Solitude

HOW still it is here in the woods. The trees

    Stand motionless, as if they do not dare

    To stir, lest it should break the spell. The air

Hangs quiet as spaces in a marble frieze.

Even this little brook, that runs at ease,

    Whispering and gurgling in its knotted bed,

    Seems but to deepen with its curling thread

Of sound the shadowy sun-pierced silences.

Sometimes a hawk screams or a woodpecker

    Startles the stillness from its fixèd mood

With his loud careless tap. Sometimes I hear

       The dreamy white-throat from some far-off tree

    Pipe slowly on the listening solitude

       His five pure notes succeeding pensively.

Archibald Lampman

A Summer Evening

THE clouds grow clear, the pine-wood glooms and stills

With brown reflections in the silent bay,

And far beyond the pale blue-misted hills

The rose and purple evening dreams away.

The thrush, the veery, from the mysterious dales

Rings his last round; and outward like a sea

The shining, shadowy heart of heaven unveils

The starry legend of eternity.

The day's long troubles lose their sting and pass.

Peaceful the world, and peaceful grows my heart.

The gossip cricket from the friendly grass

Talks of old joys and takes the dreamer's part.

Then night, the healer, with unnoticed breath,

And sleep, dark sleep, so near, so like to death.

Archibald Lampman

Winter Evening

TO-NIGHT the very horses springing by

Toss gold from whitened nostrils. In a dream

The streets that narrow to the westward gleam

Like rows of golden palaces; and high

From all the crowded chimneys tower and die

A thousand aureoles. Down in the west

The brimming plains beneath the sunset rest,

One burning sea of gold. Soon, soon shall fly

The glorious vision, and the hours shall feel

A mightier master; soon from height to height,

With silence and the sharp unpitying stars,

Stern creeping frosts, and winds that touch like steel,

Out of the depth beyond the eastern bars,

Glittering and still shall come the awful night.

Archibald Lampman

Among the Orchards

ALREADY in the dew-wrapped vineyards dry

Dense weights of heat press down. The large bright drops

Shrink in the leaves. From dark acacia tops

The nut-hatch flings his short reiterate cry;

And ever as the sun mounts hot and high

Thin voices crowd the grass. In soft long strokes

The wind goes murmuring through the mountain oaks.

Faint wefts creep out along the blue and die.

I hear far in among the motionless trees--

Shadows that sleep upon the shaven sod--

The thud of dropping apples. Reach on reach

Stretch plots of perfumed orchard, where the bees

Murmur among the full-fringed goldenrod

Or cling half-drunken to the rotting peach.

Archibald Lampman

The City of the End of Things

BESIDE the pounding cataracts

Of midnight streams unknown to us

'Tis builded in the leafless tracts

And valleys huge of Tartarus.

Lurid and lofty and vast it seems;

It hath no rounded name that rings,

But I have heard it called in dreams

The City of the End of Things.

Its roofs and iron towers have grown

None knoweth how high within the night,

But in its murky streets far down

A flaming terrible and bright

Shakes all the stalking shadows there,

Across the walls, across the floors,

And shifts upon the upper air

From out a thousand furnace doors;

And all the while an awful round

Keeps roaring on continually,

And crashes in the ceaseless sound

Of a gigantic harmony.

Through its grim depths re-echoing

And all its weary height of walls,

With measured roar and iron ring,

The inhuman music lifts and falls.

Where no thing rests and no man is,

And only fire and night hold sway;

The beat, the thunder and the hiss

Cease not, and change not, night nor day.

And moving at unheard commands,

The abysses and vast fires between,

Flit figures that with clanking hands

Obey a hideous routine;

They are not flesh, they are not bone,

They see not with the human eye,

And from their iron lips is blown

A dreadful and monotonous cry;

And whoso of our mortal race

Should find that city unaware,

Lean Death would smite him face to face,

And blanch him with its venomed air:

Or caught by the terrific spell,

Each thread of memory snapt and cut,

His soul would shrivel and its shell

Go rattling like an empty nut.

It was not always so, but once,

In days that no man thinks upon,

Fair voices echoed from its stones,

The light above it leaped and shone:

Once there were multitudes of men,

That built that city in their pride,

Until its might was made, and then

They withered age by age and died.

But now of that prodigious race,

Three only in an iron tower,

Set like carved idols face to face,

Remain the masters of its power;

And at the city gate a fourth,

Gigantic and with dreadful eyes,

Sits looking toward the lightless north,

Beyond the reach of memories;

Fast rooted to the lurid floor,

A bulk that never moves a jot,

In his pale body dwells no more,

Or mind or soul,---an idiot!

But sometime in the end those three

Shall perish and their hands be still,

And with the master's touch shall flee

Their incommunicable skill.

A stillness absolute as death

Along the slacking wheels shall lie,

And, flagging at a single breath,

The fires that moulder out and die.

The roar shall vanish at its height,

And over that tremendous town

The silence of eternal night

Shall gather close and settle down.

All its grim grandeur, tower and hall,

Shall be abandoned utterly,

And into rust and dust shall fall

From century to century;

Nor ever living thing shall grow,

Nor trunk of tree, nor blade of grass;

No drop shall fall, no wind shall blow,

Nor sound of any foot shall pass:

Alone of its accursed state,

One thing the hand of Time shall spare,

For the grim Idiot at the gate

Is deathless and eternal there.

Archibald Lampman