Duncan Campbell Scott

The Magic House, and Other Poems

Published by Good Press, 2022
goodpress@okpublishing.info
EAN 4064066200817

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A LITTLE SONG
THE HILL PATH TO H.D.S.
THE VOICE AND THE DUSK
FOR REMEMBRANCE
THE MESSAGE
THE SILENCE OF LOVE
AN IMPROMPTU
FROM THE FARM ON THE HILL TO A.P.S.
AT SCARBORO’ BEACH
THE FIFTEENTH OF APRIL TO A.L.
IN AN OLD QUARRY NOVEMBER
TO WINTER
TO WINTER
THE IDEAL
A SUMMER STORM
LIFE AND DEATH
IN THE COUNTRY CHURCHYARD TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER
SONG
THE MAGIC HOUSE
IN THE HOUSE OF DREAMS
I
II
THE RIVER TOWN
OFF THE ISLE AUX COUDRES
AT LES EBOULEMENTS TO M. E. S.
ABOVE ST. IRÉNÉE
WRITTEN IN A COPY OF ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN’S POEMS
OFF RIVIÈRE DU LOUP
AT THE CEDARS TO W. W. C.
THE END OF THE DAY
THE REED-PLAYER TO B. C.
A FLOCK OF SHEEP TO C. G. D. R.
A PORTRAIT
AT THE LATTICE
THE FIRST SNOW
I
II
IN NOVEMBER TO J. A. R.
THE SLEEPER
A NIGHT IN JUNE
MEMORY
YOUTH AND TIME
A MEMORY OF THE ‘INFERNO’
LA BELLE FERONIÈRE
A NOVEMBER DAY
OTTAWA
SONG
NIGHT AND THE PINES
A NIGHT IN MARCH
SEPTEMBER
BY THE WILLOW SPRING TO E. W.

A LITTLE SONG

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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.

THE HILL PATH

TO H.D.S.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

IN AN OLD QUARRY

NOVEMBER

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