Fires of Driftwood | Page 5

Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
heart! But best of all?Is to see the sun shrink, red and small,?While the fog steals in (more surely fleet?Than the smacks that run from her white-shod feet)?And clamours of startled calls arise?From bewildered ships that have lost their eyes;?The fog horn bellows its deep-mouthed shout,?The little lights on the shore blur out?And strange, dim shapes pass wistfully?With a secret tide to a secret sea.
Lake Louise
I THINK that when the Master Jeweler tells?His beads of beauty over, seeking there?One gem to name as most supremely fair,?To you He turns, O lake of hidden wells!
So very lovely are you, Lake Louise,?The stars which crown your lifted peaks at even?Mistake you for a little sea in heaven?And nightly launch their shining argosies.
From shore to dim-lit shore a ripple slips,?The happy sigh of faintly stirring night?Where safe she sleeps upon this virgin height?Captive of dream and smiling with white lips.
Surely a spell, creation-old, was made?For you, O lake of silences, that all?Earth's fretting voices here should muted fall,?As if a finger on their lips were laid!
The Gatekeeper
THE sunlight falls on old Quebec,?A city framed of rose and gold,?An ancient gem more beautiful?In that its beauty waxes old.?O Pearl of Cities! I would set?You higher in our diadem,?And higher yet and higher yet,?That generations still to be?May kindle at your history!
'Twas here that gallant Champlain stood?And gazed upon this mighty stream,?These towering rock-walls, buttressed high--?A gateway to a land of dream;?And all his silent men stood near?While the great fleur-de-lis fell free,?(Too awe-struck they to raise a cheer)?And while the shining folds outspread?The sunset burned a sudden red.
Here paced the haughty Frontenac,?His great heart torn with pride and pain,?His clear eye dimming as it swept?The land he might not see again,?This infant world, this strange New France?Dropped down as by some vagrant wind?Upon the New World's vast expanse,?Threatened yet safe! Through storm and stress?Time's challenge to the wilderness.
Here, when to ease her tangled skein?Fate cut her threads and formed anew?The pattern of the thing she planned?And red war slipped the shuttle through,?Montcalm met Wolfe! The bitter strife?Of flag and flag was ended here--?And every man who gave his life?Gave it that now one flag may wave,?One nation rise upon his grave!
The twilight falls on old Quebec?And in the purple shines a star,?And on her citadel lies peace?More powerful than armies are.?O fair dream city! Ebb and flow?Of race feuds vex no more your walls.?Can they of old see this? and know?That, even as they dreamed, you stand?Gatekeeper of a peace-filled land!
The Bridge Builder
OF old the Winds came romping down,?Oh, wild and free were they!?They bent the prairie grasses low?And made a place to play.
Then, that the gods might hear their voice?On purple days of spring,?They sought the tossing, pine-clad slope?And made a place to sing.
Tired at last of song and play,?They found a canyon deep?And in its echoing silences?They made a place to weep.
Man came, a small and feeble thing,?And looked upon the plain.?"Lo, this is mine," he said, and set?A seal of golden grain.
Upon the mountain slopes he gazed,?Where the great pine trees grow,?Then gashed their mighty sides and laid?Their singing branches low.
He clung upon the canyon's ledge?And from its topmost ridge,?Above its vast and awful deeps,?He built himself a bridge.
A bauble in the light of day,?New gilded by the sun,?It seemed like some great, golden web?By giant spider spun!
The homeless winds came rushing down--?Oh they were wild and free!?And angry for their stolen plain?And for their felled pine tree--
And angry--angry most of all?For that brave bridge of gold!?With deep-mouthed shout they hurtled down?To tear it from its hold--
The girders shrieked, the cables strained?And shuddered at the roar--?Yet, when the winds had passed, the bridge?Held firmly as before!
Still fairy-like and frail it shone?Against the sunset's glow--?But one, the builder of the bridge,?Lay silent, far below!
The Prairie School
THE sweet west wind, the prairie school a break in the yellow wheat, The prairie trail that wanders by to the place where the four winds meet-- A trail with never an end at all to the children's eager feet.
The morning scents, the morning sun, a morning sky so blue?The distance melts to meet it till both are lost to view?In a little line of glory where the new day beckons through--
And out of the glow, the children: a whoop and a calling gay, A clink of lunch-pails swinging as they clash in mimic fray, A shout and a shouting echo from a world as young as they!
The prairie school! The well-tramped earth, so ugly and so dear, The piney steps where teacher stands, a saucy gopher near,?A rough-cut pole where the flag flies up to a shrill voiced children's cheer.
So stands the outpost! Time and change will crowd its widening door, Big with the dreams we visioned and the hopes we battled for-- A legacy to
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