Canadian Battlefields, and Other Poems

I have grown weary of voices,
And I long for silence and rest,
And the peacefulness of night-time,
When no care doth my soul infest.

And I’ve grown weary of faces
That have never a thought for me;
Of eyes all cold and repellent
I would be forever made free.

And I’ve grown weary of thinking
The thoughts that my being possess;
The finite and the infinite
Forever my bosom oppress.

I’m very weary of hoping,
And e’er waiting from day to day
A happy and bright consummation,
An illusion still far away.

I’m weary of vacant places:
The dear hands that clasp mine no more
Have drifted o’er the dark river,
And gained the eternal shore.

Ah! how I miss the dear faces
Of old friends long years since made free;
But only their vacant places
Forever are calling to me.

And so I’m saddened and lonely,
And trying to trust and to wait,
Dreaming and longing for rest time—
’Tis the passion and burden of fate.

THE LAST SONG.

I have sung my last song, and am ready
To go at the dying of day;
Ere the gloom of night comes to sadden,
My feet shall have passed away.
No more when you meet at the twilight
Shall I mingle my voice with the strains
That tell of home, of love, and heaven,
And the past with its pleasures and pains.

And when again you are carolling
The old songs I love so well,
Will you steal a thought for the absent,
For the one who is saying farewell?
Or must I then, too, be forgotten
When my voice shall be nevermore heard?
Will regret ne’er trouble thy bosom,
Nor memory ever be stirred?

Sing on, happy hearts, in the gloaming;
Sing of home, and of heaven, and love;
Heed not the feet that have wandered
Far away, like the voice of a dove.
An echo I hear sweetly tender,
That seems ever to whisper to me
Of a meeting of friends long severed,
In a life made all perfect and free.

THE FIRST SNOW.

I’m walking to-day with mem’ry
Through the woodlands weird and still,
With ghostly shadows around me,
Haunting, and strange, and chill.
Ominous clouds are gathering
O’er a ghastly, threatening sky;
The voice of the wind is grieving
In the treetops bare and high.

And the streams are stilled and sleeping,
And under my onward tread
The fallen leaves are rustling;
And from the pale, silent dead
Come stealing back phantom footsteps
By many a ruined bower;
And tender, mystical murmurings,
From many a pale dead flower;

And a subtle song of summer,
Of beautiful seasons fled,
Of faces, voices, and ruined hopes,
Sweet dreams, and the tears we shed;
And sweet as the angels’ singing,
Or the summer’s soft twilight,
Or love asleep in fragrant bloom,
Or the peaceful, dreamland night;

And a love that waked to never die,
A radiant and fadeless bloom
That waning years cannot efface,
An endless and golden noon.
I revel at will with mem’ry
By streams and rippling rills;
My heart is wrapt in ecstasy,
As I climb its shining hills.

But list to the dirge of the wind
Through the ever deep’ning gloom;
See! ’tis falling, the death-white snow,
Awak’ning my soul too soon.
It whitens the lonely moorlands,
And the forest glade and glen,
The dreamy hills and silent vales
Where the summer late hath been.

And see how it swirls and eddies,
Searching fiercely everywhere;
It clasps in an icy embrace,
Flurrying fast through the air.
’Tis so desolate and dreary,
And thought grows heavy with pain,
For it may be that never for me
Will the summer come again.

PEACE.

At last, when the sun is setting,
And the beautiful golden bars
Reach upward through purple splendor,
And mingle their light with the stars;
The winds are hushed to a whisper,
Caressing the leaves and flowers;
And song of birds are rippling
Sweetly in twilight bowers;
I ponder o’er past and present,
And rest from the care and strife—
At peace with all, and storing strength
For the daily battle of life.

ARMAGEDDON.

CHAPTER I.

I know not if ’twas in a vision, or a spirit dream.
’Twas at the noon of day, when fairest summer time serene
Clothed all the world in loveliness; when dazzling light
Streamed o’er the Himalayas, and the grandeur of the sight
Lay all before me, as I stood on that far peerless height,
And saw through spirit eyes the whole world at my feet.

Magnificently grand was that far panoramic view,
And I was lost in wonderment as swift-winged vision flew
From sea to sea, lake, river, stream, and tiny rippling rill,
Far mountains tow’ring to the skies, and rolling plain and hill,
And a thousand verdured swells that like billows roll away
Beyond the horizon’s mystic rim and the far gates of day.

From tropic seas I pierced the veil where Arctic oceans roll,
By a thousand isles that gem the deep and flit from pole to pole,
And swift return by milder climes of rich perpetual bloom,
No more to look on that wild waste of mystery and gloom.

I saw the cattle on a thousand sloping emerald hills,
Heard the dream-songs of shepherds that through the distance thrills
The list’ning ear; and saw millions of tillers of the soil—
The support of kings, nations—earth’s suffering sons of toil,
A thousand cities glistened in the near and far away;
All domed and minaretted, by a thousand streams they lay.
I heard the din of commerce and the rush of countless feet,
And the cry of untold voices, and babel reigned complete;
And pomp and power were trampling the poor and weak ones down,
And kings looked on from palace halls with ne’er rebuke nor frown.

I saw giant nations flaunting diverse banners to the breeze,
All bristling o’er with armament, and frail thrones at their knees;
Lust of power was rampant, jars and threat’nings everywhere,
Deep mutterings of the rising storm fell across the air.
The seas were white with commerce, with the ships that o’er them sweep,
Watched by the navies of the world, vast guardians of the deep;
I heard the cry of Christian, and of ruthless Moslem bands
Flaunting their crescent banner with cruel bloodstained hands.

One flag I marked on every sea, in every clime and zone—
The meteor flag of Britain, proudly, defiantly outthrown.
It seemed to tower over all, bidding tyrants to beware,
Of the nation’s rights its bright folds guard to have a proper care.
There were mutterings and combinations adverse to Britain’s fame,
And from the horizon’s darkening rim burst shafts of ruddy flame.

But a couchant lion rose and shook his majestic, tawny mane,
And roared with a roar that shook the seas and braced his giant frame;
And the Empress of the Ocean stood on her seagirt shores
In the panoply of war, where her royal banner soars.
Serene and noble there she stood, in majesty and pride,
And beckoned, and millions of men uprose, and far and wide
Her dauntless ships moved out, and covered all the sea,
To guard the nation’s sacred cause and Christian liberty.

The German nation heard the call that echoed o’er the deep,
And her mighty heart was thrilled, and with one generous sweep
Hurled all differences to the four quarters of the wind,
And swiftly ranged by Britain’s side, as one in heart and mind.
And Italia’s answering cry rose up, regenerated, free,
As she joined the alliance with a shout for Christian unity.

The Austrian nation was moved as by a mighty throe,
And prepared to strike by Britain’s side the now advancing foe
Of Russ, and Gaul, and Moslem hordes converging for the fight
That is to shake the astonished world in horror and affright.

Converging to the gates of India in columns vast they come
To the martial blare of trumpets and roll of fife and drum,
The half a million horse—the van—in wild clangor clears the way
For three thousand frowning guns in formidable array,
With vast masses of infantry—six millions of the foe,
To deliver a vast attack, an irresistible blow;
To sweep Albion from the Ind, and the German power to break;
To win the Orient, even the world to dominate
For the passes of the Himalayas on and on they sweep,
Making the very earth to vibrate beneath their marching feet.

But hark! on the expectant and sharply startled ear
Bursts a fiercer blare of trumpets and a still more rousing cheer.
I turned my vision southward. Oh, welcome, glorious sight!
Five million men advancing in the glowing golden light
Of the sun of Ind, that fell athwart the grand array
Of Albion and her illustrious allies. And far away
I saw another army moving swiftly to the right
(As if detached from Albion’s hosts), and disappear from sight
In the foothills of the Himalayas—some deep strategy evolved
By Wolseley and Roberts, who war’s problems oft have solved.

Too late, the rushing foe the barring mountain passes gain,
And swift debouch in mighty mass and unfold along the plain.
An awful front is formed, reaching leagues and leagues away,
Deployed in seven battle lines in stupendous grim array,
With three thousand guns at intervals frowning there between
Vast corps of horse and infantry, such as the world hath ne’er seen.
Intermingled were strange devices to hurl storms of shot and shell,
Hot and furious as the deadly, insatiate maw of hell.
Bicycle corps with protecting shields flashed everywhere;
And balloons, like eagles, poised on high, borne along the air;
Swooping like eagles for their prey, searching the far and nigh,
They fearless rise above the clouds and soar along the sky.
Swiftly telegraph lines reach every part of the vast line,
Entrenched by corps of engineers skilful of design.
And central, in rear of that stupendous and waiting host,
The White Czar of all the Russias with his staff takes post.

With the Russians forming the centre, gigantic, deep, and wide,
And the corps of France the right wing, a mass of fiery pride;
And the Sultan’s hordes of Moslems form the left, and there await
The awful pending struggle, the doom of a boding fate!
And thus they wait the adversary, Gog and Magog.

CHAPTER II.

Again I turned to the southward, thrilled by the glorious sight
Of vast battle lines advancing all beautiful and bright;
With flashing steel, like countless stars, bannered, bedight they come,
Great waves of scarlet, blue and gold, fearlessly rolling on,
Preceded by a reconnaissance of cavalry and balloons,
With deadly explosives to hurl by hot platoons.
Five million men advancing in the panoply of war,
With Albion in the centre; and prolonging the right afar
Are the Italians and Austrians facing the Moslem bands,
The followers of the crescent from far Orient lands.
Deployed to the left are the Germans, a stately array,
Once more to grapple their ancient foes, defiantly at bay.

Seven leagues! seven leagues! an awful front
Albion and her allies form!
Five battle lines advancing in parallel,
Fronting the dire impending storm,
With vast masses of brilliant cavalry
At intervals on each wing,
And supporting divisions in reserve,
They half a million sabres bring.
Intermingling are three thousand quick-fire guns,
And destructive and strange machines—
Cunning devices for the attack and defence—
Under cover of light steel screens.
And covering the front are bicycle corps,
And steel-armoured motor cars;
Swift and frightfully deadly, well befitting
The grand intrepid sons of Mars.

As a very god of vast war sits Wolseley
On his charger, unmoved, serene,
In rear of the centre, with a brilliant staff,
Intrusted with the command supreme.
And the stern Germans are with their great war lord,
The Kaiser, eager for the fray;
Believing the God of all battles will win
Them this last great decisive day.
And the Austrians and dauntless Italians
Passionate enthusiasm bring,
And are grandly, unflinchingly coming on
Under Emperor and King.

Oh, the dread majesty of that gigantic,
Glorious panoply of war!
Advancing with the awesome roar of the sea
When its deep wrath is heard afar;
Advancing upon the giant adversary
To the swift help of the Lord.
To put the proud, inveterate followers
Of Satan to the pending sword;
To free the benighted world from tyranny,
And the hard yoke and scourge of sin,
They roll on, and onward, fearing neither death
Nor hell, all eager to begin.

Now pauses the colossal, mighty advance,
When near to the gigantic foe,
Ere hurling a destroying and vast attack,
Ere delivering the first great blow.
To perfect his wonderful dispositions
Wolseley, with lightning speed,
Distributes his detail of final orders
By wire, ’cycle, and fiery steed.

The engineers along the intrepid lines
Throw up works of shelter and defence;
And wires and ’phones to every abiding corps
Waiting the issue grim, intense.

It was an awful and a trying moment.
Should heaven now, or hell, prevail?
I feared as the masterful Christian hosts
Prepared the foe to assail.

CHAPTER III.

Hist! what’s this horror stealing o’er the serenitude of heaven?
A weird panoply of cold, metallic light had driven
All the deep-toned azure of the summer skies away.
A spectral terror seems to chill the very noon of day.
And see! those strange, dark phantoms falling on the earth and sea,
Portending calamity. An appalling mystery
Envelops all the horizon, and a pending doom
Seems inevitable to man; and nature’s woof and bloom
Is smitten by a poisonous and hot simoon.

But see! it changes. A wondrous crimson flood
Hath enveloped earth, sea and sky in lurid robes of blood!
And from out the awful threatening deeps, and voids on high,
Marshalling legions of phantom armies go sweeping by!
And they wheeled in vast evolution on high o’er where I stood.
The hosts of heaven, in the glorious panoply of God,
Wheeled into huge lines of columns fronting on the foe;
In golden chariots and equipments strange, and burnished so.
I bowed in awe; I could not bear the dazzling sight
Of that mass of immaculate glory, intensely bright.
But I thought with ecstasy, that heaven would fight this day
For the Christian hosts in the vale, and bear the foe away
To destruction, desolation, and bind Satan with a chain,
And cast him down headlong, to trouble man never again.

But hark! from the threatening vale below
Comes a rumbling commotion,
A sullen roar, as when storms sweep across
The wrathful face of the ocean;
And from Albion’s front move two thousand guns
Sternly rolling upon the foe,
With vast corps of riflemen in support;
And swiftly forward flashing go
The bicycle divisions, and quick-fire guns,
A destructive torrent to pour.
And aloft are the airships and balloons;
Like great eagles they rise and soar
With dire explosives and deadly machines
To hurl death on the lines below—
The awful lines in manœuvre vast
In the strange light glittering so.
Suddenly along those ponderous fronts
Bursts the roar of the dreadful guns,
Causing the very earth to tremble
As through it the vibration runs.
And peal on peal incessant staggered
The great mountain on which I stood;
And the responsive, bellowing thunder
Of the adversary froze the blood.
Thus, loosed from the leash, the dogs of war
Burst in nameless fury on the foe,
And death was hurled from the clouds above
To the hosts in the vale below.

And I saw lines of airships advancing,
Soaring like mighty birds of prey;
And rent asunder were the lurid clouds
That obscured the red god of day.
And I saw them glide on to each other,
The opposing lines up on high,
And the trumpet call from balloon to balloon
Manœuvred them through the sky.
And still dropping their horrid explosives
Below to the shattered plain,
They seek by quick aerial manœuvres
Advantageous positions to gain.
And thus rising, poising, and advancing,
Pausing in close column and line,
The strange scene was awesome and wonderful,
And immeasurably sublime.
Fiercely on each other with quick-fire guns
Destruction they now madly pour,
And infernal machines and magazines
Add their terrible, deadly roar.
And out on the vast aerial spaces
It echoed and rolled away,
A shuddering and horrible tumult,
Lost in distance grim and gray.
And contending there for the mastery,
Some collided with ruinous clash,
And fell from the fierce crimson clouds above
To the earth with a horrid crash.

And thus they fought in the aerial plains
To cover their own below,
And to hover o’er, and hurl destruction
On the contending mammoth foe.

I looked on the fearful scene below,
And the earth was pent with the slain;
And the deafening and tumultuous roar
Rolled o’er the embattled plain.
And from the hot lips of six thousand guns
Leaped whirlwinds of smoke and flame,
And the fiendish missiles tore divisions
Asunder, in ruin amain.

In majestic evolution vast masses
Of infantry enter the fire zone,
And whole fronts of magnificent columns
Into eternity are blown.
And the bicycle corps and quick-fire guns
Into the maelstrom of battle go;
Flashing in and out all along the fronts,
They deliver their blow on blow.
Vast clouds of cavalry charge on the wings
At intervals along the line;
And the mighty reserves en masse abide
Magnificent and sublime.

And these enormous adversaries sway
In furious struggles to and fro,
Repelling, receding, and advancing,
Like the vast sea-waves’ ebb and flow.
Incessant charges of the cavalry
Sweep like whirlwinds over the plain,
And though thousands fall in the mad melee,
They charge and recharge again.
And they shore whole lines into fragments
Where confusion had entered in;
Where the foot and horse had suffered most,
They drove their wild charge within.
Again and again they too were hurled back,
Broken, beaten, and swept away
By the deadly guns and the magazines
Of the infantry’s ceaseless play.

And explosives drop from the fierce red clouds,
Hurling death and dismay around,
Making ghastly rents in the shattered ranks,
Chasming the trembling ground.
And the infantry charged fierce and wild
With the bayonet’s resistless play,
And their deadly work in the mad melee,
Added horror to the ghastly day.
Thousands of banners waved through smoke and flame,
And wild cheers rent the glaring sky;
Along the lines for leagues and leagues
Rose the dauntless battle-cry.
And oh, the incessant tumultuous roar!
On the shuddering world it fell;
It seemed to rise from the infernal pit,
The red bellowing maw of hell.

CHAPTER IV.

And so the night fell redly down,
Such a night as man ne’er hath seen—
One vast crimson glare through the universe,
And weird phantoms flitting between
The stars that glowed in the vast far voids,
Falling prone on the earth and sea.
Horrible convulsions ran all amain,
Staggering the mountains under me;
And lightning leapt from the fierce red clouds,
And the appalling thunder shock
Seemed to rive the firmament in twain,
Crashing from mountain and rock to rock.
And fiendish voices shrieked through the air,
Mocking and gibing at man’s doom;
And the pale, dead legions heaping the plain,
Peering out of the gory gloom.

And the battle ceased not; through the night
It raged with the fury of hell,
And the ponderous blows that Albion dealt
Like a destroying angel fell.
They pressed the Russians from line to line
By the bayonet and sabre stroke;
On and on with a deathless valor,
Through their vast divisions they broke.
And the left of the line stands firm, where
The Germans are sternly at bay,
Assailed by the Gauls in furious hate,—
They must not and will not give way.

But the right is threatened and sorely pressed
By the Sultan’s valiant corps,
For like rocks they abide before the fire
The Italians and Austrians pour.
Avalanches of smoke and raging flame
From the batteries belch far and wide;
Like a misty veil cover all the field,
And creep up the great mountain side.
’Twas as a mist of blood, obscuring but
Slightly the struggle; and on high
The bright aerial ships still hovered
In conflict along the fierce red sky.

Suddenly, with terrific, awful throe,
The earth was rent at the mountain’s base,
And hot sulphurous fumes uprose, and
Demoniacal cries, and the face
Of Satan, with horrible equipments,
Crawled up o’er the red rim of hell;
And twelve flaming legions of fiends—lost souls—
Sprang after, and into phalanx fell.
With flaming harness all scaled, bedight,
Hideous blazoned shield and lance,
With Satan, Lucifer and Apollyon,
They prepared their direful advance

To the help of the mighty adversary,
Gog and Magog. They clanged their shields,
And raged and uttered such blasphemous,
Malignant, and discordant cries
As only the infernal conclaved
Regions of the damned could vomit forth.
And frightful shapes—scorpions, lizards, vampires,
Dragons, and serpents—wriggled up,
Hissing, and spread along the scorched ground
Their poisonous slime and horrid breath;
And all things venomous, of which to touch,
To breathe, is loathsome, instant death!

I was horrified and appalled,
And raised my eyes in prayer;
And oh, the sight that met my affrighted gaze,
In the red cloud’s tremendous glare!
The celestial army, by some wondrous
Evolution, poised o’er the foe—
Poised central—and hurled annihilation
To the Satanic hosts below;
Hurled vast streams of glaring lightning,
And rending thunderbolts roaring fell,
And countless blinding meteors scathed
And ruined Satan where they fell.
Avalanches of ponderous aerolites
Tore the maw and counterscarp of hell!
Nameless armaments beat Satan’s cohorts down,
And a hideous, discordant knell
Of rage, despair, smote the shuddering hills,
With’ring the verdure all amain,
And rolled in nameless horror along
The lines of that ensanguined plain.

Nearer and nearer swooped the celestial
Legions in majesty and might,
Until, all ruined and beaten down,
The demon foe were put to flight,
And Satan seized and bound with a chain,
And hurled blaspheming back once more
Down the accursed, eternal void of
Damnation’s frenzied awful shore!
Closed and sealed was that deadly maw
Of desolation and of doom,
That man might escape the horror of an
Everlasting suffering and gloom.

All through the lurid night the conflict raged
With furious, unabated breath,
Swaying backward, forward, with frightful carnage
In the cruel revelry of death.
And the flame and light of that vast battle,
And the veil that shrouded all the sky,
Made light as day upon the earth and sea,
And where the air ships fought on high.
All the night Albion had pressed the huge
Centre of the foe from line to line,
Pressing onward, aye, steadily onward,
With deeds of chivalry sublime.

CHAPTER V.

The intrepid Germans have not made way,
But like the rocks they firm abide,
And the fiery Gauls dash swift upon them,
Like the rise and sweep of ocean’s tide
In frenzied fury hurled forward,
And rolled backward over all
The stern rocks they seethe and roar upon, ere
Hurled in ruin to their fall.

The far right of the line’s in peril sore
At the dawn of another day,
And though sorely pressed by the Sultan’s corps,
They will die, but never give way.

This I saw as the glaring sun uprose,
And the conflict still shook the world;
And in mighty mass all along the front,
The vast foot and horse were hurled.
And the earth was heaped and pent with the slain,
And their blood like a river ran,
And ne’er was witnessed such a battle-scene
Since ever this strange world began.

And I see through the red rays of the sun
A glad sight that my bosom thrills:
’Tis Roberts, debouching in rear of the foe,
From the sheltering Himalayan hills.
’Twas he that had disappeared to the right
Ere the dreadful conflict began;
’Twas Wolseley’s masterful, strategic stroke—
A card in his vast battle plan.
With the flower of the Ind and British Guards
He fell on the brave Sultan’s rear
With half a million of horse and foot,
With a prolonged, thunderous cheer.
And they shattered the Moslems from right to left,
And lent and tore them asunder
By the infantry’s fire, and sabre stroke,
And the batteries’ awful thunder.

Crushed to atoms between the two lines,
The Sultan’s ruin is complete,
And he lays his flaming scimitar down
At the invincible Roberts’ feet.

The critical time had now arrived
To deliver a crushing blow,
And Wolseley redoubled all the fire
Of his guns on the suffering foe;
And the infantry close up, and again
They a devastating fire pour,
And the bicycle corps and quick-fire guns
Added their fierce and incessant roar.
And from the crimson clouds his aerial ships
Hurl their cruel and deadly rain,
Shattering the foe in the lines below
And rending the stormswept plain.

A grand coup de main he had prepared—
A thousand electric motor cars,
With a hedge of spears on their outward shields
That flashed like countless silver stars;
Each with a quick-fire gun, and a score of men
Held with the reserves in the rear.
He sends with a rush all along the lines
Those intrepid souls without fear.
Forward in line at intervals they sweep
With resistless hedge of steel,
And the writhing lines of the foe they reach—
See! see! they in wild horror reel
From the death rush of those wonderful cars
That cut them to pieces there,
And confusion enters those suffering lines,
And a wave of sullen despair.

And Wolseley seizes the fateful moment,
And rolls forward now the whole line—
Seven leagues! seven leagues of front!
Irresistible and sublime.

“All along their front let the cavalry charge!
Crush now their faltering powers!
Let the reserves sweep the foe from the field!
Complete this day of days, which is ours.”
And they swift unfold and sweep o’er the plain,
Resistlessly forward everywhere,
A fiery mass of heroic chivalry,
So glorious and so fair.

Like destroying angels they fall on the foe,
Rending, destroying all amain,
And they reel back in despair, still struggling there,
But ever and ever in vain.

And the cavalry charged in mighty mass,
And the earth rocked beneath their tread,
And they shore whole lines into mere fragments,
And the fragments in terror fled.

The infantry volleyed, and swept the guns,
And charged through the flame and smoke,
And rent and ruined those wavering lines
As through and through them they broke.

Thus Albion and her allies rolled on
Till from every position driven,
Bleeding and torn, ruined, and all forlorn,
The foe were cast to the four winds of heaven.

Oh, mourn! oh, pity! and weep, all the world;
At the close of that awful day
Two million of fearless, heroic dead
Were hidden forever away!

And the sinister skies were cleared again,
And the phantoms that fell on the sea,
And the fierce crimson clouds faded away,
And heaven’s blue shone again o’er me.
I heard a song, as of seraphic choirs,
And it floated down from above,
A most wonderful song of ecstasy,
Of rejoicing and infinite love.

And the celestial host soared upward,
Away, repeating the chorus; it ran:
“For the world is redeemed; joy! joy! joy!
Peace on earth and good will to man.”