|
THE
HEIGHT OF LAND
|
|
HERE
is the height of land:
The watershed on either hand
Goes down to Hudson Bay
Or Lake Superior;
The stars are up, and far away |
5 |
The
wind sounds in the wood, wearier
Than the long Ojibway cadence
In which Potàn the Wise
Declares the ills of life
And Chees-que-ne-ne makes a mournful sound |
10 |
Of acquiescence.
The fires burn low
With just sufficient glow
To light the flakes of ash that play
At being moths, and flutter away
To fall in the dark and die as ashes: |
15 |
Here
there is peace in the lofty air,
And Something comes by flashes
Deeper than peace;—
The spruces have retired a little space
And left a field of sky in violet shadow |
20 |
| With
stars like marigolds in a water-meadow.
NOW
the Indian guides are dead asleep;
There is no sound unless the soul can hear
The gathering of the waters in their sources.
WE have come up through the spreading lakes
|
25 |
From
level to level,—
Pitching our tents sometimes over a revel
Of roses that nodded all night,
Dreaming within our dreams,
To wake at dawn and find that they were captured |
30 |
With
no dew on their leaves;
Sometimes mid sheaves
Of braken and dwarf-cornel, and again
On a wide blue-berry plain
Brushed with the shimmer of a bluebird's wing; |
35 |
A rocky
islet followed
With one lone poplar and a single nest
Of white-throat-sparrows that took no rest
But sang in dreams or woke to sing,—
To the last portage and the height of land—: |
40 |
Upon
one hand
The lonely north enlaced with lakes and streams,
And the enormous targe of Hudson Bay,
Glimmering all night
In the cold arctic light; |
45 |
On the
other hand
The crowded southern land
With all the welter of the lives of men.
But here is peace, and again
That Something comes by flashes |
50 |
Deeper
than peace,—a spell
Golden and inappellable
That gives the inarticulate part
Of our strange being one moment of release
That seems more native than the touch of time, |
55 |
And
we must answer in chime;
Though yet no man may tell
The secret of that spell
Golden and inappellable.
NOW
are there sounds walking in the wood,
|
60 |
And
all the spruces shiver and tremble,
And the stars move a little in their courses.
The ancient disturber of solitude
Breathes a pervasive sigh,
And the soul seems to hear |
65 |
The
gathering of the waters at their sources;
Then quiet ensues and pure starlight and dark;
The region-spirit murmurs in meditation,
The heart replies in exaltation
And echoes faintly like a inland shell |
70 |
Ghost
tremors of the spell;
Thought reawakens and is linked again
With all the welter of the lives of men.
HERE on the uplands where the air is clear
We think of life as of a stormy scene,— |
75 |
Of tempest,
of revolt and desperate shock;
And here, where we can think, on the bright uplands
Where the air is clear, we deeply brood on life
Until the tempest parts, and it appears
As simple as to the shepherd seems his flock: |
80 |
A Something
to be guided by ideals—
That in themselves are simple and serene—
Of noble deed to foster noble thought,
And noble thought to image noble deed,
Till deed and thought shall interpenetrate, |
85 |
Making
life lovelier, till we come to doubt
Whether the perfect beauty that escapes
Is beauty of deed of thought or some high thing
Mingled of both, a greater boon than either:
Thus we have seen in the retreating tempest |
90 |
The
victor-sunlight merge with the ruined rain,
And from the rain and sunlight spring the rainbow.
THE ancient disturber of solitude
Stirs his ancestral potion in the gloom,
And the dark wood |
95 |
Is stifled
with the pungent fume
Of charred earth burnt to the bone
That takes the place of air.
Then sudden I remember when and where,—
The last weird lakelet foul with weedy growths |
100 |
And
slimy viscid things the spirit loathes,
Skin of vile water over viler mud
Where the paddle stirred unutterable stenches,
And the canoes seemed heavy with fear,
Not to be urged toward the fatal shore |
105 |
Where
a bush fire, smouldering, with sudden roar
Leaped on a cedar and smothered it with light
And terror. It had left the portage-height
A tangle of slanted spruces burned to the roots,
Covered still with patches of bright fire |
110 |
Smoking
with incense of the fragrant resin
That even then began to thin and lessen
Into the gloom and glimmer of ruin.
'TIS
overpast. How strange the stars have grown;
The presage of extinction glows on their crests
|
115 |
And
they are beautied with impermanence;
They shall be after the race of men
And mourn for them who snared their fiery pinions,
Entangled in the meshes of bright words.
A LEMMING stirs the fern and in the mosses |
120 |
Eft-minded
things feel the air change, and dawn
Tolls out from the dark belfries of the spruces.
How often in the autumn of the world
Shall the crystal shrine of dawning be rebuilt
With deeper meaning! Shall the poet then, |
125 |
Wrapped
in his mantle on the height of land,
Brood on the welter of the lives of men
And dream of his ideal hope and promise
In the blush sunrise? Shall he base his flight
Upon a more compelling law than Love |
130 |
As Life's
atonement; shall the vision
Of noble deed and noble thought immingled
Seem as uncouth to him as the pictograph
Scratched on the cave side by the cavedweller
To us of the Christ-time? Shall he stand |
135 |
With
deeper joy, with more complex emotion,
In closer commune with divinity,
With the deep fathomed, with the firmament charted,
With life as simple as a sheep-boy's song,
What lies beyond a romaunt that was read |
140 |
Once
on a morn of storm and laid aside
Memorious with strange immortal memories?
Or shall he see the sunrise as I see it
In shoals of misty fire the deluge-light
Dashes upon and whelms with purer radiance, |
145 |
And
feel the lulled earth, older in pulse and motion,
Turn the rich lands and the inundant oceans
To the flushed color, and hear as now I hear
The thrill of life beat up the planet's margin
And break in the clear susurrus of deep joy |
150 |
That
echoes and reëchoes in my being?
O Life is intuition the measure of knowledge
And do I stand with heart entranced and burning
At the zenith of our wisdom when I feel
The long light flow, the long wind pause, the deep |
155 |
Influx
of spirit, of which no man may tell
The Secret, golden and inappellable? |
|
|
|
