Ezra Hurlburt Stafford
Chinook
(At Stampede Pass)
MILDLY through the mists of night
Floats a breath of flowers sweet,
Warmly through the waning light
Wafts a wind with perfumed feet,
Down the gorge and mountain brook,
With the sound of wings—Chinook!
By no trail his spirits go,
Through the mountain passes high,
Where the moon is on the snow
And the screaming eagles fly,
Where the yawning canyon roars
With memories of misty shores.
On still prairies, mountain-locked,
Frost lies white upon the grass,
But where the witch of winter walked,
Now the summer’s masquers pass;
And at May’s refreshing breath
Tender flowers rose from death.
And the breeze, that on the Coast
Wakened softly at the morn,
Is on snowy prairies lost
When the twilight pales forlorn;
Sweet Chinook! who breathes betimes
Summer’s kiss in winter climes.
The Strange Vessel
(Quebec, 1759)
AND no one saw, while it was dark,
The outline of a sweeping barque,
Without a flag or light;
And no one counted, one by one,
Along her decks each silent gun,
That glimmered through the night.
And far above the water’s swell,
Upon a guarded citadel,
Arose the laugh of men;
But some upon the ramparts there
Felt Evil hurrying through the air,
And never laughed again.
The creak of sail, the splash of oar,
Were heard by none upon the shore;
And in the forest vale
None knew the ambush that was kept,
Nor saw a thousand men who crept
Along the narrow trail.
When day at last was breaking forth
There came two eagles flying north,
And on the morn awoke
The solemn pageantry of war,
And o’er the shining hills afar
Floated the rolling smoke.
The Last Orison
SHAPER of breathing lives, and Lord of all above,
Thy name I learned beside my mother’s knee;
She drew me to her arms, and said that Thou wert Love—
Oh, art Thou Love to me?
I cannot rear my thoughts amid the golden spheres,
Where roll the stars about Thy throne on high,
But here in lowly wise I call on Thee with tears,
And feel Thy presence nigh.
Childlike to Thee I looked when came the night of fear,
On Thee I laid my sorrows of the day;
The whole earth spake of One who seemed to be so near,
It was not hard to pray.
The bolted doors that lock the corridors of Time,
And bar the awful avenues of Space,
My soul at last shall pass, and then, O dream sublime!
I shall gaze on Thy face.