"He met her on the mountain, He gave her a horn to blow, And the very last words he said to her Were, 'Go 'long, Eliza, go.'"

Foolish,—but life was all, And under the skilful fingers Contours came at your call— Art grows and time lingers;— But now the song has a change Into something wistful and strange. And one asks with a touch of ruth What became of the youth And where did Eliza go? He met her on the mountain, He gave her a horn to blow, The horn was a silver whorl With a mouthpiece of pure pearl, And the mountain was all one glow, With gulfs of blue and summits of rosy snow. The cadence she blew on the silver horn Was the meaning of life in one phrase caught, And as soon as the magic notes were born, She repeated them once in an afterthought. They heard in the crystal passes, The cadence, calling, calling, And faint in the deep crevasses, The echoes falling, falling. They stood apart and wondered; Her lips with a wound were aquiver, His heart with a sword was sundered, For life was changed forever When he gave her the horn to blow: But a shadow arose from the valley, Desolate, slow and tender, It hid the herdsmen's chalet, Where it hung in the emerald meadow, (Was death driving the shadow?) It quenched the tranquil splendour Of the colour of life on the glow-peaks, Till at the end of the even, The last shell-tint on the snow-peaks Had passed away from the heaven. And yet, when it passed, victorious, The stars came out on the mountains, And the torrents gusty and glorious, Clamoured in a thousand fountains, And even far down in the valley, A light re-discovered the chalet. The scene that was veiled had a meaning, So deep that none might know; Was it here in the morn on the mountain, That he gave her the horn to blow?

* * * * *

Tears are the crushed essence of this world, The wine of life, and he who treads the press Is lofty with imperious disregard Of the burst grapes, the red tears and the murk. But nay! that is a thought of the old poets, Who sullied life with the passional bitterness Of their world-weary hearts. We of the sunrise, Joined in the breast of God, feel deep the power That urges all things onward, not to an end, But in an endless flow, mounting and mounting, Claiming not overmuch for human life, Sharing with our brothers of nerve and leaf The urgence of the one creative breath,— All in the dim twilight—say of morning, Where the florescence of the light and dew Haloes and hallows with a crown adorning The brows of life with love; herein the clue, The love of life—yea, and the peerless love Of things not seen, that leads the least of things To cherish the green sprout, the hardening seed; Here leans all nature with vast Mother-love, Above the cradled future with a smile. Why are there tears for failure, or sighs for weakness, While life's rhythm beats on? Where is the rule To measure the distance we have circled and clomb? Catch up the sands of the sea and count and count The failures hidden in our sum of conquest. Persistence is the master of this life; The master of these little lives of ours; To the end—effort—even beyond the end.

* * * * *

Here, Morris, on the plains that we have loved, Think of the death of Akoose, fleet of foot, Who, in his prime, a herd of antelope From sunrise, without rest, a hundred miles Drove through rank prairie, loping like a wolf, Tired them and slew them, ere the sun went down. Akoose, in his old age, blind from the smoke Of tepees and the sharp snow light, alone With his great grandchildren, withered and spent, Crept in the warm sun along a rope Stretched for his guidance. Once when sharp autumn Made membranes of thin ice upon the sloughs, He caught a pony on a quick return Of prowess and, all his instincts cleared and quickened, He mounted, sensed the north and bore away To the Last Mountain Lake where in his youth He shot the sand-hill-cranes with his flint arrows. And for these hours in all the varied pomp Of pagan fancy and free dreams of foray And crude adventure, he ranged on entranced, Until the sun blazed level with the prairie, Then paused, faltered and slid from off his pony. In a little bluff of poplars, hid in the bracken, He lay down; the populace of leaves In the lithe poplars whispered together and trembled, Fluttered before a sunset of gold smoke, With interspaces, green as sea water, And calm as the deep water of the sea.

There Akoose lay, silent amid the bracken, Gathered at last with the Algonquin Chieftains. Then the tenebrous sunset was blown out, And all the smoky gold turned into cloud wrack. Akoose slept forever amid the poplars, Swathed by the wind from the far-off Red Deer Where dinosaurs sleep, clamped in their rocky tombs. Who shall count the time that lies between The sleep of Akoose and the dinosaurs? Innumerable time, that yet is like the breath Of the long wind that creeps upon the prairie And dies away with the shadows at sundown.

* * * * *

What we may think, who brood upon the theme, Is, when the old world, tired of spinning, has fallen Asleep, and all the forms, that carried the fire Of life, are cold upon her marble heart— Like ashes on the altar—just as she stops, That something will escape of soul or essence,— The sum of life, to kindle otherwhere: Just as the fruit of a high sunny garden, Grown mellow with autumnal sun and rain, Shrivelled with ripeness, splits to the rich heart, And looses a gold kernel to the mould, So the old world, hanging long in the sun, And deep enriched with effort and with love, Shall, in the motions of maturity, Wither and part, and the kernel of it all Escape, a lovely wraith of spirit, to latitudes Where the appearance, throated like a bird, Winged with fire and bodied all with passion, Shall flame with presage, not of tears, but joy.

THE END