Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure by W.D. Lighthall
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W.D. Lighthall >> Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure
THOUGHTS, MOODS AND IDEALS
Crimes of Leisure
by
W.D. LIGHTHALL,
ADVOCATE.
Montreal:
"WITNESS" PRINTING HOUSE, ST. JAMES STREET
1887
Dedicated
to
My Friends.
THOUGHTS, MOODS AND IDEALS.
THE CONFUSED DAWN.
YOUNG MAN
What are the Vision and the Cry
That haunt the new Canadian soul?
Dim grandeur spreads we know not why
O'er mountain, forest, tree and knoll,
And murmurs indistinctly fly.--
Some magic moment sure is nigh.
O Seer, the curtain roll!
SEER
The Vision, mortal, it is this--
Dead mountain, forest, knoll and tree
Awaken all endued with bliss,
A native land--O think!--to be--
_Thy_ native land--and ne'er amiss,
Its smile shall like a lover's kiss
From henceforth seem to thee.
The Cry thou couldst not understand,
Which runs through that new realm of light,
From Breton's to Vancouver's strand
O'er many a lovely landscape bright,
It is their waking utterance grand,
The great refrain "A NATIVE LAND!"--
Thine be the ear, the sight.
(1882.)
NATIONAL HYMN.
To Thee whose smile is might and fame,
A nation lifts united praise
And asks but that Thy purpose frame
A _useful_ glory for its days.
We pray no sunset lull of rest,
No pomp and bannered pride of war;
We hold stern labor manliest,
The just side real conqueror.
For strength we thank Thee: keep us strong,
And grant us pride of skilful toil;
For homes we thank Thee: may we long
Have each some Eden rood of soil.
O, keep our mothers kind and dear,
And make the fathers stern and wise;
The maiden soul preserve sincere,
And rise before the young man's eyes.
Crush out the jest of idle minds,
That know not, jesting, when to hush;
Keep on our lips the word that binds,
And teach our children when to blush.
Forever constant to the good
Still arm our faith, thou Guard Sublime,
To scorn, like all who have understood,
The atheist dangers of the time.
Thou hearest!--Lo, we feel our love
Of loyal thoughts and actions free
Toward all divine achievement move,
Ennobled, blest, ensured, by Thee.
CANADA NOT LAST.
AT VENICE
Lo! Venice, gay with color, lights and song,
Calls from St. Mark's with ancient voice and strange:
I am the Witch of Cities! glide along
My silver streets that never wear by change
Of years: forget the years, and pain, and wrong,
And every sorrow reigning men among.
Know I can soothe thee, please and marry thee
To my illusions. Old and siren-strong,
I smile immortal, while the mortals flee
Who whiten on to death in wooing me.
AT FLORENCE
Say, what more fair, by Arno's bridged gleam,[A]
Than Florence, viewed from San Miniato's slope
At eventide, when west along the stream,
The last of day reflects a silver hope!--
Lo, all else softened in the twilight beam:--
The city's mass blent in one hazy cream,
The brown Dome midst it, and the Lily tower,
And stern Old Tower more near, and hills that seem
Afar, like clouds to fade, and hills of power,
On this side, greenly dark with cypress, vine and bower.
AT ROME
End of desire to stray I feel would come
Though Italy were all fair skies to me,
Though France's fields went mad with flowery foam
And Blanc put on a special majesty.
Not all could match the growing thought of home
Nor tempt to exile. Look I not on ROME--
This ancient, modern, mediaeval queen--
Yet still sigh westward over hill and dome,
Imperial ruin and villa's princely scene
Lovely with pictured saints and marble gods serene.
REFLECTION
Rome, Florence, Venice--noble, fair and quaint,
They reign in robes of magic round me here;
But fading, blotted, dim, a picture faint,
With spell more silent, only pleads a tear.
Plead not! Thou hast my heart, O picture dim!
I see the fields, I see the autumn hand
Of God upon the maples! Answer Him
With weird, translucent glories, ye that stand
Like spirits in scarlet and in amethyst!
I see the sun break over you; the mist
On hills that lift from iron bases grand
Their heads superb!--the dream, it is my native land.
[Footnote A: "Sovra'l bel fiume d'Arno la gran villa."--_Dante._]
O DONNA DI VIRTU!
(DANTE--INFERNO, CANTO I.)
"_O mystic Lady; Thou in whom alone
Our human race surpasses all that stand
In Paradise the nearest round the throne!
So eagerly I wait for thy command
That to obey were slow though ready done._"
How oft I read. How agonized the turning,
In those my earlier days of loss and pain,--
Of eyes to space and night as though by yearning--
Some wall might yield and I behold again
A certain angel, fled beyond discerning;
In vain I chafed and sought--alas, in vain,
From spurring though my heart's dark world returned
To Dante's page, those wearied thoughts of mine;
Again I read, again my longing burned.--
A voice melodious spake in every line,
But from sad pleasure sorrow fresh I learned:
Strange was the music of the Florentine.
LINES ON HEINE.
I saw a crowded circus once:
The fool was in the middle.
Loud laughed contemptuous Common-sense
At every frisk and riddle.
I see another circus now--
(The world a circus call I),--
But in the centre laughs the sane;
Round sit the sons of folly.
IMITATED FROM THE JAPANESE.
"..........................
I have forgotten to forget."--Japanese Song.
Tr. by R.H. Stoddard.
The morning flies, the evening dies;
The heat of noon, the chills of night,
Are but the dull varieties
Of Phoebus' and of Phoebe's flight--
Are but the dull varieties
Of ruined night and ruined day;
They bring no pleasure to mine eyes,
For I have sent my soul away.
I am the man who cannot love,
Yet once my heart was bright as thine,
The suns that rove, the moons that move,
No longer make its chambers shine;
No more they light the spirit face
That lit my night and made my day;
No maiden feet with mine keep pace
For I have sent my soul away.
O, lost! I think I see thee stand,
By Mary's ivied chapel door,
Where once thou stood'st, and with thy hand
Wring pious pain, as once before.
Impatient, crude philosopher,
I scorned thy gentle wisdom's ray.
All vain thy moistened eyelids were;
I sent my soul and thee away.
A causeless wrath, a mood of pride,
Some tears of thine, and all was done;
On alien plains I travelled wide
And thou wert soon a veiled nun.
Not long a veiled nun, but soon
Unveiled of linen and of clay;
But I am March while thou art June,
For I have sent my soul away.
And now when I would love thee well,
There sits alone within my breast
Calm guilt that dare not from its hell
Look up and wish the thing thou art.
I see a dreadful gulf of fright
Beneath my falling life; and gray,
Thy light becomes the ghost of light
Above it as it falls away.
I have a life, a voice, a form,
A skilful hand to lift and turn,
I have emotions like a storm,
A brain to throb, a heart to burn;
But that which Jesus' blood can save,
Which looks toward eternal day,
Is gone before me to the grave.--
It was my soul I sent away.
The past is past, and o'er its woe
It is no comfort to repine;
But I would wage my life to know
Thy feet in heaven keep pace with mine.
I have no hope, I will not weep,
The only wish that wish I may
Is this, that I may find asleep
The soul I thought I sent away.
THE KNIGHT ERRANT.
CLOUD TO WIND
O blow, blow high, for I descend;
Friend must go to meet his friend,
If to earth you tie your feet
You and I will never meet.
WIND
Nay, I haste. A trifle wait;
I exceed my usual gait.
Ha! this hill-top is sublime,
But it makes me pant to climb.
CLOUD
Once again, a little space,
Meet we in this Alpine place,
Before you leap adown the vale
Or I along my pathway sail.
WIND
Then let our little bell of time
Ring onward with a chatty chime--
How we have fled o'er earth and sky,
And what you saw and what saw I.
CLOUD
O, I from off my couch serene,
Woods, meadows, towns and seas have seen;
And in one wood, beside a cave,
A hermit kneeling by a grave:--
The which I felt so touched to see
I wept a shower of sympathy.
And in one mead I saw, methought,
A brave, dark-armored knight, who fought
A shining-dragon in a mist,
That, mixed with flames did roll and twist
Out of the beast's red mouth--a breath
Of choking, blinding, sulphurous death,
On which I shot my thickest rain
And made the conflict fair again.
And from one town I heard the swell
Of a loud, melancholy bell,
That past me rose in flames of sound
And up to Saint Cecilia wound.
And on one sea I saw a ship
Bend out its full-fed sails and slip
So light, so gladly o'er the tide
I could not help but look inside--
Its passengers were groom and bride.
I floated o'er them snowily,
They felt my beauty in the sky,
Their eyes, their souls, their joy were one,
I would not cross their happy sun.
I love this life of calm and use--
No bonds but windy ribbons loose,
No gifts to ask but all to give,
Secure Elysium fugitive.
WIND
Your life, though, drinks not half the wine
Of active gladness that doth mine;
I spread my wings and stretch my arms
Over a dozen hedged farms;
I breast steep hills, through pine-groves rush,
Rock birds' nests, yet no fledgling crush,
Tossing the grain-fields everywhere,
The trees, the grass, the school-girl's hair,
Whirling away her laugh the while--
(We breezes love the children's smile);
And then I lag and wander down
Among the roofs and dust of town,
Bearing cool draughts from lake and moor
To fan the faces of the poor,
While sick babes, stifled half to death,
Grow rosy at my country breath.
I lent a shoulder to your ship;
I moaned with that sad hermit's lip;
I helped disperse the dragon's mist;
And some bell's voice, 'twas yours I wist,
I handed up to winds on high
Who wing a loftier flight than I.
But, hark! a rider leaves the vale.
CLOUD
Ah, yes, I catch the gleam of mail.
RANDOLPH
O speak again ye voiced ghosts!
I heard afar your cheerful boasts.
And, if I doubt not, ye are they
That here have met me many a day.
WIND
We are they.
CLOUD, (echoing)
We are they.
But whither now doth Randolph stray,
And why the mail, and why the steed?
RANDOLPH
This is my father's mail indeed,
Bequeathed with message to his son:
"Stand straight in it and yield to none."
WIND
But whither off and why away?
RANDOLPH
Off to the world; I cannot stay--
That world I have so often viewed
Here from this upper solitude--
This bulwark barring strife and trade.
Love calls me off. I love a maid,
Loving her silently and long,
Learning for her to hate the wrong,
Learning for her to seek the right,
To hew at sloth and faint resolve
And thoughts that round but self revolve,
And pray for grace and virtue--wings
That bear men to the highest things,
Enwrapt and rising into light.
For her, for her, O Cloud and Wind!
I trained my limbs and taught my mind,
Ran, wrestled, clomb, and learned to bend
The cross-bow with each village friend;
And by my hermit-guardian spent
The earliest dimness morning lent,
And the faint torch that evening bore,
In science and in saintly lore,
Reading the stars and signs of rain,
Noting each tree and herb and grain;
Each bird that flutters through the leaves,
Each beast, each fish that green lake cleaves,
The curious deeds Devotion paints
In missals and in lives of saints,
And every olden subtle trick
Of grammar, logic, rhetoric.
But most on chivalry I turned
A torrent eagerness, and burned
To hear of wrong repaired, or read
The working of some famous deed,
Like those I dreamt that I could do
When what I set myself was through:
Vexed lest the inward clock of fate
That ticked "Too soon!" might tick "Too late!"
But now that dial points the hour
When I must test my gathered power,
And leave my books and leave my dreams
Of steeds and towers and knightly themes,
Of tourney gay and woodland quest,
Of Perceval and Perceforest,
Of Richard, Arthur, Charlemain,
Amadis and the Cid of Spain--
Must leave them all and seek alone
Some grand adventure of my own.
CLOUD
Yet if you seek and cannot find
Or fail to work what you designed,
Be it but as the steadfast sun
Who bright or dim his course doth run,
And last doth reach as far a spot
Whether he seems to shine or not.
RANDOLPH
The height, the fynial of my aim
Is _to be worthy of her name_.
CLOUD
You mortals are a curious race--
More whirled by passions, hot in chase
Of passions, than myself am whirled
When tempests tug me o'er the world;
I cannot understand your ways.
We clouds live our divinest days
Beneath great sunny depths of sky,
High above all that you think high,
Drifting through sunset's surf of gold,
Dawn-lakes and moonlight's clear waves cold,
In realms so distant, chill and lone,
That Love, impatient, leaves the throne
To meditative Amity.
RANDOLPH
So would my guardian have it be,
So flowed his constant voice to me,
Of those to make me one, he sought,
Who watch from mountain towers of thought,
Or wandering into paths apart
Pursue the lonely star of art.
WIND
But you would rather love and do.
Well said, so much the wiser you!
But let your love be false as maid's,
Your every fire a flame that fades--
A word, a smile, an easy thing
To fledge and easy taking wing.
Kiss every lip, as tired of rest
As I am now. I'm off to west
Good-bye, and some day when you're hot
I'll meet you cool.
CLOUD
And I should not
Delay my showers so long as this.
God speed! Good-bye!
RANDOLPH
Good-bye.
I miss
Their wonderful companionship.
So onward seems the world to slip.
Now one glance backward firmly cast;
Thy next foot forward bears thee past
The mountain's crest. Ah, I behold
Our reckless river leaping bold
Down all its ledges. And I see
The castle where Elaine must be.
Lo, in yon window sits she oft.--
From yon green maze of willows soft
I hear our hermitage's bell.
Sweet sound, sweet many scenes, farewell.
Elaine! Elaine!
CUJUS ANIMAE PROPICIETUR DEUS.
A quiet, old cathedral folds apart
At Oxford, from the world of colleges
A world of tombs, and shades them in its heart;
Contrasting with the busy knowledges
This wisdom, that they all shall end in peace.--
"Vex you not, slaves of truth! there is release."
There every window is a monument
Emblazoned: every slab along the pave,
Each effigy with knees devoutly bent,--
Or prone, with folded gauntlets,--is a grave.
Unnoticed down the sands of Kronos run:
Slow move the sombre shadows with the sun.
Hard by a Norman shaft, along the floor
A portraiture on ancient bronze designed
In Academic hood and robes of yore,
Commemorates some by-gone lord of mind.
Mournful the face and dignified the head:
A man who pondered much upon the dead.
Repose unbroken now his dust surrounds,
He is with those whom mortals honor most.
Respect and tender sighs and holy sounds
Of choirs, and the presence of the Holy Ghost
And fellow spirits and shadowy mem'ries dear
Make for his rest a sacred atmosphere.
Sometime a gentle and profound Divine,
Father revered of spiritual sons.
He died. They laid him here. About his shrine,
Of what they wrote this remnant legend runs:
"Nascitur omnis homo peccato mortuus
Una post cineres virtus vivere sola facit."[A]
There as I breathed the lesson of the dead:
Sudden the rich bells chorussed overhead:
"O be not of the throng ephemeral
To whom to-day is fame, to-morrow fate,
Proud of some robe no statelier than a pall,
Mad for some wreath of cypress funeral--
A phantom generation fatuate.
Stand thou aside and stretch a hand to save,
Virtue alone revives beyond the grave."
[Footnote A: "Every man is born dead in sin. Virtue alone brings life
eternal."]
STANCHEZZA.
EARLY LINES
Lo Zephyr floats, on pinions delicate,
Past the dark belfry, where a deep-toned bell
Sways back and forth, Grief tolling out the knell
For thee, my friend, so young and yet so great.
Dead--thou art dead. The destiny of men
Is ever thus, like waves upon the main
To rise, grow great, fall with a crash and wane,
While still another grows to wane again,
Dead--thou art dead. Would that I too were gone
And that the grass which rustles on thy grave
Might also over mine forever wave
Made living by the death it grew upon.
I ask not Orpheus-like, that Pluto give
Thy soul to earth. I would not have thee live.
PRAETERITA EX INSTANTIBUS.
How strange it is that, in the after age,--
When Time's clepsydra will be nearer dry--
That all the accustomed things we now pass by
Unmarked, because familiar, shall engage
The antique reverence of men to be;
And that quaint interest which prompts the sage
The silent fathoms of the past to gauge
Shall keep alive our own past memory,
Making all great of ours--the garb we wear--
Our voiceless cities, reft of roof and spire--
The very skull whence now the eye of fire
Glances bright sign of what the soul can dare.
So shall our annals make an envied lore,
And men will say, 'Thus did the men of yore.'
SUNRISE.
EARLY LINES
I saw the shining-limbed Apollo stand,
Exultant, on the rim of Orient,
And well and mightily his bow he bent,
And unseen-swift the arrow left his hand.
Far on it sped, as did those elder ones
That long ago shed plague upon the Greek--
Far on--and pierced the side of Night, who weak
And out of breath with fright, fled to his sons,
The nether ghosts; and lo! his jewelled robe
No more did shade a sleep-encircled world;
And thereupon the faery legions furled
The silk of silence, and the wheeling globe
Spun freer on its grand, accustomed way,
While all things living rose to hail the day.
REALITY.
A FANCY
Fade lesser dreams, that, built of tenderness,
Young trust and tinted hopes, have led me long.
These jagged ways ye whiled will pain me less
Than hath your falsity. Your spirit song
Sent magic wafted up and down along
The waves of wind to me. Your world was real.
There was no ruder world that I could feel.
I lived in dreams and thought you all I would,
Nor knew what dread, bare truth is doomed to rise,
When love and hope and all but one far Good,
Like sunset lands feel the cold night of lies.
Go, sweetest visions, die amid my tears,
For hence, nor cheered, nor blinded, must I seek
That larger dream that cannot fade; though years
Of leaden days and leagues of by-path bleak
Must intervene, with austere sadness gray,
Fade dimmer! lest in agony I turn,
And heartsick seek ye, though the Fates shriek "Nay!"
And the wroth heavens with judgment lightnings burn.
Go useless lesser dreams. And where they were,
Rise, grave aerial Good! Thy texture's true.
There is no good can die. "No ill," says Time, "can bear,
However beautiful, my long, long earnest view."
SEARCHINGS.
(EARLY LINES.)
Soul, thou hast lived before. Thy wing
Hath swept the ancient folds of light
Which once wrapt stilly everything,
Before the advent of a Night.
O thou art blind and thou art dead
Unto the knowledge that was thine.
A longing and a dreamy dread
Alone oft shadow the divine.
Full loud calls past eternity,
But Lethe's murmur stills its roar,
The one vague truth that reaches thee
Is this--that thou hast lived before.
Home often comes some voice of eld
Confused and low--a broken surge
By fate and distance half withheld--
Rich in linked sadness like a dirge.
The muffled, great bell Silence clangs
His solemn call, and thou, O soul!
Dost stir in sense's torpid fangs,
Like the blind magnet, toward a pole.
The deep, vast, swelling organ-sound;
The cadence of an evening flute,
Bring oft those ancient joys around
To linger till the notes are mute.
And when thy hushed breathing fills
The shrine of quiet reverence,
Then, too, a freeing angel stills
The clanking of the chains of sense.
But nearest to that former life
Another power calleth thee,
Away from care, away from strife,
Toward what thou wast--infinity.
And in thee, soul, the deepest chord
Thrills to a strain rung from above;
That strain is bound within a word,
A sole, sweet word, and it is--Love.
Love--yet it cannot set thee free
To sweep again those folds of light,
It torches but a part to thee
And dim, though fair. The rest is night.
As the fine structure of a man
Fits into life's great world, foremade,
So too it shadoweth the plan
Of ages hidden in the shade.
And thou hast lived before; hast known
The depth of every mystery,
Has dwelt in Nature, hid, alone
And winged the blue aetherial sea;
Hast looked upon the ends of space;
Hast visited each rolling star,--
Before Time measured forth his pace,
Scythe-armed, on a terrestrial war.
HOMER.
(EARLY LINES.)
Time, with his constant touch, has half erased
The memory, but he cannot dim the fame
Of one who best of all has paraphrased
The tale of waters with a tale of flame,
Yet left us but his accents and his name.
Upon that life, the sun of history
Shines not, but Legend, like a moon in mist,
Sheds over it a weird uncertainty,
In which all figures wave and actions twist,
So that a man may read them as he list.
We know not if he trod some Theban street,
And sought compassion on his aged woe,
We know not if on Chian sand his feet
Left footprints once; but only this we know,
How the high ways of fame those footprints show.
Along the border of the restless sea,
The lonely thinker must have loved to roam,
We feel his soul wrapt in its majesty,
And he can speak in words that drip with foam,
As though himself a deep, and depths his home.
Hark! under all and through and over all,
Runs on the cadence of the changeful sea;
Now pleasantly the graceful surges fall,
And now they mutter in an angry key
Ever, throughout their changes, grand and free.
How sternly sang he of Achilles' might,
How sweetly of the sweet Andromache,
How low his lyre when Ajax prays for light;
(Well might he bend that lyre in sympathy
For also great, and also blind was he.)
We almost see the nod of sternbrowed Jove,
And feel Olympus shake; we almost hear
The melodies that Greek youths interwove
In paean to Apollo, and the clear,
Full voice of Nestor, sounding far and near.
A dignity of sadness filled his heart,
That sadness, born of immortality,
Which they alone who live in art
Feel in its sweetness and its mystery,
Half-filled already with infinity.
Yea, Zeus was wise when he decreed him blind,
And wiser still when he decreed him poor;
For insight grew as outer sight declined,
And want overrode the ills it could not cure,
Else rhapsody had lacked its lay most pure.
OUR UNDERLYING EXISTENCE.
O Fool, that wisdom dost despise,
Thou knowest not, thou canst not guess
Another part of thee is wise
And silent sees thy foolishness.
Yet, fool, how dare I pity thee
Because my heart reveres the sages;
The fool lies also deep in me;
We all are one beneath the ages.
TO ______.
"Creation--God's kind giving--
Continues: did not at one Adam end.
New realms start open to each generation,
Each man receives some gift, some revelation:
I, in this late age living,
The gift, the new-creation of a friend.
TO A DEBUTANTE.
Thou who smilest in thy freshness,
Bright as bud in morning dew;
Keep this thought in thy heart's bower
"Ever turn, like sunward flower,
To the Good, the Fair, the True."
A PROBLEM.
Once, in the University of Life,
_Remember_ and _Inquire_, my old Professors,
A question hard requested me to solve:
"How can man's love be great and be eternal
If Right forewarns he may be called to leave it:
Whether should Love rule Duty and be all,
Or Duty turn his back on sweet Love crying?"
I paused--then spoke, not having what to answer:
"Ye know, Professors, how to utter problems
And man perplex with his own elements.
Yet I believe the ways ye teach are perfect
And able are you what ye set to solve.--
Admiring you, however, aids me nothing,
I speak because I have not what to answer."
"Ponder," they said, those quiet, sage Professors,
I had seen Love--O Vision, I was near thee
When Death refused that I should speak with thee!
And I had seen her soft eyes' trustful brightness
Wondrous look down into the soul of many
And lead it out and make it of eternity.
Yes, truly, in her look men find true being!--
What ruin if such being must be withered!
I had seen Duty--soldier of his God--
Of Virtue and of Order sentinel--
Grand his firm countenance with obedience.
His troth to Love would everlasting be
Or nothing. What then should commanding orders
Bid him have done with her and all renounce?
How can he look on Love and know this shadow?
"I see no answer," answered I dejected,
"Except that either Love must be abased,
Or he resign perfection in his calling."
"Nay," said they, but by strange, clear apparatus
(Whereof within that College there is much)
Gave illustration--paraphrased as follows:
"Thou hast not reckoned for eternity.
The True fears not Forever: fear thou not.
Duty and Love are noble man and wife
(If otherwise thou see them 'tis illusion),
'Tis she sends Duty forth with dear embrace
And proudest of his battle through her tears
Encourages: 'Regard me not but strike!'
And 'If thou must depart alas, depart!
Follow thy noblest, I am ever true!'
He strikes and presses, sending back his heart
As forward moves his foot on the arena;
Or marches bravely far and far, until
Hope of return as mortal disappears:
This should true soul endure, though everlasting--
But then, besides, we know that One has mercy."