| 
 
|
Sophia
Almon Hensley
by
Wanda Campbell
|
Sophia Almon Hensley
1866-1946
Sophia
(Almon) Hensley was born in Bridgetown, Nova
Scotia, on May 31, 1866, and received her education
in England and Paris. While living in Windsor,
Nova Scotia she studied with Charles G.D. Roberts,
who encouraged her to submit her poetry to various
North American periodicals. Roberts’ poem
to the then twenty-year old poet, “To S—M”
(her middle name is Margaritta), appears in his
book In Divers Tones. He mentions her
again in an 1888 letter to William Douw Lighthall:
“I think you might get something of value
from my young & fair friend Miss Sophie
M. Almon, of Windsor, N.S. who has
written some good & thoughtful verse for the
Chicago Current & the Toronto Week.
I shall send you some of her stuff. A little
of it is markedly good” (86). Though
his misdirected praise may have hindered her chances
of being taken seriously, ten years later Roberts
was still writing on her behalf, this time to
a publishing firm about her romance called “Souls:”
Also
I know she is a clever, a mighty clever and
mightily attractive young woman! And I think
she will do good work, if she has not
already done it. I hope you may find the book
worth printing. But my advice is,—judge
the book before you meet the lady. Thus you
will be more likely to judge without prejudice!!
(Letters 244)
Her
first book of poetry entitled simply Poems was
published privately in 1889 and received a positive,
if brief, review in the Dominion Illustrated
Monthly, where Hensley’s verse was
then appearing along with that of Bliss Carman,
Agnes Maule Machar, and others:
Miss
Almon gives us her impressions of the actual
sights and sounds of the glorious world, so
fair, yet so sad—not transcripts, more
or less modified of the impressions of others,
or fancy sketches of what her own impressions
[Page 271] should or might
be, in certain circumstances. She thus makes
loyalty to truth the basis of her work. (279)
In
1889, she married the Halifax lawyer Hubert Hensley
and the couple moved to New York. In an 1893 article
entitled “Canadian Writers in New York,”
Hensley speaks on behalf of the “large number
of writers, born Canadians, Canadians in heart,
and hope, and ambition, who have been obliged
to make their home in other countries…when
they found their energies stunted by the narrowness
of the home field” (195-96). Henry James
Morgan describes Hensley in The Canadian Men
and Women of the Time (1912) as a “popular
speaker at women’s clubs” who believes
“in municipal ownership of public franchises,
in social tolerance and religious freedom”
(527-28).
In
her entry on Hensley in the Dictionary of
Literary Biography, Gwendolyn Davies describes
her as “an elegant woman and an independent
thinker” (DLB 99:165) and traces
the increasingly progressive and feminist directions
of Hensley’s writing which included three
more collections of poetry, a novel Love &
Company (Limited), a musical play Princess
Mignon in collaboration with her husband,
and two non-fiction studies of social issues,
Woman and the Race and Love and the
Woman of Tomorrow.
The
idea of basing Love & Company on a man and
a woman’s diaries may have come from Ludovic
Halevry’s A Marriage for Love,
which is disparagingly reviewed in the Dominion
Illustrated Monthly (1891), a journal in
which Hensley’s own work appears. It is
tempting to think that Hensley’s choice
of Mary Woolston for a pseudonym reflects a play
on Mary Wollstonecraft.
Out
of the Silence, a long poem published in
1900, is a poetic reflection on the drowned body
of a young prostitute resting in the Paris morgue.
The dead young woman addresses the statue of Mary,
Lady of the Pitying Heart, pleading for entry
into Heaven. The Way of a Woman, and Other
Poems published in 1928 and dedicated “to
all the lovers in the world” contains some
of Hensley’s finest poetry, including poems
about the homefront experience during the first
World War.
Davies
quotes from a 1934 letter by Hensley to Roberts
which reveals her continuing commitment to poetry:
“I am thinking of collecting the verses
written here and making a little volume, ‘Songs
of St. Mary’s Bay.’ Our bay is as
yet unsung” (DLB 99:164-65). Though
she spent much of her life away from Canada, including
three years on the island of Jersey from which
she was forced to flee because of the Nazi occupation,
Hensley [Page 272] always thought
of herself as Canadian, a sentiment expressed
in the poem “Repatriated.” She died
on February 10, 1946 and was buried in Nova Scotia.
Though she travelled the world, her first and
last poems were of the home place.
Selected
Bibliography
Poems
(Windsor, NS: Anslow, 1889)
A Woman’s Love Letters (New York:
Tait, 1895)
Out of the Silence (Westwood, Mass: Ariel,
1900)
The Heart of a Woman (New York: Putnam’s,
1906)
The Way of a Woman, and Other Poems (San
Diego: Canterbury, 1928)
“Editor’s
Table,” Dominion Illustrated Monthly
2:44 (4 May 1889): 279; Sophia Almon Hensley,
“Canadian Writers in New York,” Dominion
Illustrated Monthly 2:4 (May 1893): 195-96;
Almon Hensley, “The Society for the Study
of Life,” The Arena (November 1899):
614-20; Henry James Morgan, ed. The Canadian
Men and Women of the Time (Toronto: Briggs,
1912): 527-28; Charles G.D. Roberts, Collected
Letters of Charles G. D. Roberts, ed. Laurel
Boone (Fredericton: Goose Lane, 1989); Carole
Gerson, “Captain John Try-Davies and Sophia
Almon Hensley,” Canadian Notes and Queries
39 (Spring 1988): 10-11; Gwendolyn Davies, “Sophie
Almon Hensley,” Dictionary of Literary
Biography 99 (1990): 163-65; Gwendolyn Davies,
Studies in Maritime Literary History:
1760-1930 (Fredericton: Acadiensis, 1991): 18-20.
[Page 273]
|
|
|
|
I aimless
wandered thro’ the woods, and flung
My idle limbs upon a soft brown bank,
Where, thickly strewn, the worn-out russet leaves
Rustled a faint remonstrance at my tread.
The yellow fungi, shewing pallid stems, |
5 |
The
mossy lichen creeping o’er the stones
And making green the whitened hemlock-bark,
The dull wax of the woodland lily-bud,
On these my eye could rest, and I was still.
No sound was there save a low murmured cheep |
10 |
From
an ambitious nestling, and the slow
And oft-recurring plash of myriad waves
That spent their strength against the unheeding
shore.
Over and through a spreading undergrowth.
I saw the gleaming of the tranquil sea. |
15 |
The
woody scent of mosses and sweet ferns,
Mingled with the fresh brine, and came to me,
Bringing a laudanum to my ceaseless pain;
A quietness stole in upon me then,
And o’er my soul there passed a wave of peace.
|
20 |
Dominion
Illustrated Poems
1889
Monthly 16 February
1889 (2:103) |
|
|
|
My boat
is still in the reedy cove
Where the rushes hinder its onward course,
For I care not now if we rest or move
O’er the slumberous tide to the river’s
source.
My boat is fast in the tall dank weeds
|
5 |
And
I lay my oars in silence by,
And lean, and draw the slippery reeds
Through my listless fingers carelessly. [Page
274]
The bubbling froth of the surface foam
Clings close to the side of my moveless boat,
|
10 |
Like
endless meshes of honeycomb,—
And I break it off, and send it afloat.
A faint wind stirs, and I drift along
Far down the stream to its utmost bound,
And the thick white foam-flakes gathering strong
|
15 |
| Still
cling, and follow, and fold around.
Oh! the weary green of the weedy waste,
The thickening scum of the frothy foam,
And the torpid heart by the reeds embraced
And shrouded and held in its cheerless home.
|
20 |
The fearful stillness of wearied calm,
The tired quiet of ended strife,
The echoed note of a heart’s sad psalm,
The sighing end of a wasted life,—
The reeds cling close, and my cradle sways,
|
25 |
And
the white gull dips in the waters’ barm,
And the heart asleep in the twilight haze
Feels not its earth-bonds, knows not alarm. |
|
Dominion
Illustrated
Poems 1889
Monthly 27 April 1889
(2:259) |
|
|
|
They
stream across the fading western sky
A sable cloud, far o’er
the lonely leas;
Now parting into scattered
companies,
Now closing up the broken ranks, still high
And higher yet they mount, while, carelessly, |
5 |
Trail
slow behind, athwart the moving trees [Page
275]
A lingering few, ’round
whom the evening breeze
Plays with sad whispered murmurs as they fly.
A lonely figure, ghostly in the dim
And darkening twilight lingers
in the shade
|
10 |
Of
bending willows: “Surely God has laid
His curse on me,” he moans, “my strength
of limb
And old heart-courage fail
me, and I flee
Bowed with fell terror at
the augury.” |
|
Dominion
Illustrated
Poems 1889
Monthly 27 April 1889
(2:259) |
|
|
|
The
light has left the hill-side. Yesterday
These skies shewed blue
against the dusky trees,
The leaves’ soft murmur
in the evening breeze
Was music, and the waves danced in the bay.
Then was my heart, as ever, far away |
5 |
With
you,—and I could see you as one sees
A mirrored face,—and
happiness and ease
And hope were mine, in spite of long delay.
After these months of waiting, this is all!
Hope, dead, lies coffined,
shrouded in despair,
|
10 |
With
all the blessings of the outer air
Forgot, ’neath the black covering of a pall.
Only the darkening of the
woodland ways,
A heart’s low moaning
over wasted days. |
|
Poems
1889 |
|
|
|
No ripple
stirs the water,
No song-bird wakes the grove,
[Page 276]
Calm noon-tide sways his sceptre,
And hushes even love.
On earth the sun-god bending
|
5 |
Poureth
his wonderous store;
The soft-tongued tide, advancing,
Laps the unconscious shore.
The long, low isle of marsh-land
Stretches in weary waste,
|
10 |
By sloping
sand-banks guarded,
By winding weeds embraced.
Comes clearly from the open
The plash of distant oars,—
Over the rocky headland
|
15 |
The
snow-white sea-gull soars.
I see as if through dream-clouds,
I hear from far away,
The scorched air breathes its opiate,
The drowsy fancies stay;
|
20 |
I have no hopes or longings,
I scarce can feel your kiss,—
For thought, and joy and worship,
Another hour than this! |
|
Poems
1889 |
|
|
|
The
full-orbed Paschal moon; dark shadows flung
On the brown Lenten earth; tall spectral trees
Stand in their huge and naked strength erect,
And stretch wild arms towards the gleaming sky.
A motionless girl-figure, face upraised |
5 |
In the
strong moonlight, cold and passionless. [Page
277]
A proud spring sunset; opal-tinted sky,
Save where the western purple, pale and faint
With longing for her fickle Love,—content
Had merged herself into his burning red.
|
10 |
A fair
young maiden, clad in velvet robe
Of sombre green, stands in the golden glow,
One hand held up to shade her dazzled eyes,
A bunch of white Narcissus at her throat.
November’s day, dark, leaden, lowering,—
|
15 |
Grey
purple shadows fading on the hills;
Dreary and desolate the far expanse
And gloomy sameness of the open plain.
A peasant woman, in white wimpled hood,
White vest, and scarlet petticoat, surveys |
20 |
| The
meadow, with rough hands crossed on her breast.
A shining, shimmering, gracious, golden day;
The sated summer’s all pervading hush;
Warm luscious tints, glowing in earth and sky
On a low mossy bank, a little child,
|
25 |
His
golden curls twined in the reedy grass,
Clutching within his tear-stained feverish hands
The yellow blossoms of the Celandine,
Sobs out his heart in passionate childish grief. |
|
Poems
1889 |
|
|
|
Red
gleams the mountain ridge,
Slow the stream creeps
Under the old bent bridge,
And labor sleeps.
There are no restless birds,
|
5 |
No
leaves that stir, [Page 278]
Dark her gray mantle girds,
Night’s harbinger.
The storm-soul’s change and start
Pause, lull, and cease;
|
10 |
In my
unquiet heart
Is born a peace. |
|
A
Woman’s Love
Letters 1895 |
|
|
|
Dear,
I am lonely, for the bay is still
As any hill-girt lake; the
long brown beach
Lies bare and wet. As far
as eye can reach
There is no motion. Even on the hill
Where the breeze loves to
wander I can see |
5 |
No
stir of leaves, nor any waving tree.
There is a great red cliff that fronts my view
A bare, unsightly thing;
it angers me
With its unswerving grim
monotony.
The mackeral weir, with branching boughs askew
|
10 |
Stands
like a fire-swept forest, while the sea
Laps it, with soothing sighs,
continually.
There are no tempests in this sheltered bay,
The stillness frets me,
and I long to be
Where winds sweep strong
and blow tempestuously,
|
15 |
To stand
upon some hill-top far away
And face a gathering gale,
and let the stress
Of Nature’s mood subdue
my restlessness.
An impulse seizes me, a mad desire
To tear away that red-browed
cliff, to sweep
|
20 |
Its
crest of trees and huts into the deep,
To force a gap by axe, or storm, or fire, [Page
279]
And let rush in with motion
glad and free
The rolling waves of the
wild wondrous sea.
Sometimes I wonder if I am the child
|
25 |
Of
calm, law-loving parents, or a stray
From some wild gypsy camp.
I cannot stay
Quiet among my fellows; when this wild
Longing for freedom takes
me I must fly
To my dear woods and know
my liberty. |
30 |
It is this cringing to a social law.
That I despise, these changing,
senseless forms
Of fashion! And until a
thousand storms
Of God’s impatience shall reveal the flaw
In man’s pet system,
he will weave the spell |
35 |
About
his heart and dream that all is well.
Ah! Life is hard, Dear Heart, for I am left
To battle with my old-time
fears alone
I must live calmly on, and
make no moan
Though of my hoped-for happiness bereft.
|
40 |
Thou
wilt not come, and still the red cliff lies
Hiding my ocean from these
longing eyes. |
|
A
Woman’s Love
Letters 1895 |
|
|
|
There
is a long thin line of fading gold
In the far West, and the
transfigured leaves
On some slight, topmost
bough that sways and heaves
Hang limp and tremulous. Nor warm, nor cold
The pungent air, and, ’neath
the yellow haze, |
5 |
Show
flushed and glad the wild, October ways.
There is a soft enchantment in the air,
A mystery the Summer knows
not, nor [Page 280]
The sturdy, frost-crowned
Winter. Nature wore
Her blandest smile to-day, as here and there
|
10 |
I
wandered, elf-beset, through wood and field
And gleaned the glories
of the autumn yield.
A bunch of purple aster, golden-rod
Darkened by the first frost,
a drooping spray
Of scarlet barberry, and
tall and gray
|
15 |
The
silk-cored cotton with its bursting pod,
Some tarnished maple-boughs,
and, like a flash
Of sudden flame, a branch
of mountain ash.
She smiled, but it was not the welcoming smile
Of frank surrunder. As a
witching maid
|
20 |
In
gorgeous garments cunningly arrayed
Might smile and draw them closer, hers the guile
To let men hope, pray, labor
in love’s stress
Ere they her hidden beauties
may possess.
Deep in the heart of earth where the springs rise,
|
25 |
Down
with the sweet linnæa and the moss,
In the brown thrush’s
throat, where the pines toss
In Winter’s harrying storms her secret lies.
Ours the chill night-dews
and the waiting pain
Ere we her fairy wealth
may hope to gain. |
30 |
’Tis so with knowledge. Eagerly we turn
Great Wisdom’s page,
and when our clear eyes grow
Dim in the dusk of years,
and heads bend low
Weary at last, the truth we strove to learn
Is ours forever. But the
joy of sight |
35 |
Is
dearly bought, methinks, with Youth’s delight.
Fate, too, with chaffering voice and beckoning hand
Doles out our happiness;
we snatch at wealth
And pay with anxious care
and fading health.
We call for Love, and dream that we shall stand
[Page 281]
|
40 |
On
ground enchanted, but, though sweet the way,
The rocks are sharp, and
grief comes with the Day.
Even in love, Dear Heart, there is exchange
Of gifts and griefs, and
so I render thee
Vows for thy vows, and pay
unfalteringly
|
45 |
What
love demands, nor ever deem it strange.
And when the snow drifts
fast, and north-winds sting
I make no murmur, but await
the Spring. |
|
A
Woman’s Love
Letters 1895 |
|
|
|
Spring’s
face is wreathed in smiles. She had been driven
Hither and thither at the
surly will
Of treacherous winds till
her sweet heart was chill.
Into her grasp the sceptre has been given
And now she touches with
a proud young hand |
5 |
The
earth, and turns to blossoms all the land.
We catch the smile, the joyousness, the pride,
And share them with her.
Surely winter gloom
Is for the old, and frost
is for the tomb.
Youth must have pleasure, and the tremulous tide
|
10 |
Of
sun-kissed waves, and all the golden fire
Of Summer’s noontide
splendor of desire.
I have forgotten,—for the breath of buds
Is on my temples, if in
former days
I have known sorrow; I remember
praise,
|
15 |
And
calm content, and joy’s great ocean-floods,
And many dreams so sweet
that, in their place,
We would not welcome even
Truth’s fair face.
O Man to whom my heart hast leaned, dost know
Aught of my life? Sometimes
a strong despair
|
20 |
Enters
my soul and finds a lodging there; [Page
282]
Thou dost not know me, and the years will go
As these last months have
gone, and I shall be
Still far, still a strange
woman unto thee.
I do not blame thee. If there is a fault
|
25 |
Let
it be mine for surely had I tried
The door of my heart’s
home to open wide
No need had been for even Love’s assault.
And yet, methinks, somewhere
there is a key
Thou mightest have found,
and entered happily. |
30 |
I am no saint niched in a hallowed wall
For men to worship, but
I would compel
A level gaze. You teachers
who would tell
A woman’s place I do defy you all!
While justice lives, and
love with joy is crowned |
35 |
Woman
and man must meet on equal ground.
The deepest wrong is falsehood. She who sells
Her soul and body for a
little gain
In ease, or the world’s
notice, has a stain
Upon her soul no lighter for the bells
|
40 |
Of
marriage rites, and purer far is she
Who gives her all for love’s
sad ecstasy.
Canst thou not understand a nature strong
And passionate with impulses
that sway
With yearning tenderness
that must have way,
|
45 |
Yet
knows no ill desire, no touch of wrong?
If canst not then in God’s
name I pray
See me no more forever from
this day. [Page 283] |
|
A
Woman’s Love
Letters 1895 |
|
|
|
I stood
far off above the haunts of men
Somewhere, I know not, when
the sky was dim
From some worn glory, and
the morning hymn
Of the gay oriole echoed from the glen.
Wandering, I felt earth’s
peace, nor knew I sought |
5 |
A
visioned face, a voice the wind had caught.
I passed the waking things that stirred and gazed,
Thought-bound and heeded
not; the waking flowers
Drank in the morning mist,
dawn’s tender showers,
And looked forth for the Day-god who had blazed
|
10 |
His
heart away and died at sundown. Far
In the gray west faded a
loitering star.
It seemed that I had wandered through long years,
A life of years, still seeking
gropingly
A thing I dared not name;
now I could see
|
15 |
In the
still dawn a hope, in the soft tears
Of the deep-hearted violets
a breath
Of kinship, like the herald
voice of Death.
Slow moved the morning; where the hill was bare
Woke a reluctant breeze.
Dimly I knew
|
20 |
My
Day was come. The wind-blown blossoms threw
Their breath about me, and the pine-swept air
Grew to a shape, a mighty,
formless thing,
A phantom of the wood’s
imagining.
And as I gazed, spell-bound, it seemed to move
|
25 |
Its
tendril limbs, still swaying tremulously
As if in spirit-doubt; then
glad and free
Crystalled the being won from waiting grove
Into a human likeness. There
he stood,
The vine-browed shape of
Nature’s mortal mood. [Page 284] |
30 |
“Now have I found thee, Vision I have sought
These years, unknowing;
surely thou art fair
And inly wise, and on thy
tasselled hair
Glows Heaven’s own light. Passion and fame
are naught
To thy clear eyes, O Prince
of many lands,— |
35 |
Grant
me thy joy,” I cried, and stretched my hands.
No answer but the flourish of the breeze
Through the black pines.
Then, slowly, as the wind
Parts the dense cloud-forms,
leaving naught behind
But shapeless vapor, through the budding trees
|
40 |
Drifted
some force unseen, and from my sight
Faded my god into the morning
light.
Again alone. With wistful, straining eyes
I waited, and the sunshine
flecked the bank
Happy with arbutus and violets
where I sank
|
45 |
Hearing,
near by, a host of melodies,
The rapture of the woodthrush;
soft her mood
The love-mate, with such
golden numbers woo’d.
He ceased; the fresh moss-odors filled the grove
With a strange sweetness,
the dark hemlock boughs
|
50 |
Moved
soft, as though they heard the brooklet rouse
To its spring soul, and whisper low of love.
The white robed birches
stood unbendingly
Like royal maids, in proud
expectancy.
Athwart the ramage where the young leaves press
|
55 |
It
came to me, ah, call it what you will
Vision or waking dream,
I see it still!
Again a form born of the woodland stress
Grew to my gaze, and by
some secret sign
Though shadow-hid, I knew
the form was thine. |
60 |
The glancing sunlight made thy ruddy hair
A crown of gold, but on
thy spirit-face
There was no smile, only
a tender grace [Page 285]
Of love half doubt. Upon thy hand a rare
Wild bird of Paradise perched
fearlessly
|
65 |
With
radiant plumage, and still, lustrous eye.
And as I gazed I saw what I had deemed
A shadow near thy hand,
a dusky wing,
A bird like last year’s
leaves, so dull a thing
Beside its fellow; as the sunshine gleamed
|
70 |
Each
breast showed letters bright as crystalled rain,
The fair bird bore “Delight,”
the other “Pain.”
Then came thy voice: “O Love, wilt have my
gift?”
I stretched my glad hands
eagerly to grasp
The heaven-blown bird, gold-hued,
and longed to clasp
|
75 |
It close
and know it mine. Ere I might lift
The shining thing and hold
it to my breast
Again I heard thy voice
with vague unrest.
“These are twin birds and may not parted be.”
Full in thine eyes I gazed,
and read therein
|
80 |
The
paradox of life, of love, of sin,
As on a night of cloud and mystery
One darting flash makes
bright the hidden ways
And feet tread knowingly
though thick the haze.
Thy gift, if so I chose,—no other hand
|
85 |
Save
thine.—I reached and gathered to my heart
The quivering, sentient
things.—Sometimes I start
To know them hidden there.—If I should stand
Idly, some day, and one,—God
help me!—breast
A homing breeze,—my
brown bird knows its nest. [Page
286] |
90 |
A
Woman’s Love
Letters 1895 |
|
|
|
Poets
have sung the glory of man’s passion,
His mastery and strength
for love’s delight,
The woman’s part a tender, childlike yielding
To an o’erpowering
might,
A sentiment, a stroking of the lion,
|
5 |
A
gasp of joy, half pleasure and half fear,
Glad, in an answering echo of emotion,
To know herself so dear.
Now will I tell thee. In the summer dryness
Watch for the spark thrown
’mid the dusky furze,
|
10 |
See
the flames work a forest desolation
Before gray morning stirs.
See the calm river banked against o’erflowing!
A break, a gap,—and
the tumultuous tide
Of pent-up passion spreads in wild endeavor
|
15 |
Flooding
the mountain-side.
Dost thou not know that giving—not compliance—
The soul’s oblation—not
its sacrifice—
Is greater far than all the dreams of conquest
The minds of men entice?
|
20 |
Not only greater as the artist’s fancy
Is greater than the thing
his brush portrays,
The architect outlives, in grander soaring,
The temples he may raise;
But greater in its power for love’s expression,
|
25 |
Because,
beneath the quiet woman-guise
Dwells a supremer and a fiercer passion
Than ever meets the eyes.
Because,—how rarely, to man’s shame
and sorrow!
When understanding love
has found the key [Page 287]
|
30 |
Treasures
undreamed-of show, to stay, unstinting,
Man’s slight necessity.
Love does not ask. Ere yet the feeble flutter
Of dear Desire’s wings
far-off is heard
The woman bares her bosom for the homing
|
35 |
Of
the enchanted bird.
She knows no barter and she asks no answer,
Of man’s love-coinage
notes not the alloy,
And in the loving and the fuller giving
She lives the larger joy.
|
40 |
The
Heart of a Woman 1906 |
|
|
|
Leave
me alone here, proudly, with my dead,
Ye mothers of brave sons
adventurous;
He who once prayed: “If it be possible
Let this cup pass,”
will arbitrate for us.
Your boy with iron nerves and careless smile |
5 |
Marched
gaily by, and dreamed of glory’s goal;
Mine had blanched cheek, straight mouth, and close-
gripped hands,
And prayed that somehow
he might save his soul.
I do not grudge your ribbon or your cross,
The price of these my soldier,
too, has paid; |
10 |
I hug
a prouder knowledge to my heart,
The mother of the boy who
was afraid!
He was a tender child with nerves so keen
They doubled pain and magnified
the sad,
He hated cruelty and things obscene,
|
15 |
And
in all high and holy things was glad.
And so he gave what others could not give,
The one supremest sacrifice
he made,
A thing your brave boy could not understand;
He gave his all because
he was afraid. [Page 288]
|
20 |
Like a machine he fed the shining shell
Into a hungry maw from sun
to sun;
And when at last the hour struck, and he fell,
He smiled, and murmured:
“Thank God, it is done.”
Ye glory well, ye mothers of brave sons |
25 |
Eager
and sinewy, in the part they played;
And England will remember, and repay,
And history will see their
names arrayed.
But God looked down upon my soldier-boy
Who set his teeth, and did
his bit, and prayed, |
30 |
And
understands why I am proud to be
The mother of the boy who
was afraid! |
|
Everybody’s
Magazine The
Way of a Woman
August 1918 (39) and
Other Poems 1928 |
|
|
|
The
great gold moon swung down the sky
An hour ago, and from my
bed
I watched it lower lingeringly
Leaving but stars o’erhead.
Fades my Madonna on the wall,
|
5 |
The
Botticelli that you loved
In baby days, and cuddled small
To imitate. You moved
Your little hands upon my breast
As His were laid in loving
wise,
|
10 |
And
searched my face in tender quest
With earnest, answering
eyes.
Two hours till dawn. But, over there
It is broad daylight, and
the sun
Strikes on your field-equipment, bare,
|
15 |
The
day’s work well begun; [Page 289]
And by-and-by, as that long train
Of ammunition finds the
road
You will ride straight, in reek or rain
Your eyes upon your load.
|
20 |
I am so proud, O soldier fine!
Yet now, before I rest,
Your baby eyes look into mine,
Your hands beat on my breast.
|
|
The
Way of a Woman
and Other Poems 1928 |
|
|
|
Look
into my eyes, Sweetheart, and know the truth.
There are great crying Causes,
where the arm
Of Power, of Ruth,
Withholds
and harms; then can we have no peace
But raise defiant flags,
sound the alarm, |
5 |
As
now the mother-half of this strange world
Fights,
nor will cease
Till
man-made might from his high place is hurled,
And shamed Democracy may raise its head.
Only in love, Dear Heart,
|
10 |
Are
there no rights save the sole right to love.
Bonds of a silken thread
So slight that one quick
fear, one selfish start
And
they are gone; and so the wise ones move
Softly. In love there is no place |
15 |
For
“mine” and “thine”—it
is forever “thine.”
As love in melting mist unveils his face,
Holy
with the sweet chrism of centuries,
Pride, the arch-foe, fades
from the shrine,
A
traitor, from the house of mysteries. [Page
290] |
20 |
The
Way of a Woman
and Other Poems 1928 |
|
|
|
When
the need lay in the homestead,
Loom and dairy, fruit and
bee,
When the products of our labor
Fed our households worthily,
How we sewed and spun, and nourished |
5 |
All
the hungry family!
From the home has gone the spinning,
And the bakers pass the
door;
Men have seized our old-time labors
Building up the mart and
store;
|
10 |
So,
as women empty-handed,
We must look about for more.
Eye and heart grow wider open
And we see our sister’s
hand
Beckon to us through the darkness,
|
15 |
And,
at last, we understand;
We must work for light and freedom
Till our labors bless the
land.
So our work has weightier issues,
And the home has wider grown;
|
20 |
All
the suffering, tempted children
We must cherish as our own;
And our helpless, sad-eyed sisters
Labor never more alone.
And if we must fight injustice,
|
25 |
Gain
the power to further good,
Leave behind the sweeter quiet,
Standing where our fathers
stood.
We shall, with the higher impulse,
Find a finer womanhood.
[Page 291] |
|
The
Way of a Woman
and Other Poems 1928 |
|
|
|
In a
garden, suddenly, purple, pink, and blue,
Flashed gay morning-glories; to my heart there flew
Pangs of hurt and restless dream; nothing I have
known
In this life of loveliness that I call my own.
Like a lightening fire-flash in a summer sky
|
5 |
Darts
a wave-winged wonder like a threnody.
Somewhere, in a life unknown, just such odors blew;
On a hedge beside a cot morning-glories grew.
There was youth and love and pain in that long
ago,
Severed lives and weeping,—and I surely
know
|
10 |
Where
we stood and gazed and loved, sun-shafts glinting
through,
Morning-glories twined and bloomed, pink and purpled
blue. |
|
The
Way of a Woman
and Other Poems 1928 |
|
|
|
If one
could doubt of the full-flowered plum
The blossom’s fall and fruitage; if we feared
When night makes things invisible and dumb
A lagging dawn; if when our course we steered
Northward we knew not if our ship would shift |
5 |
South,
East, or West, then the unwelcome gift
Of life in a wild world were but a jest,
A quaint conceit enshaped at some mad king’s
behest.
Behind all life is one unerring law.
Fond fools there be who deem the Power that holds
|
10 |
The
worlds unchanging will admit a flaw
At some deep-voiced request,—the creature
molds
God as he wills. We, with the lesson learned
Know action and reaction are not turned [Page
292]
From their own course. We reap as we have sown
|
15 |
| And
in the full requital are but fuller grown. |
|
The
Way of a Woman
and Other Poems 1928 |
|
|
|
All
my dear childhood and the budding years,
Glamorous and glowing, knew the spruce-bound hills,
The ruddy Avon, and the towering tiers
Of bleak-browed Blomidon; the wood-locked mills;
The apple-orchards dropping yellow fruit, |
5 |
The
fields of grass and grain of Acadie.
Through long maturer years, with magic mute
In clamour of great cities, I could see,
Eyes closed, the marshes that I loved, the stream
Of plover, hear the raucous call of crows, |
10 |
And
knew a deep nostalgia through my dream.
Out where the strange Pacific ebbs and flows,
Through the wild roads and hills of Santa Fé,
Far on the Tucson desert, and along
The Apache Trail, a thousand wonders lay. |
15 |
Grandeur
I knew, and warmth, and friendliness
In the great Western States, and health and play;
But always was I alien, nationless,
With voices calling from St. Mary’s Bay,
From little sleepy towns of Gaspereaux. |
20 |
I have
come home from world-wracked troublous climes
To the calm haven of the Maritimes,
Calm without fixity, a land of men
Rugged and real, my people. All of me—
Sprung from their soil, their forests, and their
sea, |
25 |
Canadian
in blood and hope and heart—
Calls to my people. And so, in the gloam,
My eventide, ready to do my part,
I have come home. [Page
293] |
|
Dalhousie
Review
January 1934 (14:434) |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
