February the First on the Prairies / Wilson MacDonald

February the First on the Prairies

The page is snowy white, the pen is dipped,
And yet unwritten is this manuscript —
Save for a scattered letter leagues apart.

But through this frail beginning I can peer
On days when all this wilderness shall hear
The rhythmic throbbings of the human heart.

The heavens are bare; no clouds are on her face
To make the laggard sun increase his pace
Above the rusted hillocks bare and red.

The yellow straw-pipes, spearing through the ice,
Are lovely from an ancient sacrifice;
They gave and hear the nations breaking bread.

The prairie lands are spread to-day for me
Like frozen billows on a pulseless sea
That waits the golden wheat’s releasing tide.

Here, in his largest mood, the artist tries
To catch the amber glory with his dyes,
And sees, with aching soul, his task defied.

Bolder, the poet, with a stronger hand
Anoints with song this little-laurelled land,
Weaving the west winds wildly in his rune.

He sees the cattle stand with moveless tails,
And heads together, to outwit the gales
That blow the bronze of summer from the moon.

He sees, beside a ridge where poplars grow,
A bronco coldly nosing in the snow,
And gains the prairie vastness from his form.

He sees the patient straw-stack, brown with rain,
A giant, ripened mushroom of the plain
Whose stem is worn by rubbing flank and storm.

Here, while the blizzard aches its heart in sound,
The cattle move like driftwood, ’round and ’round,
Yea, ’round and ’round as in a whirlpool’s reach.

And, in a nook that lulls the wilder whine,
A shaggy bush claims kinship with the pine
And meets the gale with boldness in its speech;

Or, with a thought for some far woodland, dense,
Her branches wail against an old offense —
Complaining of the hoof that brought them here.

No lordly tree this land shall ever dare;
And yet, unfearful of their valiant fare,
Soon, in this vast, shall frailest flowers appear.

Where Might doth falter, Beauty enters in;
Where Pride shall fail, Humility shall win.
And this will be until the heavens are old.

And here, to prove the adage, I shall pass
When April kindles beauty in the grass
And warms these frozen fields with red and gold.

~~
Wilson MacDonald (1880-1967)
from Out of the Wilderness, 1926

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Wilson MacDonald biography

Jakub Fryš, Prairie of Alberta, February 2019. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

November / Wilson MacDonald

November

Some nomad yearning burns within my singing
    For that bleak beauty scorned of lute and lyre,
That loveliness of gray whereon are winging

  The last wild lyrists of the marsh and mire.   

    And, lest that migrant choir 

Should wing away all music from the land,
    By one forgotten lake I chant this song;
And that cold passion of her choric sand
    Shall to my muse belong.

This lake, unnamed in June, is still more nameless
  Amid this ruined grandeur of the year,
These roofless, pillared temples where the tameless
  Young Winter soon will chase her frosty spear;
  And where even now I hear
The prelude of her long and ghostly wail
  In boughs that creak and shallows that congeal,
And, like a child who hears some ghostly tale,
  A strange delight I feel.

I saw the year pass by me like a dancer:
  The imp of April and the child of May,
The modest maid of June with her soft answer
  To every wooing wind that blew her way.
  And now, this autumn day,
When the high rouge of leaf no more conceals
  And there is none to pipe a dancing theme,
A woman old, with heavy toes and heels,
  Plods by me in a dream.

Let others pour their opulence of roses
  To please their high-born ladies of the tower;
Rather would I the thin, wan hand that closes
  In grateful love about my simple flower.
  While comrade singers shower
With wonderment of word and garish phrase
  The luscious year, that moves from plough to plough,
I rest content to twine mine austere bays
  About November’s brow.

Here, in this cheerless womb, is born the glory
  Of June’s white-woven whorl of scented hours.
And here, within this mist supine and hoary,   

    Is dreamed the foot of April’s dancing showers.
  Here, where the black leaf cowers
Against the dusky bosom of the earth,
  Is drawn the milk that feeds the dawning year;
And Flora plans, herself, the rhythmic birth
  Of spring’s new chorus here.

Above my nameless lake the broken fingers
  Of those once-hardy reeds are jewelled with ice;
The mallard duck, despite this warning, lingers
  Until the gripping air is like a vice.
  The year hath tossed her dice
And lost the Indian summer, and the loon
  Chills, with her wintry laughter, the bleak skies —
And, where a meagre sun is doled at noon,
  A wounded pheasant dies.

 
And, lest these hueless days should pass despairing,
  The rose hath garbed her seeds in orbs of red —
The last warm touch of pure, autumnal daring
  In all this frosty garden of the dead.
  The quail, to hardship bred,
Frames her soft eyes with tangled brush and brier,
  And woos us with the contrast; and the hare,
Urged by the weasel’s probing eyes of fire,
  Leaps from her peaceful lair.

This is the hour when the bold sun is sleeping
  On his last couch — and here his lady comes,
Cold as a cloud that will not melt to weeping,
  And breaks the flutes and muffles all the drums,
  And the last warmth benumbs.
I know the road she walks to greet her lord
  By the strange rustle of her silken dress;
Or do I hear the oak-tree’s phantom horde
  Of dead leaves in distress?

O troubadours of spring! O bards of gladness,
  Who in the scented gardens love to throng!
So loath are ye to sing the hour of sadness
  When all the world is hungry for a song,
  And nights are strange and long,
That I, in this pale hour, have called mine art
  To hymn that beauty, scorned of pen and tongue;
For God Himself hath set my song apart
  To praise His worlds unsung.

~~
Wilson MacDonald (1880-1967)
from Out of the Wilderness, 1926

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Wilson MacDonald biography

Traveling Otter, Dusk at Pontoon Lake, Yellowknife, Canada, November 2010.

CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

The Song of the Ski / Wilson MacDonald

The Song of the Ski

Norse am I when the first snow falls;
Norse am I till the ice departs.
The fare for which my spirit calls
Is blood from a hundred viking-hearts.
The curved wind wraps me like a cloak;
The pines blow out their ghostly smoke.
I'm high on the hill and ready to go —
A wingless bird in a world of snow:
Yet I'll ride the air
With a dauntless dare
That only a child of the north can know.

The bravest ski has a cautious heart
And moves like a tortoise at the start,
But when it tastes the tang of the air
It leaps away like a frightened hare.
The day is gloomy, the curtains half-drawn,
And light is stunted as at the dawn:
But my foot is sure and my arm is brawn.

I poise on the hill and I wave adieu:
(My curving skis are firm and true)
The slim wood quickens, the air takes fire
And sings to me like a gypsy's lyre.
Swifter and swifter grows my flight:
The dark pines ease the unending white.
The lean, cold birches, as I go by,
Are like blurred etchings against the sky.
One am I for a moment's joy
With the falling star and the plunging bird.
The world is swift as an Arab boy;
The world is sweet as a woman's word.
Never came such a pure delight.
To a bacchanal or a sybarite:
Swifter and swifter grows my flight,
And glad am I, as I near the leap,
That the snow is fresh and the banks are deep.

Swifter and swifter on I fare,
And soon I'll float with the birds on air.
The speed is blinding; I'm over the ridge,
Spanning space on a phantom bridge.
The drifts await me; I float, I fall:
The world leaps up like a lunging carp.
I land erect and the tired winds drawl
A lazy rune on a broken harp.

Child of the roofless world am I;
Not of those hibernating drones
Who fear the gray of a wintry sky
And the shrieking wind's ironic tones,
Who shuffle cards in a cloud of smoke
Or crawl like frozen flies at chess,
Or gossip all day with meddling folk
In collar of starch and a choking dress.

Come, ye maids of the vanity-box,
Come, ye men of the stifling air:
The white wind waits at your door and knocks;
The white snow calls you everywhere.
Come, ye lads of the lounge and chair,
And gird your feet with the valiant skis
And mount the steed of the winter air
And hold the reins of the winter breeze.

Lord of the mountains dark with pine!
Lord of the fields of smoking snow!
Grant to this vagrant heart of mine
A patch of wood where my feet may go,
And a roofless world to my journey's end,
And a cask of wind for my cup of wine,
And yellow gold of the sun to spend,
And at night the stars in endless line,
And, after it all, the hand of a friend —
The hand of a trusted friend in mine.

~~
Wilson MacDonald (1880-1967)
from Out of the Wilderness, 1926

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Wilson MacDonald biography