Embers, Complete

          How has the cloud fallen, and the leaf withered on the tree,
          The lemontree, that standeth by the door?
          The melon and the date have gone bitter to the taste,
          The weevil, it has eaten at the core—
          The core of my heart, the mildew findeth it;
          My music, it is but the drip of tears,
          The garner empty standeth, the oven hath no fire,
          Night filleth me with fears.
          O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice?
          His footsteps hast thou covered with thy flood?
          He was as one who lifteth up the yoke,
          He was as one who taketh off the chain,
          As one who sheltereth from the rain,
          As one who scattereth bread to the pigeons flying.
          His purse was at his side, his mantle was for me,
          For any who passeth were his mantle and his purse,
          And now like a gourd is he withered from our eyes.
          His friendship, it was like a shady wood—
          Whither has he gone?—Who shall speak for us?
          Who shall save us from the kourbash and the stripes?
          Who shall proclaim us in the palace?
          Who shall contend for us in the gate?
          The sakkia turneth no more; the oxen they are gone;
          The young go forth in chains, the old waken in the night,
          They waken and weep, for the wheel turns backward,
          And the dark days are come again upon us—
          Will he return no more?
          His friendship was like a shady wood,
          O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice?
          Hast thou covered up his footsteps with thy flood?
          The core of my heart, the mildew findeth it!
          When his footsteps were among us there was peace;
          War entered not the village, nor the call of war:
          Now our homes are as those that have no roofs.
          As a nest decayed, as a cave forsaken,
          As a ship that lieth broken on the beach,
          Is the house where we were born.
          Out in the desert did we bury our gold,
          We buried it where no man robbed us, for his arm was strong.
          Now are the jars empty, gold did not avail
          To save our young men, to keep them from the chains.
          God hath swallowed his voice, or the sea hath drowned it,
          Or the Nile hath covered him with its flood;
          Else would he come when our voices call.
          His word was honey in the prince’s ear—
          Will he return no more?

               In the sands I lived in a hut of palm,
               There was never a garden to see;
               There was never a path through the desert calm,
               Nor a way through its storms for me.

               Tenant was I of a lone domain;
               The far pale caravans wound
               To the rim of the sky, and vanished again;
               My call in the waste was drowned.

               The vultures came and hovered and fled;
               And once there stole to my door
               A white gazelle, but its eyes were dread
               With the hurt of the wounds it bore.

               It passed in the dusk with a foot of fear,
               And the white cold mists rolled in;
               And my heart was the heart of a stricken deer,
               Of a soul in the snare of sin.

               My days they withered like rootless things,
               And the sands rolled on, rolled wide;
               Like a pelican I, with broken wings,
               Like a drifting barque on the tide.

               But at last, in the light of a rose-red day,
               In the windless glow of the morn,
               From over the hills and from far away,
               You came-ah, the joy of the morn!

               And wherever your footsteps fell there crept
               A path—it was fair and wide;
               A desert road which no sands have swept,
               Where never a hope has died.

               I followed you forth, and your beauty held
               My heart like an ancient song,
               By that desert road to the blossoming plains
               I came, and the way was long.

               So, I set my course by the light of your eyes;
               I care not what fate may send;
               On the road I tread shine the love-starred skies,
               The road with never an end.

          Oh, the garden where to-day we, sow and to-morrow we reap;
          Oh, the sakkia turning by the garden walls;
          Oh, the onion-field and the date-tree growing,
          And my hand on the plough—by the blessing of God;
          Strength of my soul, O my brother, all’s well!

          Take thou thy flight, O soul! Thou hast no more
          The gladness of the morning: ah, the perfumed roses
          My love laid on my bosom as I slept!
          How did he wake me with his lips upon mine eyes,
          How did the singers carol, the singers of my soul,
          That nest among the thoughts of my beloved!
          All silent now, the choruses are gone,
          The windows of my soul are closed; no more
          Mine eyes look gladly out to see my lover come.
          There is no more to do, no more to say
          Take flight, my soul, my love returns no more!

     The bed of my love I will sprinkle with attar of roses,
     The face of my love I will touch with the balm,
     With the balm of the tree from the farthermost wood,
     From the wood without end, in the world without end.
     My love holds the cup to my lips, and I drink of the cup,
     And the attar of roses I sprinkle will soothe like the evening dew,
     And the balm will be healing and sleep, and the cup I will drink,
     I will drink of the cup my love holds to my lips.

          Fleet is thy foot: thou shalt rest by the etl tree;
          Water shalt thou drink from the blue-deep well;
          Allah send his gard’ner with the green bersim,
          For thy comfort, fleet one, by the etl tree.
          As the stars fly, have thy footsteps flown—
          Deep is the well, drink, and be still once more;
          Till the pursuing winds, panting, have found thee
          And, defeated, sink still beside thee—
          By the well and the etl tree.

     The Tall Dakoon, the bridle rein he shook, and called aloud,
     His Arab steed sprang down the mists which wrapped them like a
          shroud;
     But up there rang the clash of steel, the clanking silver chain,
     The war-cry of the Tall Dakoon, the moaning of the slain.

     And long they fought—the Tall Dakoon, the children of the mist,
     But he was swift with lance and shield, and supple of the wrist,
     Yet if he rose, or if he fell, no man hath proof to show—
     And wide the world beyond the mists, and deep the vales below!

     For when a man, because of love, hath wrecked and burned his ships,
     And when a man for hate of love hath curses on his lips,
     Though he should be the peasant born, or be the Tall Dakoon,
     What matters then, of hap, or place, the mist comes none too soon!

          Our ship is a beautiful lady,
          Friendly and ready and fine;
          She runs her race with the storm in her face,
          Like a sea-bird over the brine.

          In her household work no hand does shirk,—
          No need of belaying-pins,—
          And the captain dear and the engineer,
          They both look after the Twins:

          The Twins that drive her to do her best
          Where the Roaring Forties rage
          From the Fastnet Height to the Liberty Light,
          And the Customs landing-stage.

          Where the crank-shafts pitch in the iron ditch,
          Where the main-shaft swims and glides,
          Where the boilers keep, in the sullen deep,
          A master-hand on the Tides;

          Where the reeking shuttle and booming bar
          Keep time in the hum of the toiling hive,—
          The men of the deep, while the travellers sleep,
          Their steel-clad coursers drive.

          And Davy Jones’ locker is full
          Of the labour that moves the world;
          And brave they be who serve the sea
          To keep our flags unfurled:

          The Union Jack and the Stripes and Stars,
          Gallant and free and true,
          In a world-wide trade, and a fame well made,
          And humanity’s work to do.

          Now list, ye landsmen, as ye roam,
          To the voice of the men offshore,
          Who’ve sailed in the old ship Never Return,
          With the great First Commodore.

          They fitted foreign (God keeps the sea),
          They stepped aboard (God breaks the wind).
          And the babe that held by his father’s knee,
          He leaves, with his lass, behind.

          And the lad will sail as his father sailed,
          And a lass she will wait again;
          And he’ll get his scrip in his father’s ship,
          And he’ll sail to the Southern Main;

          And he’ll sail to the North, and he’ll make to the East,
          And he’ll overhaul the West;
          And he’ll pass outspent as his father went
          From his landbirds in the nest.

          There are hearts that bleed, there are mouths to feed,
          (Now one and all, ye landsmen, list)
          And the rent’s to pay on the quarter-day—
          (What ye give will never be missed)

          And you’ll never regret, as your whistle you wet,
          In Avenue Number Five,
          That you gave your “quid” to the lonely kid
          And the widow, to keep ‘em alive.

          So out with your golden shilling, my lad,
          And your bright bank-note, my dear!
          We are safe to-night near the Liberty Light,
          And the mariner says, What Cheer!

               I ride to the tramp and shuffle of hoofs
               Away to the wild waste land,
               I can see the sun on the station roofs,
               And a stretch of the shifting sand;
               The forest of horns is a shaking sea,
               Where white waves tumble and pass;
               The cockatoo screams in the myall-tree,
               And the adder-head gleams in the grass.

               The clouds swing out from beyond the hills
               And valance the face of the sky,
               And the Spirit of Winds creeps up and fills
               The plains with a plaintive cry;
               A boundary-rider on lonely beat
               Creeps round the horizon’s rim;
               He has little to do, and plenty to eat,
               And the world is a blank to him.

               His friends are his pipe, and dog, and tea,
               His wants, they are soon supplied;
               And his mind, like the weeping myall-tree,
               May droop on his weary ride,
               But he lives his life in his quiet way,
               Forgetting,—perhaps forgot,—
               Till another rider will come some day,
               And he will have ridden, God wot!

               To the Wider Plains with the measureless bounds:
               And I know, if I had my choice,
               I would rather ride in those pleasant grounds,
               Than to sit ‘neath the spell of the voice
               Of the sweetest seraph that you could find
               In all the celestial place;
               And I hope that the Father, whose heart is kind,
               When I speak to Him face to face,

               Will give me something to do up there
               Among all the folks that have died,
               That will give me freedom and change of air,
               If it’s only to boundary ride:
               For I somehow think, in the Great Stampede,
               When the world crowds up to the Bar,
               The unluckiest mortals will be decreed
               To camp on the luckiest star.

               It was the time that the Long Divide
               Blooms and glows like an hour-old bride;
               It was the days when the cattle come
               Back from their winter wand’rings home;
               Time when the Kicking Horse shows its teeth,
               Snarls and foams with a demon’s breath;
               When the sun with a million levers lifts
               Abodes of snow from the rocky rifts;
               When the line-man’s eyes, like the lynx’s, scans
               The lofty Bridge of the Hundred Spans.

               Round a curve, down a sharp incline,
               If the red-eyed lantern made no sign,
               Swept the train, and upon the bridge
               That binds a canon from ridge to ridge.
               Never a watchman like old Carew;
               Knew his duty, and did it, too;
               Good at scouting when scouting paid,
               Saved a post from an Indian raid—
               Trapper, miner, and mountain guide,
               Less one arm in a lumber slide;
               Walked the line like a panther’s guard,
               Like a maverick penned in a branding-yard.
               “Right as rain,” said the engineers,
               “With the old man working his eyes and ears.”

               “Safe with Carew on the mountain wall,”
                Was how they put it, in Montreal.
               Right and safe was it East and West
               Till a demon rose on the mountain crest,
               And drove at its shoulders angry spears,
               That it rose from its sleep of a thousand years,
               That its heaving breast broke free the cords
               Of imprisoned snow as with flaming swords;
               And, like a star from its frozen height,
               An avalanche leaped one spring-tide night;
               Leaped with a power not God’s or man’s
               To smite the Bridge of the Hundred Spans.

               It smote a score of the spans; it slew
               With its icy squadrons old Carew.
               Asleep he lay in his snow-bound grave,
               While the train drew on that he could not save;
               It would drop, doom-deep, through the trap of death,
               From the light above, to the dark beneath;
               And town and village both far and near
               Would mourn the tragedy ended here.

               One more hap in a hapless world,
               One more wreck where the tide is swirled,
               One more heap in a waste of sand,
               One more clasp of a palsied hand,
               One more cry to a soundless Word,
               One more flight of a wingless bird;
               The ceaseless falling, the countless groan,
               The waft of a leaf and the fall of a stone;
               Ever the cry that a Hand will save,
               Ever the end in a fast-closed grave;
               Ever and ever the useless prayer,
               Beating the walls of a mute despair.
               Doom, all doom—nay then, not all doom!
               Rises a hope from the fast-closed tomb.
               Write not “Lost,” with its grinding bans,
               On life, or the Bridge of the Hundred Spans.

               See, on the canon’s western ridge,
               There stands a girl!  She beholds the bridge
               Smitten and broken; she sees the need
               For a warning swift, and a daring deed.
               See then the act of a simple girl;
               Learn from it, thinker, and priest, and churl.
               See her, the lantern between her teeth,
               Crossing the quivering trap of death.
               Hand over hand on a swaying rail,
               Sharp in her ears and her heart the wail
               Of a hundred lives; and she has no fear
               Save that her prayer be not granted her.
               Cold is the snow on the rail, and chill
               The wind that comes from the frozen hill.
               Her hair blows free and her eyes are full
               Of the look that makes Heaven merciful—
               Merciful, ah! quick, shut your eyes,
               Lest you wish to see how a brave girl dies!
               Dies—not yet; for her firm hands clasped
               The solid bridge, as the breach out-gasped,
               And the rail that had held her downward swept,
               Where old Carew in his snow-grave slept.

               Now up and over the steep incline,
               She speeds with the red light for a sign;
               She hears the cry of the coming train,
               it trembles like lanceheads through her brain;
               And round the curve, with a foot as fleet
               As a sinner’s that flees from the Judgment-seat,
               She flies; and the signal swings, and then
               She knows no more; but the enginemen
               Lifted her, bore her, where women brought
               The flush to her cheek, and with kisses caught
               The warm breath back to her pallid lips,
               The life from lives that were near eclipse;
               Blessed her, and praised her, and begged her name
               That all of their kindred should know her fame;
               Should tell how a girl from a cattle-ranche
               That night defeated an avalanche.
               Where is the wonder the engineer
               Of the train she saved, in half a year
               Had wooed her and won her?  And here they are
               For their homeward trip in a parlour car!
               Which goes to show that Old Nature’s plans
               Were wrecked with the Bridge of the Hundred Spans.

               Rebel? . . . I grant you,—my comrades then
               Were called Old Pascal Dubois’ Men
               Half-breeds all of us . . . I, a scamp,
               The best long-shot in the Touchwood Camp;
               Muscle and nerve like strings of steel,
               Sound in the game of bit and heel—
               There’s your guide-book. . . . But, Jeanne Amray,
               Telegraph-clerk at Sturgeon Bay,
               French and thoroughbred, proud and sweet,
               Sunshine down to her glancing feet,
               Sang one song ‘neath the northern moon
               That changed God’s world to a tropic noon;
               And Love burned up on its golden floor
               Years of passion for Nell Latore—
               Nell Latore with her tawny hair,
               Glowing eyes and her reckless air;
               Lithe as an alder, straight and tall—
               Pride and sorrow of Rise-and-Fall!
               Indian blood in her veins ran wild,
               And a Saxon father called her child;
               Women feared her, and men soon found
               When they trod on forbidden ground.
               Ride! there’s never a cayuse knew
               Saddle slip of her; pistols, too,
               Seemed to learn in her hands a knack
               How to travel a dead-sure track.
               Something in both alike maybe,
               Something kindred in ancestry,
               Some warm touch of an ancient pride
               Drew my feet to her willing side.
               My comrade, she, in the Touchwood Camp,
               To ride, hunt, trail by the fire-fly lamp;
               To track the moose to his moose-yard; pass
               The bustard’s doom through the prairie grass;
               To hark at night to the crying loon
               Beat idle wings on the still lagoon;
               To hide from death in the drifting snow,
               To slay the last of the buffalo. . . .
               Ah, well, I speak of the days that were;
               And I swear to you, I was kind to her.
               I lost her.  How are the best friends lost?
               The lightning lines of our souls got crossed—
               Crossed, and could never again be free
               Till Death should call from his midnight sea.

               One spring brought me my wedding day,
               Brought me my bright-eyed Jeanne Amray;
               Brought that night to our cabin door
               My old, lost comrade, Nell Latore.
               Her eyes swam fire, and her cheek was red,
               Her full breast heaved as she darkly said:
               “The coyote hides from the wind and rain,
               The wild horse flies from the hurricane,
               But who can flee from the half-breed’s hate,
               That rises soon and that watches late?”
                Then went; and I laughed Jeanne’s fears afar,
               But I thought that wench was our evil star.
               Be sure, when a woman’s heart gets hard,
               It works up war like a navy yard.

               Half-breed and Indian troubles came—
               The same old story—land and game;
               And Dubois’ Men were the first to feel
               The bullet-sting and the clip of steel;
               And last in battle ‘gainst thousands sent,
               With Gatling guns for our punishment.
               Every cause has its traitor; then
               How should it fare with Dubois’ Men!
               Beaten their cause was, and hunted down,
               Like to a moose in the chase full blown,
               Panting they stood; and a Judas sold
               Their hiding-place for a piece of gold.
               And while scouts searched for us night and day
               Jeanne telegraphed on at Sturgeon Bay.
               Picture her there as she stands alone,
               Cold, in the glow of the afternoon;
               Picture, I ask you, that patient wife,
               Numb with fear for her husband’s life,
               When a sharp click-click awakes her brain
               To life, with the needle-points of pain.
               A message it was to Camp Pousette—
               One that the half-breeds think on yet:
               “Dubois’ gang are in Rocky Glen,
               Take a hundred and fifty men;
               Go by the next express,” it said,
               “Bring them up here, alive or dead!” . . .

               “Go by the next express!” and she,
               Standing there by the silent key,
               Said it over and over again,
               Thinking of one of Dubois’ Men
               Thinking in anguish, heart and head,
               Of him, brought up there alive or dead.
               Save him, and perish to save him, yes!
               But three hours more, and that next express
               Would thunder by her, and she, alas!
               Must stand there still and let it pass.
               Duty was duty, and hers was clear;
               God seemed far off, and no friend near.
               But the truest friend and the swiftest horse
               Must ride that ride on a breakneck course;
               And with truest horse and swiftest friend,
               To the fast express was the winning end!
               And as if one pang was needed more,
               There stood in the doorway, Nell Latore—
               Nell Latore, with her mocking face,
               Restless eyes, and her evil grace;
               Quick to read in the wife’s sad eyes,
               The deep, strange woe, and the hurt surprise.
               Slow she said, with piercing breath,
               “Rebel fighter dies rebel death!”
                Said, and paused; for she seemed to see
               Far through the other’s misery,
               Something that stilled her; triumph fled
               Shamed and fast, as the young wife said—
               “He keeps his faith with an oath he swore,
               For the half-breed’s freedom, Nell Latore;
               And, did he lie here, eyes death-dim,
               You, if you spoke but truth of him,
               Truth, truth only, should stand and say,
               ‘He never wronged me, Jeanne Amray.’”
                Then, for a moment, standing there,
               Hushed and cold as a dead man’s prayer,
               Nell Latore, with the woman now,
               Scorching the past from her eyes and brow
               “Trust me,” she said, like an angel-call,
               “Tell me his danger, tell me all.”

               Quick resolve to a quick-told tale—
               Nell Latore, to the glistening rail
               Fled, and on it a hand-car drew,
               Seized the handles, and backward threw
               One swift, farewell look, and said,
               “You shall have him alive, not dead!”
                Ah, well for her that her arms were strong,
               And cord and nerve like a knotted thong,
               And well for Jeanne in her sharp distress,
               That Nell was racing the fast express
               Her whole life bent to this one deed,
               And, like a soul from its prison freed,
               Rising, dilating, reached across
               Hills of conquest from plains of loss.
               Gorges echoed as she passed by,
               Wild fowl rose with a plaintive cry;
               On she sped; and the white steel rang—
               “Save him—save him for her!” it sang.
               Once, a lad at a worn-out mine
               Strove to warn her with awe-struck sign—
               Turned she neither to left nor right,

               Strained till the Rock Hills came in sight;
               “But two miles more,” to herself she said,
               “Then she shall have him alive, not dead!”
                The merciful gods that moment heard
               Her promise, and helped her to keep her word;
               For, when the wheels of the fast express
               Slowed through the gates of that wilderness,
               Round a headland and far away
               Sailed the husband of Jeanne Amray.
               While all that hundred-and-fifty then,
               Hot on the trail of the Dubois Men,
               Knew, as they stood by the pine-girt store,
               The girl that had foiled them—Nell Latore.
               Slow she moved from among them, turned
               Where the sky to the westward burned;
               Gazed for a moment, set her hands
               Over her brow, so! drew the strands
               Loose and rich of her tawny hair,
               Once through her fingers, standing there;
               Then again to the rail she passed.
               One more look to the West she cast,
               And into the East she drew away:
               Backwards and forwards her brown arms play,
               Forwards and backwards, till far and dim,
               She grew one with the night’s dun rim;
               Backwards and forwards, and then, was gone
               Into I know not what . . . alone.
               She came not back, she may never come;
               But a young wife lives in a cabin home,
               Who prays each night that, alive or dead,
               Come God’s own rest for her lonely head:
               And I—shall I see her then no more,
               My comrade, my old love, Nell Latore?