akrcratsaNj P O ETR.Y CHAP-BGUKS Hite Arbutus Tree And Other Poems By JOHN HOSIE \> 1 O F THIS EDITION OF THE ARBUTUS TREE AND OTHER POEMS, BY JOHN HOSIE, TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES HAVE BEEN PRINTED. THIS CHAP-BOOK IS A PRODUCT OF THE RYERSON PRESS. TORONTO. CANADA. Copyright, Canada, 1929, by The Ryerson Press, Toronto PS8515 084A83 1929 McLennan Hosie , John , The arbutus tree and other poems 71771913 John Hosie, Provincial Librarian and Archivist of British Columbia, resides at Victoria, B.C. From his old-world garden he enjoys exten- sive views inland from Victoria over the rugged Sooke Hills. The little poem herein, entitled “God s Tapestries,” is woven around one of the magnificent spreading oaks on his lawn. As a Nature lover Mr. Hosie has written many prose articles and occasional verses. Mr. Hosie recently edited The Pioneer Women of Vancouver Island , and has made several contributions to the proceedings of the British Columbia Historical Association and to magazines and newspapers. •«r~ - The Arb utus Tree {Dedicated to the Hon. Walter Cameron Nichol) **** G OD, when He made thee, beauteous tree, Exhausted Nature’s alchemy. The rarest elements He sought, And in His crucible He wrought The miracle that gave thee birth. And brought thee pristine from the earth, In shining loveliness to be The darkling woods’ embroidery. Thy limbs as polished pillars are Of bronze o’erlaid with cinnabar, Or, dim within the temple green, Of burnished gold or tangerine. Thy plumy blossoms, honey-sweet. Distil in high midsummer’s heat Ambrosial perfume, and the bees Forget their toil in lotus ease, Finding some precious anodyne In thy rich nectar’s potent wine. But most I love thee, when at last, Thy pomps of Summer overpast, Thou holdst aloft a plenitude Of fruitage soft-vermilion hued, Like hanging lamps to light the bier Of Autumn desolate and sere. One 30 1 030 0 tree! that midst the changing scene Art ever comely and serene, Beloved, protected of the gods Through parching heat or wintry odds, — 1 love thee passing well, 0 tree, Whose benediction covers me ! 4 » 4 » 4 * THE OLD CABIN ON THE OLD TRAIL I T’S the Spring, and the May-fly is out, and there’s an old cabin yonder. In a fold of the hills in shuttered-up darkness waiting for me, And the dogwood’s in bloom by the trails where my friends, the shy deer, wander, And there’s a burgeoning loveliness abroad for all men to see. And the river sings there, under the misty green rain of the willows, And shadowy trout in alder-fringed pools are darting and stealing. And legions of lilies star the forest floor’s soft mossy pillows, And the thought of it all is a balm and delight for heart’s healing. And the cabin dreams in the sun, of flown years halcyon and golden, Of warmth and cheer and laughter and song, and the firelight on the wall, Of vanished friendly faces in the days now overpast and olden. And of one living but faithless, who comes no more, no more at all. Nay! let me go; let me shoulder my pack and be gone; I am weary. Let me follow the old trail again to the Horseshoe Cabin Bend. 0 cabin mine, deserted, lonesome, disconsolate and dreary, I am coming to thee, mute and patient standing at the long trail’s end. Ttoo THE UNKNOWN BIRD O MY HEART is full of joy, for the south wind blows to-day, And wood and mead are vocal with a melody new-born; And I’m thinking of a hillside ten thousand miles away, Where I know the throstle’s singing on a spike of budding thorn. 0 rapture of the throstle o’er all the April land ! 0 ecstasy unfathomed by any human mind ! A very balm of comfort to those who understand, Yea, passing sweet and potent and magical and kind ! * This day I heard an unknown bird at hush of golden dawn. Out in the holly thicket he piped a song for me. And it took me to a dingle hard by a northern lawn, ' And all the day was mellow with an ancient memory. And now at eve, while burns the sun low o’er the tinted bay. To vesper notes he turns for me the matins of the morn; And I’m thinking of a hillside ten thousand miles away, Where I know the throstle’s singing on a spike of budding thorn. 4 * 4 » 4 » GOD’S TAPESTRIES ( Sunset , January 31, 1926 ) M Y OAK’S a frieze against the evening sky, For me to see all Heaven by; A rood-screen risen from the parent sod. To glorify the face of God; To frame, like windows in a chancel grey, The pictures of the dying day ; To hold and focus for my feeble eyes The sunset’s flaming tapestries, God’s far-flung gallery of matchless art, That fills with ecstasy the heart, That draws the soul in transport and in prayer, To visions of that Otherwhere, Whose gates emblazoned seem to stand Enshrined in yonder sunset-land. Three SINGING EXILE ( The English skylark on Vancouver Island) H EARKEN to the singing exile, soaring o’er the Saanich plain! Singing in the blue infinity of space; Spilling music, sweet, ecstatic, free and lovely as the rain, Pouring benediction on your upturned face ! Shut your eyes and listen! Listen to his rhapsody of joy! Not a hint of longing in it or of rue; But back upon a Sussex down you stand, a rapt, entranced boy, Listening to a skylark trilling in the blue. Yea, from an English mead he came to these rolling uplands fair, Following his People to new lands afar, To sing and mate and love, and rear his fledgling brood to share This new-found kingdom where his People are. 0 blest missioner of ancient peace and dear enduring things! Thy only task to sanctify and consecrate These virgin fields, this blithesome land which no poet sings Save thee, 0 winged spirit passionate ! * * * BIRD IN THE MIST W HITHER, 0 bird, in the night and the mist art thou flying, High through the uncharted blackness crying, Piercing the night with thy cries in the distance dying ? 0 lone traveler, that wingest thy way without knowing, Wherefore these cries and the pain of thy going, Filling my heart to a bitter and poignant o’erflowing ? Tarriedst thou late and aware, the immanent urge resisting, Scorning the waning days and the ominous misting. Defying the common call to the flocking migrants’ trysting ? Calamity fills the skies, thy frenzied notes repeating Hither and yon, like a lost lamb’s bleating, With never an answering hail to give thee greeting. Four 0, ever the same the loiterer's fate who dallies and delays. Who mocks at elder Wisdom's words and ways, Who pays the price in the swift, ineluctable days ! Yet may the gods be kind, to-morrow’s grey dawn bringing Thee far on thy errant flight sure winging, Thy goal in sight, thy heart at rest, exultant singing. * 4 * INNOCENCE N O BIRD that sings but speaks to me Of God and love and purity; Of artless happiness confessed, Of joy by mortals unexpressed ; Of ecstasy, unbidden, free, That lifts the gloomy soul of me Out of the fretting and the pain. To sing remembered songs again, And catch anew through vagrant tears The glamour of the vanished years, The sweet felicities of youth That knew nor any care nor ruth That sprang spontaneous from the heart. Oblivious of conscious art. The song, the laughter and the play That filled with mirth each blithesome day. Nor child nor songster seeks to know The source from whence its raptures flow, Each full exulting lives and sings, And to the broad world gladness brings, While sorry men and tempest-tossed Seek vainly for a joy long lost, Hoping by vanity to find Ease and abandon of the mind. And fail, for all their high pretence. Before the face of Innocence. Five m ANGUISH ( Lines written on the breaking of a friendship ) G OOD-BYE, is it? And life not half over ! Our interblent souls dissevered apart ! God of the Universe, me cover! For I am heavy of heart. I am undone; my sorrow consumes me. I am smitten of grief and afraid. Engulfed in despair that entombs me, Stupefied and dismayed. • ••••••« 0 thou, my heart, why and forever this ? Is love’s reward but bitter anguish. Tossed from the heights of crowned bliss, To mourn and languish? Thou, thou, my idol and my almost God ! Thee did I worship past all knowing. Flamed to thy flaming, burned as sod Burns, warmly glowing. Must I live, and find savour in living. On the husks and dregs of desire, Denied the old getting and giving. And love’s holy fire ? Dare I live without thee, 0 my Being, My life’s blood, my manna, my soul. In shattered confusion unseeing The ultimate goal ? I yield, to drift upon a sea of pain, That bears me nowhere on its heaving breast. I care not, care no more again, For aught but rest. Six AURICULAS A LL FLOWERS I love, but these the most Of the sweet-perfumed, painted host That prink the garden ways in Spring And cause the heart of me to sing With holy and peculiar joy, As when, an eager, elfish boy, I wandered in a cloistered place, Seeking with bright, ecstatic face The favoured blossoms of my heart, In honeyed clusters set apart Along the rambling border’s edge, Beneath the greening hawthorn hedge, Distilling in the April dusk Odours of amaranth and musk, And seeming to my raptured eyes Fairer than flowers of Paradise, Designed in some ancestral hour As my own God-given special flower, In mystic love enshrined to be For ever in the soul of me. A MARCH SABBATH DAWN I HAVE not known so exquisite a sight in any Spring As holds me now enchanted on this opalescent morn, Nor drunk so deep of Beauty’s cup, nor seen a holier thing Than this resplendent dawning of a crystal day new-born. I have beheld in ancient fanes the rites of godly men, And loved the pomp and colour and the incense and the praise. And felt the press of things unseen beyond my feeble ken, And deemed it God that filled my heart with joy and sweet amaze. And I have caught in lesser shrines ’mid Calvinistic gloom. Dim pictures of celestial dawns o’er fields of Paradise, And watched the rapture of poor hearts in many a quiet room. And seen the light of God revealed in their beatific eyes. And here, no less meseems some holy sacrament proceeds, In unimagined splendour in the chancels of the East: The essence of a thousand rites, sans tapers, books or creeds, With all the world a temple lit, and God Himself the Priest. 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