THE MAGIC HOUSE

THE MAGIC HOUSE
A N D O T H E R P O E M S

BY

DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT

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METHUEN AND CO.
18 BURY STREET, W.C.
LONDON
1893

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

TO

MY MOTHER

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	PAGE
A LITTLE SONG
The sunset in the rosy west,	1
THE HILL PATH
Are the little breezes blind,	2
THE VOICE AND THE DUSK
The slender moon and one pale star,	5
FOR REMEMBRANCE
It would be sweet to think when we are old,	7
THE MESSAGE
Wind of the gentle summer night,	8
THE SILENCE OF LOVE
My heart would need the earth,	10
AN IMPROMPTU
The stars are in the ebon sky,	11
FROM THE FARM ON THE HILL
The night wind moves the gloom,	13
AT SCARBORO’ BEACH
The wave is over the foaming reef,	15
THE FIFTEENTH OF APRIL
Pallid saffron glows the broken stubble,	17
IN AN OLD QUARRY
Above the lifeless pools the mist films swim,	19
TO WINTER
Come, O thou conqueror of the flying year,	20
TO WINTER
Come, O thou season of intense repose,	21
THE IDEAL
Let your soul grow a thing apart,	22
A SUMMER STORM
Last night a storm fell on the world,	23
LIFE AND DEATH
I thought of death beside the lonely sea,	25
IN THE COUNTRY CHURCHYARD
This is the acre of unfathomed rest,	26
SONG
I have done,	32
THE MAGIC HOUSE
In her chamber, wheresoe’er,	33
IN THE HOUSE OF DREAMS
The lady Lillian knelt upon the sward,	36
THE RIVER TOWN
There’s a town where shadows run,	38
OFF THE ISLE AUX COUDRES
The moon, Capella, and the Pleiades,	40
AT LES EBOULEMENTS
The bay is set with ashy sails,	41
ABOVE ST. IRÉNÉE
I rested on the breezy height,	42
WRITTEN IN A. LAMPMAN’S POEMS
When April moved in maiden guise,	45
OFF RIVIÈRE DU LOUP
O ship incoming from the sea,	48
AT THE CEDARS
You had two girls—Baptiste—	50
THE END OF THE DAY
I hear the bells at eventide,	54
THE REED-PLAYER
By a dim shore where water darkening,	56
A FLOCK OF SHEEP
Over the field the bright air clings and tingles,	58
A PORTRAIT
All her hair is softly set,	60
AT THE LATTICE
Good-night, Marie, I kiss thine eyes,	63
THE FIRST SNOW
The field pools gathered into frosted lace,	64
IN NOVEMBER
The ruddy sunset lies,	66
THE SLEEPER
Touched with some divine repose,	68
A NIGHT IN JUNE
The world is heated seven times,	70
MEMORY
I see a schooner in the bay,	72
YOUTH AND TIME
Move not so lightly, Time, away,	73
A MEMORY OF THE ‘INFERNO’
An hour before the dawn I dreamed of you,	74
LA BELLE FERONIÈRE,
I never trod where Leonardo was,	75
A NOVEMBER DAY
There are no clouds above the world,	76
OTTAWA
City about whose brow the north winds blow,	78
SONG
Here’s the last rose,	79
NIGHT AND THE PINES
Here in the pine shade is the nest of night,	80
A NIGHT IN MARCH
At eve the fiery sun went forth,	82
SEPTEMBER
The morns are grey with haze and faintly cold,	86
BY THE WILLOW SPRING
Come hither, Care, and look on this fair place,	87

A LITTLE SONG

The sunset in the rosy west
Burned soft and high;
A shore-lark fell like a stone to his nest
In the waving rye.

A wind came over the garden beds
From the dreamy lawn,
The pansies nodded their purple heads,
The poppies began to yawn.

One pansy said: It is only sleep,
Only his gentle breath:
But a rose lay strewn in a snowy heap,
For the rose it was only death.

Heigho, we’ve only one life to live,
And only one death to die:
Good-morrow, new world, have you nothing to give?—
Good-bye, old world, good-bye.

Are the little breezes blind,
They that push me as they pass?
Do they search the tangled grass
For some path they want to find?
Take my fingers, little wind;
You are all alone, and I
Am alone too. I will guide,
You will follow; let us go
By a pathway that I know,
Leading down the steep hillside,
Past the little sharp-lipped pools,
Shrunken with the summer sun,
Where the sparrows come to drink;
And we’ll scare the little birds,
Coming on them unawares;
And the daisies every one
We will startle on the brink
Of a doze.
(Gently, gently, little wind),
Very soon a wood we’ll see,
There my lover waits for me.
(Go more gently, little wind,
You should follow soft, behind.)
You will hear my lover say
How he loves me night and day,
But his words you must not tell
To the other little winds,
For they all might come to hear,
And might rustle through the wood,
And disturb the solitude.
(Blow more softly, little wind,
You are tossing all my hair,
Go more gently, have a care;
If you lead you can’t be blind,
So,—good-bye:)
There he goes: I see his feet
On the grass;
Now the little pools are blurred
As they pass;
And he must be very fleet,
For I see the bushes stirred
Near the wood. I hope he’ll tell,
If he isn’t out of breath,
That he met me on the hill.
But I hope he will not say
That he kissed me for good-bye
Just before he flew away.

THE VOICE AND THE DUSK

The slender moon and one pale star,
A rose-leaf and a silver bee
From some god’s garden blown afar,
Go down the gold deep tranquilly.

Within the south there rolls and grows
A mighty town with tower and spire,
From a cloud bastion masked with rose
The lightning flashes diamond fire.

The purple-martin darts about
The purlieus of the iris fen;
The king-bird rushes up and out,
He screams and whirls and screams again.

A thrush is hidden in a maze
Of cedar buds and tamarac bloom,
He throws his rapid flexile phrase,
A flash of emeralds in the gloom.

A voice is singing from the hill
A happy love of long ago;
Ah! tender voice, be still, be still,
‘’Tis sometimes better not to know.’

The rapture from the amber height
Floats tremblingly along the plain,
Where in the reeds with fairy light
The lingering fireflies gleam again.

Buried in dingles more remote,
Or drifted from some ferny rise,
The swooning of the golden throat
Drops in the mellow dusk and dies.

A soft wind passes lightly drawn,
A wave leaps silverly and stirs
The rustling sedge, and then is gone
Down the black cavern in the firs.

FOR REMEMBRANCE

It would be sweet to think when we are old
Of all the pleasant days that came to pass,
That here we took the berries from the grass,
There charmed the bees with pans, and smoke unrolled,
And spread the melon nets when nights were cold,
Or pulled the blood-root in the underbrush,
And marked the ringing of the tawny thrush,
While all the west was broken burning gold.

And so I bind with rhymes these memories;
As girls press pansies in the poet’s leaves
And find them afterwards with sweet surprise;
Or treasure petals mingled with perfume,
Loosing them in the days when April grieves,—
A subtle summer in the rainy room.

THE MESSAGE

Wind of the gentle summer night,
Dwell in the lilac tree,
Sway the blossoms clustered light,
Then blow over to me.

Wind, you are sometimes strong and great,
You frighten the ships at sea,
Now come floating your delicate freight
Out of the lilac tree.

Wind, you must waver a gossamer sail
To ferry a scent so light,
Will you carry my love a message as frail
Through the hawk-haunted night?

For my heart is sometimes strange and wild,
Bitter and bold and free,
I scare the beautiful timid child,
As you frighten the ships at sea;

But now when the hawks are piercing the air,
With the golden stars above,
The only thing my heart can bear
Is a lilac message of love.

Gentle wind, will you carry this
Up to her window white;
Give her a gentle tender kiss,
Bid her good-night—good-night.

THE SILENCE OF LOVE

My heart would need the earth,
My voice would need the sea,
To only tell the one half
How dear you are to me.

And if I had the winds,
The stars and the planets as well,
I might tell the other half,
Or perhaps I would try to tell.

AN IMPROMPTU

The stars are in the ebon sky,
Burning, gold, alone;
The wind roars over the rolling earth,
Like water over a stone.

We are like things in a river-bed
The stream runs over,
They see the iris, and arrowhead,
Anemone, and clover.

But they cannot touch the shining things,
For all their strife,
For the strong river swirls and swings—
And that is much like life.

For life is a plunging and heavy stream,
And there’s something bright above;
But the ills of breathing only seem,
When we know the light is love.

The stars are in the ebon sky,
Burning, gold, alone;
The wind roars over the rolling earth,
Like water over a stone.

FROM THE FARM ON THE HILL

TO A.P.S.

The night wind moves the gloom
In the shadowy basswood;
Mysteriously the leaves sway and sing;
So slow, so tender is the wind,
The slender elm-tree
Is hardly stirred.

The sky is veiled with clouds,
With diaphanous tissue;
Through their dissolving films
The stars shine,
But how infinitely removed;
How inaccessible!

In the distant city
Under the obscure towers
The lights of watchers gleam;
From the dim fields
At intervals in the silence
A cuckoo utters
A distorted cry;
Through the low woods,
Haunted with vain melancholy,
A whip-poor-will wanders,
Forcing his monotonous song.

All the ancient desire
Of the human spirit
Has returned upon me in this hour,
All the wild longing
That cannot be satisfied.
Break, O anguish of nature,
Into some glorious sound!
Let me touch the next circle of being,
For I have compassed this life.

AT SCARBORO’ BEACH

The wave is over the foaming reef
Leaping alive in the sun,
Seaward the opal sails are blown
Vanishing one by one.

’Tis leagues around the blue sea curve
To the sunny coast of Spain,
And the ships that sail so deftly out
May never come home again.

A mist is wreathed round Richmond point,
There’s a shadow on the land,
But the sea is in the splendid sun,
Plunging so careless and grand.

The sandpipers trip on the glassy beach,
Ready to mount and fly;
Whenever a ripple reaches their feet
They rise with a timorous cry.

Take care, they pipe, take care, take care,
For this is the treacherous main,
And though you may sail so deftly out,
You may never come home again.

THE FIFTEENTH OF APRIL

TO A.L.

Pallid saffron glows the broken stubble,
Brimmed with silver lie the ruts,
Purple the ploughed hill;
Down a sluice with break and bubble
Hollow falls the rill;
Falls and spreads and searches,
Where, beyond the wood,
Starts a group of silver birches,
Bursting into bud.

Under Venus sings the vesper sparrow,
Down a path of rosy gold
Floats the slender moon;
Ringing from the rounded barrow
Rolls the robin’s tune;
Lighter than the robin; hark!
Quivering silver-strong
From the field a hidden shore-lark
Shakes his sparkling song.

Now the dewy sounds begin to dwindle,
Dimmer grow the burnished rills,
Breezes creep and halt,
Soon the guardian night shall kindle
In the violet vault,
All the twinkling tapers
Touched with steady gold,
Burning through the lawny vapours
Where they float and fold.