LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ

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

CHARLES L. WEBSTER AND COMPANY

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK MDCCCXCIII

Copyright, 1893,

By BLISS CARMAN.

(All rights reserved.)

PRESS OF

Jenkins & McCowan,

NEW YORK.

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.

CONTENTS

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—

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.

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.

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;

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;

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.

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.

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.

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;

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,

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,

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;

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.

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.

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.

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."

"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,

"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.

"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'?"

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,

"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.

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,