Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE GOLDEN CROSS, by WILSON PUGSLEY MACDONALD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE GOLDEN CROSS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: We hold in memory all the whiter moons
Last Line: And lilies wet from no fair woodland's breast.
Subject(s): Conscientious Objectors; World War I; First World War


If the indignities and cruelties that were heaped upon conscientious objectors during the Great
War were fully revealed, they would form a fitting sequel to the atrocities of the Inquisition.
Historians have carefully kept silence on this subject, but the spectacle of men being driven
insane by the brutality of military officials, because they believed in the message.
of One, Jesus of Nazareth, will not recommend our civilization to the more humane ages
that are to be.

WE hold in memory all the whiter moons,
And store them with the red and golden eves,
With the dew-drinking morns, the higher noons
That brew their languid dreams in cooling leaves.
And thus I keep one night from Lethe's arms,
For that white flower she wore --
That mystic, moon-blown lily whose pale charms
Fell on the stained stone and blackened wood,
And on the yellow pavement where I stood
By Notre Dame and her wide, open door.

It was a Sabbath evening, calm and cool;
And from the great cathedral poured that stream
Of older children, passing out from school,
To laugh and weep, and some -- a few -- to dream:
An uninspiring sea of heavy eyes,
Tired in an iron age,
And lost to every wonder and surprise --
Lost to the wildness of a winter's day,
Lost to the fragrant loveliness of May,
Lost to the poet's lyric, laughing page.

Were there then none among these mortal men,
Whose voices droned in that great, common choir,
To rouse the sullen flowing of my pen
With that pure passion of the Doric fire?
And then, in spirit alien to the throng
That filled the narrow aisle,
A youth of strangest beauty passed along,
And some one turned and shouted: "That is he --
A dog of peace -- the poet, Paul Dupris."
And Paul, who heard them, answered with a smile.

There rose the Mount of Olives in that look,
And I drew near and spoke the poet's name;
And he, as though he knew me, gently took
My arm and walked with me until we came
To flaming woodlands slowly sloping down
From that pine-pillared hill
That holds her silence proudly from the town.
And there we talked of themes unknown to men:
Of how the will of Christ would come again
When khakied hosts no more went out to kill.

I learned to know him well within that hour,
And to his humble dwelling we returned --
A darkened haunt on Bleury, where the flower
Of his high, musing spirit long had burned.
And in a room of simple taste and fare,
And 'mid her vellum choir,
Whose magic songs have eased a world's despair,
Before a luscious board of fig and date
And amber honey, curving on the plate,
We eased the frugal heart of our desire.

I saw him often in that passing year:
There seemed no secret place but knew him well.
Sometimes I caught him standing rapt to hear
The plaintive tone of some wood vesper-bell --
And often, on the road to Saint Hilaire,
When the gold tides of wheat
Wash the hot sandals of the summer air,
And the frail flowers have lost their power to dance,
I've heard him chanting runes of ancient France;
And always, when I met him, life grew sweet.

And once he held me in as strange a tale
As haunts the fragrant pages of romance:
How, in a woodland nook called Ardenvale,
A maid once trembled at his swift advance;
How, oft, he passed the girl and how her fear
Grew gentler, day by day,
Until he knew she cared to have him near;
And how, upon her path, a fallen glove
Brought forth the word that led them up to love;
And how her heart had cast that love away.

He opened wide his coat and I could see
A long, white feather pinned against his heart.
"This was her gift of scorn," he said to me,
"And 'tis forever, I know well, we part.
I had not gone to fight in this world woe,
Because of words One said
By Galilee, two thousand years ago."
A mile we walked and spoke no more, and then
We parted and I saw him not again
Until the night when blood was on his head.

It was a winter evening, gaunt and lean,
And shouting men were passing by my door;
And, carried on the breezes cold and keen,
I heard the poet's name above the roar.
And in the human tide I bathed my feet
And came to Notre Dame --
And there, upon the street's white-woven sheet,
I saw the lifeless form of Paul Dupris,
And on his breast, for any eye to see,
The feather she had given for his shame.

"They killed him," sobbed a woman, "for he cried:
'There is no sword in Christ's diviner law.'"
"God grant him peace, which here he was denied,"
Whispered a gaunt old riverman in awe.
And some new Mary of our later day,
Sad for the spilled life-wine,
Dewed, with her tears, the stone on which he lay.
And the white moon dropped the rare flower she wore
Upon his breast; and through the abbey's door
Came music, searching for a soul divine.

But in my dreams that night an angel knelt
Beside the dead, and touched the badge of shame,
And in her tapered hands I saw it melt
And change into a cross whereon his name
Was burned in living letters, pure as light
At dawn upon the sea;
And it was made from gold of flawless white
Such as no cave of earth was ever known
To hold within its coldest depth of stone;
And it was graved: "For valor; Paul Dupris."

And, in my dreams, that messenger divine
Cried sadly to the hosts, now cowed and still:
"When will ye learn that man may grow so fine
That Hell's own legions could not make him kill?
This man was more to Nature than her flowers,
And dearer to the spring
Than April and her lilt of laughing showers;
Richer to autumn than her cloak of gold.
And, if the winds could speak, their tongues had told
How at his feet a wounded bird would sing."

The years have passed and now I walk alone
Along fair Cote-de-Neiges and up the hill,
And by the river marges making moan,
And in the deeper woods of Cartierville.
And once I sought, upon a summer's eve,
The acre of his rest --
And found another soul had come to grieve;
And watched her, through the scented, swaying trees,
Pour out her grief in white anemones
And lilies wet from no fair woodland's breast.





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