piled along the ledge.
At evening off some reedy bay
You will swing slowly on your chain,
And catch the scent of dewy hay,
Soft blowing from the pleasant plain.
The End of the Day
I HEAR the bells at eventide
Peal slowly one by one,
Near and far off they break and glide;
Across the stream float faintly beautiful
The antiphonal bells of Hull;
The day is done, done, done,
The day is done.
The dew has gathered in the flowers,
Like tears from some unconscious deep:
The swallows whirl around the towers,
The light runs out beyond the long cloud bars,
And leaves the single stars;
’Tis time for sleep, sleep, sleep,
’Tis time for sleep.
The hermit thrush begins again,—
Timorous eremite—
That song of risen tears and pain,
As if the one he loved was far away:
‘Alas! another day—’
‘And now Good Night, Good Night,’
‘Good Night.’
A Flock of Sheep
OVER the field the bright air clings and tingles
In the gold sunset, while the red wind swoops;
Upon the nibbled knolls, and from the dingles,
The sheep are gathering in frightened groups.
From the wide field the laggards bleat and follow,
A drover hurls his cry and hooting laugh;
And one young swain, too glad to whoop or hollo,
Is singing wildly as he whirls his staff.
Now crowding into little groups and eddies
They swirl about and charge and try to pass;
The sheep-dog yelps and heads them off and steadies
And rounds and moulds them in a seething mass.
They stand a moment with their heads uplifted
Till the wise dog barks loudly on the flank,
They all at once roll over and are drifted
Down the small hill toward the river bank.
Covered with rusty marks and purple blotches
Around the fallen bars they flow and leap;
The wary dog stands by and keenly watches
As if he knew the name of every sheep.
Now down the road the nimble sound decreases,
The drovers cry, the dog delays and whines,
And now with twinkling feet and glimmering fleeces
They round and vanish past the dusky pines.
The drove is gone, the ruddy wind grows colder,
The singing youth puts up the heavy bars,
Beyond the pines he sees the crimson smoulder,
And catches in his eyes the early stars.
Memory
I SEE a schooner in the bay
Cutting the current into foam;
One day she flies and then one day
Comes like a swallow veering home.
I hear a water miles away
Go sobbing down the wooded glen;
One day it falls and then one day
Comes sobbing on the wind again.
Remembrance goes but will not stay;
That cry of unpermitted pain
One day departs and then one day
Comes sobbing to my heart again.
Home Song
THERE is rain upon the window,
There is wind upon the tree;
The rain is slowly sobbing,
The wind is blowing free:
It bears my weary heart
To my own country.
I hear the whitethroat calling,
Hid in the hazel ring;
Deep in the misty hollows
I hear the sparrows sing;
I see the bloodroot starting,
All silvered with the spring.
I skirt the buried reed-beds,
In the starry solitude:
My snowshoes creak and whisper,
I have my ready blood.
I hear the lynx-cub yelling
In the gaunt and shaggy wood.
I hear the wolf-tongued rapid
Howl in the rocky break;
Beyond the pines at the portage
I hear the trapper wake
His En roulant ma boulé,
From the clear gloom of the lake.
O! take me back to the homestead,
To the great rooms warm and low,
Where the frost creeps on the casement,
When the year comes in with snow.
Give me, give me the old folk
Of the dear long ago.
Oh, land of the dusky balsam,
And the darling maple tree,
Where the cedar buds and berries,
And the pine grows strong and free!
My heart is weary and weary
For my own country.
Life and Death
I THOUGHT of death beside the lonely sea,
That went beyond the limit of my sight,
Seeming the image of his mastery,
The semblance of his huge and gloomy might.
But firm beneath the sea went the great earth,
With sober bulk and adamantine hold,
The water but a mantle for her girth,
That played about her splendor fold on fold.
And life seemed like this dear familiar shore,
That stretched from the wet sands’ last wavy crease,
Beneath the sea’s remote and sombre roar,
To inland stillness and the wilds of peace.
Death seems triumphant only here and there;
Life is the sovereign presence everywhere.
Ottawa
CITY about whose brow the north winds blow,
Girdled with woods and shod with river foam,
Called by a name as old as Troy or Rome,
Be great as they, but pure as thine own snow;
Rather flash up amid the auroral glow,
The Lamia city of the northern star,
Than be so hard with craft or wild with war,
Peopled with deeds remembered for their woe.
Thou art too bright for guile, too young for tears,
And thou wilt live to be too strong for Time;
For he may mock thee with his furrowed frowns,
But thou wilt grow in calm throughout the years,
Cinctured with peace and crowned with power sublime,
The maiden queen of all the towered towns.