ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN

[BORN at Morpeth, Canada, 1861; died at Ottawa, 1899. He became a clerk in the Civil Service. He published two volumes of verse, Among the Millet and Lyrics of Earth, and was preparing a third volume, Alcyone, for the press at the time of his death. His collected poems were published in 1900 with a memoir by Mr. Duncan Campbell Scott.]

A new manner and a new temper of thought came into Canadian literature shortly after 1880, and Mr. Roberts and Mr. Carman, Mr. Wilfred Campbell, Mr. D. C. Scott, and Archibald Lampman, are the poetic voices of our renaissance. Each was soon to develop his own peculiar vein, but they all shared a kindred enthusiasm for nature, Mr. Roberts and Mr. Carman reproducing the atmosphere of the Eastern sea-board, Mr. Campbell writing vigorous lyrics of the Great Lakes region, and Mr. Scott and Lampman taking as their province the beautiful country that lies about Ottawa, where cultivation merges so rapidly into the untamed beauty of the Laurentian hills that bound the near horizon.

Of this group Lampman has subordinated himself most completely to the influences which flow from nature, and he takes rank as the finest of our descriptive poets. He cannot be said to have any systematic philosophy of nature, unless it be that to yield oneself completely to her sway is to master the secret of unselfish and noble living. It is not exciting poetry, and it is probable that the more dramatic methods and the more fluid technique of our present-day writers have made us careless of his quieter perfection. But Lampman's work has solid virtues that will keep it alive long after the collapse of many an ultra-modernist reputation, and among Canadian poets at least he will remain a classic.

HEAT

From plains that reel to southward, dim,
The road runs by me white and bare;

Up the steep hill it seems to swim
Beyond, and melt into the glare.

Upward half-way, or it may be
Nearer the summit, slowly steals
A hay-cart, moving dustily

With idly clacking wheels.

By his cart's side the wagone.
Is slouching slowly at his ease,
Half-hidden in the windless blur

Of white dust puffing to his knees.
This waggon on the height above,
From sky to sky on either hand,
Is the sole thing that seems to move
In all the heat-held land.

Beyond me in the fields the sun

Soaks in the grass and hath his will;
I count the marguerites one by one;
Even the buttercups are still.
On the brook yonder not a breath
Disturbs the spider or the midge.
The water-bugs draw close beneath
The cool gloom of the bridge.

Where the far elm-tree shadows flood
Dark patches in the burning grass,
The cows, each with her peaceful cud,
Lie waiting for the heat to pass.
From somewhere on the slope near by
Into the pale depth of the noon
A wandering thrush slides leisurely
His thin revolving tune.

In intervals of dreams I hear

The cricket from the droughty ground;
The grasshoppers spin into mine ear
A small innumerable sound.

I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze:
The burning sky-line blinds my sight:
The woods far off are blue with haze:
The hills are drenched in light.

And yet to me not this or that
Is always sharp or always sweet;
In the sloped shadow of my hat

I lean at rest, and drain the heat;
Nay more, I think some blessèd power
Hath brought me wandering idly here:
In the full furnace of this hour

My thoughts grow keen and clear.

OUTLOOK

Not to be conquered by these headlong days,
But to stand free: to keep the mind at brood
On life's deep meaning, nature's altitude
Of loveliness, and time's mysterious ways;
At every thought and deed to clear the haze
Out of our eyes, considering only this,

What man, what life, what love, what beauty is,
This is to live, and win the final praise.

Though strife, ill fortune, and harsh human need
Beat down the soul, at moments blind and dumb
With agony; yet, patience—there shall come

Many great voices from life's outer sea,

Hours of strange triumph, and, when few men heed,
Murmurs and glimpses of eternity.

THE WOODCUTTER'S HUT

Far up in the wild and wintry hills in the heart of the cliff-broken woods,

Where the mounded drifts lie soft and deep in the noiseless soli

tudes.

The hut of the lonely woodcutter stands, a few rough beams that show

A blunted peak and a low black line, from the glittering waste of

snow.

In the frost-still dawn from his roof goes up in the windless, motionless air,

The thin, pink curl of leisurely smoke; through the forest white and bare

The woodcutter follows his narrow trail, and the morning rings and cracks

With the rhythmic jet of his sharp-blown breath and the echoing shout of his axe.

Only the waft of the wind besides, or the stir of some hardy bird

The call of the friendly chickadee, or the pat of the nut-hatch— is heard;

Or a rustle comes from a dusky clump, where the busy siskins feed,

And scatter the dimpled sheet of the snow with the shells of the

cedar-seed.

Day after day the woodcutter toils untiring with axe and wedge, Till the jingling teams come up from the road that runs by the

valley's edge,

With plunging of horses, and hurling of snow, and many a shouted word,

And carry away the keen-scented fruit of his cutting, cord upon cord.

Not the sound of a living foot comes else, not a moving visitant

there,

Save the delicate step of some halting doe, or the sniff of a prowling bear.

And only the stars are above him at night, and the trees that creak and groan,

And the frozen, hard-swept mountain-crests with their silent fronts of stone,

As he watches the sinking glow of his fire and the wavering flames upcaught,

Cleaning his rifle or mending his moccasins, sleepy and slow of thought.

Or when the fierce snow comes, with the rising wind, from the grey north-east,

He lies through the leaguering hours in his bunk like a winterhidden beast,

Or sits on the hard-packed earth, and smokes by his draughtblown guttering fire,

Without thought or remembrance, hardly awake, and waits for the storm to tire.

Scarcely he hears from the rock-rimmed heights to the wild ravines below,

Near and far off, the limitless wings of tempest hurl and go

In roaring gusts that plunge through the cracking forest, and lull, and lift,

All day without stint and all night long with the sweep of the hissing drift.

But winter shall pass ere long with its hills of snow and its fettered dreams,

And the forest shall glimmer with living gold, and chime with the gushing of streams;

Millions of little points of plants shall prick through its matted floor,

And the wind-flower lift and uncurl her silken buds by the woodman's door;

The sparrow shall see and exult; but lo! as the spring draws gaily

on,

The woodcutter's hut is empty and bare, and the master that Imade it is gone.

He is gone where the gathering of valley men another labour

yields,

To handle the plough and the harrow, and scythe, in the heat of the summer fields.

He is gone with his corded arms, and his ruddy face, and his moccasined feet,

The animal man in his warmth and vigour, sound, and hard and complete.

And all summer long, round the lonely hut, the black earth burgeons and breeds,

Till the spaces are filled with the tall-plumed ferns and the tri

umphing forest-weeds;

The thick wild raspberries hem its walls, and stretching on either hand,

The red-ribbed stems and the giant leaves of the sovereign spikenard stand.

So lonely and silent it is, so withered and warped with the sun

and snow,

You would think it the fruit of some dead man's toil a hundred

years ago;

And he who finds it suddenly there, as he wanders far and

alone,