Chapter I: Front Matter

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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.

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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

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

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,
Guendolen, Guendolen.

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

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!"

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,

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.