Sets & sages se % ee Pinte tute le a ‘ Ske va S Sa = Wie feat Saas McGILL UNIVER- SIT Ys IDR ARY DEDICATED to The Women who Knit 1914 Grey Knitting And Other Poems By KATHERINE HALE Toronto: WILLIAM BRIGGS Copyright, Canada, 1914, by WILLIAM BRIGGS Grey Knitting ALL through the country, in the autumn stillness, A web of grey spreads strangely, rim to rim; And you may hear the sound of knitting needles, Incessant, gentle, dim. A tiny click of little wooden needles, Elfin amid the gianthood of war; Whispers of women, tireless and patient, Who weave the web afar. Whispers of women, tireless and patient— “ Foolish, inadequate!” we hear you say; “Grey wool on fields of hell is out of fashion,” And yet we weave the web from day to day. Suppose some soldier dying, gayly dying, Under the alien skies, in his last hour, Should listen, in death’s prescience so vivid, And hear a fairy sound bloom like a flower— I like to think that soldiers, gayly dying For the white Christ on fields with shame sown deep, May hear the fairy click of women’s needles, As they fall fast asleep. Page Three You Who Have Gayly Left Us You who have gayly left us youth-beshorn, The town is sunless and the roof forlorn; Dread stands beside the pillow every morn. But glory is a beacon in the night, So brilliant that it bathes the world in light, And lures these slim lads marching out to fight. Country of mine, so very strong and young, What of dark banners fast before you flung? What of the awful battles yet unsung? No joyous road I ask for you to-day, I dare not pipe you peace along the way That leads to Darkness or increasing Day. For Heaven plays the prelude: drum and fife Merging the morning into larger life Challenge the noon of banners and of strife; . Until, within the living crimson flame, There seems to burn a new-born country’s name, The Friend of Light, and Honor’s deathless fame. Page Four When You Return WHEN you return I see the radiant street, I hear the rushing of a thousand feet, I see the ghosts that women come to greet. I can feel roses, roses all the way, The fearful gladness that no power can stay, The joy that glows and grows in ambient ray. Because slim lads come marching home from war? Truly, slim lads, home from the Very Far: From fields as distant as the farthest star. It will be strange to hear the plaudits roll, Back from that zone where soul is flung on soul, Where they go out like sparks to one straight goal. Where souls go out as fast as moments fly, Urging their claim on the unbending sky— Surely it must be wonderful to die! When you return I see the radiant street, I hear the rushing of a thousand feet— Inving and Dead with roses we shall greet. Page Five Comrades, Awake! oo 8 COMRADES, awake! the hour for sleep is o’er; To-day is ours, the future all before; With steady heart and courage high, And faith that cannot fail, We hold as dower old England’s power, The Flag that must prevail. Live for your Flag, O Builders of the North. Canada, Canada, in God go forth. From North to South proclaim the call again, At strong sea-gates and on the fruitful plain; As died our fathers we would die, For Canada’s dear cause, For loyal love and God above And honor’s righteous laws. Live for your Flag, O Builders of the North. Canada, Canada, in God go forth. Rise and defend the Empire’s lasting fame, O Sons of the North, in fealty as in name, And hosts untold from alien lands Will mingle with our own, While hand in hand we firmly stand For one united throne. Live for your Flag, O Builders of the North. Canada, Canada, in God go forth. Live for your Flag, O Builders of the North! Age unto age shall glorify its worth; Of precious blood its red is dyed, The white is honor’s sign. Through weal or ruth its blue is truth, Its might the power divine. Live for your Flag, O Builders of the North. Canada, Canada, in God go forth. Page Six In the Trenches (CHRISTMAS, 1914) Wark gods have descended : The world burns up in fine! Warm your hands at the trench’s fire, Dear lad o’ mine. Bullets cease this Christmas night, Only songs are heard. If you feel a phantom step, Twas my heart that stirred. If you see a dreamy light, ’Tis the Christ-Child’s eyes ; I believe He watches us, Wonderful and wise. Let us keep our Christmas night In the camp-light shine; Warm your hands at the trench’s fire— They still hold mine. Page Seven Factory Songs 8 8 NOON Swirt and red are the factory flames at noon: The world without, and work within, and a crisis soon. The engines hum, and the men call out, Like men in the thick of fray— And on the hills gleam the fairy wings of another day. But we are at it long and late, In the glare and blood of strife, And when sledges stop, and trade runs slow, "Tis a fight for life. And this is the song of the grinding wheels, through the golden, golden noon: “ Feed us and move us faster, men and soon, soon, soon.” If. EVENING EVENING, evening, and the smoky weather, Homeward slowly through the aisles of Spring; Spectre-like the shadow looming over, Cold as fate the hands that grip and cling. Day! on the fury wings the hills were yours to roam; The night has come at last, to give us time for home. Page Eight Iif. NIGHT THE lights are lit, and now the fireside glow, The tender faces and the love-words low. But, God! already ringed about us here, That other circle,—crouching, silent,—near, Wolves in the shadowy night that stare and wait to leap; lafe, we are fairly caught, and the long, best trap seems sleep. IV. MORNING MORNING! At last morning comes up the hill, With the long, long beams of the rising sun, And the new-born will. And what shines out in the quickened air? (Wolf-trampled path, you are smeared and bare.) "Tis my good old Factory Tower Standing the night with a stony power ;— Steel, you were made to sing! And sing you shall to the heart of all, the endless song of Earth, The travail, the tempest, the battle, the wolf, and the sweaty mirth : “ Men, I am honest work, I am fearful strife, The day made, and the night gained, for the child and the wife. Life is but snatched out of life, out of faith, out of sin; I am thought of man’s heart, I am Force, I am Power—I shall win; I shall win.” Page Nine To Peter Pan in Winter 5 8 ‘And so it was arranged that Peter Pan should fly back alone to Fairyland, and that once a year Mrs. Darling would allow Wendy to go and stay with him for a whole week to do his Spring cleaning.” SPRING house-cleaning in Arcadie, When every bough is bare: “Tf it bring Wendy back to me, I wish,” quoth Pan, “’twere here.” For Peter Pan is sometimes sad In spite of all that’s sung; He has to pipe and dance like mad To keep this old world young. And as he pipes the fairies hight A star for every tone. (Do starry lights burn just as bright When one is all alone?) And as he pipes small elfin folk Foregather from the moon, And dance, and flash, and fade like smoke While he plays on and on. His magic tree-tops shine with ice That used to melt in green, The people creep like small brown mice Down in the worlds between. And Wendy may be well or ill, And play or go to school; But Pan sits high and pipes his fill And minds no mortal rule. Page Ten O Peter Pan, the winds are cold, The snow is deep and high; The Never-Never Land is gold, And yet—perhaps you sigh; Perhaps you know, though just an elf, In your small fairy way, How wretched one is by himself, When Some One Else can’t stay. So pipe your sweetest, Peter Pan, And clang the silver bells; Send all the elfin din you can To where the Great One dwells, Who holds the Spring within His hand, That you, who wait above, And we, in this midwinter world, May call again—to Love. Page Eleven Response HAVE you known pipers in a magi: mood Take a slim branch all winter-warn and bare And breathe on it, till notes that were not there Seemed to steal out through the enzhanted wood? Have you seen Spring, in luring, roseate guise Gaze on some meadow, desolate and worn, Until, like softest footsteps of the morn, Pink buds responded to those questing eyes? Then you have felt the stirring in ny heart, O Gazer on a life bereft and cold! God yield to you the promise you unfold, And let me go, awakened, yet apari. —Canalian Magazine. Page Twelve A Song of Success Oo 8 I SING of triumph and of gold, I sing the inmost hopes of men; Sing, until lead souls call again Those early visions long grown cold. I sing by sone predestined power, Till every heart that covets life Awakes and cries, “ God give me strife, And give me manhood for my dower!”’ I sing of sweet things left undone, I sing of love lost by the way, And precious small things, grave and gay, Caught in this web of woven sun. The early dewn notes wildly clear, The tender treble of desire, The sun of youth’s own golden fire— This is the undertone you hear. For Life still knows and takes its own— Strange Life, imperative and brave— And urges, “ While one soul’s to save, You and your song are never done! For all the listless, leaning world That has no; fought, or swooned, or died, Or pressed its youth into this tide, You must sing on, with Hope unfurled.” So sing I ofthe Great Success, The Capture of the soul’s domain, The failure that may not remain, The outwarc flight beyond redress. And God alone gives Song the breath That urges ‘t, so great, so clear, Far out above the fields of fear, On to Himself—through Life and Death. —Cassell’s Magazine. Page Thirteen To-Day I sine the Present, The All that contains the Past, For the thing To Be is the thing for me, And not first cause, but last. I sing To-day A gold-bright cup of wine :— To press my best with all the rest Is the truest task of mine. I look far out And see dim fields of foam :— Yet fling my hour with its sparkling power, A wave to the dewy dome. I feel my hour Caught in a coming morn, And know its strain is a moment’s gain To some day yet unborn. Page Fourteen The First Christmas Oo 8 AS THAT Judean land which long ago Waited through centuries to find a face Where human and divine met first in grace And proved high love incarnate here below :— A little world that worshipped pomp and show, Yet lay, as many a strange, imperial race, Whom haunting dreams forevermore encase, Calling a vision that the soul must know— So through the ways I could not understand, Through light that dawned to disappear again, And pale mirage upon the distance cast, I waited even as that lonely land, And no dark night has ever been in vain, Since heaven shines through thee to me at last. —_——_~- Page Fifteen . ' ‘ . , a Sy AN : ¥ ‘SS: . bi : os . . : : ‘ , " : Y . \ : bn NA ‘ \ * * ~~ 4 ¥ ’ : ‘ . > \ : * + : : a _ . 7 _ ~ . \ 3 ‘ AS : . 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