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Stringer Arthur. Shadowed Victory
Shadowed Victory
Table of Contents
I
The harvests have been gathered, The plough’s good work is done; Once more the umber furrows. Drink in the autumn sun. And dark the earth lies waiting. For newer gifts to yield. Where sleep now turns to service. In every patient field. So even life lies fallow. When tired hearts rest again. That seeds which sleep with silence. May wave as ripened grain— That they who found love fleeting. And once too freely gave. May know some greener April. Beyond the winter’s grave
II
1 “It will freeze tonight,” an aged voice said, “So cut whatever comes into your head: All flowers left facing this first black frost. When day breaks cold you can count as lost.” So forth she went at the close of day. To save what winter might carry away; And heavy the harvest she gathered in. As the air grew sharp and the light grew thin
2 “Tomorrow,” her true love murmured low, “It’s off to the front we fighting men go, To die, if we must, where our betters have died— And this is our last night side by side.” When she thought of her true love cold in his grave. There seemed nothing to question, nothing to save, And knowing the quick give naught to the dead, “You may take what you like,” she quietly said
III
Lend me a red rose for her lips, A white rose for her breast, And for her smile the saddened light. That lures late suns to rest. Lend me the white-throat’s mellow call. Across the noonday heat, The wine-glow from too distant peaks, The wind on ripened wheat. Lend me the murmurous peace of pines, The slender grace of firs, And I from these shall know again. The beauty that was hers. Lend me the sound of moon-lit waves. That fringe some ghostly tide, And she again will walk with me. And whisper at my side. For now she fares in other fields, And time forgets, forgives— But oh, how in my empty heart. Her vanished beauty lives!
IV
What knew he of that bosom deep. Whereof the hungry have been fed, Where warm the waiting harvests sleep. And broken men may turn for bread? What knew he of that sun-bathed land. Where soft the golden noondays bask? Or of the quick ungrudging hand. With which she gives to them who ask? Knew he those summers long and sweet. When on her hills the feeding droves. And on her plains the ripened wheat. Made her our Lady of the Loaves?— The lakes, the lordly rivers where. The laden ships weave back and forth. That hungry countries grey with care. Might drain the largesse of our North? And if in white she deigns to sleep, Green floats her girdle in the Spring. Where warm her bosom is and deep. And doubly dear her wakening
V
A land, for all its wounds, where roses blow. And lawns are soft with summer rains, A land of languid hours and ivied homes. And old men walking older lanes. An ordered land that broods on Yesterday, Of eyes that turn to earlier years, Of haunted dusks and hills that harbour dreams, A country old in time and tears. But oh! my heart goes, homesick, back today, Back to the wide free prairie’s sweep, Back to the pines that brought the sunset near, Back where the great white Rockies sleep! For I am tired of dusk and dream and rose, Of ghosts and glories dead and gone: Give me the open trail, the upward sweep, The New World and the widening dawn!
VI
Intent within the curtained room we wait. For echoes from that far-off world of hate. Where on the anvil of inexorable. And final force men shape their final will (All day vague whispers and wild rumours came. To put our ceremonial calm to shame.) And now across the night that shuts us in. There breaks the brusque etheric bulletin. As, far afield, a phantom voice relates. The news for which a tensioned nation waits. But having gleaned war’s tabulated woe, I leave the garrulous listeners and go. Out to the star-strewn silence of the night, Where, in the soft and unimpassioned light. Of a mounting golden moon against a sky. Of silvered tenderness, I wonder why. A world all black with blood and battle smoke. Should so forget the words a Herdsman spoke, And, bombed and torn and spent and cannon-shocked, Reel down a road where angels might have walked
VII
Beyond the slough where one lone bittern wades, The green and opal sky line slowly fades, And at the world’s rim, miles and miles away, The afterglow turns down the lamp of day. The stars come out, and cool the breath of night. Steal through the prairie dusk, the dying light. And on the meadowed floor of emptiness. No hurrying feet of harried mortals press, Where star-lit space and silence lie so deep. The world and all it holds seems lost in sleep. And yet I know a city where on nights. Like this, its fevered anthills fringed with lights, Its walls so like a gridiron from the sun, The streets stand breathless when the day is done. And through them pant the heat-distracted crowds. Like throngs of tortured ghosts in flimsy shrouds. Who steal half-frenzied from each fetid room. And seek their straitened bed of grass and gloom. Where men and women floor a crowded park. And sleep, a tumbled army in the dark, Sleep side by side, like scattered sheaves of wheat, In August’s panting brotherhood of heat
VIII
The green mounds left at the lone portage, The graves by the trekking wain, Were strewn in the wake of their frontier fires. Where their dead were sown like grain. And the gloom was starred with glimmering homes, And the wastes with grain turned gold; And it fell in time, as it ever was, That the New became the Old. Its blood was that of the home-born sons, And its hope, and brawn, was theirs, But the Old World turns to its yesterday. While the New to the morrow fares. Yet the child must age as the mother aged. And in time of her best must give: By her outward-bound shall the old House stand, By her lost shall the old Home live!
IX
They showed us their ivied towers. And their tombs so grey with time, Their storied walls where the lichens creep. And the stately roses climb. But under their roses lay. Lost names that backward led, Where under the sod so soft with rain. Reposed their statelier dead. And we of that newer race. That never has learned to reap. And barter and toil above the graves. Where our scattered fathers sleep— We longed for our own far home. Where few dead heroes rest. And the long road laughs to the high white sun. And the glad hills greet the West— And the carefree heart outspans. Where the camp-fired coulees wind. And the questing son of the open trail. Leaves all his dead behind
X
For only a day it bloomed, And at dusk lay dead; Through the night that its breath perfumed. Its spirit fled. Yet the rock by the rose’s side. Through the long years lay, While the rose swung bright and died. In a single day. And loved was the withering rose, But the flawless stone, Round which no grave could close, No love had known
XI
It stands unwon though proudly wooed, A pale star in the night. That through the dusk and solitude. Still lures and leads to light. But baffled, bruised, and torn of soul, We learn through time and tears. It was the struggle, not the goal, Made rich our emptier years. For as we win, we strangely lose, And as we lose, we win, And white the temple stands for those. Who have not entered in
