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In
Divers Tones
by
Charles G.D. Roberts
Edited
by Tracy Ware
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THE
TANTRAMAR REVISTED
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Summers
and summers have come, and gone with the flight
of the swallow;
Sunshine and thunder have been, storm, and winter,
and frost;
Many and many a sorrow has all but died from remembrance,
Many a dream of joy fall’n in the shadow of
pain.
Hands of chance and change have marred, or moulded,
or broken,
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Busy
with spirit or flesh, all I most have adored;
Even the bosom of Earth is strewn with heavier shadows,—
Only in these green hills, aslant to the sea, no
change!
Here where the road that has climbed from the inland
valleys and woodlands,
Dips from the hill-tops down, straight to the base
of the hills,—
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Here,
from my vantage-ground, I can see the scattering
houses,
Stained with time, set warm in orchards, meadows,
and wheat,
Dotting the broad bright slopes outspread to southward
and eastward,
Wind-swept all day long, blown by the south-east
wind.
Skirting the sunbright uplands stretches a riband
of meadow,
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Shorn
of the laboring grass, bulwarked well from the sea,
Fenced on its seaward border with long clay dikes
from the turbid
Surge and flow of the tides vexing the Westmoreland
shores.
Yonder, toward the left, lie broad the Westmoreland
marshes,—
Miles on miles they extend, level, and grassy, and
dim,
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Clear
from the long red sweep of flats to the sky in the
distance,
Save for the outlying heights, green-rampired Cumberland
Point;
Miles on miles outrolled, and river-channels divide
them,—
Miles on miles of green, barred by the hurtling
gusts.
Miles on miles beyond the tawny bay is Minudie.
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There
are the low blue hills; villages gleam at their
feet.
Nearer a white sail shines across the water, and
nearer
Still are the slim, gray masts of fishing boats
dry on the flats.
Ah, how well I remember those wide red flats, above
tide-mark
Pale with scurf of the salt, seamed and baked in
the sun!
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Well
I remember the piles of blocks and ropes, and the
net-reels
Wound with the beaded nets, dripping and dark from
the sea!
Now at this season the nets are unwound; they hang
from the rafters
Over the fresh-stowed hay in upland barns, and the
wind
Blows all day through the chinks, with the streaks
of sunlight, and sways them
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Softly
at will; or they lie heaped in the gloom of a loft.
Now at this season the reels are empty and idle;
I see them
Over the lines of the dikes, over the gossiping
grass.
Now at this season they swing in the long strong
wind, thro’ the lonesome
Golden afternoon, shunned by the foraging gulls.
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Near
about sunset the crane will journey homeward above
them;
Round them, under the moon, all the calm night long,
Winnowing soft gray wings of marsh-owls wander and
wander,
Now to the broad, lit marsh, now to the dusk of
the dike.
Soon, thro’ their dew-wet frames, in the live
keen freshness of morning,
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Out
of the teeth of the dawn blows back the awakening
wind.
Then, as the blue day mounts, and the low-shot
shafts of the sunlight
Glance from the tide to the shore, gossamers jewelled
with dew
Sparkle and wave, where late sea-spoiling fathoms
of drift-net
Myriad-meshed, uploomed sombrely over the land.
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Well
I remember it all. The salt raw scent of the margin;
While, with men at the windlass, groaned each reel,
and the net,
Surging in ponderous lengths, uprose and coiled
in its station;
Then each man to his home,—well I remember
it all!
Yet, as I sit and watch, this present peace of
the landscape,—
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Stranded
boats, these reels empty and idle, the hush,
One gray hawk slow-wheeling above yon cluster of
haystacks,—
More than the old-time stir this stillness welcomes
me home.
Ah the old-time stir, how once it stung me with
rapture,—
Old-time sweetness, the winds freighted with honey
and salt!
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Yet
will I stay my steps and not go down to the marsh-land,—
Muse and recall far off, rather remember than see,—
Lest on too close sight I miss the darling illusion,
Spy at their task even here the hands of chance
and change.
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