Hesperus by Charles Sangster (book club suggestions TXT) 📖

CONTENTS.


Dedicatory Poem
Hesperus
Crowned
Mariline
The Happy Harvesters
Falls of the Chaudière, Ottawa
A Royal Welcome
Malcolm
The Comet, October 1858
Autumn
Colin
Margery
Eva
The Poet's Recompense
The Wine of Song
The Plains of Abraham
Death of Wolfe
Brock
Song for Canada
Song.--I'd be a Fairy King
Song.--Love while you may
The Snows, Upper Ottawa
The Rapid
Lost and Found
Again
Glimpses
My Prayer
Her Star
The Mystery
Love and Truth
The Wren
Grandpere
England's Hope and England's Heir
Rose
The Dreamer
Night and Morning
Within thine eyes
Gertrude
Flowers
The Unattainable
Yearnings
Ingratitude
True Love
An Evening Thought
A Thought for Spring
The Swallows
Song.--Clara and I
The April Snow Storm, 1858
Good Night
Hopeless
Into the Silent Land


SONNETS:

Proem
Sonnet
Au Revoir


POEMS.


DEDICATORY POEM.

Dear Carrie, were we truly wise,
And could discern with finer eyes,
And half-inspired sense,
The ways of Providence:

Could we but know the hidden things
That brood beneath the Future's wings,
Hermetically sealed,
But soon to be revealed:

Would we, more blest than we are now,
In due submission learn to bow,--
Receiving on our knees
The Omnipotent decrees?

That which is just, we have. And we
Who lead this round of mystery,
This dance of strange unrest,
What are we at the best?--

Unless we learn to mount and climb;
Writing upon the page of time,
In words of joy or pain,
That we've not lived in vain.

{10}

We all are Ministers of Good;
And where our mission's understood,
How many hearts we must
Raise, trembling, from the dust.

Oh, strong young soul, and thinking brain!
Walk wisely through the fair domain
Where burn the sacred fires
Of Music's sweet desires!

Cherish thy Gift; and let it be
A Jacob's ladder unto thee,
Down which the Angels come,
To bring thee dreams of Home.

What were we if the pulse of Song
Had never beat, nor found a tongue
To make the Poet known
In lands beyond his own?

Take what is said for what is meant.
We sometimes touch the firmament
Of starry Thought--no more;
Beyond, we may not soar.

I speak not of myself, but stand
In silence till the Master Hand
Each fluttering thought sets free.
God holds the golden key.


Kingston, C. W., May 1st, 1860.


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HESPERUS:

A LEGEND OF THE STARS.


PRELUDE.

The Stars are heaven's ministers;
Right royally they teach
God's glory and omnipotence,
In wondrous lowly speech.
All eloquent with music as
The tremblings of a lyre,
To him that hath an ear to hear
They speak in words of fire.

Not to learned sagas only
Their whisperings come down;
The monarch is not glorified
Because he wears a crown.
The humblest soldier in the camp
Can win the smile of Mars,
And 'tis the lowliest spirits hold
Communion with the stars.

Thoughts too refined for utterance,
Ethereal as the air,
Crowd through the brain's dim labyrinths,
And leave their impress there;
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As far along the gleaming void
Man's tender glances roll,
Wonder usurps the throne of speech,
But vivifies the soul.

Oh, heaven-cradled mysteries,
What sacred paths ye've trod--
Bright, jewelled scintillations from
The chariot-wheels of God!
When in the spirit He rode forth,
With vast creative aim,
These were His footprints left behind,
To magnify His name!

------

We gazed on the Evening Star,
Mary and I,
As it shone
On its throne
Afar,
In the blue sky;
Shone like a ransomed soul
In the depths of that quiet heaven;
Like a pearly tear,
Trembling with fear
On the pallid cheek of Even.

And I thought of the myriad souls
Gazing with human eyes
On the light of that star,
Shining afar,
In the quiet evening skies;

{13}

Some with winged hope,
Clearing the cope
Of heaven as swift as light,
Others, with souls
Blind as the moles,
Sinking in rayless night.

Dreams such as dreamers dream
Flitted before our eyes;
Beautiful visions!--
Angelo's, Titian's,
Had never more gorgeous dyes:
We soared with the angels
Through vistas of glory,
We heard the evangels
Relate the glad story
Of the beautiful star,
Shining afar
In the quiet evening skies.

And we gazed and dreamed,
Till our spirits seemed
Absorbed in the stellar world;
Sorrow was swallowed up,
Drained was the bitter cup
Of earth to the very lees;
And we sailed over seas
Of white vapour that whirled
Through the skies afar,
Angels our charioteers,
Threading the endless spheres,

{14}

And to the chorus of angels
Rehearsed the evangels
The Birth of the Evening Star.

------

I.

Far back in the infant ages,
Before the eras stamped their autographs
Upon the stony records of the earth;
Before the burning incense of the sun
Rolled up the interlucent space,
Brightening the blank abyss;
Ere the Recording Angel's tears
Were shed for man's transgressions:
A Seraph, with a face of light,
And hair like heaven's golden atmosphere,
Blue eyes serene in their beatitude,
Godlike in their tranquillity,
Features as perfect as God's dearest work,
And stature worthy of her race,
Lived high exalted in the sacred sphere
That floated in a sea of harmony
Translucent as pure crystal, or the light
That flowed, unceasing, from this higher world
Unto the spheres beneath it. Far below
The extremest regions underneath the Earth
The first spheres rose, of vari-coloured light,
In calm rotation through aërial deep,
Like seas of jasper, blue, and coralline,
Crystal and violet; layers of worlds--
The robes of ages that had passed away,

{15}

Left as memorials of their sojournings.
For nothing passes wholly. All is changed.
The Years but slumber in their sepulchres,
And speak prophetic meanings in their sleep.


FIRST ANGEL.

Oh, how our souls are gladdened,
When we think of that brave old age,
When God's light came down
From heaven, to crown
Each act of the virgin page!

Oh, how our souls are saddened,
At the deeds which were done since then,
By the angel race
In the holy place,
And on earth by the sons of men!

Lo, as the years are fleeting,
With their burden of toil and pain,
We know that the page
Of that primal age
Will be opened up once again.


II.

Progressing still, the bright-faced Seraph rose
From Goodness to Perfection, till she stood
The fairest and the best of all that waked
The tuneful echoes of that lofty world,
Where Lucifer, then the stateliest of the throng
Of Angels, walked majestical, arrayed

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In robes of brightness worthy of his place.
And all the intermediate spheres were homes
Of the existences
Of spiritual life.
Love, the divine arcanum, was the bond
That linked them to each other--heart to heart,
And angel world to world, and soul to soul.
Thus the first ages passed,
Cycles of perfect bliss,