Evening / Katherine Hale

from The Island

Evening

An August evening,
Pale-blue and silver and the moon ahead,
And the canoe, if you should turn it westward,
Glazed to a lacquer red.

We had set up our house:
A fireplace of the island stone,
And a mat of moss,
A tent, and a balsam bed,
And a table made of a pine.

And through the twilight’s fading line
We paddled far down the bay
To look at the place so far away
Where the inns and the tourists belong,
The place we had left so hurriedly
When we heard the sound of a song.

Being established in magic,
Householders you might say,
It was safe enough to glance at the past
From our supernatural bay.

But then we went fishing instead!
And something reached out of the twilight,
Something so old and magnetic
Something so sure and prevailing
It seemed we might better obey —
For a song has a certain conviction
Heard at the end of the day.

~~
Katherine Hale (1878-1956)
from The Island, and other poems, 1934

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the European Union]

Katherine Hale biography

Michael Klajban, Secretary Island, British Columbia (detail), 2018. 

CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Stony Lake / Katherine Hale

Stony Lake

By southern seas I have seen purple stones
Throw back the shadows of the waves and hills.
On the Ǽgean, so the stories run,
Greek youths, with many a saffron-coloured sail,
Rode flame-like to the rhythm of the gale.

Again, on the bright shores of this small lake,
Purple of hills and pink of northern rocks.
To-day I met a sail-boat in the wind
And at its mast a brown Canadian boy —
He was as splendid as his mate of Troy.

~~
Katherine Hale
from Morning in the West, 1923

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Katherine Hale biography

 

"Stony Lake" read by Stefan Von Blon for LibriVox. Courtesy LibriVox Audiobooks.

(Poem begins at 44:28)

Nearing Quebec / Katherine Hale

Nearing Quebec

Grey line of ocean that our sharp bow severs,
Do you remember those tiny dipping sails
Venturing the unknown!
Then the free wind was an uncertain guide,
Criss-crossing the grey line,
Breaking the problematic course,
Enlarging, moving, changing
Opening the vast abyss.
Remember the huddled women
In question of this mystery,
The climbing, peering men,
The strain of tense expectancy,
And the doubt of arrival.
But the trembling line is controlled,
And the wayward guide dismissed.

What is the wind to us,
A beaten and frustrated force!
Did it once intimidate men,
Who used to measure and peer
At navies of storm in the sky?
First-rate machinery casts out fear,
And now we know what we know!
London, New York, it is all the same,
The ocean track is clear and tame,
We shall without doubt arrive.

Yet I return to you,
As though to a new land,
A woman on a sailing ship
Still huddled in a mystery.
Shall I touch your shores,
Past all these shimmering capes,
Prefacing cliffs and legends,
Witch-music, song of sirens,
Hymns of safety and the rest?
I mean your actual shores;
Earth of your very being,
The innermost of you:
The straight cliffs of your mind,
The mountains of your will,
The secret passes,
The deep and lovely fountains of your joy.
Are you to be my country,
My fathomless resource,
And my enduring song?
I, too, sail trembling
Into the unknown.

---
Katherine Hale (1878-1956)
from The Island and other poems 1934

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Katherine Hale biography