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Written by Bliss Carman | Create an image from this poem

On Love

 TO the assembled folk 
At great St. Kavin’s spoke 
Young Brother Amiel on Christmas Eve; 
I give you joy, my friends, 
That as the round year ends, 
We meet once more for gladness by God’s leave. 

On other festal days 
For penitence or praise 
Or prayer we meet, or fullness of thanksgiving; 
To-night we calendar 
The rising of that star 
Which lit the old world with new joy of living. 

Ah, we disparage still 
The Tidings of Good Will, 
Discrediting Love’s gospel now as then! 
And with the verbal creed 
That God is love indeed, 
Who dares make Love his god before all men? 

Shall we not, therefore, friends, 
Resolve to make amends 
To that glad inspiration of the heart; 
To grudge not, to cast out 
Selfishness, malice, doubt, 
Anger and fear; and for the better part, 

To love so much, so well, 
The spirit cannot tell 
The range and sweep of her own boundary! 
There is no period 
Between the soul and God; 
Love is the tide, God the eternal sea.… 

To-day we walk by love; 
To strive is not enough, 
Save against greed and ignorance and might. 
We apprehend peace comes 
Not with the roll of drums, 
But in the still processions of the night. 

And we perceive, not awe 
But love is the great law 
That binds the world together safe and whole. 
The splendid planets run 
Their courses in the sun; 
Love is the gravitation of the soul. 

In the profound unknown, 
Illumined, fair, and lone, 
Each star is set to shimmer in its place. 
In the profound divine 
Each soul is set to shine, 
And its unique appointed orbit trace. 

There is no near nor far, 
Where glorious Algebar 
Swings round his mighty circuit through the night, 
Yet where without a sound 
The winged seed comes to ground, 
And the red leaf seems hardly to alight. 

One force, one lore, one need 
For satellite and seed, 
In the serene benignity for all. 
Letting her time-glass run 
With star-dust, sun by sun, 
In Nature’s thought there is no great nor small. 

There is no far nor near 
Within the spirit’s sphere. 
The summer sunset’s scarlet-yellow wings 
Are tinged with the same dye 
That paints the tulip’s ply. 
And what is colour but the soul of things? 

(The earth was without form; 
God moulded it with storm, 
Ice, flood, and tempest, gleaming tint and hue; 
Lest it should come to ill 
For lack of spirit still, 
He gave it colour,—let the love shine through.)… 

Of old, men said, ‘Sin not; 
By every line and jot 
Ye shall abide; man’s heart is false and vile.’ 
Christ said, ‘By love alone 
In man’s heart is God known; 
Obey the word no falsehood can defile.’… 

And since that day we prove 
Only how great is love, 
Nor to this hour its greatness half believe. 
For to what other power 
Will life give equal dower, 
Or chaos grant one moment of reprieve! 

Look down the ages’ line, 
Where slowly the divine 
Evinces energy, puts forth control; 
See mighty love alone 
Transmuting stock and stone, 
Infusing being, helping sense and soul. 

And what is energy, 
In-working, which bids be 
The starry pageant and the life of earth? 
What is the genesis 
Of every joy and bliss, 
Each action dared, each beauty brought to birth? 

What hangs the sun on high? 
What swells the growing rye? 
What bids the loons cry on the Northern lake? 
What stirs in swamp and swale, 
When April winds prevail, 
And all the dwellers of the ground awake?… 

What lurks in the deep gaze 
Of the old wolf? Amaze, 
Hope, recognition, gladness, anger, fear. 
But deeper than all these 
Love muses, yearns, and sees, 
And is the self that does not change nor veer. 

Not love of self alone, 
Struggle for lair and bone, 
But self-denying love of mate and young, 
Love that is kind and wise, 
Knows trust and sacrifice, 
And croons the old dark universal tongue.… 

And who has understood 
Our brothers of the wood, 
Save he who puts off guile and every guise 
Of violence,—made truce 
With panther, bear, and moose, 
As beings like ourselves whom love makes wise? 

For they, too, do love’s will, 
Our lesser clansmen still; 
The House of Many Mansions holds us all; 
Courageous, glad and hale, 
They go forth on the trail, 
Hearing the message, hearkening to the call.… 

Open the door to-night 
Within your heart, and light 
The lantern of love there to shine afar. 
On a tumultuous sea 
Some straining craft, maybe, 
With bearings lost, shall sight love’s silver star.


Written by Bliss Carman | Create an image from this poem

Rivers of Canada

 O all the little rivers that run to Hudson's Bay,
They call me and call me to follow them away.
Missinaibi, Abitibi, Little Current--where they run
Dancing and sparkling I see them in the sun.
I hear the brawling rapid, the thunder of the fall,
And when I think upon them I cannot stay at all.
At the far end of the carry, where the wilderness begins,
Set me down with my canoe-load--and forgiveness of my sins.
O all the mighty rivers beneath the Polar Star,
They call me and call me to follow them afar.

Peace and Athabasca and Coppermine and Slave,
And Yukon and Mackenzie--the highroads of the brave.

Saskatchewan, Assiniboine, the Bow and the Qu'Appelle,
And many a prairie river whose name is like a spell.

They rumor through the twilight at the edge of the unknown,
"There's a message waiting for you, and a kingdom all your own.

"The wilderness shall feed you, her gleam shall be your guide.
Come out from desolations, our path of hope is wide."

O all the headlong rivers that hurry to the West,
They call me and lure me with the joy of their unrest.

Columbia and Fraser and Bear and Kootenay,
I love their fearless reaches where winds untarnished play--

The rush of glacial water across the pebbly bar
To polished pools of azure where the hidden boulders are.

Just there, with heaven smiling, any morning I would be,
Where all the silver rivers go racing to the sea.

O well remembered rivers that sing of long ago,
Ajourneying through summer or dreaming under snow.

Among their meadow islands through placid days they glide,
And where the peaceful orchards are diked against the tide.

Tobique and Madawaska and shining Gaspereaux,
St. Croix and Nashwaak and St. John whose haunts I used to know.

And all the pleasant rivers that seek the Fundy foam,
They call me and call me to follow them home.
Written by Bliss Carman | Create an image from this poem

The Winter Scene

 I
The rutted roads are all like iron; skies
Are keen and brilliant; only the oak-leaves cling
In the bare woods, or the hardy bitter-sweet;
Drivers have put their sheepskin jackets on;
And all the ponds are sealed with sheeted ice
That rings with stroke of skate and hockey-stick,
Or in the twilight cracks with running whoop.
Bring in the logs of oak and hickory,
And make an ample blaze on the wide hearth.
Now is the time, with winter o'er the world,
For books and friends and yellow candle-light,
And timeless lingering by the settling fire.

While all the shuddering stars are keen with cold.
II

Out from the silent portal of the hours,
When frosts are come and all the hosts put on.
Their burnished gear to march across the night
And o'er a darkened earth in splendor shine,
Slowly above the world Orion wheels
His glittering square, while on the shadowy hill
And throbbing like a sea-light through the dusk,
Great Sirius rises in his flashing blue.
Lord of the winter night, august and pure,
Returning year on year untouched by time,
To hearten faith with thine unfaltering fire,
There are no hurts that beauty cannot ease,
No ills that love cannot at last repair,
In the victorious progress of the soul.
III

Russet and white and gray is the oak wood
In the great snow. Still from the North it comes,
Whispering, settling, sifting through the trees,
O'erloading branch and twig. The road is lost.
Clearing and meadow, stream and ice-bound pond
Are made once more a trackless wilderness
In the white hush where not a creature stirs;
And the pale sun is blotted from the sky.
In that strange twilight the lone traveller halts
To listen to the stealthy snowflakes fall.
And then far off toward the Stamford shore,
Where through the storm the coastwise liners go,
Faint and recurrent on the muffled air,
A foghorn booming through the Smother--hark!
IV

When the day changed and the mad wind died down,
The powdery drifts that all day long had blown
Across the meadows and the open fields,
Or whirled like diamond dust in the bright sun,
Settled to rest, and for a tranquil hour
The lengthening bluish shadows on the snow
Stole down the orchard slope, and a rose light
Flooded the earth with beauty and with peace.
Then in the west behind the cedars black
The sinking sun stained red the winter dusk
With sullen flare upon the snowy ridge,--
As in a masterpiece by Hokusai,
Where on a background gray, with flaming breath
A scarlet dragon dies in dusky gold.
Written by Bliss Carman | Create an image from this poem

The Ships of Yule

 When I was just a little boy,
Before I went to school,
I had a fleet of forty sail
I called the Ships of Yule;
Of every rig, from rakish brig
And gallant barkentine,
To little Fundy fishing boats
With gunwales painted green.
They used to go on trading trips
Around the world for me,
For though I had to stay on shore
My heart was on the sea.

They stopped at every port to call
From Babylon to Rome,
To load with all the lovely things
We never had at home;

With elephants and ivory
Bought from the King of Tyre,
And shells and silks and sandal-wood
That sailor men admire;

With figs and dates from Samarcand,
And squatty ginger-jars,
And scented silver amulets
From Indian bazaars;

With sugar-cane from Port of Spain,
And monkeys from Ceylon,
And paper lanterns from Pekin
With painted dragons on;

With cocoanuts from Zanzibar,
And pines from Singapore;
And when they had unloaded these
They could go back for more.

And even after I was big
And had to go to school,
My mind was often far away
Aboard the Ships of Yule.
Written by Bliss Carman | Create an image from this poem

On Love

 Love's of itself too sweet; the best of all
Is, when love's honey has a dash of gall.


Written by Bliss Carman | Create an image from this poem

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.
Written by Bliss Carman | Create an image from this poem

By the Aurelian Wall

 In Memory of John Keats
By the Aurelian Wall,
Where the long shadows of the centuries fall
From Caius Cestius' tomb,
A weary mortal seeking rest found room
For quiet burial,
Leaving among his friends
A book of lyrics.
Such untold amends
A traveller might make
In a strange country, bidden to partake
Before he farther wends;

Who slyly should bestow
The foreign reed-flute they had seen him blow
And finger cunningly,
On one of the dark children standing by,
Then lift his cloak and go.

The years pass. And the child
Thoughtful beyond his fellows, grave and mild,
Treasures the rough-made toy,
Until one day he blows it for clear joy,
And wakes the music wild.

His fondness makes it seem 
A thing first fashioned in delirious dream,
Some god had cut and tried,
And filled with yearning passion, and cast aside
On some far woodland stream,--

After long years to be
Found by the stranger and brought over sea,
A marvel and delight
To ease the noon and pierce the dark blue night,
For children such as he.

He learns the silver strain
Wherewith the ghostly houses of gray rain
And lonely valleys ring,
When the untroubled whitethroats make the spring
A world without a stain;

Then on his river reed,
With strange and unsuspected notes that plead
Of their own wild accord
For utterances no bird's throat could afford,
Lifts it to human need.

His comrades leave their play,
When calling and compelling far away
By river-slope and hill,
He pipes their wayward footsteps where he will,
All the long lovely day.

Even his elders come.
"Surely the child is elvish," murmur some,
And shake the knowing head;
"Give us the good old simple things instead,
Our fathers used to hum."

Others at open door
Smile when they hear what they have hearkened for
These many summers now,
Believing they should live to learn somehow
Things never known before.

But he can only tell
How the flute's whisper lures him with a spell,
Yet always just eludes
The lost perfection over which he broods;
And how he loves it well.
Till all the country-side,
Familiar with his piping far and wide,
Has taken for its own
That weird enchantment down the evening blown,--
Its glory and its pride.

And so his splendid name,
Who left the book of lyrics and small fame
Among his fellows then,
Spreads through the world like autumn--who knows when?--
Till all the hillsides flame.

Grand Pré and Margaree
Hear it upbruited from the unresting sea;
And the small Gaspereau,
Whose yellow leaves repeat it, seems to know
A new felicity.

Even the shadows tall,
Walking at sundown through the plain, recall
A mound the grasses keep,
Where once a mortal came and found long sleep
By the Aurelian Wall.
Written by Bliss Carman | Create an image from this poem

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.
Written by Bliss Carman | Create an image from this poem

A Song before Sailing

 Wind of the dead men's feet,
Blow down the empty street
Of this old city by the sea
With news for me!
Blow me beyond the grime
And pestilence of time!
I am too sick at heart to war
With failure any more.
Thy chill is in my bones;
The moonlight on the stones
Is pale, and palpable, and cold;
I am as one grown old.

I call from room to room
Through the deserted gloom;
The echoes are all words I know,
Lost in some long ago.

I prowl from door to door,
And find no comrade more.
The wolfish fear that children feel
Is snuffing at my heel.

I hear the hollow sound
Of a great ship coming round,
The thunder of tackle and the tread
Of sailors overhead.

That stormy-blown hulloo
Has orders for me, too.
I see thee, hand at mouth, and hark,
My captain of the dark.

O wind of the great East,
By whom we are released
From this strange dusty port to sail
Beyond our fellows' hail,

Under the stars that keep
The entry of the deep,
Thy somber voice brings up the sea's
Forgotten melodies;

And I have no more need
Of bread, or wine, or creed,
Bound for the colonies of time
Beyond the farthest prime.

Wind of the dead men's feet,
Blow through the empty street;
The last adventurer am I,
Then, world, goodby!
Written by Bliss Carman | Create an image from this poem

Behind the Arras

 I like the old house tolerably well, 
Where I must dwell 
Like a familiar gnome; 
And yet I never shall feel quite at home. 
I love to roam. 
Day after day I loiter and explore 
From door to door; 
So many treasures lure 
The curious mind. What histories obscure 
They must immure! 

I hardly know which room I care for best; 
This fronting west, 
With the strange hills in view, 
Where the great sun goes,—where I may go too, 
When my lease is through,— 

Or this one for the morning and the east, 
Where a man may feast 
His eyes on looming sails, 
And be the first to catch their foreign hails 
Or spy their bales 

Then the pale summer twilights towards the pole! 
It thrills my soul 
With wonder and delight, 
When gold-green shadows walk the world at night, 
So still, so bright. 

There at the window many a time of year, 
Strange faces peer, 
Solemn though not unkind, 
Their wits in search of something left behind 
Time out of mind; 

As if they once had lived here, and stole back 
To the window crack 
For a peep which seems to say, 
"Good fortune, brother, in your house of clay!" 
And then, "Good day!" 

I hear their footsteps on the gravel walk, 
Their scraps of talk, 
And hurrying after, reach 
Only the crazy sea-drone of the beach 
In endless speech. 

And often when the autumn noons are still, 
By swale and hill 
I see their gipsy signs, 
Trespassing somewhere on my border lines; 
With what designs? 

I forth afoot; but when I reach the place, 
Hardly a trace, 
Save the soft purple haze 
Of smouldering camp-fires, any hint betrays 
Who went these ways. 

Or tatters of pale aster blue, descried 
By the roadside, 
Reveal whither they fled; 
Or the swamp maples, here and there a shred 
Of Indian red. 

But most of all, the marvellous tapestry 
Engrosses me, 
Where such strange things are rife, 
Fancies of beasts and flowers, and love and strife, 
Woven to the life; 

Degraded shapes and splendid seraph forms, 
And teeming swarms 
Of creatures gauzy dim 
That cloud the dusk, and painted fish that swim, 
At the weaver's whim; 

And wonderful birds that wheel and hang in the air; 
And beings with hair, 
And moving eyes in the face, 
And white bone teeth and hideous grins, who race 
From place to place; 

They build great temples to their John-a-nod, 
And fume and plod 
To deck themselves with gold, 
And paint themselves like chattels to be sold, 
Then turn to mould. 

Sometimes they seem almost as real as I; 
I hear them sigh; 
I see them bow with grief, 
Or dance for joy like any aspen leaf; 
But that is brief. 

They have mad wars and phantom marriages; 
Nor seem to guess 
There are dimensions still, 
Beyond thought's reach, though not beyond love's will, 
For soul to fill. 

And some I call my friends, and make believe 
Their spirits grieve, 
Brood, and rejoice with mine; 
I talk to them in phrases quaint and fine 
Over the wine; 

I tell them all my secrets; touch their hands; 
One understands 
Perhaps. How hard he tries 
To speak! And yet those glorious mild eyes, 
His best replies! 

I even have my cronies, one or two, 
My cherished few. 
But ah, they do not stay! 
For the sun fades them and they pass away, 
As I grow gray. 


Yet while they last how actual they seem! 
Their faces beam; 
I give them all their names, 
Bertram and Gilbert, Louis, Frank and James, 
Each with his aims; 


One thinks he is a poet, and writes verse 
His friends rehearse; 
Another is full of law; 
A third sees pictures which his hand can draw 
Without a flaw. 


Strangest of all, they never rest. Day long 
They shift and throng, 
Moved by invisible will, 
Like a great breath which puffs across my sill, 
And then is still; 


It shakes my lovely manikins on the wall; 
Squall after squall, 
Gust upon crowding gust, 
It sweeps them willy nilly like blown dust 
With glory or lust. 


It is the world-ghost, the time-spirit, come 
None knows wherefrom, 
The viewless draughty tide 
And wash of being. I hear it yaw and glide, 
And then subside, 


Along these ghostly corridors and halls 
Like faint footfalls; 
The hangings stir in the air; 
And when I start and challenge, "Who goes there?" 
It answers, "Where?" 


The wail and sob and moan of the sea's dirge, 
Its plangor and surge; 
The awful biting sough 
Of drifted snows along some arctic bluff, 
That veer and luff, 


And have the vacant boding human cry, 
As they go by;— 
Is it a banished soul 
Dredging the dark like a distracted mole 
Under a knoll? 


Like some invisible henchman old and gray, 
Day after day 
I hear it come and go, 
With stealthy swift unmeaning to and fro, 
Muttering low, 


Ceaseless and daft and terrible and blind, 
Like a lost mind. 
I often chill with fear 
When I bethink me, What if it should peer 
At my shoulder here! 


Perchance he drives the merry-go-round whose track 
Is the zodiac; 
His name is No-man's-friend; 
And his gabbling parrot-talk has neither trend, 
Beginning, nor end. 


A prince of madness too, I'd cry, "A rat!" 
And lunge thereat,— 
Let out at one swift thrust 
The cunning arch-delusion of the dust 
I so mistrust, 


But that I fear I should disclose a face 
Wearing the trace 
Of my own human guise, 
Piteous, unharmful, loving, sad, and wise 
With the speaking eyes. 


I would the house were rid of his grim pranks, 
Moaning from banks 
Of pine trees in the moon, 
Startling the silence like a demoniac loon 
At dead of noon. 


Or whispering his fool-talk to the leaves 
About my eaves. 
And yet how can I know 
'T is not a happy Ariel masking so 
In mocking woe? 


Then with a little broken laugh I say, 
Snatching away 
The curtain where he grinned 
(My feverish sight thought) like a sin unsinned, 
"Only the wind!" 


Yet often too he steals so softly by. 
With half a sigh, 
I deem he must be mild, 
Fair as a woman, gentle as a child, 
And forest wild. 


Passing the door where an old wind-harp swings, 
With its five strings, 
Contrived long years ago 
By my first predecessor bent to show 
His handcraft so, 


He lay his fingers on the aeolian wire, 
As a core of fire 
Is laid upon the blast 
To kindle and glow and fill the purple vast 
Of dark at last. 


Weird wise, and low, piercing and keen and glad, 
Or dim and sad 
As a forgotten strain 
Born when the broken legions of the rain 
Swept through the plain— 


He plays, like some dread veiled mysteriarch, 
Lighting the dark, 
Bidding the spring grow warm, 
The gendering merge and loosing of spirit in form, 
Peace out of storm. 


For music is the sacrament of love; 
He broods above 
The virgin silence, till 
She yields for rapture shuddering, yearning still 
To his sweet will. 


I hear him sing, "Your harp is like a mesh, 
Woven of flesh 
And spread within the shoal 
Of life, where runs the tide-race of the soul 
In my control. 


"Though my wild way may ruin what it bends, 
It makes amends 
To the frail downy clocks, 
Telling their seed a secret that unlocks 
The granite rocks. 


"The womb of silence to the crave of sound 
Is heaven unfound, 
Till I, to soothe and slake 
Being's most utter and imperious ache, 
Bid rhythm awake. 


"If with such agonies of bliss, my kin, 
I enter in 
Your prison house of sense, 
With what a joyous freed intelligence 
I shall go hence." 


I need no more to guess the weaver's name, 
Nor ask his aim, 
Who hung each hall and room 
With swarthy-tinged vermilion upon gloom; 
I know that loom. 


Give me a little space and time enough, 
From ravelings rough 
I could revive, reweave, 
A fabric of beauty art might well believe 
Were past retrieve. 


O men and women in that rich design, 
Sleep-soft, sun-fine, 
Dew-tenuous and free, 
A tone of the infinite wind-themes of the sea, 
Borne in to me, 


Reveals how you were woven to the might 
Of shadow and light. 
You are the dream of One 
Who loves to haunt and yet appears to shun 
My door in the sun; 


As the white roving sea tern fleck and skim 
The morning's rim; 
Or the dark thrushes clear 
Their flutes of music leisurely and sheer, 
Then hush to hear. 


I know him when the last red brands of day 
Smoulder away, 
And when the vernal showers 
Bring back the heart to all my valley flowers 
In the soft hours. 


O hand of mine and brain of mine, be yours, 
While time endures, 
To acquiesce and learn! 
For what we best may dare and drudge and yearn, 
Let soul discern. 


So, fellows, we shall reach the gusty gate, 
Early or late, 
And part without remorse, 
A cadence dying down unto its source 
In music's course; 


You to the perfect rhythms of flowers and birds, 
Colors and words, 
The heart-beats of the earth, 
To be remoulded always of one worth 
From birth to birth; 


I to the broken rhythm of thought and man, 
The sweep and span 
Of memory and hope 
About the orbit where they still must grope 
For wider scope, 


To be through thousand springs restored, renewed, 
With love imbrued, 
With increments of will 
Made strong, perceiving unattainment still 
From each new skill. 


Always the flawless beauty, always the chord 
Of the Overword, 
Dominant, pleading, sure, 
No truth too small to save and make endure. 
No good too poor! 


And since no mortal can at last disdain 
That sweet refrain, 
But lets go strife and care, 
Borne like a strain of bird notes on the air, 
The wind knows where; 


Some quiet April evening soft and strange, 
When comes the change 
No spirit can deplore, 
I shall be one with all I was before, 
In death once more.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry