"O Lost Canadian Singer of the winsome lays,
How farest thou along the Elysium ways,—
Art thou companionless as we
And sorrowing?
* * * * * *
"O gentle heart, we wonder if thou farest happily
With Homer and the Attic strain,
With Milton and the Tragic train."
Among the younger Canadian poets are two sisters, Annie Campbell Huestis and Ethel Huestis Butler, who have each won distinction. One little lyric of Mrs. Butler's, On Life's Highway, is singularly poetic in its motive, contrasting the experiences of walking as companioned with Grief, or with Joy, and is expressed with much tenderness of feeling. The work of Miss Huestis suggests that she makes her pilgrimages to the "holy hill," and brings away with her all the fragrance of the thyme. A poem of hers entitled Aldaran, the Singer, has somewhat of that sustained sweetness and music that so signally characterised Mrs. Browning's Catarina to Camoens. From Miss Huestis's Aldaran are these extracts:
"Aldaran, who loved to sing,
Here lieth dead.
All the glory of the spring,
All its birds and blossoming,
Near his still bed
Cannot waken him again.
Cannot lure to hill and plain,
Aldaran, the Singer,
Who is dead.
"Aldaran, who loved to sing,
Here lieth low;
Not again his heart shall spring
At the time of blossoming,
Ah, who can know?
Still at dusk or break of day,
Some can hear him on his way,
Aldaran, the vanished one,
Walking, hidden, in the sun;
Moving, mist-like, by the streams
When the early twilight dreams;
Speeding on his quiet way,
Never seen by night or day,
"But in pity drawing near
To the help of those who fear.
To the beds of those who die,
Singing low their lullaby,
Singing still, when they are far
Where the mist and silence are,
Singing softly still that they
May not fear the hidden way.
So, to those whose day is sped,
In the hour lone and dread,
Cometh Aldaran, the Singer,
Who is dead!"
For her Magdalen, whose beauty of phrasing attracted attention when published in a leading critical review of New York, and in which there is a haunting reminiscence of Christina Rossetti, room must here be made, as it represents Miss Huestis in what is perhaps her most artistic mood:
"'Where are you going, weary feet.
Feet that have failed in storm and flood?
'I go to find a flower sweet
I left, fresh growing, near a wood.
The winds blow pure from many a hill,
And hush to tender stillness there.
Shall not this restless heart be still,
And grow more innocent and fair?'
'Not so; for sin and bitter pain
Can never find Youth's flower again!'