It looms up larger than I dreamed;
Roadways of rock
And canyons full of light;
Niched balconies for pines bent all one way;
Small birds in flight,
Dashing against the dark
Of that vast rocky flank,
Whose sides of iron seams,
Laid under golden lichen,
Have been a place of dreams
And of brute sacrifice.
What if it has a power to draw us near
As in the days of fear?
When from the rocklands of the Georgian Bay
Or through the bush roads whence we came to-day,
But then on foot, soft-padding all the way,
Or in the war canoes
They crowded to this small blue lake of theirs
And an old shrine ...
What are we floating towards
In this small, low canoe?
A naked, ceremonial singing past
Seems to reach out and whisper.
STUDY IN SHADOWS
The Rock at Bon Echo
I
Once in the twilight aisles of Amiens
I thought I knew what shadows were,
Creeping in golden dust and greying dust,
And trooping down dim flights of measured air,
Liquid in spacing, that those arches span.
II
But just last night, before the moon was up,
Our little boat stole close against these crags
That out-rear arches and reject the dark.
Yet gradually the purple of the rock
Melted before it; and again they came
Creeping in golden dust, and greying dust,
And crowding down those giant flights of stair
That open slowly as eternity,
To hold the feet of shadows, lost in night.
III
Then I remembered Götterdammerüng—
How before doom falls on the gorgeous host,
Slowly there drifts across the empty stage
A smoke-cloud, lonely as a passing soul.
In very truth the gods return to you—
Great rock that blazes colour in the sun—
And, as in the Valhalla of old song,
Parade before our eyes the whole day long
And make a glorious end,
As with you they are folded in a sleep.
No cloud foretells their doom, but wings of birds
A moment sweep your side—then fall away.