From the broad-shouldered Cobequids we saw
Prone Blomidon in lotos-eyed repose,
The immemorial vigil lapst to dream.
The Basin lay as if in calm of swoon.
Upon the bosom of the breathing tide
The drifting ships, wide-winged in air, in sea,
Sailed double on a single keel—a ship
In either stilly heaven, above, beneath.
The day was warm, and as we lay beside
The woodland brook and watched the pinfish play,
We saw the sky within a silver pool,
Like a great vase of lapis lazuli
Veined with the feathery spray of cirrus cloud,
While cumuli in spotless beauty bloomed
Therein—a garden of the gods! And all
The pool seemed fragrant with a myriad sweets.
"There's promise of fair morrow," Harold said,
"The witness of the sea and wood is one:
The hissing brine, moonstruck, comes vengeful up
Its iron gateways with remorseless flood—
This little brook in rage and foam tears through
A hundred hills—each sets a mirror at
Our feet of beauty's self. And so, I ween,
The fury of the age will end as full
Of calm as are this sea and pool of heaven."
And breasting an old path to the carved shore
Where fell at ebb the sea-green billows clear,—
A path o'ertangled thick with alder hung
With tags that take the rich brown Vandyke loved,
And cool with dusky air in which, all still,
Eye-bright and fronded fern and lichened spruce
Swam deep in voiceless sea of wildwood balm—
My eye had sight of emerald moss and bells
That wreathed the bearded rocks that once were fire.
"Ho! here is where the fisher lives who sings
All day while fingering nets, and chants the tide
To sleep," cried Harold, "as he tends his seines
At night. Some three-score souls like his would make
A state, and one such state the golden age.
This old man never knows when spring is past,
But pipes a robin song from May to May,
A fresh-blown breezy song of coming good—
He's piping now!"
Heirs of the century,
Sons of the next,
Hearten your spirits,
Your souls keep unvext.
There's an ebb in the tide,
There's an open sea wide,
But where sun and star dart,
You've a trustworthy chart.
Beside the wave-worn cliffs,
Painted with rainbows of a thousand storms,
We sat us down, and took on grateful cheek
And brow the waking winds that yestermorn,
Far out Atlantic's grey unresting wastes,
In awful tempest smote the full-winged ship
And pluckt it naked to the hungry deep.
"Peace is of conflict born," I said, "and good
Seems rooted oft in ill. Man gropes in fog,
And is a child tost in a cockle-shell.
The stars wink over him and then are gone,
The sun is not, and when he deems he's lost,
The shore breaks forth in silver welcome sweet."
Care for the coming man,
Heirs of the race,
Hearten your spirits,
Gird! quicken your pace!
There's a sound in the air,
There are trumpets ablare,
But there's nothing to dread,
You've God overhead.
"The Sirens once were symbol of chief fears
That met the hardy mariner on life's main,"
Said Harold, musingly, "but now the coast
Is set with sirens groaning lest he touch
The isles mist-veiled and hooded white with fog,
But cruel as the Sisters twain of death.
Science, to-day, the witchery of the past
Turns into truth to guide the course of man,
Tracks to its lair disease, and bolt and flame
Subdues to service of the struggling race;
While breeze of health begins to fan alike
The cheeks of rich and poor in city ways,
And wisdom cries aloud in every street."
You of the world-ages,
Saviors of man,
Hearten your spirits,
Lay open God's plan.
Labor hungers and wastes
While love tarries nor hastes,
Yet the note's round and clear,
The full time draweth near.
"But what of man's grim lust and greed?" said I.
"The comradeship of stars and night is not
More awful than is that of man with sin,
Nor shows more steadfast purpose 'gainst the light.
The sky and air fresh-washed with summer rain
Forthwith begin to cloud with haze and smoke
Till smit again with lightning's wrath, and torn
By buffet of the thunder's pealing voice.
So hath it been with man, till judgment-ire
Reddens in vain to purge his murky sky
And flash the light of God upon his soul.
The beastly lure of drunkenness that cloaks
Itself in the white mantle of the Christ;
Delusion's wand that prints mirage for sight
On eyes of civic crowds, and nations, too,
Or, unclean, faith assoils in simple hearts;
The simpering guile that toys with capital
And robs the workman of his honest wage,
While like the surgy murmurs of the sea
Sounds out the moan of willing labor's voice
For bread to fill its famished children's mouths;
The lust of power to sit in place of God
And turn for selfish ends the wheels of fate
Of fellowman,—these wait a day of doom!"
Heirs of the century,
Sons of renown,
Lift up humanity's
Broad kingdom and crown.
There's a purpose replete,
To put all 'neath man's feet,
And we see it begun
In the Virgin's crowned Son.
"Injustice," Harold said, with eye that burned
Like a star, "is the devil's own trade-mark,
And hottest comes from hell through saintly hands!
The race of man is in the making yet.
Hypocrisy still deftly apes true worth—
Thus prophesying universal good.
Nature is non-committal of her end,
But God is hiding not man's destiny.
Yon fitful beacon flares the dark night through,
And then the kindling clouds, day's heralds, burn
In golden dawn. Earth's skyward crags, which thirst
For news from God, are bathed in heavenly light,
And from their sunrise shoulders the full morn
Shoots far the splendors of its coming noon.
The shadows of a fleeing night yet dim
The age and mask a hundred ills as good,
More eager graspt at since they haste away;
But from the slopes there pours a clear new light,
Divinely aired, above that of the sun.
Philosophy of schools, nor science wise,
Nor labor, of itself, life's secret finds,
That fills the promise of man's vermeil bloom.
'Tis love alone can sheathe the alien sword,
And crown mankind in his own kingdom lord."
Heirs of the coming age,
Makers of man,
The Christ be your pattern,
Ay, choose with elan.
There's a presence at hand,
There's a voice of command—
It is Love, King of men,
Alleluia, Amen!
And as we turned toward home by open beach,
The waves were loud in clamor on the shore;
But over all, and far away, we caught
The drifting chant of the old Christian seer:
It is Love, King of men,
Alleluia, Amen!