The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems
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Kate Seymour Maclean >> The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems
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THE COMING OF THE PRINCESS; AND OTHER POEMS.
BY
KATE SEYMOUR MACLEAN, KINGSTON, ONTARIO.
AN INTRODUCTION, BY THE EDITOR OF "THE CANADIAN MONTHLY."
INTRODUCTION.
BY G MERCER ADAM.
The request of the author that I should write a few words of
preface to this collection of poems must be my excuse for obtruding
myself upon the reader. Having frequently had the pleasure as
editor of _The Canadian Monthly_, of introducing many of Mrs.
MacLean's poems to lovers of verse in the Dominion it was thought
not unfitting that I should act as foster father to the collection
of them here made and to bespeak for the volume at the hands at
least of all Canadians the appreciative and kindly reception due to a
Child of the first winds and suns of a nation.
Accepting the task assigned to me the more readily as I discern the
high and sustained excellence of the collection as a whole let me
ask that the volume be received with interest as a further and most
meritorious contribution to the poetical literature of our young
country (the least that can be said of the work), and with sympathy
for the intellectual and moral aspirations that have called it into
being.
There is truth, doubtless, in the remark, that we are enriched less
by what we have than by what we hope to have. As the poetic art in
Canada has had little of an appreciable past, it may therefore be
thought that the songs that are to catch and retain the ear of the
nation lie still in the future, and are as yet unsung. Doubtless
the chords have yet to be struck that are to give to Canada the
songs of her loftiest genius; but he would be an ill friend of the
country's literature who would slight the achievements of the
present in reaching solely after what, it is hoped, the coming time
will bring.
But whatever of lyrical treasure the future may enshrine in
Canadian literature, and however deserving may be the claims of the
volumes of verse that have already appeared from the native press,
I am bold to claim for these productions of Mrs. MacLean's muse a
high place in the national collection and a warm corner in the
national heart.
To discern the merit of a poem is proverbially easier than to say
how and in what manner it is manifested. In a collection the task
of appraisement is not so difficult. Lord Houghton has said: "There
is in truth no critic of poetry but the man who enjoys it, and the
amount of gratification felt is the only just measure of
criticism." By this test the present volume will, in the main, be
judged. Still, there are characteristics of the author's work which
I may be permitted to point out. In Mrs. MacLean's volume what
quickly strikes one is not only the fact that the poems are all of
a high order of merit, but that a large measure of art and instinct
enters into the composition of each of them. As readily will it be
recognized that they are the product of a cultivated intellect, a
bright fancy, and a feeling heart. A rich spiritual life breathes
throughout the work, and there are occasional manifestations of
fervid impulse and ardent feeling. Yet there is no straining of
expression in the poems nor is there any loose fluency of thought.
Throughout there is sustained elevation and lofty purpose. Her
least work, moreover, is worthy of her, because it is always honest
work. With a quiet simplicity of style there is at the same time a
fine command of language and an earnest beauty of thought. The
grace and melody of the versification, indeed, few readers will
fail to appreciate. Occasionally there are echoes of other
poets--Jean Ingelow and Mrs. Barrett Browning, in the more
subjective pieces, being oftenest suggested. But there is a voice
as well as an echo--the voice of a poet in her own right. In an age
so bustling and heedless as this, it were well sometimes to stop
and listen to the voice In its fine spiritualizations we shall at
least be soothed and may be bettered.
But I need not dwell on the vocation of poetry or on the excellence
of the poems here introduced. The one is well known to the reader,
the other may soon be. Happily there is promise that Canada will
ere long be rich in her poets. They stand in the vanguard of the
country's benefactors, and so should be cherished and encouraged.
Of late our serial literature has given us more than blossomings.
The present volume enshrines some of the maturer fruit. May it be
its mission to nourish the poetic sentiment among us. May it do
more to nourish in some degree the "heart of the nation", and, in
the range of its influence, that of humanity.
CANADIAN MONTHLY OFFICE,
Toronto, December, 1880
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Coming of the Princess
Bird Song
An Idyl of the May
The Burial of the Scout
Questionings
Pansies
November Meteors
Pictures in the Fire
A Madrigal
The Ploughboy
The Voice of Many Waters
The Death of Autumn
A Farewell
The News Boy's Dream of the New Year
The Old Church on the Hill
The Burning of Chicago
The Legend of the New Year
By the Sea-Shore at Night
Resurgam
Written in a Cemetery
Marguerite
The Watch-Light
New Year, 1868
Thanksgiving
Miserere
Beyond
The Sabbath of the Woods
A Valentine
Snow-Drops
Easter Bells
In the Sierra Nevada
Summer Rain
A Baby's Death
Christmas
My Garden
River Song
The Return
Voices of Hope
In the Country
Science, the Iconoclast
What the Owl said to me
Our Volunteers
Night: A Phantasy
A Monody
Minnie
The Golden Wedding
Verses Written in Mary's Album
The Woods in June
The Isle of Sleep
The Battle Autumn of 1862
In War Time
Christmas Hymn
Te Deum Laudamus
A November Wood-Walk
Resignation
Euthanasia
Ballad of the Mad Ladye
The Coming of the King
With a Bunch of Spring Flowers
The Higher Law
May
Two Windows
The Meeting of Spirits
George Brown
Forgotten Songs
To the Daughter of the Author of "Violet Keith"
A Prelude, and a Bird's Song
An April Dawn
ENVOI
A little bird woke singing in the night,
Dreaming of coming day,
And piped, for very fulness of delight,
His little roundelay.
Dreaming he heard the wood-lark's carol loud,
Down calling to his mate,
Like silver rain out of a golden cloud,
At morning's radiant gate.
And all for joy of his embowering woods,
And dewy leaves he sung,--
The summer sunshine, and the summer floods
By forest flowers o'erhung.
Thou shalt not hear those wild and sylvan notes
When morn's full chorus pours
Rejoicing from a thousand feathered throats,
And the lark sings and soars,
Oh poet of our glorious land so fair,
Whose foot is at the door;
Even so my song shall melt into the air,
And die and be no more.
But thou shalt live, part of the nation's life;
The world shall hear thy voice
Singing above the noise of war and strife,
And therefore I rejoice!
THE COMING OF THE PRINCESS
I.
Break dull November skies, and make
Sunshine over wood and lake,
And fill your cells of frosty air
With thousand, thousand welcomes to the Princely pair!
The land and the sea are alight for them;
The wrinkled face of old Winter is bright for them;
The honour and pride of a race
Secure in their dwelling place,
Steadfast and stern as the rocks that guard her,
Tremble and thrill and leap in their veins,
As the blood of one man through the beacon-lit border!
Like a fire, like a flame,
At the sound of her name,
As the smoky-throated cannon mutter it,
As the smiling lips of a nation utter it,
And a hundred rock-lights write it in fire!
Daughter of Empires, the Lady of Lome,
Back through the mists of dim centuries borne,
None nobler, none gentler that brave name have worn;
Shrilled by storm-bugles, and rolled by the seas,
Louise!
Our Princess, our Empress, our Lady of Lorne!
II.
And the wild, white horses with flying manes
Wind-tost, the riderless steeds of the sea.
Neigh to her, call to her, dreadless and free,
"Fear not to follow us; these thy domains;
Welcome, welcome, our Lady and Queen!
O Princess, oh daughter of kingliest sire!
Under its frost girdle throbbing and keen,
A new realm awaits thee, loyal and true!"
And the round-cheeked Tritons, with fillets of blue
Binding their sea-green and scintillant hair,
Blow thee a welcome; their brawny arms bear
Thy keel through the waves like a bird through the air.
II.
Shoreward the shoal of mighty shoulders lean
Through the long swell of waves,
Reaching beyond the sunset and the hollow caves,
And the ice-girdled peaks that hold serene
Each its own star, far out at sea to mark
Thy westward way, O Princess, through the dark.
The rose-red sunset dies into the dusk,
The silver dusk of the long twilight hour,
And opal lights come out, and fiery gleams
Of flame-red beacons, like the ash-gray husk
Torn from some tropic blossom bursting into flower,
Making the sea bloom red with ruddy beams.
IV
Still nearer and nearer it comes, the swift sharp prow
Of the ship above and the shadow ship below,
With the mighty arms of the Titans under,
All bowed one way like a field of wind-blown ears,
Still nearer and nearer, and now
touches the strand, and, lo,
With the length of her bright hair backward flowing
Round her head like an aureole,
Like a candle flame in the wind's breath blowing,
Stands she fair and still as a disembodied soul,
With hands outstretched, and eyes that shine through tears
And tremulous smiles
When the trumpets, and the guns, and the great drums roll,
And the long fiords and the forelands shake with the thunder
Of the shout of welcome to the daughter of the Isles.
V
Bring her, O people, on the shoulders of her vassals
Throned like a queen to her palace on the height,
Up the rocky steeps where the fir tree tassels
Nod to her, and touch her with a subtle, vague delight,
Like a whisper of home, like a greeting and a smile
From the fir-tree walks and gardens, the wood-embowered castles
In the north among the clansmen of Argyle.
Now the sullen plunge of waves for many a mile
Along the roaring Ottawa is heard,
And the cry of some wood bird,
Wild and sudden and sweet,
Scared from its perch by the rush and trample of feet,
And the red glare of the torches in the night.
And now the long facade gay with many a twinkling light
Reaches hands of welcome, and the bells peal, and the guns,
And the hoarse blare of the trumpets, and the throbbing
of the drums
Fill the air like shaken music, and the very waves rejoice
In the gladness, and the greeting, and the triumph of
their voice.
VI.
Under triumphal arches, blazoned with banners and scrolls,
And the sound of a People's exulting, still gathering as it rolls,
Enter the gates of the city, and take the waiting throne,
And make the heart of a Nation, O Royal Pair, your own.
Sons of the old race, we, and heirs of the old and the new;
Our hands are bold and strong, and our hearts are faithful and true;
Saxon and Norman and Celt one race of the mingled blood
Who fought built cities and ships and stemmed the unknown flood
In the grand historic days that made our England great
When Britain's sons were steadfast to meet or to conquer fate
Our sires were the minster builders who wrought themselves unknown
The thought divine within them till it blossomed into stone
Forgers of swords and of ploughshares reapers of men and of grain,
Their bones and their names forgotten on many a battle plain
For faith and love and loyalty were living and sacred things
When our sires were those who wrought and yours were the leaders
and kings.
VII
For since the deeds that live in Arthur's rhyme
Who left the stainless flower of knighthood for all time
Down to our Blameless Prince wise gentle just
Whom the world mourns not by your English dust
More precious held more sacredly enshrined
Than in each loyal breast of all mankind,
Men bare the head in homage to the good,
And she who wears the crown of womanhood,
August, not less than that of Empress, reigns
The crowned Victoria of the world's domains
North, South, East, West, O Princess fair, behold
In this new world, the daughter of the old,
Where ribs of iron bar the Atlantic's breast,
Where sunset mountains slope into the west,
Unfathomed wildernesses, valleys sweet,
And tawny stubble lands of corn and wheat,
And all the hills and lakes and forests dun,
Between the rising and the setting sun;
Where rolling rivers run with sands of gold,
And the locked treasures of the mine unfold
Undreamed of riches, and the hearts of men,
Held close to nature, have grown pure again.
Like that exalted Pair, beloved, revered,
By princely grace, and truth and love endeared,
Here fix your empire in the growing West,
And build your throne in each Canadian breast,
Till West and East strike hands across the main,
Knit by a stronger, more enduring chain,
And our vast Empire become one again.
BIRD SONG.
Art thou not sweet,
Oh world, and glad to the inmost heart of thee!
All creatures rejoice
With one rapturous voice.
As I, with the passionate beat
Of my over-full heart feel thee sweet,
And all things that live, and are part of thee!
Light, light as a cloud
Swimming, and trailing its shadow under me
I float in the deep
As a bird-dream in sleep,
And hear the wind murmuring loud,
Far down, where the tree-tops are bowed,--
And I see where the secret place of the thunders be
Oh! the sky free and wide,
With all the cloud-banners flung out in it
Its singing wind blows
As a grand river flows,
And I swim down its rhythmical tide,
And still the horizon spreads wide,
With the birds' and the poets' songs like a shout in it!
Oh life, thou art sweet
Sweet--sweet to the inmost heart of thee!
I drink with my eyes
Thy limitless skies,
And I feel with the rapturous beat
Of my wings thou art sweet--
And I,--I am alive, and a part of thee!
AN IDYL OF THE MAY.
In the beautiful May weather,
Lapsing soon into June;
On a golden, golden day
Of the green and golden May,
When our hearts were beating tune
To the coming feet of June,
Walked we in the woods together.
Silver fine
Gleamed the ash buds through the darkness
of the pine,
And the waters of the stream
Glance and gleam,
Like a silver-footed dream--
Beckoning, calling,
Flashing, falling,
Into shadows dun and brown
Slipping down,
Calling still--Oh hear! Oh follow!
Follow--follow!
Down through glen and ferny hollow,
Lit with patches of the sky,
Shining through the trees so high,
Hand in hand we went together,
In the golden, golden weather
Of the May;
While the fleet wing of the swallow
Flashing by, called--follow--follow!
And we followed through the day:
Speaking low--
Speaking often not at all
To the brooklet's crystal call,
With our lingering feet and slow--
Slow, and pausing here and there
For a flower, or a fern,
For the lovely maiden-hair;
Hearing voices in the air,
Calling faintly down the burn.
Still the streamlet slid away,
Singing, smiling, dimpling down
To a mossy nook and brown,
Under bending boughs of May;
Where the nodding wind-flower grows,
And the coolwort's lovely pink,
Brooding o'er the brooklet's brink
Dips and blushes like a rose.
And the faint smell of the mould.
Sweeter than the musky scent
Of the garden's manifold
Perfumes into perfect blent.
Lights and sounds and odours stole,
In the golden, golden weather--
Heart and thought, and life and soul,
Stole away,
In that merry, merry May,
Wandering down the burn together.
Ah Valentine--my Valentine!
Heard I, with my hand in thine,
Grave and low, and sweet and slow,
As the wood bird over head,
Brooding notes, half sung half said,--
"In the world so bleak and wide,
Hearts make Edens of their own;
Wilt thou linger by my side,--
Wilt thou live for me alone,
Making bright the winter weather,
Thou and I and love together?"
"Yea," I said, "for thee alone,"--
Shading eyes lest they confess
Too much their own happiness,
With the happy tears o'erflown.
Gravely thou--"The world is not
Like this ferny hollow--
Through a rougher, thornier lot
Wilt thou bravely follow?"
Still the brook, with softer flow,
Called, "Oh hear! Oh follow!"
"Aye," I said, with bated breath,
"Where thou goest, I will go;
Holding still thy stronger hand,
Through the dreariest desert land,
True, till death."
Silence fell between us two,
Noiseless as the silver dew;
Hearts that had no need of speech
In the silence spoke to each;
And along the sapphire blue,
Shot with shafts of sunset through,
Fell a voice, a bodiless breath--
"True, till death"
Through a mist of smiles and tears,
Doubts and fears, and toils and dreams,
Oh! how long ago it seems,
Looking back across the year
Silver threads are in my hair
And the sunset shadows slope
Back along the hills of hope
That before us shone so fair.
Ah! for us the merry May
Comes no more with golden weather;
Fields, and woods, and sunshine gay,
Purple skies, and purple heather.
We have had our holyday,
And I sit with folded hands,
In the twilight looking back
Over life's uneven track--
Thorny wilds, and desert sands.
Weary heart, unwearied faith,
In the twilight softly saith--
"We have had our golden weather--
We have walked through life together,
True, till death!"
THE BURIAL OF THE SCOUT.
O not with arms reversed,
And the slow beating of the muffled drum,
And funeral marches, bring our hero home
These stormy woods where his young heart was nursed
Ring with a trumpet burst
Of jubilant music, as if he who lies
With shrouded face, and lips all white and dumb
Were a crowned conqueror entering paradise,--
This is his welcome home!
Along the reedy marge of the dim lake,
I hear the gathering horsemen of the North,
The cavalry of night and tempest wake,--
Blowing keen bugles as they issue forth,
To guard his homeward march in frost and cold,
A thousand spearmen bold!
And the deep-bosomed woods,
With their dishevelled locks all wildly spread,
Stretch ghostly arms to clasp the immortal dead,
Back to their solitudes
While through their rocking branches overhead,
And all their shuddering pulses underground
shiver runs, as if a voice had said--
And every farthest leaf had felt the wound--
He comes--but he is dead!
The dainty-fingered May
with gentle hand shall fold and put away
The snow-white curtains of his winter tent,
and spread above him her green coverlet,
'Broidered with daisies, sweet to sight and scent
and Summer, from her outposts in the hills,
Under the boughs with heavy night-dews wet,
shall place her gold and purple sentinels,
And in the populous woods sound reveille,
falling from field and fen her sweet deserters back--
But he,--no long roll of the impatient drum,
for battle trumpet eager for the fray,
From the far shores of blue Lake Erie blown,
shall rouse the soldier's last long bivouac.
QUESTIONINGS.
I touch but the things which are near;
The heavens are too high for my reach:
In shadow and symbol and creed,
I discern not the soul from the deed,
Nor the thought hidden under, from speech;
And the thing which I know not I fear.
I dare not despair nor despond,
Though I grope in the dark for the dawn:
Birth and laughter, and bubbles of breath,
And tears, and the blank void of death,
Round each its penumbra is drawn,--
I touch them,--I see not beyond.
What voice speaking solemn and slow,
Before the beginning for me,
From the mouth of the primal First Cause,
Shall teach me the thing that I was,
Shall point out the thing I shall be,
And show me the path that I go?
Were there any that missed me, or sought,
In the cycles and centuries fled.
Ere my soul had a place among men?--
Even so, unremembered again
I shall lie in the dust with the dead,
And my name shall be heard not, nor thought.
Yea rather,--from out the abyss,
Where the stars sit in silence and light,
When the ashes and dust of our world
Are like leaves in their faces up-whirled,--
What orb shall look down through the night,
And take note of the quenching of this?
Yea, beyond--in the heavens of space
Where Jehovah sits, absolute Lord,
Who made out of nothing the whole
Round world, and man's sentient soul--
Will He crush, like a creature abhorred,
What He fashioned with infinite grace
In His own awful image, and made
Quick with the flame of His breath,--
Which He saw and behold it was good?--
Ah man! thou hast waded through blood
And crime down to darkness and death,
Since thou stood'st before Him unafraid.
My life falls away like a flower
Day by day,--dispersed of the wind
Its vague perfume, nor taketh it root,
Ripening seeds for the sower, or fruit
To make me at one with my kind,
And give me my work, and my hour
No creed for my hunger sufficed,
Though I clung to them, each after other,
They slipped from my passionate hold,--
The prophets, the martyrs of old,--
Thy pitying face, Mary Mother,--
Thy thorn-circled forehead, O Christ!
Pilgrim sandalled, the deserts have known
The track of my wandering feet,
Where dead saints and martyrs have trod,
To search for the pure faith of God,
Making life with its bitterness sweet,
And death the white gate to a throne.
O Thou, who the wine-press hast trod,
O sorrowful--stricken--betrayed,--
Thy cross o'er my spirit prevails;
In Thy hands with the print of the nails,
My life with its burdens is laid,--
O Christ--Thou art sole--Thou art God!
PANSIES.
When the earliest south winds softly blow
Over the brown earth, and the waning snow
In the last days of the discrowned March,--
Before the silver tassels of the larch,
Or any tiniest bud or blade is seen;
Or in the woods the faintest kindling green,
And all the earth is veiled in azure mist,
Waiting the far-off kisses of the sun,--
They lift their bright heads shyly one by one.
And offer each, in cups of amethyst,
Drops of the honey wine of fairy land,--
A brimming beaker poised in either hand
Fit for the revels of King Oberon,
With all his royal gold and purple on:
Children of pensive thought and airy fancies,
Sweeter than any poet's sweetest stanzas,
Though to the sound of eloquent music told,
Or by the lips of beauty breathed or sung:
They thrill us with their backward-looking glances,
They bring us to the land that ne'er grows old,--
They mind us of the days when life was young
Nor time had stolen the fire from youth's romances,
Dear English pansies!
While still the hyacinth sleeps on securely,
And every lily leaf is folded purely,
Nor any purple crocus hath arisen;
Nor any tulip raised its slender stem,
And burst the earth-walls of its winter prison,
And donned its gold and jewelled diadem;
Nor by the brookside in the mossy hollow,
That calls to every truant foot to follow,
The cowslip yet hath hung its golden ball,--
In the wild and treacherous March weather,
The pansy and the sunshine come together,
The sweetest flower of all!
The sweetest flower that blows;
Sweeter than any rose,
Or that shy blossom opening in the night,
Its waxen vase of aromatic light--
A sleepy incense to the winking stars;
Nor yet in summer heats,
That crisp the city streets,--
Where the spiked mullein grows beside the bars
In country places, and the ox-eyed daisy
Blooms in the meadow grass, and brooks are lazy,
And scarcely murmur in the twinkling heat;
When sound of babbling water is so sweet,
Blue asters, and the purple orchis tall,
Bend o'er the wimpling wave together;--
The pansy blooms through all the summer weather,
The sweetest flower of all!
The sweetest flower that blows!
When all the rest are scattered and departed,
The symbol of the brave and faithful-hearted,
Her bright corolla glows.
When leaves hang pendant on their withered stalks,
Through all the half-deserted garden walks;
And through long autumn nights,
The merry dancers scale the northern heights,
And tiny crystal points of frost-white fire
Make brightly scintillant each blade and spire,
Still under shade of shelt'ring wall,
Or under winter's shroud of snows,
Undimmed, the faithful pansy blows,
The sweetest flower of all!
NOVEMBER METEORS.
Out of the dread eternities,
The vast abyss of night,
A glorious pageant rose and shone,
And passed from human sight.
We saw the glittering cavalcade,
And heard inwove through all,
Faint and afar from star to star,
The sliding music fall.
With banners and with torches,
And hoofs of glancing flame,
With helm and sword and pennon bright
The long procession came.
And all the starry spaces,
Height above height outshone,
And the bickering clang of their armour rang
Down to the farthest zone.
As if some grand cathedral,
With towers of malachite,
And walls of more than crystal clear,
Rose out of the solid light,
And under its frowning gateway,
Each morioned warrior stept,
And in radiant files down the ringing aisles,
The martial pageant swept.
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