Sonnets and Other Verse Part 2

So grows the good man old--meek, glad, sublime; More lovely than in all his youthful bloom, Grander than in the vigor of his prime, He lights with radiance life's autumnal gloom, And through the fading avenue of Time Walks in triumphal glory to his tomb.

AN AUTUMN WALK.

Adown the track that skirts the shallow stream I wandered with blank mind; a bypath drew My aimless steps aside, and, ere I knew, The forest closed around me like a dream.

The gold-strewn sward, the horizontal gleam Of the low sun, pouring its splendors through The far-withdrawing vistas, filled the view, And everlasting beauty was supreme.

I knew not past or future; 'twas a mood Transcending time and taking in the whole.

I was both young and old; my lost childhood, Years yet unlived, were gathered round one goal; And death was there familiar. Long I stood, And in eternity renewed my soul.

NOVEMBER.

Sombre November, least belov'd of all The months that make the pleasurable year, Too late for the resplendence of the fall, Too soon for Christmas-bringing winter's cheer; Ign.o.ble interregnum following The golden cycle of a good queen's reign, Before her heir, proclaimed already king, Has come of age to rule in her domain;

We do not praise you; many a dreary day Impatiently we chide your laggard pace; Backward we look, and forward, and we say: The queen was kind and fair of form and face; The king is stern, but clad in brave array: G.o.d save His Majesty and send him grace.

NOVEMBER SUNs.h.i.+NE.

O affluent Sun, unwilling to abate Thy bounteous hospitality benign, Whenas we deemed the banquet o'er, thy great Gold flagon brims again with amber wine; Whenas we thought t' have seen on plain and hill Thy euthanasia in October's haze, The blessing of thy light, unstinted still, Irradiates the drear November days.

Naught can discourage thee, O thurifer Of gladness to the else benighted face Of the misfeatured earth; fit minister Of Him whose love illumines every place, Who pours His mercy forth without demur Over the sins and sorrows of our race.

SHORT DAYS.

Now is the Sun, erst spendthrift of his rays And lavish of his largesses of light, Become a miser in his latter days, An avaricious dotard, alter'd quite.

Is he the same that all the summer long Strew'd with ungrudging hand his gleaming gold?

Can such ill grace to high estate belong?

Can bright be dim? can warm so soon be cold?

Ay, but he goes his parsimonious way, And h.o.a.rds his s.h.i.+ning treasures from the view, And garners up his riches 'gainst the day When Earth, the prodigal, shall beg anew; Then to her need he'll give no n.i.g.g.ard dole, But wealth incalculable, heart and soul.

THE BEGINNING OF WINTER.

Now are the trees all ruefully bereft Of their brave liveries of green and gold, No shred of all their pleasant raiment left To s.h.i.+eld them from the wind and nipping cold.

Now is the gra.s.s all withered up and dead, And shrouded in its cerement of the snow; Now the enfeebled Sun goes soon to bed, And rises late and carries his head low.

Now is the night magnificent to view When the Queen Moon appears with cloudless brow; Now are our spirits cleans'd and born anew In the clear, quickening atmosphere; and now We re-make home, and find our hearts' desire In common talk before the cheerful fire.

THE WINTER AND THE WILDERNESS.

When we who dwell within this province old, Cloven in twain by the great river's tide, Gird at inhospitable winter's cold, And rue the downfall of fair summer's pride; Or turn our eyes from gazing on the vales Of lavish verdure and abundant fruit, To those rough wastes where Nature ever fails, And tillage spurns a profitless pursuit;

Let us recall that sentence from the hand Of history's father, laying down his pen,-- Those words of Cyrus, which he made to stand To all his work as moral and amen; 'Tis not the richest and most fertile land That always bears the n.o.blest breed of men.[1]

[1] "Although the work seems unfinished, it concludes with a sentence which cannot have been placed casually at the end, viz., that, as the great Cyrus was supposed to have said, 'It is not always the richest and most fertile country which produces the most valiant men.'"--_Commentary on the Work of Herodotus_.

THE IMMIGRANTS.

From lands where old abuses sit entrenched And stern restriction thwarts aspiring merit, And by gaunt men a meagre dole is wrenched From the unkind conditions they inherit; From teeming cities where the ceaseless moan Of want is burthen to the traffic's hum, From shrouded mills, and fields they ne'er might own, From servitude and blank despair, they come.

And every s.h.i.+p that sails across the foam, And every train that rushes from the sea, And every sun that brightens heaven's dome, And every breeze that stirs the leafing tree, Sings to the pilgrims a glad song of home, With freedom, joy and opportunity.

WOLFE.

"I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec to-morrow."--_Wolfe, on hearing Gray's "Elegy" read the night before the capture of Quebec_.

Thou need'st no marble monuments to keep Thy fame immortal and thy memory An inspiration to make pulses leap And resolution spring to mastery.

Thou need'st no gilded tablets on the walls Of cities, no imposing sepulchre, Imperishable Wolfe, whose name recalls The flower of kings, who bore Excalibur.

The ultimate dispensers of renown, The poets, shall accord thee honor fit, And add fresh laurels ever to thy crown, High-minded hero, who hadst rather writ Those lines of one to every poet dear Than take the fortress of a hemisphere.

MONTCALM.

"Ce n'est rien, ce n'est rien; ne vous affligez pas pour moi, mes bonnes amies."

Montcalm, calm mount, thou didst not faint nor fail At that fierce volley from thy foemen near, Nor at the charge's deafening prelude quail,-- The Highland slogan and the Saxon cheer.

But thou, even thou, couldst not withstand the shock That broke and bore precipitately on Tried regiments, La Sarre and Languedoc, Bearn, Guienne and Royal Roussillon.

Thou couldst but fight as heroes e'er have fought, With that high self-devotion which transcends Vain-glorious victory: "'Tis naught, 'tis naught; Fret not yourselves on my account, good friends,"

Yet 'twas thy mortal wound. Such words express True chivalry and Christlike n.o.bleness.