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Title : Low Tide on Grand Pré: A Book of Lyrics

Author : Bliss Carman

Release date : January 3, 2018 [eBook #56300]
Most recently updated: January 24, 2021

Language : English

Credits : Produced by Larry B. Harrison and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from images made available by the HathiTrust
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ: A BOOK OF LYRICS ***

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ

iii

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ:
A BOOK OF LYRICS:
BY
BLISS CARMAN

CHARLES L. WEBSTER AND COMPANY

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK MDCCCXCIII

iv Copyright, 1893,

By BLISS CARMAN.

PRESS OF

Jenkins & McCowan ,

NEW YORK.

v The poems in this volume have been collected with reference to their similarity of tone. They are variations on a single theme, more or less aptly suggested by the title, Low Tide on Grand Pré . It seemed better to bring together between the same covers only those pieces of work which happened to be in the same key, rather than to publish a larger book of more uncertain aim.

B. C.

By Grand Pré, September, 1893.

vii

	PAGE
Low Tide on Grand Pré	11
Why	15
The Unreturning	18
A Windflower	19
In Lyric Season	21
The Pensioners	23
At the Voice of a Bird	27
When the Guelder Roses Bloom	31
Seven Things	44
A Sea Child	47
Pulvis et Umbra	48
Through the Twilight	61
Carnations in Winter	63
A Northern Vigil	65
The Eavesdropper	73
In Apple Time	77
Wanderer	79
Afoot	89
Wayfaring	94
The End of the Trail	103
The Vagabonds	111
Whither	118

ix TO

S. M. C.

Spiritus haeres sit patriae quae tristia nescit.

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ

      The sun goes down, and over all
     
      These barren reaches by the tide
     
      Such unelusive glories fall,
     
      I almost dream they yet will bide
     
      Until the coming of the tide.

      And yet I know that not for us,
     
      By any ecstasy of dream,
     
      He lingers to keep luminous
     
      A little while the grievous stream,
     
      Which frets, uncomforted of dream—

      
       12
      
      A grievous stream, that to and fro
     
      Athrough the fields of Acadie
     
      Goes wandering, as if to know
     
      Why one beloved face should be
     
      So long from home and Acadie.

      Was it a year or lives ago
     
      We took the grasses in our hands,
     
      And caught the summer flying low
     
      Over the waving meadow lands,
     
      And held it there between our hands?

      The while the river at our feet—
     
      A drowsy inland meadow stream—
     
      At set of sun the after-heat
     
      Made running gold, and in the gleam
     
      We freed our birch upon the stream.

      
       13
      
      There down along the elms at dusk
     
      We lifted dripping blade to drift,
     
      Through twilight scented fine like musk,
     
      Where night and gloom awhile uplift,
     
      Nor sunder soul and soul adrift.

      And that we took into our hands
     
      Spirit of life or subtler thing—
     
      Breathed on us there, and loosed the bands
     
      Of death, and taught us, whispering,
     
      The secret of some wonder-thing.

      Then all your face grew light, and seemed
     
      To hold the shadow of the sun;
     
      The evening faltered, and I deemed
     
      That time was ripe, and years had done
     
      Their wheeling underneath the sun.

      
       14
      
      So all desire and all regret,
     
      And fear and memory, were naught;
     
      One to remember or forget
     
      The keen delight our hands had caught;
     
      Morrow and yesterday were naught.

      The night has fallen, and the tide....
     
      Now and again comes drifting home,
     
      Across these aching barrens wide,
     
      A sigh like driven wind or foam:
     
      In grief the flood is bursting home.

WHY

      For a name unknown,
     
      Whose fame unblown
     
      Sleeps in the hills
     
      For ever and aye;

      For her who hears
     
      The stir of the years
     
      Go by on the wind
     
      By night and day;

      
       16
      
      And heeds no thing
     
      Of the needs of spring,
     
      Of autumn's wonder
     
      Or winter's chill;

      For one who sees
     
      The great sun freeze,
     
      As he wanders a-cold
     
      From hill to hill;

      And all her heart
     
      Is a woven part
     
      Of the flurry and drift
     
      Of whirling snow;

      
       17
      
      For the sake of two
     
      Sad eyes and true,
     
      And the old, old love
     
      So long ago.

THE UNRETURNING

      The old eternal spring once more
     
      Comes back the sad eternal way,
     
      With tender rosy light before
     
      The going-out of day.

      The great white moon across my door
     
      A shadow in the twilight stirs;
     
      But now forever comes no more
     
      That wondrous look of Hers.

A WINDFLOWER

      Between the roadside and the wood,
     
      Between the dawning and the dew,
     
      A tiny flower before the sun,
     
      Ephemeral in time, I grew.

      And there upon the trail of spring,
     
      Not death nor love nor any name
     
      Known among men in all their lands
     
      Could blur the wild desire with shame.

      
       20
      
      But down my dayspan of the year
     
      The feet of straying winds came by;
     
      And all my trembling soul was thrilled
     
      To follow one lost mountain cry.

      And then my heart beat once and broke
     
      To hear the sweeping rain forebode
     
      Some ruin in the April world,
     
      Between the woodside and the road.

      To-night can bring no healing now;
     
      The calm of yesternight is gone;
     
      Surely the wind is but the wind,
     
      And I a broken waif thereon.

IN LYRIC SEASON

      The lyric April time is forth
     
      With lyric mornings, frost and sun;
     
      From leaguers vast of night undone
     
      Auroral mild new stars are born.

      And ever at the year's return,
     
      Along the valleys gray with rime,
     
      Thou leadest as of old, where time
     
      Can naught but follow to thy sway.

      
       22
      
      The trail is far through leagues of spring,
     
      And long the quest to the white core
     
      Of harvest quiet, yet once more
     
      I gird me to the old unrest.

      I know I shall not ever meet
     
      Thy still regard across the year,
     
      And yet I know thou wilt draw near,
     
      When the last hour of pain and loss

      Drifts out to slumber, and the deeps
     
      Of nightfall feel God's hand unbar
     
      His lyric April, star by star,
     
      And the lost twilight land reveal.

THE PENSIONERS

      We are the pensioners of Spring,
     
      And take the largess of her hand
     
      When vassal warder winds unbar
     
      The wintry portals of her land;

      The lonely shadow-girdled winds,
     
      Her seraph almoners, who keep
     
      This little life in flesh and bone
     
      With meagre portions of white sleep.

      
       24
      
      Then all year through with starveling care
     
      We go on some fool's idle quest,
     
      And eat her bread and wine in thrall
     
      To a fool's shame with blind unrest.

      Until her April train goes by,
     
      And then because we are the kin
     
      Of every hill flower on the hill
     
      We must arise and walk therein.

      Because her heart as our own heart,
     
      Knowing the same wild upward stir,
     
      Beats joyward by eternal laws,
     
      We must arise and go with her;

      
       25
      
      Forget we are not where old joys
     
      Return when dawns and dreams retire;
     
      Make grief a phantom of regret,
     
      And fate the henchman of desire;

      Divorce unreason from delight;
     
      Learn how despair is uncontrol,
     
      Failure the shadow of remorse,
     
      And death a shudder of the soul.

      Yea, must we triumph when she leads.
     
      A little rain before the sun,
     
      A breath of wind on the road's dust,
     
      The sound of trammeled brooks undone,

      
       26
      
      Along red glinting willow stems
     
      The year's white prime, on bank and stream
     
      The haunting cadence of no song
     
      And vivid wanderings of dream,

      A range of low blue hills, the far
     
      First whitethroat's ecstasy unfurled:
     
      And we are overlords of change,
     
      In the glad morning of the world,

      Though we should fare as they whose life
     
      Time takes within his hands to wring
     
      Between the winter and the sea,
     
      The weary pensioners of Spring.

AT THE VOICE OF A BIRD

Consurgent ad vocem volucris.

      Call to me, thrush,
     
      When night grows dim,
     
      When dreams unform
     
      And death is far!

      When hoar dews flush
     
      On dawn's rathe brim,
     
      Wake me to hear
     
      Thy wildwood charm,

      
       28
      
      As a lone rush
     
      Astir in the slim
     
      White stream where sheer
     
      Blue mornings are.

      Stir the keen hush
     
      On twilight's rim
     
      When my own star
     
      Is white and clear.

      Fly low to brush
     
      Mine eyelids grim,
     
      Where sleep and storm
     
      Will set their bar;

      
       29
      
      For God shall crush
     
      Spring balm for him,
     
      Stark on his bier
     
      Past fault or harm,

      Who once, as flush
     
      Of day might skim
     
      The dusk, afar
     
      In sleep shall hear

      Thy song's cool rush
     
      With joy rebrim
     
      The world, and calm
     
      The deep with cheer.

      
       30
      
      Then, Heartsease, hush!
     
      If sense grow dim,
     
      Desire shall steer
     
      Us home from far.

WHEN THE GUELDER ROSES BLOOM

When the Guelder roses bloom,

Love, the vagrant, wanders home.

Love, that died so long ago,

As we deemed, in dark and snow,

Comes back to the door again,

Guendolen, Guendolen.

32 In his hands a few bright flowers,

Gathered in the earlier hours,

Speedwell-blue, and poppy-red,

Withered in the sun and dead,

With a history to each,

Are more eloquent than speech.

In his eyes the welling tears

Plead against the lapse of years.

33 And that mouth we knew so well,

Hath a pilgrim's tale to tell.

Hear his litany again:

"Guendolen, Guendolen!"

"No, love, no, thou art a ghost!

Love long since in night was lost.

"Thou art but the shade of him,

For thine eyes are sad and dim."

34 "Nay, but they will shine once more,

Glad and brighter than before,

"If thou bring me but again

To my mother Guendolen!

"These dark flowers are for thee,

Gathered by the lonely sea.

"And these singing shells for her

Who first called me wanderer,

35 "In whose beauty glad I grew,

When this weary life was new."

Hear him raving! "It is I.

Love once born can never die."

"Thou, poor love, thou art gone mad

With the hardships thou hast had.

"True, it is the spring of year,

But thy mother is not here.

36 "True, the Guelder roses bloom

As long since about this room,

"Where thy blessed self was born

In the early golden morn

"But the years are dead, good lack!

Ah, love, why hast thou come back,

"Pleading at the door again,

'Guendolen, Guendolen'?"

37 When the Guelder roses bloom,

And the vernal stars resume

Their old purple sweep and range,

I can hear a whisper strange

As the wind gone daft again,

"Guendolen, Guendolen!"

"When the Guelder roses blow,

Love that died so long ago,

38 "Why wilt thou return so oft,

With that whisper sad and soft

"On thy pleading lips again,

'Guendolen, Guendolen'!"

Still the Guelder roses bloom,

And the sunlight fills the room,

Where love's shadow at the door

Falls upon the dusty floor.

39 And his eyes are sad and grave

With the tenderness they crave,

Seeing in the broken rhyme

The significance of time,

Wondrous eyes that know not sin

From his brother death, wherein

I can see thy look again,

Guendolen, Guendolen.

40 And love with no more to say,

In this lovely world to-day

Where the Guelder roses bloom,

Than the record on a tomb,

Only moves his lips again,

"Guendolen, Guendolen!"

Then he passes up the road

From this dwelling, where he bode

41 In the by-gone years. And still,

As he mounts the sunset hill

Where the Guelder roses blow

With their drifts of summer snow,

I can hear him, like one dazed

At a phantom he has raised,

Murmur o'er and o'er again,

"Guendolen, Guendolen!"

42 And thus every year, I know,

When the Guelder roses blow,

Love will wander by my door,

Till the spring returns no more;

Till no more I can withstand,

But must rise and take his hand

Through the countries of the night,

Where he walks by his own sight,

43 To the mountains of a dawn

That has never yet come on,

Out of this fair land of doom

Where the Guelder roses bloom,

Till I come to thee again,

Guendolen, Guendolen.

SEVEN THINGS

      The fields of earth are sown
     
      From the hand of the striding rain,
     
      And kernels of joy are strewn
     
      Abroad for the harrow of pain.

I.

      The first song-sparrow brown
     
      That wakes the earliest spring,
     
      When time and fear sink down,
     
      And death is a fabled thing.

II.

      The stealing of that first dawn
     
      Over the rosy brow,
     
      When thy soul said, "World, fare on,
     
      For Heaven is here and now!"

III.

      The crimson shield of the sun
     
      On the wall of this House of Doom,
     
      With the garb of war undone
     
      At last in the narrow room.

IV.

      A heart that abides to the end,
     
      As the hills for sureness and peace,
     
      And is neither weary to wend
     
      Nor reluctant at last of release.

V.

      Thy mother's cradle croon
     
      To haunt thee over the deep,
     
      Out of the land of Boon
     
      Into the land of Sleep.

VI.

      The sound of the sea in storm,
     
      Hearing its captain cry,
     
      When the wild, white riders form,
     
      And the Ride to the Dark draws nigh.

VII.

      But last and best, the urge
     
      Of the great world's desire,
     
      Whose being from core to verge
     
      Only attains to aspire.

A SEA CHILD

      The lover of child Marjory
     
      Had one white hour of life brim full;
     
      Now the old nurse, the rocking sea,
     
      Hath him to lull.

      The daughter of child Marjory
     
      Hath in her veins, to beat and run,
     
      The glad indomitable sea,
     
      The strong white sun.

PULVIS ET UMBRA

      There is dust upon my fingers,
     
      Pale gray dust of beaten wings,
     
      Where a great moth came and settled
     
      From the night's blown winnowings.

      Harvest with her low red planets
     
      Wheeling over Arrochar;
     
      And the lonely hopeless calling
     
      Of the bell-buoy on the bar,

      
       49
      
      Where the sea with her old secret
     
      Moves in sleep and cannot rest.
     
      From that dark beyond my doorway,
     
      Silent the unbidden guest

      Came and tarried, fearless, gentle,
     
      Vagrant of the starlit gloom,
     
      One frail waif of beauty fronting
     
      Immortality and doom;

      Through the chambers of the twilight
     
      Roaming from the vast outland,
     
      Resting for a thousand heart-beats
     
      In the hollow of my hand.

      
       50
      
      "Did the volley of a thrush-song
     
      Lodge among some leaves and dew
     
      Hillward, then across the gloaming
     
      This dark mottled thing was you?

      "Or is my mute guest whose coming
     
      So unheralded befell
     
      From the border wilds of dreamland,
     
      Only whimsy Ariel,

      "Gleaning with the wind, in furrows
     
      Lonelier than dawn to reap,
     
      Dust and shadow and forgetting,
     
      Frost and reverie and sleep?

      
       51
      
      "In the hush when Cleopatra
     
      Felt the darkness reel and cease,
     
      Was thy soul a wan blue lotus
     
      Laid upon her lips for peace?

      "And through all the years that wayward
     
      Passion in one mortal breath,
     
      Making thee a thing of silence,
     
      Made thee as the lords of death?

      "Or did goblin men contrive thee
     
      In the forges of the hills
     
      Out of thistle-drift and sundown
     
      Lost amid their tawny rills,

      
       52
      
      "Every atom on their anvil
     
      Beaten fine and bolted home,
     
      Every quiver wrought to cadence
     
      From the rapture of a gnome?

      "Then the lonely mountain wood-wind,
     
      Straying up from dale to dale,
     
      Gave thee spirit, free forever,
     
      Thou immortal and so frail!

      "Surely thou art not that sun-bright
     
      Psyche, hoar with age, and hurled
     
      On the northern shore of Lethe,
     
      To this wan Auroral world!

      
       53
      
      "Ghost of Psyche, uncompanioned,
     
      Are the yester-years all done?
     
      Have the oars of Charon ferried
     
      All thy playmates from the sun?

      "In thy wings the beat and breathing
     
      Of the wind of life abides,
     
      And the night whose sea-gray cohorts
     
      Swing the stars up with the tides.

      "Did they once make sail and wander
     
      Through the trembling harvest sky,
     
      Where the silent Northern streamers
     
      Change and rest not till they die?

      
       54
      
      "Or from clouds that tent and people
     
      The blue firmamental waste,
     
      Did they learn the noiseless secret
     
      Of eternity's unhaste?

      "Where learned they to rove and loiter,
     
      By the margin of what sea?
     
      Was it with outworn Demeter,
     
      Searching for Persephone?

      "Or did that girl-queen behold thee
     
      In the fields of moveless air?
     
      Did these wings which break no whisper
     
      Brush the poppies in her hair?

      
       55
      
      "Is it thence they wear the pulvil—
     
      Ash of ruined days and sleep,
     
      And the two great orbs of splendid
     
      Melting sable deep on deep!

      "Pilot of the shadow people,
     
      Steering whither by what star
     
      Hast thou come to hapless port here,
     
      Thou gray ghost of Arrochar?"

      For man walks the world with mourning
     
      Down to death, and leaves no trace,
     
      With the dust upon his forehead,
     
      And the shadow in his face.

      
       56
      
      Pillared dust and fleeing shadow
     
      As the roadside wind goes by,
     
      And the fourscore years that vanish
     
      In the twinkling of an eye.

      Beauty, the fine frosty trace-work
     
      Of some breath upon the pane;
     
      Spirit, the keen wintry moonlight
     
      Flashed thereon to fade again.

      Beauty, the white clouds a-building
     
      When God said and it was done;
     
      Spirit, the sheer brooding rapture
     
      Where no mid-day brooks no sun.

      
       57
      
      So. And here, the open casement
     
      Where my fellow-mate goes free;
     
      Eastward, the untrodden star-road
     
      And the long wind on the sea.

      What's to hinder but I follow
     
      This my gypsy guide afar,
     
      When the bugle rouses slumber
     
      Sounding taps on Arrochar?

      "Where, my brother, wends the by-way,
     
      To what bourne beneath what sun,
     
      Thou and I are set to travel
     
      Till the shifting dream be done?

      
       58
      
      "Comrade of the dusk, forever
     
      I pursue the endless way
     
      Of the dust and shadew kindred,
     
      Thou art perfect for a day.

      "Yet from beauty marred and broken,
     
      Joy and memory and tears,
     
      I shall crush the clearer honey
     
      In the harvest of the years.

      "Thou art faultless as a flower
     
      Wrought of sun and wind and snow,
     
      I survive the fault and failure.
     
      The wise Fates will have it so.

      
       59
      
      "For man walks the world in twilight,
     
      But the morn shall wipe all trace
     
      Of the dust from off his forehead,
     
      And the shadow from his face.

      "Cheer thee on, my tidings-bearer!
     
      All the valor of the North
     
      Mounts as soul from flesh escaping
     
      Through the night, and bids thee forth.

      "Go, and when thou hast discovered
     
      Her whose dark eyes match thy wings,
     
      Bid that lyric heart beat lighter
     
      For the joy thy beauty brings."

      
       60
      
      Then I leaned far out and lifted
     
      My light guest up, and bade speed
     
      On the trail where no one tarries
     
      That wayfarer few will heed.

      Pale gray dust upon my fingers;
     
      And from this my cabined room
     
      The white soul of eager message
     
      Racing seaward in the gloom.

      Far off shore, the sweet low calling
     
      Of the bell-buoy on the bar,
     
      Warning night of dawn and ruin
     
      Lonelily on Arrochar.

THROUGH THE TWILIGHT

      The red vines bar my window way;
     
      The Autumn sleeps beside his fire,
     
      For he has sent this fleet-foot day
     
      A year's march back to bring to me
     
      One face whose smile is my desire,
     
      Its light my star.

      Surely you will come near and speak,
     
      This calm of death from the day to sever!
     
      And so I shall draw down your cheek
     
      Close to my face—So close!—and know
     
      God's hand between our hands forever
     
      Will set no bar.

      
       62
      
      Before the dusk falls—even now
     
      I know your step along the gravel,
     
      And catch your quiet poise of brow,
     
      And wait so long till you turn the latch!
     
      Is the way so hard you had to travel?
     
      Is the land so far?

      The dark has shut your eyes from mine,
     
      But in this hush of brooding weather
     
      A gleam on twilight's gathering line
     
      Has riven the barriers of dream:
     
      Soul of my soul, we are together
     
      As the angels are!

CARNATIONS IN WINTER

      Your carmine flakes of bloom to-night
     
      The fire of wintry sunsets hold;
     
      Again in dreams you burn to light
     
      A far Canadian garden old.

      The blue north summer over it
     
      Is bland with long ethereal days;
     
      The gleaming martins wheel and flit
     
      Where breaks your sun down orient ways.

      
       64
      
      There, when the gradual twilight falls,
     
      Through quietudes of dusk afar,
     
      Hermit antiphonal hermit calls
     
      From hills below the first pale star.

      Then in your passionate love's foredoom
     
      Once more your spirit stirs the air,
     
      And you are lifted through the gloom
     
      To warm the coils of her dark hair.

A NORTHERN VIGIL

      Here by the gray north sea,
     
      In the wintry heart of the wild,
     
      Comes the old dream of thee,
     
      Guendolen, mistress and child.

      The heart of the forest grieves
     
      In the drift against my door;
     
      A voice is under the eaves,
     
      A footfall on the floor.

      
       66
      
      Threshold, mirror and hall,
     
      Vacant and strangely aware,
     
      Wait for their soul's recall
     
      With the dumb expectant air.

      Here when the smouldering west
     
      Burns down into the sea,
     
      I take no heed of rest
     
      And keep the watch for thee.

      I sit by the fire and hear
     
      The restless wind go by,
     
      On the long dirge and drear,
     
      Under the low bleak sky.

      
       67
      
      When day puts out to sea
     
      And night makes in for land,
     
      There is no lock for thee,
     
      Each door awaits thy hand!

      When night goes over the hill
     
      And dawn comes down the dale,
     
      It's O for the wild sweet will
     
      That shall no more prevail!

      When the zenith moon is round,
     
      And snow-wraiths gather and run,
     
      And there is set no bound
     
      To love beneath the sun,

      
       68
      
      O wayward will, come near
     
      The old mad willful way,
     
      The soft mouth at my ear
     
      With words too sweet to say!

      Come, for the night is cold,
     
      The ghostly moonlight fills
     
      Hollow and rift and fold
     
      Of the eerie Ardise hills!

      The windows of my room
     
      Are dark with bitter frost,
     
      The stillness aches with doom
     
      Of something loved and lost.

      
       69
      
      Outside, the great blue star
     
      Burns in the ghostland pale,
     
      Where giant Algebar
     
      Holds on the endless trail.

      Come, for the years are long,
     
      And silence keeps the door,
     
      Where shapes with the shadows throng
     
      The firelit chamber floor.

      Come, for thy kiss was warm,
     
      With the red embers' glare
     
      Across thy folding arm
     
      And dark tumultuous hair!

      
       70
      
      And though thy coming rouse
     
      The sleep-cry of no bird,
     
      The keepers of the house
     
      Shall tremble at thy word.

      Come, for the soul is free!
     
      In all the vast dreamland
     
      There is no lock for thee,
     
      Each door awaits thy hand.

      Ah, not in dreams at all,
     
      Fleering, perishing, dim,
     
      But thy old self, supple and tall,
     
      Mistress and child of whim!

      
       71
      
      The proud imperious guise,
     
      Impetuous and serene,
     
      The sad mysterious eyes,
     
      And dignity of mien!

      Yea, wilt thou not return,
     
      When the late hill-winds veer,
     
      And the bright hill-flowers burn
     
      With the reviving year?

      When April comes, and the sea
     
      Sparkles as if it smiled,
     
      Will they restore to me
     
      My dark Love, empress and child?

      
       72
      
      The curtains seem to part;
     
      A sound is on the stair,
     
      As if at the last ... I start;
     
      Only the wind is there.

      Lo, now far on the hills
     
      The crimson fumes uncurled,
     
      Where the caldron mantles and spills
     
      Another dawn on the world!

THE EAVESDROPPER

      In a still room at hush of dawn,
     
      My Love and I lay side by side
     
      And heard the roaming forest wind
     
      Stir in the paling autumn-tide.

      I watched her earth-brown eyes grow glad
     
      Because the round day was so fair;
     
      While memories of reluctant night
     
      Lurked in the blue dusk of her hair.

      
       74
      
      Outside, a yellow maple tree,
     
      Shifting upon the silvery blue
     
      With small innumerable sound,
     
      Rustled to let the sunlight through.

      The livelong day the elvish leaves
     
      Danced with their shadows on the floor;
     
      And the lost children of the wind
     
      Went straying homeward by our door.

      And all the swarthy afternoon
     
      We watched the great deliberate sun
     
      Walk through the crimsoned hazy world,
     
      Counting his hilltops one by one.

      
       75
      
      Then as the purple twilight came
     
      And touched the vines along our eaves,
     
      Another Shadow stood without
     
      And gloomed the dancing of the leaves.

      The silence fell on my Love's lips;
     
      Her great brown eyes were veiled and sad
     
      With pondering some maze of dream,
     
      Though all the splendid year was glad.

      Restless and vague as a gray wind
     
      Her heart had grown, she knew not why.
     
      But hurrying to the open door,
     
      Against the verge of western sky

      
       76
      
      I saw retreating on the hills,
     
      Looming and sinister and black,
     
      The stealthy figure swift and huge
     
      Of One who strode and looked not back.

IN APPLE TIME

      The apple harvest days are here,
     
      The boding apple harvest days,
     
      And down the flaming valley ways,
     
      The foresters of time draw near.

      Through leagues of bloom I went with Spring,
     
      To call you on the slopes of morn,
     
      Where in imperious song is borne
     
      The wild heart of the golden wing.

      
       78
      
      I roamed through alien summer lands,
     
      I sought your beauty near and far;
     
      To-day, where russet shadows are,
     
      I hold your face between my hands.

      On runnels dark by slopes of fern,
     
      The hazy undern sleeps in sun.
     
      Remembrance and desire, undone,
     
      From old regret to dreams return.

      The apple harvest time is here,
     
      The tender apple harvest time;
     
      A sheltering calm, unknown at prime,
     
      Settles upon the brooding year.

WANDERER

I

      Wanderer, wanderer, whither away?
     
      What saith the morning unto thee?
     
      "Wanderer, wanderer, hither, come hither,
     
      Into the eld of the East with me!"

      Saith the wide wind of the low red morning,
     
      Making in from the gray rough sea.
     
      "Wanderer, come, of the footfall weary,
     
      And heavy at heart as the sad-heart sea.

      
       80
      
      "For long ago, when the world was making,
     
      I walked through Eden with God for guide;
     
      And since that time in my heart forever
     
      His calm and wisdom and peace abide.

      "I am thy spirit and thy familiar,
     
      Child of the teeming earth's unrest!
     
      Before God's joy upon gloom begot thee
     
      I had hungered and searched and ended the quest.

      "I sit by the roadside wells of knowledge;
     
      I haunt the streams of the springs of thought;
     
      But because my voice is the voice of silence,
     
      The heart within thee regardeth not.

      
       81
      
      "Yet I await thee, assured, unimpatient,
     
      Till thy small tumult of striving be past.
     
      How long, O wanderer, wilt thou a-weary,
     
      Keep thee afar from my arms at the last?"

II

      Wanderer, wanderer, whither away?
     
      What saith the high noon unto thee?
     
      "Wanderer, wanderer, hither, turn hither,
     
      Far to the burning South with me,"

      Saith the soft wind on the high June headland,
     
      Sheering up from the summer sea,
     
      "While the implacable warder, Oblivion,
     
      Sleeps on the marge of a foamless sea!

      
       82
      
      "Come where the urge of desire availeth,
     
      And no fear follows the children of men;
     
      For a handful of dust is the only heirloom
     
      The morrow bequeaths to its morrow again.

      "Touch and feel how the flesh is perfect
     
      Beyond the compass of dream to be!
     
      'Bone of my bone,' said God to Adam;
     
      'Core of my core,' say I to thee.

      "Look and see how the form is goodly
     
      Beyond the reach of desire and art!
     
      For he who fashioned the world so easily
     
      Laughed in his sleeve as he walked apart.

      
       83
      
      "Therefore, O wanderer, cease from desiring;
     
      Take the wide province of seaway and sun!
     
      Here for the infinite quench of thy craving,
     
      Infinite yearning and bliss are one."

III

      Wanderer, wanderer, whither away?
     
      What saith the evening unto thee?
     
      "Wanderer, wanderer, hither, haste hither,
     
      Into the glad-heart West with me!"

      Saith the strong wind of the gold-green twilight,
     
      Gathering out of the autumn hills,
     
      "I am the word of the world's first dreamer
     
      Who woke when Freedom walked on the hills.

      
       84
      
      "And the secret triumph from daring to doing,
     
      From musing to marble, I will be,
     
      Till the last fine fleck of the world is finished,
     
      And Freedom shall walk alone by the sea.

      "Who is thy heart's lord, who is thy hero?
     
      Bruce or Cæsar or Charlemagne,
     
      Hannibal, Olaf, Alaric, Roland?
     
      Dare as they dared and the deed's done again!

      "Here where they come of the habit immortal,
     
      By the open road to the land of the Name,
     
      Splendor and homage and wealth await thee
     
      Of builded cities and bruited fame.

      
       85
      
      "Let loose the conquering toiler within thee;
     
      Know the large rapture of deeds begun!
     
      The joy of the hand that hews for beauty
     
      Is the dearest solace beneath the sun."

IV

      Wanderer, wanderer, whither away?
     
      What saith the midnight unto thee?
     
      "Wanderer, wanderer, hither turn home,
     
      Back to thy North at last to me!"

      Saith the great forest wind and lonely,
     
      Out of the stars and the wintry hills.
     
      "Weary, bethink thee of rest, and remember
     
      Thy waiting auroral Ardise hills!

      
       86
      
      "Was it not I, when thy mother bore thee
     
      In the sweet, solemn April night,
     
      Took thee safe in my arms to fondle,
     
      Filled thy dream with the old delight?

      "Told thee tales of more marvelous summers
     
      Of the far away and the long ago,
     
      Made thee my own nurse-child forever
     
      In the tender dear dark land of the snow?

      "Have I not rocked thee, have I not lulled thee,
     
      Crooned thee in forest, and cradled in foam,
     
      Then with a smile from the hearthstone of childhood
     
      Bade thee farewell when thy heart bade thee roam?

      
       87
      
      "Ah, my wide-wanderer, thou blessed vagrant,
     
      Dear will thy footfall be nearing my door.
     
      How the glad tears will give vent at thy coming,
     
      Wayward or sad-heart to wander no more!"

V

      Morning and midday I wander, and evening,
     
      April and harvest and golden fall;
     
      Seaway or hillward, taut sheet or saddle-bow,
     
      Only the night wind brings solace at all.

      Then when the tide of all being and beauty
     
      Ebbs to the utmost before the first dawn,
     
      Comes the still voice of the morrow revealing
     
      Inscrutable valorous hope—and is gone.

      
       88
      
      Therefore is joy more than sorrow, foreseeing
     
      The lust of the mind and the lure of the eye
     
      And the pride of the hand have their hour of triumph,
     
      But the dream of the heart will endure by-and-by.

AFOOT

      There's a garden in the South
     
      Where the early violets come,
     
      Where they strew the floor of April
     
      With their purple, bloom by bloom.

      There the tender peach-trees blow,
     
      Pink against the red brick wall,
     
      And the hand of twilight hushes
     
      The rain-children's least footfall,

      
       90
      
      Till at midnight I can hear
     
      The dark Mother croon and lean
     
      Close above me. And her whisper
     
      Bids the vagabonds convene.

      Then the glad and wayward heart
     
      Dreams a dream it must obey;
     
      And the wanderer within me
     
      Stirs a foot and will not stay.

      I would journey far and wide
     
      Through the provinces of spring,
     
      Where the gorgeous white azaleas
     
      Hear the sultry yorlin sing.

      
       91
      
      I would wander all the hills
     
      Where my fellow-vagrants wend,
     
      Following the trails of shadows
     
      To the country where they end.

      Well I know the gypsy kin,
     
      Roving foot and restless hand,
     
      And the eyes in dark elusion
     
      Dreaming down the summer land.

      On the frontier of desire
     
      I will drink the last regret,
     
      And then forth beyond the morrow
     
      Where I may but half forget.

      
       92
      
      So another year shall pass,
     
      Till some noon the gardener Sun
     
      Wanders forth to lay his finger
     
      On the peach-buds one by one.

      And the Mother there once more
     
      Will rewhisper her dark word,
     
      That my brothers all may wonder,
     
      Hearing then as once I heard.

      There will come the whitethroat's cry,
     
      That far lonely silver strain,
     
      Piercing, like a sweet desire,
     
      The seclusion of the rain.

      
       93
      
      And though I be far away,
     
      When the early violets come
     
      Smiling at the door with April,
     
      Say, "The vagabonds are home!"

WAYFARING

      Across the harbor's tangled yards
     
      We watch the flaring sunset fail;
     
      Then the forever questing stars
     
      File down along the vanished trail,

      To no discovered country, where
     
      They will forgather when the hands
     
      Of the strong Fates shall take away
     
      Their burdens and unloose their bands.

      
       95
      
      Westward and lone the hill-road gray
     
      Mounts to the skyline sheer and wan,
     
      Where many a weary dream puts forth
     
      To strike the trail where they are gone.

      The sleepless guide to that outland
     
      Is the great Mother of us all,
     
      Whose molded dust and dew we are
     
      With the blown flowers by the wall.

      Girt with the twilight she is grave,
     
      The strong companion, wise and free;
     
      She leads beyond the dales of time,
     
      The earldom of the calling sea—

      
       96
      
      Beyond these dull green miles of dike,
     
      And gleaming breakers on the bar—
     
      To the white kingdom of her lord,
     
      The nameless Word, whose breath we are.

      And all the world is but a scheme
     
      Of busy children in the street,
     
      A play they follow and forget
     
      On summer evenings, pale with heat.

      The dusty courtyard flags and walls
     
      Are like a prison gate of stone,
     
      To every spirit for whose breath
     
      The long sweet hill-winds once have blown.

      
       97
      
      But waiting in the fields for them
     
      I see the ancient Mother stand,
     
      With the old courage of her smile,
     
      The patience of her sunbrown hand.

      They heed her not, until there comes
     
      A breath of sleep upon their eyes,
     
      A drift of dust upon their face;
     
      Then in the closing dusk they rise,

      And turn them to the empty doors;
     
      But she within whose hands alone
     
      The days are gathered up as fruit,
     
      Doth habit not in brick and stone.

      
       98
      
      But where the wild shy things abide,
     
      Along the woodside and the wheat,
     
      Is her abiding, deep withdrawn;
     
      And there, the footing of her feet.

      There is no common fame of her
     
      Upon the corners, yet some word
     
      Of her most secret heritage
     
      Her lovers from her lips have heard.

      Her daisies sprang where Chaucer went;
     
      Her darkling nightingales with spring
     
      Possessed the soul of Keats for song;
     
      And Shelley heard her skylark sing;

      
       99
      
      With reverent clear uplifted heart
     
      Wordsworth beheld her daffodils;
     
      And he became too great for haste,
     
      Who watched the warm green Cumner hills.

      She gave the apples of her eyes
     
      For the delight of him who knew,
     
      With all the wisdom of a child,
     
      "A bank whereon the wild thyme grew."

      Still the old secret shifts, and waits
     
      The last interpreter; it fills
     
      The autumn song no ear hath heard
     
      Upon the dreaming Ardise hills.

      
       100
      
      The poplars babble over it
     
      When waking winds of dawn go by;
     
      It fills her rivers like a voice,
     
      And leads her wanderers till they die.

      She knows the morning ways whereon
     
      The windflowers and the wind confer;
     
      Surely there is not any fear
     
      Upon the farthest trail with her!

      And yet, what ails the fir-dark slopes,
     
      That all night long the whippoorwills
     
      Cry their insatiable cry
     
      Across the sleeping Ardise hills?

      
       101
      
      Is it that no fair mortal thing,
     
      Blown leaf, nor song, nor friend can stray
     
      Beyond the bourne and bring one word
     
      Back the irremeable way?

      The noise is hushed within the street;
     
      The summer twilight gathers down;
     
      The elms are still; the moonlit spires
     
      Track their long shadows through the town.

      With looming willows and gray dusk
     
      The open hillward road is pale,
     
      And the great stars are white and few
     
      Above the lonely Ardise trail.

      
       102
      
      And with no haste nor any fear,
     
      We are as children going home
     
      Along the marshes where the wind
     
      Sleeps in the cradle of the foam.

103

THE END OF THE TRAIL

      Once more the hunters of the dusk
     
      Are forth to search the moorlands wide,
     
      Among the autumn-colored hills,
     
      And wander by the shifting tide.

      All day along the haze-hung verge
     
      They scour upon a fleeing trace,
     
      Between the red sun and the sea,
     
      Where haunts the vision of your face.

      
       104
      
      The plane at Martock lies and drinks
     
      The long Septembral gaze of blue;
     
      The royal leisure of the hills
     
      Hath wayward reveries of you.

      Far rovers of the ancient dream
     
      Have all their will of musing hours:
     
      Your eyes were gray-deep as the sea,
     
      Your hands lay open in the flowers!

      From mining Rawdon to Pereau,
     
      For all the gold they delve and share,
     
      The goblins of the Ardise hills
     
      Can horde no treasure like your hair.

      
       105
      
      The swirling tide, the lonely gulls,
     
      The sweet low wood-winds that rejoice—
     
      No sound nor echo of the sea
     
      But hath tradition of your voice.

      The crimson leaves, the yellow fruit,
     
      The basking woodlands mile on mile—
     
      No gleam in all the russet hills
     
      But wears the solace of your smile.

      A thousand cattle rove and feed
     
      On the great marshes in the sun,
     
      And wonder at the restless sea;
     
      But I am glad the year is done,

      
       106
      
      Because I am a wanderer
     
      Upon the roads of endless quest,
     
      Between the hill-wind and the hills,
     
      Along the margin men call rest.

      Because there lies upon my lips
     
      A whisper of the wind at morn,
     
      A murmur of the rolling sea
     
      Cradling the land where I was born;

      Because its sleepless tides and storms
     
      Are in my heart for memory
     
      And music, and its gray-green hills
     
      Run white to bear me company;

      
       107
      
      Because in that sad time of year,
     
      With April twilight on the earth
     
      And journeying rain upon the sea,
     
      With the shy windflowers was my birth;

      Because I was a tiny boy
     
      Among the thrushes of the wood,
     
      And all the rivers in the hills
     
      Were playmates of my solitude;

      Because the holy winter night
     
      Was for my chamber, deep among
     
      The dark pine forests by the sea,
     
      With woven red auroras hung,

      
       108
      
      Silent with frost and floored with snow,
     
      With what dream folk to people it
     
      And bring their stories from the hills,
     
      When all the splendid stars were lit;

      Therefore I house me not with kin,
     
      But journey as the sun goes forth,
     
      By stream and wood and marsh and sea,
     
      Through dying summers of the North;

      Until, some hazy autumn day,
     
      With yellow evening in the skies
     
      And rime upon the tawny hills,
     
      The far blue signal smoke shall rise,

      
       109
      
      To tell my scouting foresters
     
      Have heard the clarions of rest
     
      Bugling, along the outer sea,
     
      The end of failure and of quest.

      Then all the piping Nixie folk,
     
      Where lonesome meadow winds are low,
     
      Through all the valleys in the hills
     
      Their river reeds shall blow and blow,

      To lead me like a joy, as when
     
      The shining April flowers return,
     
      Back to a footpath by the sea
     
      With scarlet hip and ruined fern.

      
       110
      
      For I must gain, ere the long night
     
      Bury its travelers deep with snow,
     
      That trail among the Ardise hills
     
      Where first I found you years ago.

      I shall not fail, for I am strong,
     
      And Time is very old, they say,
     
      And somewhere by the quiet sea
     
      Makes no refusal to delay.

      There will I get me home, and there
     
      Lift up your face in my brown hand,
     
      With all the rosy rusted hills
     
      About the heart of that dear land.

111

THE VAGABONDS

"Such as wake on the night and sleep on the day, and haunt customable taverns and alehouses and routs about, and no man wot from whence they came, nor whither they go."— Old English Statute.

      We are the vagabonds of time,
     
      And rove the yellow autumn days,
     
      When all the roads are gray with rime
     
      And all the valleys blue with haze.

      We came unlooked for as the wind
     
      Trooping across the April hills,
     
      When the brown waking earth had dreams
     
      Of summer in the Wander Kills.

      
       112
      
      How far afield we joyed to fare,
     
      With June in every blade and tree!
     
      Now with the sea-wind in our hair
     
      We turn our faces to the sea.

      We go unheeded as the stream
     
      That wanders by the hill-wood side,
     
      Till the great marshes take his hand
     
      And lead him to the roving tide.

      The roving tide, the sleeping hills,
     
      These are the borders of that zone
     
      Where they may fare as fancy wills
     
      Whom wisdom smiles and calls her own.

      
       113
      
      It is a country of the sun,
     
      Full of forgotten yesterdays,
     
      When time takes Summer in his care,
     
      And fills the distance of her gaze.

      It stretches from the open sea
     
      To the blue mountains and beyond;
     
      The world is Vagabondia
     
      To him who is a vagabond.

      In the beginning God made man
     
      Out of the wandering dust, men say;
     
      And in the end his life shall be
     
      A wandering wind and blown away.

      
       114
      
      We are the vagabonds of time,
     
      Willing to let the world go by,
     
      With joy supreme, with heart sublime,
     
      And valor in the kindling eye.

      We have forgotten where we slept,
     
      And guess not where we sleep to-night,
     
      Whether among the lonely hills
     
      In the pale streamers' ghostly light

      We shall lie down and hear the frost
     
      Walk in the dead leaves restlessly,
     
      Or somewhere on the iron coast
     
      Learn the oblivion of the sea.

      
       115
      
      It matters not. And yet I dream
     
      Of dreams fulfilled and rest somewhere
     
      Before this restless heart is stilled
     
      And all its fancies blown to air.

      Had I my will!... The sun burns down
     
      And something plucks my garment's hem;
     
      The robins in their faded brown
     
      Would lure me to the south with them.

      'Tis time for vagabonds to make
     
      The nearest inn. Far on I hear
     
      The voices of the Northern hills
     
      Gather the vagrants of the year.

      
       116
      
      Brave heart, my soul! Let longings be!
     
      We have another day to wend.
     
      For dark or waylay what care we
     
      Who have the lords of time to friend?

      And if we tarry or make haste,
     
      The wayside sleep can hold no fear.
     
      Shall fate unpoise, or whim perturb,
     
      The calm-begirt in dawn austere?

      There is a tavern, I have heard,
     
      Not far, and frugal, kept by One
     
      Who knows the children of the Word,
     
      And welcomes each when day is done.

      
       117
      
      Some say the house is lonely set
     
      In Northern night, and snowdrifts keep
     
      The silent door; the hearth is cold,
     
      And all my fellows gone to sleep....

      Had I my will! I hear the sea
     
      Thunder a welcome on the shore;
     
      I know where lies the hostelry
     
      And who should open me the door.

118

WHITHER

      What shall we do, dearie,
     
      Dreaming such dreams?
     
      Will they come true, dearie?
     
      Never, it seems.

      Leave the wise thrush alone;
     
      He knows such things.
     
      How rich the silences
     
      Fall when he sings!

      
       119
      
      When shall we come, dearie,
     
      Into that land
     
      Once was our home, dearie,
     
      Perfect as planned?

      When the wind calling us,
     
      Some summer day,
     
      Into the long ago
     
      Lures us away.

      Where shall we go, dearie,
     
      Wandering thus?
     
      Far to and fro, dearie,
     
      Life leads for us.

      
       120
      
      Thou with the morrow's sun
     
      Hillward and free,
     
      I to the vast and hoar
     
      Lone of the sea.

1886-1893.

Transcriber's Note

The original spelling and punctuation has been retained.

Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Low Tide on Grand Pré: A Book of Lyrics

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ:
A BOOK OF LYRICS:
BY
BLISS CARMAN

CONTENTS

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ

WHY

THE UNRETURNING

A WINDFLOWER

IN LYRIC SEASON

THE PENSIONERS

AT THE VOICE OF A BIRD

Consurgent ad vocem volucris.

WHEN THE GUELDER ROSES BLOOM

SEVEN THINGS

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

A SEA CHILD

PULVIS ET UMBRA

THROUGH THE TWILIGHT

CARNATIONS IN WINTER

A NORTHERN VIGIL

THE EAVESDROPPER

IN APPLE TIME

WANDERER

I

II

III

IV

V

AFOOT

WAYFARING

THE END OF THE TRAIL

THE VAGABONDS

WHITHER

Transcriber's Note

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Low Tide on Grand Pré: A Book of Lyrics

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ: A BOOK OF LYRICS: BY BLISS CARMAN

CONTENTS

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ

WHY

THE UNRETURNING

A WINDFLOWER

IN LYRIC SEASON

THE PENSIONERS

AT THE VOICE OF A BIRD Consurgent ad vocem volucris.

WHEN THE GUELDER ROSES BLOOM

SEVEN THINGS

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

A SEA CHILD

PULVIS ET UMBRA

THROUGH THE TWILIGHT

CARNATIONS IN WINTER

A NORTHERN VIGIL

THE EAVESDROPPER

IN APPLE TIME

WANDERER

I

II

III

IV

V

AFOOT

WAYFARING

THE END OF THE TRAIL

THE VAGABONDS

WHITHER

Transcriber's Note

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ:
A BOOK OF LYRICS:
BY
BLISS CARMAN

AT THE VOICE OF A BIRD

Consurgent ad vocem volucris.