Part 9 (1/2)

You trusted I could feel My arm as strong as steel, So still your upturned face, so calm your breath, While circling eddies curled, While laughing rapids whirled From boulder unto boulder, till they dashed themselves to death.

Your splendid eyes aflame Put heaven's stars to shame, Your G.o.d-like head so near my lap was laid-- My hand is burning where It touched your wind-blown hair, As sweeping to the rapids verge, I changed my paddle blade.

The boat obeyed my hand, Till wearied with its grand Wild anger, all the river lay aswoon, And as my paddle dipped, Thro' pools of pearl it slipped And swept beneath a sh.o.r.e of shade, beneath a velvet moon.

To-night, again dream you Our spirit-winged canoe Is listening to the rapids purling past?

Where, in delirium reeled Our maddened hearts that kneeled To idolize the perfect world, to taste of love at last.

THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS

Into the rose gold westland, its yellow prairies roll, World of the bison's freedom, home of the Indian's soul.

Roll out, O seas! in sunlight bathed, Your plains wind-tossed, and gra.s.s enswathed.

Farther than vision ranges, farther than eagles fly, Stretches the land of beauty, arches the perfect sky, Hemm'd through the purple mists afar By peaks that gleam like star on star.

Fringing the prairie billows, fretting horizon's line, Darkly green are slumb'ring wildernesses of pine, Sleeping until the zephyrs throng To kiss their silence into song.

Whispers freighted with odour swinging into the air, Russet needles as censers swing to an altar, where The angels' songs are less divine Than duo sung twixt breeze and pine.

Laughing into the forest, dimples a mountain stream, Pure as the airs above it, soft as a summer dream, O! Lethean spring thou'rt only found Within this ideal hunting ground.

Surely the great Hereafter cannot be more than this, Surely we'll see that country after Time's farewell kiss.

Who would his lovely faith condole?

Who envies not the Red-skin's soul,

Sailing into the cloud land, sailing into the sun, Into the crimson portals ajar when life is done?

O! dear dead race, my spirit too Would fain sail westward unto you.

IN THE SHADOWS

I am sailing to the leeward, Where the current runs to seaward Soft and slow, Where the sleeping river gra.s.ses Brush my paddle as it pa.s.ses To and fro.

On the sh.o.r.e the heat is shaking All the golden sands awaking In the cove; And the quaint sand-piper, winging O'er the shallows, ceases singing When I move.

On the water's idle pillow Sleeps the overhanging willow, Green and cool; Where the rushes lift their burnished Oval heads from out the tarnished Emerald pool.

Where the very silence slumbers, Water lilies grow in numbers, Pure and pale; All the morning they have rested, Amber crowned, and pearly crested, Fair and frail.

Here, impossible romances, Indefinable sweet fancies, Cl.u.s.ter round; But they do not mar the sweetness Of this still September fleetness With a sound.