In The Winter Woods
WINTER forests mutely standing
Naked on your bed of snow,
Wide your knotted arms expanding
To the biting winds that blow,
Nought ye heed of storm or stress,
Stubborn, silent, passionless.
Buried is each woodland treasure,
Gone the leaves and mossy rills,
Gone the birds that filled with pleasure
All the valleys and the hills;
Ye alone of all that host
Stand like soldiers at your post.
Grand old trees, the words ye mutter,
Nodding in the frosty wind,
Wake some thoughts I cannot utter,
But which haunt the heart and mind,
With a meaning, strange and deep,
As of visions seen in sleep.
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poem by Frederick George Scott
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Knowledge
THEY were islanders, our fathers were,
And they watched the encircling seas,
And their hearts drank in the ceaseless stir,
And the freedom of the breeze;
Till they chafed at their narrow bounds
5
And longed for the sweep of the main,
And they fretted and fumed like hounds
Held in within sight of the plain,
And the play
And the prey.
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So they built them ships of wood, and sailed
To many an unknown coast;
They braved the storm and battles hailed,
And danger they loved most;
Till the tiny ships of wood
15
Grew powerful on the globe
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poem by Frederick George Scott
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A Fancy
A LITTLE sprite sat on a moonbeam,
When the night was waning away,
And over the world to the eastward
Spread the first faint flush of day.
The moonbeam was cold and slippery,
5
And a fat little fairy was he;
Around him the white clouds were sleeping,
And under him slumbered the sea.
Then the old moon looked out of her left eye,
And laughed when she thought of the fun,
10
For she knew that the moonbeam he sat on
Would soon melt away in the sun;
So she gave a slight shrug of her shoulders,
And winked at a bright little star—
The moon was remarkably knowing,
15
As old people always are.
"Great madam," then answered the fairy,
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poem by Frederick George Scott
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The Feud
I hear a cry from the Sansard cave,
O mother, will no one hearken?
A cry of the lost, will no one save?
A cry of the dead, though the oceans rave,
And the scream of a gull as he wheels o'er a grave,
While the shadows darken and darken.'
'Oh, hush thee, child, for the night is wet,
And the cloud-caves split asunder,
With lightning in a jagged fret,
Like the gleam of a salmon in the net,
When the rocks are rich in the red sunset,
And the stream rolls down in thunder.'
'Mother, O mother, a pain at my heart,
A pang like the pang of dying.'
'Oh, hush thee, child, for the wild birds dart
Up and down, and close and part,
Wheeling round where the black cliffs start,
And the foam at their feet is flying.'
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poem by Frederick George Scott
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Too Late
HOPE? What! hope !—you say there is hope for the long-lost one!
Hope! when the light is out; hope! when the oil is done;
Hope! No, no, good lady! no hope for me, at least;
No home for me but the clammy grave when life has ceased.
Hope! Well, there might have been hope had my mother lived; but, then,
5
God struck her dead, and I was left alone among men.
God knows how I loved her; and shall I never see her again?
Is there no glimpse of heaven for those who are doomed to pain?
Oh, cannot she come and kiss me? Oh, cannot she pray by my side,
As she did long ago on that terrible evening before she died?
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If she prayed God would hear her, and perhaps—but no;
I'm too old a sinner for mercy—there is nothing for me but woe.
You say that I yet could be saved if I sorrowed for my sin;
That the Lord is at heaven's gate to take poor sinners in!
God knows that I hate my sin, but I feel that it cannot be;
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poem by Frederick George Scott
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The Burden of Time
Before the seas and mountains were brought forth,
I reigned. I hung the universe in space,
I capped earth's poles with ice to South and North,
And set the moving tides their bounds and place.
I smoothed the granite mountains with my hand,
My fingers gave the continents their form;
I rent the heavens and loosed upon the land
The fury of the whirlwind and the storm.
I stretched the dark sea like a nether sky
Fronting the stars between the ice-clad zones;
I gave the deep his thunder; the Most High
Knows well the voice that shakes His mountain thrones.
I trod the ocean caverns black as night,
And silent as the bounds of outer space,
And where great peaks rose darkly towards the light
I planted life to root and grow apace.
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poem by Frederick George Scott
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Samson
Plunged in night, I sit alone
Eyeless on this dungeon stone,
Naked, shaggy, and unkempt,
Dreaming dreams no soul hath dreamt.
Rats and vermin round my feet
Play unharmed, companions sweet;
Spiders weave me overhead
Silken curtains for my bed.
Day by day the mould I smell
Of this fungus-blistered cell;
Nightly in my haunted sleep
O'er my face the lizards creep.
Gyves of iron scrape and burn
Wrists and ankles when I turn,
And my collared neck is raw
With the teeth of brass that gnaw.
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poem by Frederick George Scott
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A Mood
AS some great cloud upon a mountain's breast,
Hanging for ever, shutteth out the sun,
Its chilly fingers twining in the trees
And blighting them, so ever one dark thought
Broods o'er my life and makes my spirit droop
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Beneath its baleful shade. A demon form
Is ever at my side, whose icy touch
Freezes my warmest thoughts, and makes them hang
Like dull, cold icicles about my heart.
I feel his presence 'mid my fellow-men;
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I see his image in the restless sea
That gnaws the land; and on the towering top,
Where everything is still, amid the rocks,
Worn bald by fleeting years, I hear his tread.
I see his footsteps in the lonely wild,
15
Where forests ever spring and ever die;
But, most of all, I feel him near the night,
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poem by Frederick George Scott
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The Soul's Quest
PART I
IN the land that is neither night nor day,
Where the mists sleep over the forests grey,
A sad, sad spirit wandered away.
The woods are still—no brooks, no wind,
No fair green meadows can she find;
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But a low red light in the sky behind.
Far over the plain, to the spirit's sight,
The city's towers are black as night,
Against the edge of the low red light.
This side the city in darkness lies,
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But westward, at the glowering skies,
It glares with a thousand fiery eyes.
The road is long, the hedgerows bare,
There's the chill of death in the silent air,
And a glimmer of darkness everywhere.
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poem by Frederick George Scott
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Evolution
THOU stand'st complete in every part,
An individual of thy kind;
But whence thou cam'st and what thou art,
Didst ever ask thee of thy mind?
Thou claim'st a portion of God's earth;
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Thou say'st to all men, "This is I;"
Thou hast a date to mark thy birth,
And other date when thou shalt die.
Thy years are in the planets' years;
A space in all that mighty span,
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A little space of smiles and tears,
Is writ in shining letters—"Man."
Thou hear'st the mighty ocean roll,
Thou seest death on every hand;
There loom strange phantoms in thy soul,
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And boundless heavens arch the land.
Thy feet are on the sand and clay,
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poem by Frederick George Scott
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