Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, IN HOWARD PARK, by WILSON PUGSLEY MACDONALD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IN HOWARD PARK, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Call me away not yet a vagrant while!
Last Line: Here will I come and dream again my dreams.
Subject(s): Grief; Parks; Youth; Sorrow; Sadness


I

CALL me away not yet a vagrant while!
The tide of years so seldom bears me here.
Call me not back to walk the crashing street,
Until the color blanches from the year
And the sun dims his dial!
Then, in the gray November, will I go,
Back to the weary wash of human streams,
Back to the droning town, and when the snow
Is blurred by marching of young April's feet
Here will I come and dream again my dreams.

Fine is the fabric of these dreams of mine --
It fades not with the using, for its thread
Was stained immortal colors in my breast.
Here, at my mother's passing, was I led;
And here I reared a shrine
Whereon to soothe my deep, unhealing pain;
And here I sought to find in a child's way
The trembling warmth of one dear lip again.
And here, past many a mile-stone pointing west,
I come with that same seeking heart to-day.

Ah, one unhealing pain! what aching grief
With this supreme bereavement can compare?
For, though I ease my wounds with flower and fern,
With nature's mystic anodyne of air,
With music of the leaf,
With merriment of stars and warmth of sun,
With that near-human kindness of the rain,
With winds that curve about me as I run
Like my lost mother's arm: still do I yearn
One peerless gift and yearn it all in vain.

Youth's grief is strange; through all my childhood days
My hungry soul was pauper for a kiss.
And so I took as comrades the warm flowers
And wooed the soul of their eternal bliss,
And sought the silent ways,
And ran with dryads, shaping at my whim,
And pressed the cooling pine against my woes.
And now, here, oft I come when life is dim
And dusty with the years, and in these bowers
Fill with my blood again each withered rose.

Yea, often here I wander when the blame
And praise of men is weary on my heart,
And chant those shyer fragments of my song
Whose simple beauty has transcended art
To light a purer flame.
And once I came here in the matchless May,
And heard my mother's dear, applauding hands,
And sang for her alone that darling day;
And came away at even clean and strong
And girded for my soul's divine commands:

Girded to endure once more the witless mirth
Of blind Misunderstanding's callous cry
And all this late apostasy to Truth;
To stand, an outcast lyrist, and defy
The songless choir of earth;
To find so seldom what thou did'st possess --
The miracle of love, the untroubled eyes,
And that serene, unconscious loveliness
That burns in woodland roses and in youth
Ere our unlearned wisdom hath made wise.

With golden leaves my garish hour is cloyed:
And yet what woodland opulence shall suffice
For one lost word of lips too early mute?
Even loveliest autumn cannot pay the price
For life too soon destroyed.
But, better than grievous wailing, let us find
Some wealth of noble yearning to atone,
Some holy beauty of a heart resigned.
Adown the air now falls the summer fruit
And never more sweetly did the winds make moan.

II

There is a road and proudly at its side,
With cooling vision of Ontario's Lake,
The homestead of the Howards crowns a hill.
Here, in a youthful fancy, I did take
The woodland as my bride:
Nor ever in the years 'twixt then and now,
Though all the world about me grew unclean,
Have I relaxed the ardor of that vow.
Even as then the air to-day is still,
But the great trees have darker cloaks of green.

Two massive oaks, that guard the homestead's door,
Invite us where their shadows cool like rain.
Here let us sit alone, where none may see,
And wash away the city's yellow stain;
And dream how, on this floor,
Two frosty acorns in their cold distress
Slept in the earth and grew up side by side,
Feeling through nights of gloom the soft caress
Of perfect understanding such as we,
The mortals of our day, have been denied.

What cups of light were gaily tossed away!
What clouds were freed to cool these thirsting tongues!
What winds pressed firmly with their shaping bands!
What tempests blew the bellows of these lungs!
In the late hours of May
Full often have these ancient trees reclad
Their barren limbs -- a laggard robe to don --
And heard the willow chiding, she who had
Taken her green from April's hueless hands:
But these shall keep their robes when hers are gone.

Yea, these shall feel the thin October rain,
Turned to fine snow, hiss coldly on their leaves,
And see the willows, naked in their prime,
And watch their garments floating in the eaves;
And know that all we gain
By easy effort shall not long endure.
But here the air to-day is ribbed with heat,
And the full-statured, crimson asters cure
Our grief as summer passes to the rhyme
Of hooded acorns, tapping at her feet.

There was an hour these oaks bewailed their fate
And stood like guiltless men condemned to die,
And heard the distant axe in birch and pine;
And nights of old were bitter with their cry.
But now no more they wait,
For one high morning brought their glad reprieve:
"Here shall the tide of dwellings never flow;
Here shall the woodland looms forever weave
Robes of the purple phlox and columbine
And plumes of fir and lilies of warm snow."

So silent are this homestead's storied walls
That it doth seem the nobler age we lost,
Here, at these doors, is tethered like a steed
That waits the mount who long ago hath crossed
Beyond her whinnied calls.
And yet how near is that black tide that swirls
At Yonge and Queen, from dawn to midnight stars:
The frowning men and gaudy, painted girls
Who lean their joys upon a broken reed
And burn their souls to drive their flaming cars.

Through sunken suns and faded moons I fly
Back to the gold of those forgotten hours
When love was sure and simple in its plea.
Here came a lover once with gift of flowers
That pleased a maiden's eye,
And up the winding road they took the light
Out of the Night's high hand, and found their way.
And she was gowned in fragrant dress of white;
And comrade-rebel of the dark was she
With hawthorn and the apple-blossom spray.

That was an age of fine belief in Christ;
And these two lovers lived in quaint content
Until upon the maid the darkness fell.
Then in a few, sad years her comrade went
To keep with her a tryst.
And here I dwell in this Gothamic ease
Where words are light and love is soon defiled,
And where the former lovers of the trees
Come not to vespers at the woodland's bell
But every where are by false gods beguiled.

There is a tomb to which the pilgrims go,
And here, amid its peace, our lovers sleep;
And you can read the legend of their names
Writ, on a stained stone, in letters deep.
Bright is their bed below,
For through their dumb, eternal weight of clay,
The voice of youth, emancipated, drones;
And they can hear this blessed sound of play
Above their heads at dusk, when sunset flames
Upon their couch and fires the crimson cones.

I leave the tomb and mount the gentle hill
Until I reach a garden drenched in red
That tames the purple asters and the blue
Forget-me-nots that fleck the garden's bed --
And wonder what could fill
This narrow sward with loveliness so deep,
Unless some crimson cloud had floated nigh
And here had fallen in a rosy heap;
For in this garden I behold each hue
That warmed last night the solemn evening sky.

Along the northern margin of the park
There is a field of few and scattered trees
From which the browning acorn now is hurled.
Here, as a youth, I took the hours of ease,
And lit the sacred spark;
And to this day if I my lyre take down,
And chant a song which once I chanted here,
This field arises in its cloak of brown.
And oft in gardens half-way 'round the world
Have I, in music, bade this scene appear.

Call me not then away a vagrant while!
The tide of years so seldom bears me here.
Call me not back to walk the crashing street,
Until the color blanches from the year,
And the sun dims his dial!
Then, in the gray November, will I go
Back to the weary wash of human streams,
Back to the droning town, and when the snow
Is blurred by marching of young April's feet
Here will I come and dream again my dreams.





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