And a kiss and a welcome that fill the These demon-haunted were-wolves, room,

Who circle round the Pole. And the kettle sings in the glimmer and gloom.

They hasten, still they hasten, Margery, Margery, make the tea,

Across the northern night, Singeth the kettle merrily.

Filled with a frighted madness,

A horror of the light;

Forever and forever,
A LAKE MEMORY

Like leaves before the wind, The lake comes throbbing in with voice of They leave the wan, white gleaming pain

Of the dawning far behind. Across these flats, athwart the sunset's glow,

Their only peace is darkness, I see her face, I know her voice again,

Their rest to hasten on Her lips, her breath, O God, as long ago. Into the heart of midnight,

Forever from the dawn. To live the sweet past over I would fain, Across far phantom ice-floes

As lives the day in the red sunset's fire, The eye of night may mark That all these wild, wan marshlands now These horror-haunted were-wolves would stain,

Who hound them to the dark. With the dawn's memories, loves and flushed desire.

All through this hideous journey,

They are the souls of men
I call her back across the vanished years, Who in the far dark-ages
Nor vain — a white-armed phantom fills Made Europe one black fen.
her place;

They fled from courts and convents,
Its eyes the wind-blown sunset fires, its tears And bound their mortal dust
This rain of spray that blows about my With demon wolfish girdles
face.

Of human hate and lust.

THE WERE-WOLVES
THEY hasten, still they hasten,

From the even to the dawn ;
And their tired eyes gleam and glisten

Under north skies white and wan.
Each panter in the darkness

Is a demon-haunted soul,
The shadowy, phantom were-wolves,

Who circle round the Pole.

Their tongues are crimson flaming,

Their haunted blue eyes gleam, And they strain them to the utmost

O'er frozen lake and stream ; Their cry one note of agony,

That is neither yelp nor bark, These panters of the northern waste,

Who hound them to the dark.

These who could have been god-like,

Chose, each a loathsome beast,
Amid the heart's foul graveyards,

On putrid thoughts to feast;
But the great God who made them

Gave each a human soul,
And so 'mid night forever

They circle round the Pole;
A praying for the blackness,

À longing for the night,
For each is doomed forever

By horror
And far in the heart of midnight,

Where their shadowy flight is hurled,
They feel with pain the dawning,

That creeps in round the world.
Under the northern midnight,

The white, glint ice upon,
They hasten, still they hasten,

With their horror of the dawn ;
Forever and forever,

Into the night away
They hasten, still they hasten

Unto the judgment day.

You may hear their hurried breathing,

You may see their fleeting forms, At the pallid polar midnight

When the north is gathering storms ; When the arctic frosts are flaming,

And the ice-field thunders roll ;

Frederick George Scott
KNOWLEDGE

For they never came back again

On the deep the ships were lost; THEY were islanders, our fathers were, But in spite of the danger and pain,

And they watched the encircling seas, The ocean has still to be crossed, And their hearts drank in the ceaseless stir,

And only they do And the freedom of the breeze;

Who are brave and true. Till they chafed at their narrow bounds

And longed for the sweep of the main,
And they fretted and fumed like hounds

TIME
Held in within sight of the plain,
And the play

I saw Time in his workshop carving faces;
And the prey.

Scattered around his tools lay, blunting

griefs, So they built them ships of wood, and sailed Sharp cares that cut out deeply in reliefs To many an unknown coast;

Of light and shade ; sorrows that smooth They braved the storm and battles hailed,

the traces And danger they loved most ;

Of what were smiles. Nor yet without fresh Till the tiny ships of wood

graces Grew powerful on the globe,

His handiwork, for ofttimes rough were And the new-found lands for good

ground They wrapped in a wondrous robe And polished, oft the pinched made smooth Of bold design,

and round; Our brave ensign.

The calm look, too, the impetuous fire re

places. And islanders yet in a way are we,

Long time I stood and watched ; with hidOur knowledge is still confined,

eous grin And we hear the roar of encircling sea,

He took each heedless face between his To be crossed in the ship of the mind;

knees, And we dream of lands afar,

And graved and scarred and bleached with Unknown, unconquered yet,

boiling tears. And we chafe at the bounds there are, I wondering turned to go, when, lo! my And our spirits fume and fret

skin For the prize

Feels crumpled, and in glass my own face Of the wise.

Itself all changed, scarred, careworn, white But we 'll never do aught, I know, unless

with years.
We are brave as our sires of old,
And face like them the bitterness
Of the battle and storm and cold ;

SAMSON
Unless we boldly stand,
When men would hold us back,

Plunged in night, I sit alone
With the helm-board in our hand,

Eyeless on this dungeon stone, And our eyes to the shining track Naked, shaggy and unkempt, Of what may be

Dreaming dreams no soul hath dreamt. Beyond the sea.

Rats and vermin round my feet There are rocks out there in that wide, wide Play unharmed, companions sweet,

Spiders weave me overhead 'Neath many a darkling stream,

Silken curtains for

my

bed. And souls that once sailed out bold and free

Day by day the mould I smell Have been carried away in a dream ; Of this fungus-blistered cell ;

sees

sea,

a

sea.

IN THE GOLDEN BIRCH From over the purple hills

Comes the wind with its strange sweet How the leaves sing to the wind !

song to the land ; And the wind with its turbulent voices And the earth looks bright, as it might sweet

when planned Gives back the praise of the leaves, as is By the Maker, and left unblemished of meet,

human ills ; To the soft blue sky, where the cumulous And the river runs, like a child to its clouds are thinned,

mother's knee, And driven away, like a flock of fright- To the heart of the great unresting

ened sheep, By the wind that waketh and putteth to sleep.

How perfect the day, and sweet!

Over me, limitless heavens of blue ; Here, in the golden birch,

Close to me, leaves that the wind sifts Folded in rapture of golden light,

through ; I taste the joy of the birds in their flight ; And the one sweet song, that the wind and And I watch the flickering shadows, that

the leaves repeat, sway and lurch

Till the mild, hushed meadows listen, And flutter, like dancing brownies, over crowned with light, the green,

And the bill-tops own its might! And the birch is singing wherein I lean.

Archibald Lampman
HEAT

Nay more, I think some blessed power

Hath brought me wandering idly here :
FROM plains that reel to southward, dim, In the full furnace of this hour

The road runs by me white and bare ; My thoughts grow keen and clear.
Up the steep hill it seems to swim
Beyond, and melt into the glare.

BETWEEN THE RAPIDS
Upward half way, or it may be

Nearer the summit, slowly steals The point is turned ; the twilight shadow A hay-cart, moving dustily

fills With idly clacking wheels.

The wheeling stream, the soft receding

shore, By_bis cart's side the wagoner

And on our ears from deep among the hills Is slouching slowly at his ease,

Breaks now the rapids' sudden quickenHalf-hidden in the windless blur

ing roar. Of white dust puffing to his knees. Ah, yet the same ! or have they changed This wagon on the height above,

their face, From sky to sky on either hand,

The fair green fields, and can it still be Is the sole thing that seems to move

seen, In all the heat-held land.

The white log cottage near the mountain's

base, Beyond me in the fields the sun

So bright and quiet, so home-like and Soaks in the grass and hath his will ;

serene? I count the marguerites one by one ; Ah, well I question, for as five years go, Even the buttercups are stiil.

How many blessings fall, and how much
On the brook yonder not a breath

Disturbs the spider or the midge.
The water-bugs draw close beneath Aye there they are, nor have they changed
The cool gloom of the bridge.

their cheer,

The fields, the hut, the leafy mountain
Where the far elm-tree shadows flood

brows;
Dark patches in the burning grass, Across the lonely dusk again I hear
The cows, each with her peaceful cud, The loitering bells, the lowing of the
Lie waiting for the heat to pass.

COWS,
From somewhere on the slope near by The bleat of many sheep, the stilly rush
Into the pale depth of the noon

Of the low whispering river, and, through
A wandering thrush slides leisurely

all, His thin revolving tune.

Soft human tongues that break the deep

ening hush In intervals of dreams I hear

With faint-heard song or desultory call : The cricket from the droughty ground ; O comrades, hold ! the longest reach is The grasshoppers spin into mine ear

past ; A small innumerable sound.

The stream runs swift, and we are flying
I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze :

fast.
The burning sky-line blinds my sight;
The woods far off are blue with haze ; The shore, the fields, the cottage, just the
The hills are drenched in light.

same,

But how with them whose memory makes And yet to me not this or that

them sweet? Is always sharp or always sweet ;

Oh, if I called them, hailing name by name, In the sloped shadow of my bat

Would the same lips the same old shouts I lean at rest, and drain the heat;

repeat ?

woe.