Isabella Valancy Crawford - Ontario Poet Part 1

PART 1 Biographical Notes - Isabella Valancy Crawford

Makers of Canadian Literature


ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD


LIBRARY EDITION



Canadian Literature




t^



ifcS^

J t WSN

if ||
Js8



Lome Albert Pierce
Editor

Victor Morin

Associate Editor
French Section



lo fhc writers o,
Canada ---past and present-
ihe real H/aster -Guilders and
interpreters of our areat
Ttominion* in fhc hope ihat:
our People, equal heir5 in
fhe rich inheritance, may learn
to know? fhem intimatelu ; and
knouunq fhem love fKem;and






si

ISABELLA VALANCY

9

/^f

LRAWFORD



:



KATHERINE HALE

(Mrs. John Garvin)



-K




TORONTO
THE RYERSON PRESS



PS



3



COPYHIGHT IN ALL COUNTRIES
SUBSCRIBING TO THE BERNE CONVENTION



CONTENTS



Biographical

Anthology 1?

Appreciation 93

Bibliography HI

Index. , - - 123



BIOGRAPHICAL



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD




FLAMING but solitary figure,
singing through the sombre
Ontario of the 7o s and 8o s
of the last century strange
and brilliant songs. The songs
were alien to the day and
place in which they were sung. It was as
though a vendor of foreign fruits were, by
some trick of fate, set down to sell his wares
in bazaars whose crowds were too unsophisti
cated to recognize their flavours.

It is perhaps inevitable that what the Irish
call a "trouble" should exist between the
mystical and the actual life of every artist. In
the case of Isabella Valancy Crawford this
conflict began generations before her day, for
she was of the fatal Celtic origin that gathers
trouble to itself as naturally as it gathers joy.
The Crawfords were of Highland, and later
of Irish, descent, and it was in Dublin, on
Christmas Day, 1850, that there was bora to
Sydney Scott, and Stephen Dennis Crawford,



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

her husband, a daughter, whom they
named for a maternal relative, Isabella Val-
ancy. Dr. Crawford was a man of wide ex
perience and literary culture. There was
much to claim his interest and affection in
sophisticated Dublin, but the tales of wealth
in British North America were fabulous, and
his family was large, and the children were
delicate. In 1858 they migrated to Canada,
and, of all places, to a little Ontario village just
emerging from the bush, the village of Paisley
upon the Saugeen River. Here, instead of
golden guineas, ordinary farm produce was
exchanged for medical service, and there was
hardship for them all. But from the first the
family lived true to its traditions, and even yet
hi Paisley one may hear echoes of the Craw-
fords dignified hospitality.

For six years this village existence was con
tinued, formative years of a child s life. The
Crawfords were unlike the other young people
of the settlement. The girls were not sent to
the public school, but were carefully grounded
in Latin and English by their parents, and in
French, which they spoke fluently. Isabella
Valancy was especially fond of reading, and
attached to the kind of books that no young

2



BIOGRAPHICAL

girl in an Ontario village in the early sixties
had studied translations of Horace and
of Dante, for instance. But to offset all this
education there was the splendid and primitive
drama of the bush going on around them ; the
rush of its streams, the life of its trees, then-
death, too, as they fell crashing in the forest
under the woodsman s axe. Even more than
her sisters did Isabella love the forest; it was
her mightiest book, and she possessed a vig
orous young body which nature loved and
called. Nature was unkind to the others.
There were twelve children when they came
to Paisley, and only three when, eight years
later, the family removed to Lakefield.

Their fatal love of beauty irresistibly drew
the family to a romantic rather than a prosper
ous village. Lakefield, on the borderland of
the Kawartha Lakes district was, and is, pic
turesque. Of its early pioneer life Susanna
Moodie and her sister, Catherine Parr Trail,
have written fascinating stories. When the
Crawfords arrived it was something of a place.
Paisley was Scotch and the Kirk predominated.
Lakefield was English and here, in the now
unused Christ Church, Isabella was confirmed.
There were several old English families living
2



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

in or near the village and hence congenial
society.

But it was the lakes that lured the poet. The
Kawarthas have been likened to a miniature
Muskoka, but are far more nearly akin to
certain Scottish lakes, with their clear blue
waters and many islands accentuated in beauty
by the hills of the shore line which cast across
the water a wild charm, and on which one may
watch the play of sun and shadow all day.
There were no summer cottages, but Lake-
field families then, as in the earlier days of
the Moodies, used to take canoes and camping
supplies up the lakes. Stony Lake, near Bur-
leigh Falls, has always been loved by the In
dians, many of whom were living on its shores
when Isabella Valancy Crawford spent her
summers there.

It seems, through what may be gathered
from the few survivors who still remember
her, and the still scantier records of her his
tory, that these were enchanted days in the
brief life of the poet. They were tip-toe days
of youth. In spite of her natural reserve, and
a sort of bitter pride that was the heritage of
her birth and her poverty, when she did join
the village doings and the merry-makings of



BIOGRAPHICAL

the young people, a Lakefield contemporary
(and I here quote from an article written to the
Globe, of Toronto, in 1905 by Maud Miller
Wilson) recalls the fact that she became the
life of the party, "electrifying us with her
flashes of fun and repartee."

But the father was elderly, the son a mere
lad, the Canadian promise of affluence still
unfulfilled and so another move was made.
This time to Peterborough, then a thriving
town. Dr. Crawford took a house which was
one of a row of several facing on the market
square, at that time the centre of the town s
activities. The front windows looked on shops
and busy stalls where week after week the
farmers came in to sell their produce. But the
back windows looked on beauty on the rush
ing Otonabee River, silver-stiff in winter, and
in summer the channel for great drives of logs
sent through to Lake Ontario from the timber
stretches of the North. And in this house the
young woman, who for years had been studying
and experimenting in verse forms, now set her
self deliberately to take stock of her resources.
There was need to plan her future, for even in
a larger field Dr. Crawford s practice was not
adequate to their actual needs.

~~"* "" J



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

Paisley had taught her the woods and the
spirit of the pioneers, and Lakefield had shown
her northern lakes and Indian life. "Mal
colm s Katie," that long-sustained narrative
of farm life and western woods, a magnificent
poem, at first sight dwarfed of its stature by a
foolish name, was thought out and written
here, and so was the famous western cowboy
poem, " Old Spookses Pass," a gorgeous
living, moving thing carried through with a
man s touch and a man s imagery, again path
etically marred by its name and an attempt to
make the glowing lines popular by an Ameri
canized cowboy jargon. She tried to antici
pate her audience. Financial success was
necessary, and her hope lay in a compelling
theme. Everyone was talking of the North
west, the great new country just then coming
out of its solitude. The young poet had never
been west of Ontario, but she listened to trav
ellers tales and her vivid imagination caught
fire. Her account of a stampede of cattle hi
"Old Spookses Pass" is still considered a
remarkable tour de force from a realistic as
well as a poetic standpoint.

At this time she attacked also the writing of
short stories, and was almost instantly success-



BIOGRAPHICAL

ful. Her work was accepted by Frank Les
lie s and other American magazines. But the
payment was so small that even the discount
on American money, then fifteen per cent.,
was a sad loss. An editorial in Varsity, of
Toronto, January 23rd, 1886, on the subject
of "the encouragement of native literature,"
contains one of the few comments to be found
on the prose work: "The novel by Isabella
Valancy Crawford in the Globe is vastly
superior to the ordinary run of newspaper fic
tion." The concluding lines of the editorial
are a naive comment on the attitude of the day.
"We hope that Canadian editors will en
deavour to do their best to encourage native
talent. They should also pay for it."

On the death of Dr. Crawford the support
of her mother and invalid sister devolved
upon Isabella, the brother having left for the
district of Algoma. They moved to a little
roughcast cottage hidden behind lilac bushes
on Brock Street. Two pathetic incidents
stand out in this period. The delicate Emma
Naomi, the younger sister, was always busy
with beautiful and intricate designs in em
broidery. On one piece she had worked for
a year, and sent it, in hopes of a sale or a prize,
y

V.C. 2



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

to the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia.
It was lost in the mails. At the same time it
was announced that Isabella had won a six-
hundred dollar prize in a short story compe
tition. This meant financial salvation. But
on the heels of the first cheque for a hundred
dollars came the news that the prize-giving
corporation had failed and nothing more was
to be expected from them. It is not im
probable that this double blow, so tragic for
the two sisters, should have hastened the heart
disease which afflicted Emma Naomi, as it had
the other ill-fated children, for she died, leav
ing Isabella and her mother alone.

They left Peterborough and went to live in
Toronto, taking lodgings over a grocery shop
at the corner of King and John Streets, kept
by Mrs. Charles J. Stuart, who was a sincere
friend to the young poet and her mother. The
two were very lonely. The spirit which in
Peterborough had been too proud to admit
visitors because there was "no fire in the
drawing-room to keep them warm" was not
that which beckons those friends and acquaint
ances who pass on the legend of one s work.
Single-handed, Isabella fought her battle for
recognition. She would take her poems to





BIOGRAPHICAL

the Globe and the Telegram and sell them for
little or nothing. They gleamed there for a
day in their strange foreign beauty and were
forgotten. She made them of subjects far
and near, sometimes of roses in Madrid, some
times of a little French laundress, washing out
her clothes on the bank of a river that she had
never seen, sometimes of Toronto in Septem
ber, and once when the soldiers were returning
after the Battle of Batouche, in 1885, she
made a beautiful song of welcome for them,
which appeared in the Toronto Telegram, and
is called "The Rose of a Nation s Thanks."

There were no clubs and associations then
to advise the public that it would be well to
admire this work. There were, however, a
few discerning critics and, oddly enough, the
critics were with the poet.

Down the lane-like Jordan Street, in a
certain dingy building, there was installed a
brilliant journal called The Week, which ex
isted for over a decade and became a decided
literary influence. It was founded by Goldwin
Smith, with Charles G. D. Roberts as its first
editor. A study of the files shows such names
as those of Archibald Lampman, Bliss Carman,

9



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

W. W. Campbell and others equally well
known to-day. It is interesting also that in
these comparatively early days a woman editor
was already in evidence, for we find that Mrs.
J. W. F. Harrison (Seranus) was the musical,
and then the literary, editor of The Week,
and that Sara Jeanette Duncan was also an
editor. It was at this time, while Mrs. Harri
son was its literary editor, that a new writer
climbed those dingy stairs. "A tall, dark
young woman," says Mrs. Harrison, "one
whom most people would feel was difficult,
almost repellant in her manner. But her work
charmed me, though I had to tell her," she de
clares, still regretful after all the years, "that
we didn t pay for poetry."

Nevertheless, the friendship and support of
a fellow-worker, herself a true poet, must have
meant much to Miss Crawford. At this time
she was launching on a perilous adventure,
that of her first book. It was a cheaply-bound
little paper volume, having for the name
poem "Old Spookses Pass." Its writer was
forced to bear all expenses of publication, and
the book, now one of the most eagerly sought
volumes of the collector of Canadiana, never

10



BIOGRAPHICAL

even paid for itself. It was Mrs. Harrison,
chiefly, who called attention to this book in
The Week and elsewhere.

Though the Canadian public ignored the
work, in justice it must be said that this was
not the case in England. The London Athe
naeum compared certain of the poems with the
work of standard English poets ; the Spectator
referred to Miss Crawford s blank verse as
"indeed of no ordinary kind vigorous, power
ful"; the Illustrated London News described
her verse as "abounding in picturesque narra
tion, glowing language and pathetic touches,
combined with simple, impressive dignity";
the Graphic declared the humorous poems
"equal to anything Colonel Hay had ever pub
lished," and characterized the book as
"throughout a delightful one." Lord Dufferin,
in a letter written to the poet from the British
Embassy at Constantinople, says: "It is time
now that Canada should have a literature of
its own, and I am glad to think that you have
so nobly shown the way."

Through the vivid recollections of two friends
remarkable impressions have been given to
the writer.

Mrs. A. J. Heffernan, formerly Miss Stuart,

11



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

says: "I was a young girl at the time of
her death, but how could I forget one like
Miss Crawford! She seemed to me like a
being from another planet. There was some
thing about her that the world in general could
not be expected to understand. She and her
mother lived almost completely by themselves
during the years that they lodged with us, ex
cept for one or two friends. But they had their
own pursuits. They were deeply interested in
English and European literature, and would
speak French together constantly. Miss Craw
ford always liked me to practise my school-girl
French with her. I used to watch her make
her wonderful Irish potato cakes in our kitchen
while she described the whole process to me
in the language I was trying so hard to learn.
I think she was really gay at heart, but at
times seemed sad and depressed. Her pas
sion for music was almost as great as her love
for books and poetry. She studied the piano
and played very well indeed, collecting a good
deal of music, a part of which she gave to me.
. . . And there were things to charm a
young girl in the two little rooms upstairs. I
remember a flounce of precious old lace, and
chintzes, and quaint ornaments, and an In-

12



BIOGRAPHICAL

dian prayer rug, Miss Crawford s special
treasure, sent to her by her uncle, Dr. John
Irwin Crawford, a naval officer who was much
on the Indian seas .... Miss Craw
ford was not exactly beautiful, but I shall
never forget the wonderful animation of her
face at times, and its sadness in repose."

Mrs. Donald Urquhart, of Toronto, at whose
hospitable house the Crawfords were always
at home during the years they lived in Tor
onto, remembers "as though it were yester
day" this girl whose life was always creative,
and always drawn to far-away and exquisitely
suggestive things. "She would forget all her
failures and discouragements when she was
at the piano, or composing poetry or stories.
Then there was a strange thing! she had a
great delight in cutting out and making the
most unique and beautiful little foreign figures,
tiny dolls, always of oriental types, made out
of vivid coloured silks or satins; Rajahs and
Mandarins and Hindoo priests in their robes
and turbans, with their attendants perfectly
costumed. She would spend hours over these
things, making every detail correct. They
were arranged on a silk-covered cardboard
stage hah* the size of my dining-room table."

13



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

"She could not afford to have her poems
well bound," continues Mrs. Urquhart, "so she
made a special cover for ours, knowing how
much my husband and I appreciated her work."
And I held in my hand "Old Spookses Pass"
in faded peacock blue satin, covered with fine
rose-point lace.

And against this a recollection, faint with age,
of the young woman whom "as a child I used
to watch in church wondering what a poet
was like."

It was in Peterborough that Katherine
Wallis, the well-known Canadian sculptor,
recalled the scornful attitude of the people of
the town, who thought that a somewhat de
tached manner on the part of the poet was a
mere affectation. Miss Wallis also remem
bers the fact that children would follow her
to call out the, to them, fantastic and un
familiar name "Valancy." "Even yet," she
says, "you may ask in vain in the public
library here for a copy of her Collected
Poems ."

Perhaps the struggle was too hard. Perhaps
an ardent flame burns too fast. Practical
people will say that a woman with an inherited

14



BIOGRAPHICAL

heart disease courts death by overwork. At
any rate there was no premonition of her swift
end, which occurred in Toronto on the i2th
of February, 1887.

Her body was taken to Peterborough and
there, where the Otonabee encircles the beau
tiful Little Lake Cemetery, she lies, and over
her grave is a Celtic cross erected by a group
of friends.

"In Toronto," says Mrs. Heffernan, recalling
a bitter winter s day, "several people sent
flowers. But one tribute was nameless. It
was a great white bloom bearing the message,
The Rose of a Nation s Thanks ."



15



ANTHOLOGY



From "WHO SEES A VISION"

Who sees a vision bright and bold
Hath found a treasure of pure gold ;

For say it vanisheth

When morning banisheth
Sleep, mother of all dreams,
Before his comely beams,
Thou didst not wis, before sleep showed to thee
That things so nobly fair might ever be ;

But now that thou dost know,
Waking shall make it so ;
So here is treasure hid
Beneath a closed eyelid.

Who dreams a dream both sweet and bright
Hath found a true nectar of delight ;

For say with pain and smart

It fadeth out apart,
Thy galled heart did never,
In waking sad endeavour,
Bend back the veil of murky tapestry
And show such things of light and joy to thee;

19



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

But now that thou dost know,
Hope builds her skyward bow ;
There cannot be a shade
But for it form is made.

THE ROSE

The Rose was given to man for this :
He, sudden seeing it in later years,

Should swift remember Love s first lingering

kiss
And Grief s last lingering tears ;

Or, being blind, should feel its yearning soul
Knit all its piercing perfume round his own,

Till he should see on memory s ample scroll
All roses he had known ;

Or, being hard, perchance his finger-tips
Careless might touch the satin of its cup,

And he should feel a dead babe s budding lips
To his lips lifted up ;

Or, being deaf and smitten with its star,
Should, on a sudden, almost hear a lark

Rush singing up the nightingale afar
Sing thro the dew-bright dark;

20



ANTHOLOGY

Or, sorrow-lost in paths that round and round
Circle old graves, its keen and vital breath

Should call to him within the yew s bleak bound
Of Life, and not of death.

SAID THE DAISY

There ne er was blown out of the yellow east

So fresh, so fair, so sweet a morn as this.
The dear earth decked herself as for a feast ;

And, as for me, I trembled with my bliss.
The young grass round me was so rich with dew,

And sang me such sweet, tender strains,as low
The breath of dawn among its tall spikes blew ;

But what it sang none but myself can know!

O never came so glad a morn before !

So rosy dimpling burst the infant light,
So crystal pure the air the meadows o er,
The lark with such young rapture took his

flight,

The round world seemed not older by an hour

Than mine own daisy self ! I laughed to see

How, when her first red roses paled and died,

The blue sky smiled, and decked her azure lea

With daisy clouds, white, pink-fringed, just

like me !

21



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

"This is a morn for song," sang out the lark,
"O silver-tressed beloved !" My golden eye
Watched his brown wing blot out the last star-
spark

Amidst the daisy cloudlets of the sky.
"No morn so sweet as this, so pure, so fan*
God s bud time," so the oldest white thorn

said,

And she has lived so long ; yet here and there
Such fresh white buds begem her ancient
head.

And from her thorny bosom all last night

Deep in my dew-sealed sleep I heard a

note
So sweet a voice of anguish and delight

I dreamed a red star had a bird-like throat
And that its rays were music which had crept

Mid the white-scented blossoms of the

thorn,
And that to hear her sing the still night wept

With mists and dew until the yellow morn.

I wonder, wonder what the song he sang,
That seemed to drown in melody the vales !

I knew my lark s song as he skyward sprang,
But only roses know the nightingale s.

22



ANTHOLOGY

The yellow cowslip bent her honeyed lips
And whispered : "Daisy, wert thou but as high

As I am, thou couldst see the merry ships
On yon blue wondrous field blown gaily by."

A gay, small wind, arch as a ruddy fox,

Crept round my slender, green and dainty

stem,
And piped : "Let me but shake thy silver locks

And free thy bent head from its diadem
Of diamond dew, and thou shalt rise and gaze

Like the tall cowslips, o er the rustling grass,
On proud, high cliffs, bright strands and spark
ling bays,

And watch the white ships as they gaily pass."

"Oh, while thou mayst keep thou thy crystal

dew!"
Said the aged thorn, where sang the heart of

night,

The nightingale. "The sea is very blue,
The sails of ships are wondrous swift and

white.

Soon, soon enough thy dew will sparkling die,
And thou, with burning brow and thirsty lips,
Wilt turn the golden circle of thine eye,
Nor joy in them, on ocean and her ships !"

23

V.C. 3



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

There never flew across the violet hills

A morn so like a dove with jewelled eyes,
With soft wings fluttering like the sound of
rills,

And gentle breast of rose and azure dyes.
The purple trumpets of the clover sent

Such rich, dew-loosened perfume, and the

bee
Hung like a gold drop in the woodbine s tent.

What care I for the gay ships and the sea !



GOOD-BYE S THE WORD

Heave up the anchor, heave ye ho I

And swing her head about;
The blue flag flies, the breezes blow,

Let all her canvas out !
Blue eyes and black upon the quay

Are smiling tears away ;
And sweethearts blush at parting kiss,

And wives and mothers pray.

The babe upon my Polly s breast will toddle

down the strand,
And pipe a welcome when again our good ship

sails to land ;

24



ANTHOLOGY

And Tom will reach my elbow then, and Ned

be shoulder high
Avast! avast! I sail too fast good-bye s

the word, good-bye !

Heave up the anchor, heave ye ho !

And speed us on our way ;
A stiff breeze, sweet with rose and thyme

Blows fast along the bay ;
The sails round out, the rattling shrouds

Are loud with noisy glee ;
The staunch craft trembles as she hears

The footsteps of the sea.

Belike, my mates, tis just the way a lass s
heart will beat

When sounds upon the shingly strand her tar s
returning feet;

Or Poll will tremble when she hears my foot
steps drawing nigh

Avast! avast! I sail too fast good-bye s the
word, good-bye !

Heave up the anchor, heave ye ho !

God bless the dear brown hands
That wave "good-bye" when Jack sets sail

To steer for other strands ;

25



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

And tho our ship her anchor heaves

When she would sail afar,
My eyes ! she don t resemble there

The ways of true Jack tar.

For when Jack casts life s anchor down his

heart, belike, you know
He never hauls it up again, whatever squalls

may blow ;
Mine s grappled safe in Polly s breast until

the day I die
Avast! avast! the wind blows fast good-bye s

the word, good-bye !

A HARVEST SONG

The noon was as a crystal bowl
The red wine mantled through ;

Around it like a Viking s beard
The red-gold hazes blew,

As tho he quaffed the ruddy draught
While swift his galley flew.

This mighty Viking was the Night;

He sailed about the earth,
And called the merry harvest-time

To sing him songs of mirth ;
And all on earth or in the sea

To melody gave birth.

26



ANTHOLOGY

The valleys of the earth were full

To rocky lip and brim
With golden grain that shone and sang

When woods were still and dun,
A little song from sheaf to sheaf

Sweet Plenty s cradle-hymn.

O gallant were the high tree-tops,
And gay the strain they sang !

And cheerfully the moon-lit hills
Then- echo-music rang !

And what so proud and what so loud
As was the ocean s clang !

But O the little humming song
That sang among the sheaves !

Twas grander than the airy march
That rattled thro the leaves,

And prouder, louder, than the deep,
Bold clanging of the waves :

"The lives of men, the lives of men
With every sheaf are bound !

We are the blessing which annuls
The curse upon the ground!

And he who reaps the Golden Grain
The Golden Love hath found."

27



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD
ROSES IN MADRID

Roses, Senors, roses !

Love is subtly hid
In the fragrant roses

Blown in gay Madrid.
Roses, Senors, roses !

Look, look, look, and see
Love hanging in the roses

Like a golden bee !
Ha ! ha ! shake the roses

Hold a palm below ;
Shake him from the roses,

Catch the vagrant so !

High I toss the roses

From my brown palm up,
Like the wine that bubbles

From a golden cup.
Catch the roses, Senors,

Light on finger-tips ;
He who buys red roses

Dreams of crimson lips.
Tinkle my fresh roses,

With the rare dews wet ;
Clink my crisp, red roses

Like a Castanet.

28



ANTHOLOGY

Roses, Senors, roses !

Come, Hidalgo, buy!
Proudly wait my roses

For thy Rose s eye.
Be thy Rose as stately

As a pacing deer,
Worthy are my roses

To burn behind her ear.
Ha ! ha ! I can see thee,

Where the fountains foam,
Twining my red roses

In her golden comb !

Roses, Donnas, roses !

None so fresh as mine,
Plucked at rose of morning

By our Lady s shrine.
Those that first I gathered

Laid I at her feet,
That is why my roses

Still are fresh and sweet.
Roses, Donnas, roses,

Roses, waxen fair!
Acolytes my roses,

Censing ladies prayer !



29



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

Roses, roses, roses !

Hear the tawny bull
Thund ring in the circus

Buy your arms full.
Roses by the dozen !

Roses by the score !
Pelt the victor with them

Bull or toreador !



THE CITY TREE

I stand within the stony, arid town,
I gaze forever on the narrow street,

I hear forever passing up and down
The ceaseless tramp of feet.

I know no brotherhood with far-locked woods,
Where branches bourgeon from a kindred

sap,

Where o er mossed roots, in cool, green soli
tudes,
Small silver brooklets lap.

No emerald vines creep wistfully to me
And lay their tender fingers on my bark ;

High may I toss my boughs, yet never see
Dawn s first most glorious spark.

30



ANTHOLOGY

When to and fro my branches wave and sway,
Answ ring the feeble wind that faintly calls,

They kiss no kindred boughs, but touch alway
The stones of climbing walls.

My heart is never pierced with song of bird ;

My leaves know nothing of that glad unrest
Which makes a flutter in the still woods heard

When wild birds build a nest.

There never glance the eyes of violets up,
Blue, into the deep splendour of my green;

Nor falls the sunlight to the primrose cup
My quivering leaves between.

Not mine, not mine to turn from soft delight
Of woodbine breathings, honey-sweet and
warm;

With kin embattled rear my glorious height
To greet the coming storm !

Not mine to watch across the free, broad plains
The whirl of stormy cohorts sweeping fast.

The level silver lances of great rains
Blow onward by the blast !

Not mine the clamouring tempest to defy,
Tossing the proud crest of my dusky leaves

Defender of small flowers that trembling lie
Against my barky greaves !

31



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

Not mine to watch the wild swan drift above,
Balanced on wings that could not choose
between

The wooing sky, blue as the eye of love,
And my own tender green !

And yet my branches spread, a kingly sight,
In the close prison of the drooping air :

When sun-vexed noons are at their fiery

height
My shade is broad, and there

Come city toilers, who their hour of ease
Weave out to precious seconds as they lie

Pillowed on horny hands, to hear the breeze
Through my great branches die.

I see no flowers, but as the children race
With noise and clamour through the dusty
street,

I see the bud of many an angel face,
I hear their merry feet.

No violets look up, but, shy and grave,
The children pause and lift their crystal eyes

To where my emerald branches call and wave
As to the mystic skies.

32



ANTHOLOGY
THE CAMP OF SOULS

My white canoe, like the silvery air

O er the River of Death that darkly rolls
When the moons of the world are round and

fair,

I paddle back from the "Camp of Souls."
When the wishton-wish in the low swamp

grieves

Come the dark plumes of red "Singing
Leaves."

Two hundred times have the moons of spring

Rolled over the bright bay s azure breath
Since they decked me with plumes of an eagle s

wing,
And painted my face with the "paint of

death,"

And from their pipes o er my corpse there broke
The solemn rings of the blue "last smoke."

Two hundred times have the wintry moons
Wrapped the dead earth in a blanket white ;

Two hundred times have the wild sky loons
Shrieked in the flush of the golden light

Of the first sweet dawn, when the summer
weaves

Her dusky wigwam of perfect leaves.

33



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

Two hundred moons of the falling leaf

Since they laid my bow in my dead right hand

And chanted above me the "song of grief"
As I took my way to the spirit land ;

Yet when the swallow the blue air cleaves

Comes the dark plumes of red "Singing
Leaves."

White are the wigwams in that far camp,
And the star-eyed deer on the plains are
found ;

No bitter marshes or tangled swamp
In the Manitou s happy hunting-ground !

And the moon of summer forever rolls

Above the red men in their "Camp of Souls."

Blue are its lakes as the wild dove s breast,
And their murmurs soft as her gentle note ;

As the calm, large stars in the deep sky rest,
The yellow lilies upon them float ;

And canoes, like flakes of the silvery snow,

Thro the tall, rustling rice-beds come and go.

Green are its forests ; no warrior wind
Rushes on war trail the dusk grove through,

With leaf-scalps of tall trees mourning behind ;
But South Wind, heart friend of Great
Manitou,

34



ANTHOLOGY

When ferns and leaves with cool dews are wet,
Blows flowery breaths from his red calumet.

Never upon them the white frosts lie,
Nor glow their green boughs with the "paint

of death";

Manitou smiles in the crystal sky,
Close breathing above them His life-strong

breath ;
And He speaks no more in fierce thunder

sound,
So near is His happy hunting-ground.

Yet often I love, in my white canoe,

To come to the forests and camps of earth :
Twas there death s black arrow pierced me

through;
Twas there my red-browed mother gave me

birth;

There I, in the light of a young man s dawn,
Won the lily heart of dusk "Springing Fawn."

And love is a cord woven out of life,
And dyed hi the red of the living heart ;

And time is the hunter s rusty knife,
That cannot cut the red strands apart :

And I sail from the spirit shore to scan

Where the weaving of that strong cord began.

35



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

But I may not come with a giftless hand,
So richly I pile, in my white canoe,

Flowers that bloom in the spirit land,
Immortal smiles of Great Manitou.

When I paddle back to the shores of earth

I scatter them over the white man s hearth.

For love is the breath of the soul set free ;

So I cross the river that darkly rolls,
That my spirit may whisper soft to thee

Of Thine who wait in the "Camp of Souls."
When the bright day laughs, or the wan night

grieves,

Come the dusky plumes of red "Singing
Leaves."



THE DARK STAG

A startled stag, the blue-grey Night,

Leaps down beyond black pines.
Behind a length of yellow light

The hunter s arrow shines :
His moccasins are stained with red,

He bends upon his knee,
From covering peaks his shafts are sped,
The blue mists plume his mighty head

Well may the swift Night flee !

36



ANTHOLOGY

The pale, pale Moon, a snow-white doe,

Bounds by his dappled flank :
They beat the stars down as they go,

Like wood-bells growing rank.
The winds lif t dewlaps from the ground,

Leap from the quaking reeds ;
Their hoarse bays shake the forests round,
With keen cries on the track they bound,

Swift, swift the dark stag speeds !

Away! his white doe, far behind,

Lies wounded on the plain ;
Yells at his flank the nimblest wind,

His large tears fall in rain;
Like lily-pads, small clouds grow white

About his darkling way ;
From his bald nest upon the height
The red-eyed eagle sees his flight ;
He falters, turns, the antler ed Night

The dark stag stands at bay !

His feet are in the waves of space ;

His antlers broad and dun
He lowers ; he turns his velvet face

To front the hunter, Sun ;



37



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

He stamps the lilied clouds, and high

His branches fill the west.
The lean stork sails across the sky,
The shy loon shrieks to see him die,

The winds leap at his breast.

Roar the rent lakes as thro the wave

Their silver warriors plunge,
As vaults from core of crystal cave

The strong, fierce muskallunge ;
Red torches of the sumach glare,

Fall s council-fires are lit ;
The bittern, squaw-like, scolds the air ;
The wild duck splashes loudly where

The rustling rice-spears knit.

Shaft after shaft the red Sun speeds :

Rent the stag s dappled side ;
His breast, fanged by the shrill winds, bleeds,

He staggers on the tide ;
He feels the hungry waves of space

Rush at him high and blue ;
Their white spray smites his dusky face,
Swifter the Sun s fierce arrows race

And pierce his stout heart thro .



38



ANTHOLOGY

His antlers fall ; once more he spurns

The hoarse hounds of the day ;
His blood upon the crisp blue burns,

Reddens the mounting spray ;
His branches smite the wave with cries

The loud winds pause and flag
He sinks in space red glow the skies,
The brown earth crimsons as he dies,

The strong and dusky stag.

LAUGHTER

Laughter wears a lilied gown

She is but a simple thing ;
Laughter s eyes are water-brown,
Ever glancing up and down

Like a woodbird s restless wing.

Laughter slender is and round

She is but a simple thing ;
And her tresses fly unbound,
And about her brow are found

Buds that blossom by Mirth s spring.

Laughter loves to praise and play

She is but a simple thing
With the children small who stray
Under hedges, where the May
Scents and blossoms richly fling.

39

V.C. 4



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

Laughter coyly peeps and flits

She is but a simple thing
Round the flower-clad door, where sits
Maid who dimples as she knits,

Dreaming in the rosy spring.

Laughter hath light-tripping feet

She is but a simple thing;
Yet may often Laughter meet
In the hayfield, gilt and sweet,

Where the mowers jest and sing.

Laughter shakes the bounteous leaves-
She is but a simple thing
On the village ale-house eaves,
While the angered swallow grieves
And the rustic revellers sing.

Laughter never comes a-nigh
She s a wise though simple thing

Where men lay them down to die ;

Nor will under stormy sky
Laughter s airy music ring.



40



ANTHOLOGY
HIS CLAY

He died ; he was buried, the last of his race,
And they laid him away in his burial-place.

And he said in his will, "When I have done
With the mask of clay that I have on,

"Bury it simply I m done with it,
At best it is only a poor misfit.

"It cramped my brains and chained my soul,
And it clogged my feet as I sought my goal.

"When my soul and I were inclined to shout
O er some noble thought we had chiselled
out;

"When we d polished the marble until it stood
So fair that we truly said : Tis good !

"My soul would tremble, my spirit quail,
For it fell to the flesh to uplift the veil.

"It took our thought in its hands of clay,
And lo ! how the beauty had passed away.

"When Love came in to abide with me,
I said, Welcome, Son of Eternity!

41



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

"I built him an altar strong and white,
Such as might stand hi God s own sight ;

"I chanted his glorious litany
Pure Love is the Son of Eternity;

"But ever my altar shook alway

Neath the brute hands of the tyrant clay.

"Its voice, with its accents harsh and drear,
Mocked at my soul and wailed hi its ear :

Why tend the altar and bend the knee?
Love lives and dies in the dust with me.

"So the flesh that I wore chanced ever to be
Less of my friend than my enemy.

"Is there a moment this death-strong earth
Thrills, and remembers her time of birth?

"Is there a time when she knows her clay
As a star in the coil of the astral way?

"Who may tell? But the soul in its clod
Knows hi swift moments its kinship to God.

"Quick lights hi its chambers that flicker

alway
Before the hot breath of the tyrant clay.

42



ANTHOLOGY

"So the flesh that I wore chanced ever to be
Less of my friend than my enemy.

"So bury it deeply strong foe, weak friend
And bury it cheaply and there its end!"

THE BUTTERFLY

When the moon was horned the mother died,
And the child pulled at her hand and knee,
And he rubbed her cheek and loudly cried :
"O mother, arise, give bread to me !"
But the pine tree bent its head,
And the wind at the door-post said :
"O child, thy mother is dead!"

The sun set his loom to weave the day;

The frost bit sharp like a silent cur ;
The child by her pillow paused in his play :
"Mother, build up the sweet fire of fir !"
But the fir tree shook its cones,
And loud cried the pitiful stones :
"Wolf Death has thy mother s bones!"

They bore the mother out on her bier ;

Their tears made warm her breast and

shroud ;
The smiling child at her head stood near;

And the long, white tapers shook and bowed,

43



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

And said with their tongues of gold,
To the ice lumps of the grave mold :
"How heavy are ye and cold !"

They buried the mother ; to the feast
They flocked with the beaks of unclean crows.

The wind came up from the red-eyed east
And bore in its arms the chill, soft snows.
They said to each other: "Sere
Are the hearts the mother held dear ;
Forgotten, her babe plays here !"

The child with the tender snowflakes played,
And the wind on its fingers twined his hair

And still by the tall, brown grave he stayed,
Alone in the churchyard lean and bare.
The sods on the high grave cried
To the mother s white breast inside :
"Lie still; in thy deep rest abide !"

Her breast lay still like a long-chilled stone,

Her soul was out on the bleak, grey day;
She saw her child by the grave alone,

With the sods and snow and wind at play.

Said the sharp lips of the rush,
"Red as thy roses, O bush,

With anger the dead can blush!"

44



ANTHOLOGY

A butterfly to the child s breast flew,*
Fluttered its wings on his sweet, round cheek

Danced by his fingers, small, cold and blue.
The sun strode down past the mountain peak
The butterfly whispered low
To the child: "Babe, follow me; know,
Cold is the earth here below."

The butterfly flew; followed the child,
Lured by the snowy torch of its wings ;

The wind sighed after them soft and wild
Till the stars wedded night with golden rings ;
Till the frost upreared its head,
And the ground to it groaned and said :
"The feet of the child are lead!"

The child s head drooped to the brown, sere

mold,

On the crackling cones his white breast lay ;
The butterfly touched the locks of gold,
The soul of the child sprang from its clay.
The moon to the pine tree stole,
And, silver-lipped, said to its bole;
"How strong is the mother s soul!"



*In Eastern Europe the soul of the deceased is said
to hover, in the shape of a bird or butterfly, close to
the body until after the burial.

45



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

The wings of the butterfly grew out
To the mother s arms, long, soft and white ;

She folded them warm her babe about,
She kissed his lips into berries bright,
She warmed his soul on her breast;
And the east called out to the west :
"Now the mother s soul will rest!"

Under the roof where the burial feast

Was heavy with meat and red with wine,
Each crossed himself as out of the east

A strange wind swept over oak and pine.

The trees to the home-roof said :
" Tis but the airy rush and tread

Of angels greeting thy dead."



From THE ROSE OF A NATION S THANKS

A welcome? Oh, yes, tis a kindly word, but why

will they plan and prate
Of feasting and speeches and such small

things, while the wives and mothers wait?
Plan as ye will, and do as ye will, but think of

the hunger and thirst
In the hearts that wait ; and do as ye will, but

lend us our laddies first !

46



ANTHOLOGY

Why, what would ye have? There is not a
lad that treads in the gallant ranks

Who does not already bear on his breast the
Rose of a Nation s Thanks !

A welcome? There is not a babe at the breast
won t spring at the roll of the drum

That heralds them home the keen, long cry
in the air of "They come ! They come !"

And what of it all if ye bade them wade knee-
deep in a wave of wine,

And tossed tall torches, and arched the town
in garlands of maple and pine?

All dust in the wind of a woman s cry as she
snatches from the ranks

Her boy who bears on his bold young breast
the Rose of a Nation s Thanks !

A welcome? O Joy, can they stay your feet,

or measure the wine of your bliss?
O Joy, let them have you alone to-day a day

with a pulse like this !
A welcome? Yes, tis a tender thought, a

green laurel that laps the sword
But Joy has the wing of a wild white swan, and

the song of a free wild bird !

47



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

She must beat the air with her wing at will, at

will must her song be driven
From her heaving heart and tremulous throat

through the awful arch of heaven.
And what would ye have? There isn t a lad

will burst from the shouting ranks
But bears like a star on his faded coat the Rose

of a Nation s Thanks !



A BATTLE

Slowly the Moon her banderoles of light
Unfurls upon the sky ; her fingers drip
Pale, silvery tides ; her armoured warriors
Leave Day s bright tents of azure and of gold,
Wherein they hid them, and in silence flock
Upon the solemn battlefield of Night
To try great issues with the blind old king,
The Titan Darkness, who great Pharaoh fought
With groping hands, and conquered for a span.

The starry hosts with silver lances prick
The scarlet fringes of the tents of Day,
And turn their crystal shields upon their breasts
And point their radiant lances, and so wait
The stirring of the giant in his caves.

48



ANTHOLOGY

The solitary hills send long, sad sighs

As the blind Titan grasps their locks of pine

And trembling larch to drag him toward the

sky,
That his wild-seeking hands may clutch the

Moon
From her war-chariot, scythed and wheeled

with light,
Crush bright-mailed stars, and so, a sightless

king,

Reign in black desolation ! Low-set vales
Weep under the black hollow of his foot,
While sobs the sea beneath his lashing hair
Of rolling mists, which, strong as iron cords,
Twine round tall masts and drag them to

the reefs.

Swifter rolls up Astarte s light-scythed car:
Dense rise the jewelled lances, groves of light;
Red flouts Mars banner in the voiceless war
(The mightiest combat is the tongueless one) ;
The silvery dartings of the lances prick
His fingers from the mountains, catch his locks
And toss them in black fragments to the winds,
Pierce the vast hollow of his misty foot,
Level their diamond tips against his breast,
And force him down to lair within his pit

--49



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

And thro its chinks thrust down his groping

hands

To quicken Hell with horror for the strength
That is not of the Heavens is of Hell.



THE VESPER STAR

Unfold thy pinions, drooping to the sun,
Just plunged behind the rough-browed moun
tain, deep
Crowned with the snows of hawthorn, aval-

anched

All down its sloping shoulder with the bloom
Of orchards, blushing to the ardent South,
And to the evening oriflamme of rose
That arches the blue concave of the sky.

O rosy star, thy trembling glory part
From the great sunset splendour that its tides
Sends rushing in swift billows to the east,
And on their manes of fire outswell thy sails
Of light-spun gold ; and as the glory dies,
Throbbing thro changeful rose to silver mist,
Laden with souls of flowers wooed abroad
From painted petals by the ardent Night,
Possess the heavens for one short splendid

hour

r>o



ANTHOLOGY

Sole jewel on the Egypt brow of Night,
Who steals, dark giant, to caress the Earth,
And gathers from the glassy mere and sea
The silver foldings of his misty robe,
And hangs upon the air with brooding wings
Of shadow, shadow, stretching everywhere.



AN INTERREGNUM

Loud trumpets blow among the naked pines,
Fine spun as sere-cloth rent from royal dead.
Seen ghostly thro high-lifted vagrant drifts,
Shrill blaring, but no longer loud to moons
Like a brown maid of Egypt stands the Earth,
Her empty valley palms stretched to the Sun,
For largesse of his gold. Her mountain tops
Still beacon winter with white flame of snow,
Fading along his track ; her rivers shake
Wild manes, and paw their banks as though

to flee
Their riven fetters.

Lawless is the time,

Full of loud kingless voices that way gone :
The Polar Caesar striding to the north,
Nor yet the sapphire-gated south unfolds

51



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

For Spring s sweet progress; the winds, un
kinged,

Reach gusty hands of riot round the brows
Of lordly mountains waiting for a lord,
And pluck the ragged beards of lonely pines
Watchers on heights for that sweet,hidden king,
Bud-crowned and dreaming yet on other shores
And mock their patient waiting. But by night
The round Moon falters up a softer sky,
Drawn by silver cords of gentler stars
Than darted chill flames on the wintry earth.
Within his azure battlements the Sun
Regilds his face with joyance, for he sees,
From those high towers, Spring, earth s fairest

lord,

Soft-cradled on the wings of rising swans,
With violet eyes slow budding into smiles,
And small, bright hands with blossom largesse

full,

Crowned with an orchard coronal of white,
And with a sceptre of a ruddy reed
Burnt at its top to amethystine bloom.
Come, Lord, thy kingdom stretches barren

hands!

Come, King, and chain thy rebels to thy throne
With tendrils of the vine and jewelled links
Of ruddy buds pulsating into flower !

52



ANTHOLOGY
SAID THE WEST WIND

I love old earth! Why should I lift my wings,
My misty wings, so high above her breast
That flowers would shake no perfumes from

their hearts,

And waters breathe no whispers to the shores?
I love deep places builded high with woods,
Deep, dusk, fern-closed, and starred with nod
ding blooms,
Close watched by hills,green,garlanded and tall.

On hazy wings, all shot with mellow gold,
I float, I float thro shadows clear as glass ;
With perfumed feet I wander o er the seas,
And touch white sails with gentle finger-tips ;
I blow the faithless butterfly against
The rose-red thorn, and thus avenge the rose ;
I whisper low amid the solemn boughs,
And stir a leaf where not my loudest sigh
Could move the emerald branches from their

calm

Leaves, leaves, I love ye much, for ye and I
Do make sweet music over all the earth !

I dream by glassy ponds, and lingering, kiss
The gold crowns of their lilies one by one,

53



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

As mothers kiss their babes who be asleep
On the clear gilding of their infant heads,
Lest if they kissed the dimple on the chin,
The rose flecks on the cheek or dewy lips,
The calm of sleep might feel the touch of love
And so be lost. I steal before the rain,
The longed-for guest of summer ; as his fringe
Of mist drifts slowly from the mountain peaks,
The flowers dance to my fairy pipe and fling
Rich odours on my wings, and voices cry,
"The dear West Wind is damp, and rich with

scent ;
We shall have fruits and yellow sheaves for

this."

At night I play amid the silver mists,
And chase them on soft feet until they climb
And dance their gilded plumes against the stars ;
At dawn the last round primrose star I hide
By wafting o er her some small fleck of cloud,
And ere it passes comes the broad, bold Sun
And blots her from the azure of the sky,
As later, toward his noon, he blots a drop
Of pollen-gilded dew from violet cup
Set bluely in the mosses of the wood.



54



ANTHOLOGY
From BETWEEN THE WIND AND RAIN

Long swayed the grasses like a rolling wave
Above an undertow ; the mastiff cried ;
Low swept the poplars, groaning in their hearts ;
And iron-footed stood the gnarled oaks,
And braced their woody thews against the

storm.

Lashed from the pond, the ivory cygnets sought
The carven steps that plunged into the pool ;
The peacocks screamed and dragged forgotten

plumes ;

On the sheer turf all shadows subtly died
In one large shadow sweeping o er the land ;
Bright windows in the ivy blushed no more ;
The ripe, red walls grew pale, the tall vane dim.
Like a swift offering to an angry god,
O erweighted vines shook plum and apricot
From trembling trellis, and the rose trees

poured

A red libation of sweet, ripened leaves
On the trim walks ; to the high dove-cote set
A stream of silver wings and violet breasts,
The hawk-like storm down swooping on their

track.



55

V.C. 5



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD
CANADA TO ENGLAND

Gone are the days, old Warrior of the Seas,
When thine armed head, bent low to catch my

voice,

Caught but the plaintive sighings of my woods,
And the wild roar of rock-dividing streams,
And the loud bellow of my cataracts,
Bridged with the seven splendours of the bow.
When Nature was a Samson yet unshorn,
Filling the land with solitary might,
Or as the Angel of the Apocalypse,
One foot upon the primeval bowered land,
One foot upon the white mane of the sea,
My voice but faintly swelled the ebb and flow
Of the wild tides and storms that beat upon
The rocky girdle loud shrieking from the Ind
Ambrosial-breathing furies ; from the north
Thundering with Arctic bellows, groans of seas
Rising from tombs of ice disrupted by
The magic kisses of the wide-eyed sun.

The times have won a change. Nature no more

Lords it alone and binds the lonely land

A serf to tongueless solitudes ; but Nature s self

Is led, glad captive, in light fetters rich

As music-sounding silver can adorn ;

And man has forged them, and our silent God

56



ANTHOLOGY

Behind His flaming worlds smiles on the deed.
"Man hath dominion" words of primal

might;
"Man hath dominion" thus the words of God.

If destiny is writ on night s dusk scroll,
Then youngest stars are dropping from the

hand

Of the Creator, sowing on the sky
My name in seeds of light. Ages will watch
Those seeds expand to suns, such as the tree
Bears on its boughs, which grows in Paradise.

How sounds my voice, my warrior kinsman,

now?

Sounds it not like to thine in lusty youth
A world-possessing shout of busy men,
Veined with the clang of trumpets and the noise
Of those who make them ready for the strife,
And in the making ready bruise its head?
Sounds it not like to thine the whispering vine,
The robe of summer rustling thro the fields,
The lowing of the cattle in the meads,
The sound of Commerce, and the music-set,
Flame-brightened step of Art in stately halls
All the infinity of notes which chord
The diapason of a Nation s voice?

57



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

My infants tongues lisp word for word with

thine ;

We worship, wed, and die, and God is named
That way ye name Him strong bond between
Two mighty lands when as one mingled cry,
As of one voice, Jehovah turns to hear.
The bonds between us are no subtle links
Of subtle minds binding in close embrace,
Half-struggling for release, two alien lands,
But God s own seal of kindred, which to burst
Were but to dash His benediction from
Our brows. "Who loveth not his kin,
Whose face and voice are his, how shall he love
God whom he hath not seen?"

TORONTO

She moves to meet the centuries, her feet
All shod with emerald, and her light robe
Fringed with leaves singing in the jazel air.
Her tire is rich, not with stout battlements,
Prophets of strife, but wealthy with tall spires
All shining Godward, rare with learning s

domes,

And burning with young stars that promise suns
To clasp her older brows. On her young breast
Lie linked the fair, clear pearls of many homes

58



ANTHOLOGY

Mighty and lovely chain, from its white strength
Hangs on her heart the awful jewel, Hope.

She moves to meet the centuries, nor lies
All languid waiting, with the murmuring kiss
Of the large waters on white, nerveless feet,
And dim, tranced gaze upon the harbour bar,
And dusk, still boughs knit over her prone head,
And rose-soft hands that idly pluck the turf,
And rose lips singing idly thro her dream.

She hears the marching centuries which Time
Leads up the dark peaks of Eternity:
The pulses of past warriors bound in her ;
The pulses of dead sages beat in her ;
The pulses of dead merchants stir in her;
The roses of her young feet turn to flame,
Yet ankle-deep in tender buds of spring ;
Till, with the perfumes of close forests thick
Upon her tender flesh, she to her lips
Lifts the bold answering trump, and winding

shrill

With voices of her people and her waves
Notes of quick joy, half queen, half child, she

bounds

To meet the coming Time, and climbs the steps
Of the tall throne he builds upon her strand.

59



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

Toronto, joy and peace ! When comes the day
Close domes of marble rich with gold leap up
From porphyry pillars to the eye-clear sky,
And when the wealthy fringes of thy robe
Sweep outward league on league, and to thee

come
The years all bowed with treasures for thy

house,

On lusty shoulders, still remember thee
Of thy first cradle on the lilies lap
In the dim woods ; and tho thy diadem
Make a new sunrise, still, amid its flame
Twine for the nursing lilies sake the glow
Of God-like lilies round about thy brows
Honour and Peace and sweet-breathed Charity !

CURTIUS

How spake the Oracle, my Curtius, how?
Methought, while on the shadowed terraces
I walked and looked toward Rome, an echo

came

Of legion wails, blent into one deep cry.
"O Jove!" I thought, "the Oracles have said,
And, saying, touched some swiftly answering

chord
General to every soul." And then my heart

60



ANTHOLOGY

(I being here alone) beat strangely loud,
Responsive to the cry, and my still soul
Informed me thus : "Not such a harmony
Could spring from aught within the souls of men,
But that which is most common to all souls.
Lo! that is sorrow!"

Nay, Curtius, I could smile
To tell thee, as I listened to the cry,
How on the silver flax which blew about
The ivory distaff in my languid hand
I found large tears ; such big and rounded drops
As gather thro dark nights on cypress boughs.
And I was sudden angered, for I thought:
"Why should a general wail come home to me
With such vibration in my trembling heart
That such great tears should rise and over
flow?"

Then shook them on the marble where I paced,
Where instantly they vanished in the sun,
As diamonds fade in flames. Twas foolish,
Curtius !

And then methought how strange and lone it

seemed,

For till thou cam st I seemed to be alone
On the vined terrace, prisoned hi the gold
Of that still noontide hour. No widows stole

61



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

Up the snow-glimmering marble of the steps
To take my alms and bless the gods and me ;
No orphans touched the fringes of my robe
With innocent babe fingers, nor dropped the

gold

I laid in their soft palms, to laugh, and stroke
The jewels on my neck, or touch the rose
Thou sayest, Curtius, lives upon my cheek.
Perchance all lingered in the Roman streets
To catch first tidings from the Oracles.
The very peacocks drowsed in distant shades,
Nor sought my hand for honeyed cake; and

high

A hawk sailed blackly in the clear blue sky
And kept my doves from cooing at my feet.

My lute lay there, bound with the small white

buds
Which, laughing, this bright morn thou brought

and wreathed

Around it as I sang ; but with that wail
Dying across the vines and purple slopes,
And breaking on its strings, I did not care
To waken music nor in truth could force
My voice or fingers to it. So I strayed
Where hangs thy best loved armour on the wall
And pleased myself by filling it with thee.

62



ANTHOLOGY

Tis yet the goodliest armour in proud Rome,
Say all the armourers ; all Rome and I
Know thee the lordliest bearer of a sword.
Yet, Curtius, stay, there is a rivet lost
From out the helmet, and a ruby gone
From the short sword-hilt trifles both which

can
Be righted by to-morrow s noon. To-morrow s

noon !

Was there a change, my Curtius, in my voice
When spake I these three words, "to-morrow s

noon"?
Oh, I am full of dreams methought there was.

Why, love, how darkly gaze thine eyes in mine !
If loved I dismal thoughts I well could deem
Thou sawest not the blue of my fond eyes,
But looked between the lips of that dread pit

Jove ! to name it seems to curse the air
With chills of death! We ll speak not of it,

Curtius.

When I had dimmed thy shield with kissing it

1 went between the olives to the stalls.
While Audax neighed out to me as I came,
As I had been Hippona to his eyes,

New dazzling from the one small mystic cloud

63



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

That, like a silver chariot, floated low
In the ripe blue of noon, and seemed to pause,
Stayed by the hilly round of yon aged tree.
He stretched the ivory arch of his vast neck,
Smiting sharp thunders from the marble floor
With hoofs impatient of a peaceful earth ;
Shook the long silver of his burnished mane
Until the sunbeams smote it into light
Such as a comet trails across the sky.
I love him, Curtius ! Such magnanimous fires
Leap from his eyes ! And I do truly think
That with thee seated on him, thy strong knees
Against his sides, the bridle in his jaws
In thy loved hand, to pleasure thee he d spring
Sheer from the verge of Earth into the breast
Of Death and Chaos. Of Death and Chaos!
What omens seem to strike my soul to-day!

What is there in this blossom-hour should knit

An omen in with every simple word?

Should make yon willows with their hanging

locks

Dusk sybils, muttering sorrows to the air?
The roses, clamb ring round yon marble Pan,
Wave like red banners floating o er the dead?
The dead there tis again ! My Curtius, come,
And thou shalt tell me of the Oracles

64



ANTHOLOGY



thv e



Wi:r. :u:e: ;.-.:: I hr^ri r : ..~ drivers 5.27
The bulls .vere :;r the AlT^rs. ^iie

come
Wod from the Oracles as to the Pit.

Curtras, Curtras, in my soul I s*?e

How :lAck ^ni reirrul is ::s ;lu~:" :1::;A:!

1 wfll not look !

boul, Tr r^Lr.j. Ar.c s^-6 not.

T ., - _ . . . - rt
QcXI iHc LL1CU

Waved ^^^>l^epW^,gHn ^li^yfmmtfc^wine

And plumed with broozj leaves, and each to

each

Showed the sleek beauty of the rounded sides,
The mighty curving of the lordly breasts,

65



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

The level lines of backs, the small, fine heads.
And laughed and said, "The gods will have it thus,
The choicest of the earth for sacrifice,
Let it be man or maid, or lowing bull!"
Where lay the witchcraft in their clownish

words

To shake my heart? I know not ; but it thrilled
As Daphne s leaves thrill to a wind so soft
One might not feel it on the open palm.
I cannot choose but laugh, for what have I
To do with altars and with sacrifice?



From SAID THE CANOE

My masters twain sang songs that wove
As they burnished hunting-blade and rifle-
A golden thread with a cobweb trifle,

Loud of the case and low of love :

"O Love ! art thou a silver fish,
Shy of the line and shy of gaffing,
Which we do follow, fierce, yet laughing,
Casting at thee the light-winged wish?
And at the last shall we bring thee up
From the crystal darkness, under the cup

Of lily f olden

On broad leaves golden?

66



ANTHOLOGY

"O Love ! art thou a silver deer
With its feet as swift as wing of swallow,
While we with rushing arrows follow?
And at the last shall we draw near
And o er thy velvet neck cast thongs
Woven of roses, stars and songs

New chains all moulden

Of rare gems olden?"

They hung the slaughtered fish like swords
On saplings slender; like scimitars,
Bright, and ruddied from new-dead wars,

Blazed in the light the scaly hordes.

They piled up boughs beneath the trees,
Of cedar web and green fir tassel.
Low did the pointed pine tops rustle,

The camp-fire blushed to the tender breeze.

The hounds laid dewlaps on the ground
With needles of pine, sweet, soft and rusty,
Dreamed of the dead stag stout and lusty;

A bat by the red flames wove its round.

The darkness built its wigwam walls
Close round the camp, and at its curtain
Pressed shapes, thin, woven and uncertain

As white locks of tall waterfalls.

67



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

From MALCOLM S KATIE

The South Wind laid his moccasins aside,
Broke his gay calumet of flowers, and cast
His useless wampum, beaded with cool dews,
Far from him northward ; his long, ruddy spear
Flung sunward, whence it came, and his soft

locks

Of warm, fine haze grew silvery as the birch.
His wigwam of green leaves began to shake ;
The crackling rice-beds scolded harsh like

squaws ;

The small ponds pouted up their silver lips;
The great lakes eyed the mountains, whispered

"Ugh!

Are ye so tall, O chiefs? Not taller than
Our plumes can reach," and rose a little way,
As panthers stretch to try their velvet limbs
And then retreat to purr and bide their time.

At morn the sharp breath of the night arose
From the wide prairies, in deep-struggling seas,
In rolling breakers, bursting to the sky ;
In tumbling surfs, all yellowed faintly thro
With the low sun ; in mad, conflicting crests,
Voiced with low thunder from the hairy throats
Of the mist-buried herds. And for a man
To stand amid the cloudy roll and moil,

68



ANTHOLOGY

The phantom waters breaking overhead,
Shades of vexed billows bursting on his breast,
Torn caves of mist walled with a sudden gold
Resealed as swift as seen broad, shaggy fronts
Fire-eyed, and tossing on impatient horns
The wave impalpable was but to think
A dream of phantoms held him as he stood.

The pulseless forest, locked and interlocked
So closely bough with bough and leaf with leaf,
So serfed by its own wealth, that while from

high,
The moons of summer kissed its green-glossed

locks,
And round its knees the merry West Wind

danced,

And round its ring, compacted emerald,
The South Wind crept on moccasins of flame,
And the red fingers of th impatient Sun
Plucked at its outmost fringes, its dim veins
Beat with no life, its deep and dusky heart
In a deep trance of shadow felt no throb
To such soft wooing answer. Thro its dream
Brown rivers of deep waters sunless stole ;
Small creeks sprang from its mosses, and

amazed,
Like children in a wigwam curtained close

69



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

Above the great, dead heart of some red chief,
Slipped on soft feet, swift stealing through the

gloom,
Eager for light and for the frolic winds.

In this shrill moon the scouts of Winter ran
From the ice-belted north, and whistling shafts
Struck maple and struck sumach, and a blaze
Ran swift from leaf to leaf, from bough to bough,
Till round the forest flashed a belt of flame,
And inward licked its tongues of red and gold
To the deep-crannied inmost heart of all.
Roused the still heart but all too late, too

late!

Too late the branches, welded fast with leaves,
Tossed, loosened, to the winds ; too late the Sun
Poured his last vigour to the deep, dark cells
Of the dim wood. The keen two-bladed Moon
Of Falling Leaves rolled up on crested mists,
And where the lush, rank boughs had foiled

the Sun

In his red prime, her pale, sharp fingers crept
After the wind and felt about the moss,
And seemed to pluck from shrinking twig and

stem

The burning leaves, while groaned the shud
dering wood.

70



ANTHOLOGY

Who journeyed where the prairies made a pause
Saw burnished ramparts flaming in the sun
With beacon fires, tall on their rustling walls.
And when the vast horned herds at sunset drew
Their sullen masses into one black cloud,
Rolling thundrous o er the quick pulsating plain
They seemed to sweep between two fierce,

red suns

Which, hunter-wise, shot at their glaring balls
Keen shafts with scarlet feathers and gold

barbs.

By round, small lakes with thinner forests

fringed

More jocund woods that sung about the feet
And crept along the shoulders of great cliffs
The warrior stags, with does and tripping fawns
Like shadows black upon the throbbing mist
Of evening s rose, flashed thro the singing

woods,
Nor tim rous sniffed the spicy cone-breathed

air;

For never had the patriarch of the herd
Seen, limned against the farthest rim of light
Of the low-dipping sky, the plume or bow
Of the red hunter ; nor, when stooped to drink,
Had from the rustling rice-bed heard the shaft

71

V.C. 6



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

Of the still hunter hidden in its spears
His bark canoe close knotted in its bronze,
His form as stirless as the brooding air,
His dusky eyes two fixed, unwinking fires,
His bow-string tightened, till it subtly sang
To the long throbs and leaping pulse that rolled
And beat within his knotted, naked breast.

There came a morn the Moon of Falling Leaves
With her twin silver blades had only hung
Above the low set cedars of the swamp
For one brief quarter, when the Sun arose
Lusty with light and full of summer heat,
And, pointing with his arrows at the blue
Closed wigwam curtains of the sleeping Moon,
Laughed with the noise of arching cataracts,
And with the dove-like cooing of the woods,
And with the shrill cry of the diving loon,
And with the wash of saltless rounded seas,
And mocked the white Moon of the Falling
Leaves :

"Esa! esa! shame upon you, Pale Face!
Shame upon you, Moon of Evil Witches !
Have you killed the happy, laughing Summer?
Have you slain the mother of the flowers
With your icy spells of might and magic?
Have you laid her dead within my arms?

79

i &



ANTHOLOGY

Wrapped her, mocking, in a rainbow blanket?
Drowned her in the frost-mist of your anger?
She is gone a little way before me ;
Gone an arrow s flight beyond my vision.
She will turn again and come to meet me
With the ghosts of all the stricken flowers
In a blue mist round her shining tresses
In a blue smoke in her naked forests.
She will linger, kissing all the branches ;
She will linger, touching all the places,
Bare and naked, with her golden fingers,
Saying, Sleep and dream of me, my children;
Dream of me, the mystic Indian Summer
I, who, slain by the cold Moon of Terror,
Can return across the path of Spirits,
Bearing still my heart of love and fire. "

Soon the great heaps of brush were builded high,
And, like a victor, Max made pause to clear
His battle-field high strewn with tangled dead.
Then roared the crackling mountains, and then-
fires

Met in high heaven, clasping flame with flame;
The thin winds swept a cosmos of red sparks
Across the bleak midnight sky ; and the sun
Walked pale behind the resinous black smoke.
And Max cared little for the blotted sun,

73



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

And nothing for the startled, outshone stars ;

For love, once set within a lover s breast,

Has its own sun, its own peculiar sky,

All one great daffodil, on which do lie

The sun, the moon, the stars, all seen at once

And never setting, but all shining straight

Into the faces of the trinity

The one beloved, the lover, and sweet love.

It was not all his own, the axe-stirred waste.
In these new days men spread about the earth
With wings at heel, and now the settler hears,
While yet the axe rings on the primal woods,
The shrieks of engines rushing o er the wastes ;
Nor parts his land to hew his fortunes out.
And as one drop glides down the unknown rock
And the bright-threaded stream leaps after it
With welded billions, so the settler finds
His solitary footsteps beaten out
With a quick rush of panting human waves
Upheaved by throbs of angry poverty,
And, driven by keen blasts of hunger from
Their native strands, so stern, so dark, so drear !

So shanties grew

Other than his amid the blackened stumps ;
And children ran with little twigs and leaves
And flung them, shouting, on the forest pyres

74



ANTHOLOGY

Where burned the forest kings ; and in the glow
Paused men and women when the day was done.
There the lean weaver ground anew his axe,
Nor backward looked upon the vanished loom,
But forward to the ploughing of his fields,
And to the rose of plenty in the cheeks
Of wife and children; nor heeded much the

pangs

Of the roused muscles tuning to new work.
The pallid clerk looked on his blistered palms
And sighed and smiled, but girded up his loins
And found new vigour as he felt new hope.
The lab rer with trained muscles, grim and

grave,

Looked at the ground, and wondered in his soul
What joyous anguish stirred his darkened

heart

At the mere look of the familiar soil,
And found his answer in the words, "Mine

own!"

Then came smooth-coated men with eager eyes
And talked of steamers on the cliff-bound lakes,
And iron tracks across the prairie lands,
And mills to crush the quartz of wealthy hills,
And mills to saw the great wide-armed trees,
And mills to grind the singing stream of grain.

75



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

And with such busy clamour mingled still
The throbbing music of the bold, bright Axe
The steel tongue of the present ; and the wail
Of falling forests voices of the past.

O Love builds on the azure sea,
And Love builds on the golden sand,

And Love builds on the rose-winged cloud,
And sometimes Love builds on the land !

O if Love build on sparkling sea,
And if Love build on golden strand,

And if Love build on rosy cloud,
To Love, these are the solid land !

O Love will build his lily walls,
And Love his pearly roof will rear

On cloud, or land, or mist, or sea-
Love s solid land is everywhere !



GISLI, THE CHIEFTAIN
Part I

To the Goddess Lada prayed
Gisli, holding high his spear

Bound with buds of spring, and laughed
All his heart to Lada s ear.

76



ANTHOLOGY

Damp his yellow beard with mead ;

Loud the harps clanged thro the day ;
With bruised breasts triumphant rode

Gisli s galleys in the bay.

Bards sang in the banquet hall,
Set in loud verse Gisli s fame ;

On their lips the war gods laid
Fire to chant their warrior s name.

To the Love Queen Gisli prayed,

Buds upon his tall spear s tip,
Laughter in his broad blue eyes,

Laughter on his bearded lip.

To the Spring Queen Gisli prayed.

She, with mystic distaff slim,
Spun her hours of love and leaves ;

Made the stony headlands dim

Dim and green with tender grass ;

Blew on ice-fields with red mouth ;
Blew on lovers hearts and lured

White swans from the blue-arched south.

To the Love Queen Gisli prayed.

Groaned far icebergs, tall and blue,
As to Lada s distaff slim

All their ice-locked fires flew.

77



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

To the Love Queen Gisli prayed.

She, with red hands, caught and spun
Yellow flames from crater lips,

Long flames from the waking sun.

To the Love Queen Gisli prayed.

She with loom and beam and spell
All the subtle fires of earth

Wove, and wove them strong and well.

To the Spring Queen Gisli prayed.

Low the sun the pale sky trod ;
Mute her ruddy hand she raised,

Beckoned back the parting god.

To the Love Queen Gisli prayed.

Warp and weft of flame she wove,
Lada, Goddess of the Spring,

Lada, Goddess strong of Love.

Sire of the strong chieftain s prayer,
Vict ry, with his pulse of flame ;

Mead, its mother loud he laughed,
Calling on great Lada s name :

"Goddess Lada, Queen of Love,

Here I stand and quaff to thee,
Deck for thee with buds my spear;
Give a comely wife to me !

78



ANTHOLOGY

"Blow not to my arms a flake

Of crisp snow in maiden guise,
Mist of pallid hair and tips
Of long ice-spears in her eyes.

"When my death-sail skims the foam,

Strain my oars on Death s black sea,
When my foot the Glass Hill seeks,
Such a maid may do for me.

"Now, O Lada, mate the flesh;

Mate the fire and flame of life ;
Tho the soul go still unwed,
Give the flesh its fitting wife !

"As the galley runs between

Skies with billows closely spun,
Feeling but the wave that leaps
Closest to it in the sun,

"Throbs but to the present kiss

Of the wild lips of the sea,
Thus a man joys in his life
Nought of the Beyond knows he.

"Goddess, here I cast bright buds,

Spicy pine boughs at thy feet ;
Give the flesh its fitting mate
Life is strong and lif e is sweet !"

79



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

To the Love Queen Gisli prayed.

Warp and weft of flame she wove,
Lada, Goddess of the Spring,

Lada, Goddess strong of love.

Part II

From harpings and sagas and mirth of the town
Great Gisli, the chieftain, strode merrily down,

His ruddy beard stretched in the loom of the

wind,
His shade like a dusky god striding behind.

Gylfag, his true hound, to his heel glided near,
Sharp-fanged, lank and red as a blood-rusted
spear.

As crests of the green bergs flame white in the

sky,
The town on its sharp hill shone brightly and

high.

In fiords roared the ice shields ; below the dumb

stroke
Of the Sun s red hammer rose blue mist like

smoke.

It clung to the black pines and clung to the bay
The galleys of Gisli grew ghosts of the day,

80



ANTHOLOGY

It followed the sharp wings of swans as they

rose;
It fell to the wide jaws of swift riven floes ;

It tamed the wild shriek of the eagle ; grew dull
The cries, hi its foldings, of osprey and gull.

"Arouse thee, bold wind," shouted Gisli,

"and drive
Floe and berg out to sea, as bees from a hive !

"Chase this woman-lipped haze at top of thy

speed ;

The soul with it cloys, as the tongue cloys with
mead!

"Come, buckle thy sharp spear again to thy

breast ;

Thy galley hurl forth from the seas of the
West!

"With the long, hissing oars beat loud the

North Sea;

The sharp gaze of day give the eagles and
me!

"No cunning mists shrouding the sea and the

sky,

Or the brows of the great gods, bold wind,
love I !

81



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

As Gylf ag, my hound, lays his fangs in the flank
Of a grey wolf, shadowy, leather-the wed , lank,

"Bold wind, chase the blue mist, thy prow in

its hair !

Sun, speed thy keen shafts thro the breast
of the air !"



The shouting of Gisli, the chieftain,
Rocked the blue hazes, and, cloven
In twain by sharp prow of the west wind,
To north and to south fled the thick mist.

As in burnished walls of Valhalla,
In cleft of the mist stood the chieftain,
And up to the blue shield of Heaven
Flung the loud shaft of his laughter.

Smote the mist with shrill spear the swift wind ;
Grey shapes fled like ghosts on the Hel Way ;
Bayed after their long locks hoarse Gylfag;
Stared at them, triumphant, the eagles.

To mate and to eaglets the eagle
Shrieked, "Gone is my foe of the deep mist,
Rent by the vast hands of the kind gods
Who know the knife-pangs of our hunger !"

82



ANTHOLOGY

Shrill whistled the wind as his dun wings
Strove with it feather by feather ;
Loud grated the rock as his talons
Spurned slowly its breast ; and his red eyes

Like fires seemed to flame in the swift wind-
At his sides the darts of his hunger ;
At his ears the shrieks of his eaglets ;
In his breast the love of the quarry.

Unfurled to the northward and southward
His wings broke the air, and to eastward
His breast gave its iron ; and godward
Pierced the shrill voice of his hunger.

Bared were his great sides as he laboured
Up the steep blue of the broad sky,
His gaze on the fields of his freedom ;
To the gods spake the prayers of his gyres.

Bared were his vast sides as he glided,
Black in the sharp blue of the north sky,
Black over the white of the tall cliffs,
Black over the arrow of Gisli.



83



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD
THE SONG OF THE ARROW

What know I,

As I bite the blue veins of the throbbing sky,

To the quarry s breast,

Hot from the sides of the sleek, smooth nest?

What know I

Of the will of the tense bow from which I fly?

V/hat the need or jest

That feathers my flight to its bloody rest?

What know I

Of the will of the bow that speeds me on high?

What doth the shrill bow

Of the hand on its singing soul-string know?

Flame-swift speed I,

And the dove and the eagle shriek out and die.
Whence comes my sharp zest
For the heart of the quarry? The gods know
best.

Deep pierced the red gaze of the eagle
The breast of a cygnet below him.
Beneath his dun wing from the eastward
Shrill chanted the long shaft of Gisli ;



84



ANTHOLOGY

Beneath his dun wing from the westward
A shaft shook that laughed in its biting-
Met in the fierce breast of the eagle
The arrows of Gisli and Brynhild.

Part IV

A ghost along the Hel Way sped ;
The Hel shoes shod his misty tread ;
A phantom hound beside him sped.

Beneath the spandrels of the Way
Worlds rolled to night from night to day ;
In Space s ocean suns were spray.

Grouped worlds, eternal eagles, flew;
Swift comets fell like noiseless dew ;
Young earths slow budded in the blue.

The waves of space, inscrutable,
With awful pulses rose and fell,
Silent and godly terrible.

Electric souls of strong suns laid
Strong hands along the awful shade
That God about His God-work made.

Ever from all ripe worlds did break
Men s voices, as when children speak,
Eager and querulous and weak ;

85



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

And pierced to the All-worker thro
His will that veiled Him from the view :
"What hast Thou done? What dost Thou
do?"

And ever from His heart did flow,

Majestical, the answer low

The benison "Ye shall not know!"

The wan ghost on the Hel Way sped,
Nor yet Valhalla s lights were shed
Upon the white brow of the Dead.

Nor sang within his ears the roll
Of trumpets calling to his soul;
Nor shone wide portals of the goal.

His spear grew heavy on his breast;
Dropped, like a star, his golden crest;
Far, far the vast Halls of the Blest!

His heart grown faint, his feet grown weak,
He scaled the knit mists of a peak
That ever parted grey and bleak,

And, as by unseen talons nipped,
To the deep abysses slowly slipped.
Then, swift as thick smoke strongly ripped



86



ANTHOLOGY

By whirling winds from ashy ring
Of dank weeds blackly smouldering,
The peak sprang upward, quivering;

And, perdurable, set its face
Against the pulsing breast of space.
But for a moment ; to its base

Refluent rolled the crest, new sprung,
In clouds with ghastly lightnings stung;
Faint thunders to their black feet clung.

His faithful hound ran at his heel;

His thighs and breast were bright with steel ;

He saw the awful Hel Way reel.

But far along its bleak peaks rang

A distant trump its airy clang

Like light through deathly shadows sprang.

He knew the blast the voice of love
(Cleft lay the throbbing peak above)
Sailed light, winged like a silver dove.

On strove the toiling ghost, his soul
Stirred like strong mead in wassail bowl
That quivers to the shout of "Skoal!"

Strode from the mist, close-curved and cold
As is a writhing dragon s fold,
A warrior with shield of gold.

87



V.C. 7



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

A sharp blade glittered at his hip ;
Flamed like a star his lance s tip;
His bugle sang at bearded lip.

Beneath his golden sandals flew

Stars from the mist, as grass flings dew,

Or red fruit falls from the dark yew.

As under sheltering wreaths of snow
The dark blue north-flowers richly blow,
Beneath long locks of silver glow

Clear eyes that, burning on a host,
Would win a field at sunset lost,
Ere stars from Odin s hand were tost.

He stretched his hand, he bowed his head ;
The wan ghost to his bosom sped
Dead kissed the bearded lips of Dead.

"What dost thou here, my youngest born?
Thou, scarce yet fronted with life s storm,
Why art thou from the dark earth torn?

"When high Valhalla pulsed and rang
With harps that shook as grey bards sang,
Mid the loud joy I heard the clang

"Of Death s dark doors; to me alone
Smote in thine awful dying groan
My soul recalled its blood and bone.



ANTHOLOGY

"Viewless the cord which draws from far,
To the round sun, some mighty star;
Viewless the strong knit soul cords are.

"I felt thy dying gasp thy soul
Toward mine a kindred wave in roll ;
I left the harps, I left the bowl,

"I sought the Hel Way I, the blest
That thou, new death-born son, should rest
Upon the strong rock of my breast.

"What dost thou here, young, fair and bold?
Sleek with youth s gloss thy locks of gold ;
Thy years by flowers might yet be told.

"What dost thou at the ghostly goal,
While yet thy years were to thy soul
As mead yet shallow in the bowl?"

His arm about the pale ghost cast,
The warrior blew a clear, loud blast ;
Like frightened wolves the mists fled past.

Grew firm the Way; worlds flamed to light
The awful peak that thrust its height
With swift throbs upward ; like a flight

Of arrows from a host close set
Long meteors pierced its breast of jet.
Again the trump his strong lips met,

89



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

And, at its blast, blew all the day
In broad winds on the awful Way ;
Sun smote at sun across the gray.

As reindeer smite the high-piled snow

To find the green moss far below,

They struck the mists, thro which did glow

Bright vales ; and on a sea afar
Lay, at a sunlit harbour bar,
A galley gold-sailed like a star.

Spake the pale ghost as onward sped,
Heart pressed to heart, the valiant dead
(Soft the green paths beneath their tread) :

"I loved this is my tale and died.
The fierce chief hungered for my bride :
The spear of Gisli pierced my side.

"And she her love filled all my need ;
Her vows were sweet and strong as mead ;
Look, father ! doth my heart still bleed?

"I built her round with shaft and spear;
I kept her mine for one brief year
She laughed above my blood-stained bier !

"Upon a far and ice-peaked coast
My galleys by long winds were tost :
There Gisli feasted with his host

90



ANTHOLOGY

"Of warriors triumphant. He
Strode out from harps and revelry,
And sped his shaft above the sea.

"Look, father! doth my heart bleed yet?
His arrow Brynhild s arrow met
My galleys anchored in their net.

"Again their arrows meet swift lies
That pierced me from their smiling eyes.
How fiercely hard a man s heart dies !

"She false he false ! There came a day
Pierced by the fierce chief s spear I lay
My ghost rose shrieking from its clay.

"I saw on Brynhild s golden vest
The shining locks of Gisli rest
I sought the Hel Way to the Blest.

"Father, put forth thy hand and tear
Their twin shafts from my heart, all bare
To thee they rankle death-like there."



Said the voice of Evil to the ear of Good,
"Clasp thou my strong right hand,
Nor shall our clasp be known or understood
By any in the land.

91



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

"I, the dark giant, rule strong on the earth;

Yet thou, bright one, and I
Sprang from the one great mystery at one

birth
We looked upon the sky.

"I labour at my bleak, stern toil, accursed

Of all mankind ; nor stay
To rest, to murmur I hunger ! or I thirst !
Nor for my joy delay.

"My strength pleads strong with thee; doth
any beat

With hammer and with stone,
Past tools, to use them to his deep defeat,

To turn them on his throne,

"Then I, of God the mystery toil with me,

Brother ; but in the sight
Of men who know not, I stern son shall be
Of Darkness thou of Light!"



92



AN APPRECIATION



AN APPRECIATION




IGHTEEN years had passed
since the death of Isabella
Valancy Crawford. There was
not a trace of her work save a
few copies of the paper-cov
ered "Old Spookses Pass,"
which had found friends here and there, though
at the time of its author s death there was no
body of opinion to create a sense of its value.
Many of her poems were lost in the old files
of the Toronto daily newspapers.

Then, almost unannounced, there appeared
in 1905 a Collected Edition of her Poems. It
was gathered together by Mr. John W. Garvin,
with the help and assistance of the one sur
viving member of the Crawford family, Mr.
Stephen Walter Crawford. Miss Ethelwyn
Wetherald wrote a delightful Introduction and
the volume was published by William Briggs
of Toronto. It met with enthusiastic reviews
and editorials from one end of Canada to the
other. It is strange to compare these tributes

95



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

with the scanty comment paid to the same
work two decades before.

This volume contains eighty-six poems, of
which fifty-two appeared for the first tune.
The contents are divided into four sections:
lyrics, narrative poems, blank verses and dia
lect. The editor tells us that "Miss Crawford
preserved few of her poetic compositions in
the original manuscript. Most of the poems
in this volume, other than those printed in the
early collection, were preserved in the form
of clippings from the newspapers in which they
originally appeared. Some of the finest poems
such as The Rose of a Nation s Thanks,
Peace, His Clay, The Rose and Fairy
Toil were discovered in the Toronto Evening
Telegram of the years 1884 to 1887."

Open this book and you find the eternal
poet, no longer thwarted by life but rich amaz
ingly, overflowing with thought and full of ec
stasy an authentic voice of wide range and a
timbre that probably came out of long inheri
tance; brilliant, pure, sophisticated and yet
spontaneous.

In any analysis of the art of Isabella Valancy
Crawford it must be remembered that hers is
the poetry of youth, written in days of struggle

96



AN APPRECIATION

and literary obscurity that seem, in their com
parative nearness, incredibly remote. She
was caught in the smoothest decades of Vic-
torianism. The giants existed, and fought
among themselves hi a sort of holy war, but
there was no rush of young insurgents clam
ouring to break new lances. She was far
from the centres of art where camaraderie
naturally exists. Alone she must work out
her methods, the rhythms of world poetry
moving far away in distant lordly strides. But
she possessed in herself the necessary ele
ments: tingling life, imagination rather than
fancy, a sensuous love of beauty, invention,
which always means a large knowledge of the
world s facts, and, as she was no specialist,
the transmutation of more than one gift adding
its subtle power.

Sidney Lanier once said of William Morris,
"He caught a crystal cupful of the yellow light
of sunset, and, persuading himself to dream it
wine, drank it with a sort of smile." But Miss
Crawford s cup contains life, and life that is
heady enough to intoxicate. In fact, she rather
reminds one at times of Walt Whitman s dem
ocrat, who felt himself "taller than the red
woods of California" and "strong enough to

97



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

handle hell." She is essentially dramatic,
even in her treatment of nature. Her oak is
"a dark loud lion of a tree." In "The Legend
of the Mistletoe" she makes one of her own
striking similes :

What time fierce Winter, like a wolf all lean,
With sharp white fangs bit at weak woodland things,
Pierced furry breasts, and broke small painted wings,
And from dim homes all interlocked and green

Drove little spirits those who love glossed leaves
And glimmer in tall grasses those who ride
Glossed bubbles on the woodland s sheltered tide,
And make blue hyacinths their household eaves.

Her wood flowers are "gay enamelled chil
dren of the swamp," and who but she could
write of "a morn so like a dove with jewelled
eyes"?

Like all creators this poet garnered from the
past but lived vividly in the present. How she
would have moulded the sensitive mercurial
stuff of our day is problematic; what register
of new perceptions it might have awakened it
is perhaps idle to conjecture. Her construc
tive faculty was very great. Immaturity is
evident in a certain lack of perspective, for, in
spite of several dialect poems obviously in
tended to please an unsophisticated public, she
had not lived long enough to acquire the gift of

98



AN APPRECIATION

humour. With it, she would have been full-
armed. Her work is, of course, the truest
biography. It would seem that she had been
grounded in Dante and had put on Tennyson,
though, as in the case of most disciples, she
outdoes her master hi mannerisms. But while
the early work abounds in imitative methods in
its essence, it is not for a moment derivative.
Indeed, its spontaneity is infectious. The clear-
flowing lines seem to spring out of some glad,
secret fountain of being. And there is great
verbal colour. Take, as one example out of
many, lines from "Said the Canoe," where a
description of the lighting of a camp fire
occurs :

Streamed incense from the hissing cones;

Large crimson flashes grew and whirled;

Thin golden nerves of sly light curled
Round the dun camp; and rose faint zones,
Half way about each grim bole knit,
Like a shy child that would bedeck
With its soft clasp a Brave s red neck. . . .

Into the hollow hearts of brakes
Yet warm from sides of does and stags
Passed to the crisp, dark river-flags
Sinuous, red as copper-snakes
Sharp-headed serpents, made of light,
Glided and hid themselves in night.

In her way she is an experimenter in form.
You feel her touching the rich embroidery to

99



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

design new patterns. Sometimes she uses an
irregular rhyme, but seldom an irregular
rhythm. In the poem "March" the amphi
brach foot is used effectively without rhyme,
and it is not an old-fashioned mind that could
write such a line a hundred others might be
quoted as "her laugh a zigzag butterfly of
silver sound." But she has her old-world
moods when the reader gets the impression of
a weaver of mediaeval tapestries. The. forms
and images are quaint hundreds of years old.
She writes of minstrels and wine-bowls, of
steeds and lances and groves and hermits and
golden-tressed maidens, old castles, black
moats and trembling doves. She loves the
adjective "ruddy," and quite overdoes it, and
perpetually she uses the symbol of the rose.
But no matter how ornate a poem may appear
at a first reading, soon comes the piercing
thought that makes short work of mere
"poetic" words, the golden line that carries
one away by sheer magic. A picture-maker
always, more than that a dramatist, she under
stands the value of suspense and withdrawal,
as well as a short, dry attack. The poetry of
to-day is sharper than it was in her day; it

100



AN APPRECIATION

makes use of clearer contrast. In many ways
she was a forerunner.

The inclination to classical themes may
have been a means of escape from a colourless
environment. It was also a natural outcome
of early training and reading. Such poems as
"The Helot," "Caesar s Wife," "Curtius" and
"Vashti the Queen" are examples of this phase.
They are written in blank verse, and in this
form Miss Crawford excels, making of it a
magnificent and rarely flexible instrument.

But there is an inherent oriental quality that,
with the exception of Marjorie Pickthall, no
Canadian possesses in anything like the same
degree. Who, having read it, can forget cer
tain lines in "Curtius" where a woman waits
for her lover who has gone to hear news of the
Oracle at Rome :

The very peacocks drowsed in distant shades,
Nor sought my hand for honeyed cake ; and high
A hawk sailed blackly in the clear blue sky
And kept my doves from cooing at my feet.

The concluding lines of the poem, where the
frightened girl recalls the passing of sacrificial
bulls, with silver hides, and their drivers on
the road to the altars, are splendid in sug
gestive power :

101



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

Then the men

Waved their long goads, still juicy from the vine
And plumed with bronzy leaves, and each to each
Showed the sleek beauty of the rounded sides,
The mighty curving of the lordly breasts,
The level lines of backs, the small, fine heads,
And laughed and said, "The gods will have it thus,
The choicest of the earth for sacrifice,
Let it be man or maid, or lowing bull!"
Where lay the witchcraft in their clownish words
To shake my heart? I know not; but it thrilled
As Daphne s leaves thrill to a wind so soft
One might not feel it on the open palm.
I cannot choose but laugh, for what have I
To do with altars and with sacrifice?

A sense of conscience is not always included
among the singing leaves of a poet s wreath,
but this poet possessed it. In "The King s
Garments" occurs the famous lines:

For Law immutable hath one decree,
No deed of good, no deed of ill can die ;
All must ascend unto my loom and be
Woven for man in lasting tapestry,
Each soul his own.

But I like better the careless dismissal, as of
an account closed, with which she wills away
the flesh in a poem called "His Clay" :

The flesh that I wore chanced ever to be
Less of my friend than my enemy.

So bury it deeply strong foe, weak friend
And bury it cheaply and there its end.

Of love of country this poet wrote in her
102



AN APPRECIATION

own strange bright language. There was a
day when lines like these met the casual
gaze of readers of a Toronto newspaper :

If destiny is writ on night s dusk scroll,

Then youngest stars are dropping from the hand

Of the Creator, sowing on the sky

My name in seeds of light. Ages will watch

Those seeds expand to suns, such as the tree

Bears on its boughs, which grow in Paradise.

No poet long maintains this plane of rap
ture. Shakespeare and Dante sustained it in
repeated measures. Keats and Shelley in
brief lyric songs, every real poet in certain
magic lines. It is the last thought of the
writer to compare the magic lines of this Can
adian poet with those of any other, much
less with the masters of English song. One
can only stress the obvious fact that she did
leave rare and beautiful snatches of poetry,
marked by her own original imprint, which
always bore a certain splendour rather akin
to the clear colours of the Ontario landscape
that she knew and loved.

In this anthology the collection has been
chosen to show the remarkable versatility of
the poet. Her sea songs are few and rarely
quoted, hence "Good-Bye s the Word," which
is as fresh as though written yesterday. "Be-

103

V.C. 8



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

tween the Wind and the Rain," "The Butter
fly" (the original title of "The Mother s Soul"),
"The Camp of Souls" and "Laughter," to men
tion only a few of the lyrics, take us worlds
away one from the other, hi concept and
mood. It is interesting to compare the de
lightfully simple "Who Sees a Vision" and
its opening couplet:

Who sees a vision bright and bold
Hath found a treasure of pure gold,

with the much-quoted lines of the American
poet, Anna Hempstead Branch, in "The Monk
in the Kitchen" written nearly thirty years later :

Whoever makes a thing more bright
He is an angel of all light.

The fact that the present writer happens to
know that Miss Branch had never seen or
heard of the work of the Canadian poet at the
time she wrote makes the coincidence of con
siderable interest.

Lines from "Malcolm s Katie" cannot be
omitted in any summary of the poet s output.
Here one gets a vivid imagination at work on
a foundation of actual experience. The life
of the woods is the drama, with a somewhat
insipid love-story used as a connecting link.

104



AN APPRECIATION

In "Gisli the Chieftain," an old Norse Saga
is converted into a narrative poem that for
sheer dramatic imagery would have made the
writer notable, had no other work been pub
lished. The pictures are superb unforget
table. Gisli, the Chieftain, invokes the help
of Lada, the goddess of spring and love, to give
him a passionate human affection. His galleys
seek the land of Brynhild and his spear the
breast of her husband. The poem is written
in four parts, entirely different one from an
other in movement and pattern. The first is
the prayer to Lada. In the second the figure
of Gisli emerges :

From harpings and sagas and mirth of the town
Great Gisli, the Chieftain, strode merrily down.

His ruddy beard stretched in the loom of the wind,
His shade like a dusky god striding behind.

As crests of the green bergs flame white in the sky
The town on its sharp hill shone brightly and high.

In part three the quest of Gisli is the theme,
and the flight of an eagle from his arrow is
described :

Unfurled to the northward and southward
His wings broke the air, and to eastward
His breast gave its iron; and godward
Pierced the shrill voice of his hunger.

105



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

Bared were his great sides as he laboured
Up the steep blue of the broad sky,
His gaze on the fields of his freedom;
To the gods spake the prayers of his gyres.

Bared were his vast sides as he glided,
Black in the sharp blue of the north sky,
Black over the white of the tall cliffs,
Black over the arrow of Gisli.

Then comes the remarkable part four, de
picting the soul of Gisli s victim which begins :

A ghost along the Hel Way sped ;
The Hel shoes shod his misty tread;
A phantom hound beside him sped.

Beneath the spandrels of the Way
Worlds rolled to night from night to day;
In Space s ocean suns were spray.

Grouped worlds, eternal eagles, flew;
Swift comets fell like noiseless dew;
Young earths slow budded in the blue.

The waves of Space, inscrutable,
With awful pulses rose and fell,
Silent and godly terrible.

Perhaps no biographer can hope to summon
very vividly a figure out of the near past. Those
of a century ago seem strangely clear by com
parison. And the most difficult test as to the
quality of work lies in this matter of distance.
I believe that this poet will stand the test-
that Housman might have written of her :

106



AN APPRECIATION

And when the bird with the voice of gold
Whether he sound the day or the night
With his plummet of song that bell-like tone
Rings like the resurrection light!
And up from the tomb, with its weight of stone
Raises to life a heart once dead.
At the voice of the bird, stone becomes bread
Food for the living!

There is an ancient myth that poets thrive in
poverty and neglect and that the tongues and
pens of hostile critics are so much fuel to then-
flame. Witter Bynner, the American poet,
has recently said "One had to be a poet indeed
a quarter of a century ago to endure the at
tacking obloquy." Judging from the criticisms
of the day, however, women, with the possible
exception of Mrs. Browning, who had been
bold enough to write "The Cry of the Chil
dren," a protest against juvenile labour in the
factories and mines of England, were not even
dignified by "attacking obloquy." They were
merely "poetesses." Isabella Valancy Craw
ford was never a "poetess," and perhaps her
work refutes the theory that to have great ar
tists there must be great audiences. One of
the robust race whom no circumstance, how
ever untoward, can altogether quell, she goes
singing on in lines that may, or may not, be
better known to-morrow than they are to-day.

107



ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD

A small trunk full of her manuscript stands
before me as I write. Not, alas, of poems
newly discovered, but of old stories, short
stories and novelettes written out in her clear,
delicate handwriting on paper now yellow with
age. The trunk is crammed with them ; there
are hundreds of closely-written pages : themes
carefully invented and in some cases cleverly
carried out. A quotation, opening paragraphs
from a short story of the French Revolution,
called "La Tricoteuse," illustrates the quality
of the prose, though it does not convince one
that Miss Crawford s gift lay as richly in this
direction as in poetry. But it is a beautiful
rhythmic prose another example that goes to
strengthen the theory of many critics that
while mastery in the technique of prose does
not, as a general rule, effect the sheer-drawn
fabric of poetry, something in the practice of
the scales and exercises of poetry often reacts
on a poet s prose, increasing its flexibility and
colour.

Five years before the head of Louis rolled in the
sawdust to a roulade of drums there was prophecy of
tragedy in the kennels of Paris. But not then, or in
deed until much later, was it felt in air perfumed from
the Jessamine farms of Sorbraie that bordered the
chateau of Monsieur le Comte Fabrian de St. Broie.

Here the peasants danced in scarlet camisoles and

108



AN APPRECIATION

wooden shoes, in holiday blouses and barbaric ear
rings. The great dove-coloured oxen, turned adrift
from the vintage wains, dozed half buried in the rich
grass. The air was heavy as the hand of a genii with
the odour of the Greek-born glory of the rose of Prov
ence, the fine shafted incense of the jasmine from the
neighbouring farms of Sorbraie sous Montagne and
Sorbraie sur Montagne. The air was drowsy with the
hum of golden bees, it was fanned by the gorgeous
wings of butterflies, it was mellow with the sun of
Provence, it was cool with silver dews. It was an air
to expand dusky physical beauty, to ripen a certain sen
suous genius, to make of labour a golden loitering in
the sun. If poverty lolled on the peasant s threshold
the sun gilded her. Morin might have painted her
in glorious dyes amongst the dancing peasants on
his rose du Barre vases of Sevres and her rags would
have shone in gay splendours, her eyes would have
laughed as well as wept. Poverty, where goat s milk
cheeses, black bread and purple grapes were plentiful
as gnats over a silver pool, was a different thing to
poverty in the gutters of Paris, slinking from the cuffs
of gilded lackeys and crooning the first mad music of
the reign of terror, behind skeleton hands.

The wrapper in which this evidently re
turned manuscript was discovered bears a
New York postmark. The editor or reader
had not troubled to sort the pages. As I drew
the folded, tangled mass from the old envelope
the word "Finis" appeared at the bottom of
the first page that met my eye. And just above
this word was the concluding sentence of the
story. It happened to be a quotation : "Hush,
hush thoughts are safest, like young birds,
in the nest."

109



BIBLIOGRAPHY



BIBLIOGRAPHY



OLD SPOOKSES PASS, MALCOLM S KATI
AND OTHER POEMS

By Isabella Valancy Crawford. Toronto : James
Bain & Son, 1884. Foolscap 8vo., blue-green
paper boards, with title as above repeated in full
on face, but with no lettering on back; pp. i-iv +
224, all edges trimmed; publishers advertise
ment on under cover; slip of errata at p. i.

According to Mr. Donald Bain, the "Son" of the
firm of James Bain & Son, 1,000 copies of this book
were printed for the author, but the book prac
tically fell dead from the press, not more, perhaps,
than fifty copies being actually sold. Miss
Crawford finally took back the undisposed of
copies, and in 1886 re-issued them in gray or blue
paper boards, with a substituted title-page (re
peated in full as before, on the face, but again with
no lettering on the back), following the typography
of the original title-page closely, but omitting the
quotation marks which there accompanied the
titles, "Old Spookses Pass" and "Malcolm s
Katie," and the publishers imprint (including the
date), but adding after the author s name:
Author of "A Little Bacchante ; or Some Black
Sheep," and also retaining the copyright notice
on the verso. In addition, the publishers adver
tisement on the under side of the cover of
the first issue was replaced by press notices
of the volume from various Canadian and English
newspapers and other publications, the latest of
them being dated April 3, 1886. The slip of
errata was also omitted, although the single error
mentioned therein remained uncorrected.

Some copies of this second issue have the
original title-page pasted down, in addition to

113



BIBLIOGRAPHY

carrying the substituted title-page, and therefore
may be considered a separate issue ; but whether
they were the first put out by Miss Crawford in
her capacity as vendor of her own book, or
whether they were the last she put out, is an
open question.

In 1898, a considerable store of unsold copies of
what may be called the "author s edition" (al
though how many is not definitely known at this
late date) was found and, after being rebound in
light blue cloth boards, with lettering and floral
design on the face in silver, and lettering on the
back, also in silver, put on the market by William
Briggs. There were thus, as will have been seen,
three, if not four, different issues of this little
volume, which, rare enough in any issue, is in its
first issue one of the rarest and most desirable of
Canadian books of verse. A small number (eight
or ten) of this issue, it maybe added, were bound
de luxe in full leather.

THE MAIL, TORONTO

"The Vesper Star," December 24, 1873;
"Esther," March 7, 1874; "The Wishing Star,"
March 25, 1874; "Caesar s Wife," April 27, 1874;
"A Battle," June 26, 1874; "Canada to England,"
July 28, 1874; "The Roman Rose-Seller," August
19, 1874; "The Wooing of Gheezis: an Indian
Idyll," September 18, 1874; "Moloch," November
6, 1874; "Flora," February 26, 1875; "An Inter
regnum," May 3, 1875.

The above poems were written and contributed while
Miss Crawford lived in Peterboro , Ontario.

THE FAVORITE

"The Inspiration of Song," "Love Amongst the
Roses."

No record of "The Favorite" can be found at either
the Reference or the Parliamentary Library, Toronto:
but I have definite information that those poems ap
peared in a publication of that name.

114



BIBLIOGRAPHY

NATIONAL

"I ll Laugh to See the Year In," "La Blanchis-
seuse," "A Harvest Song," "Where, Love, Art
Hid?"

The "National" was a weekly journal which began
publication in Toronto in 1872, and discontinued in
a few years. Only two issues of this journal can be
found at the public libraries, and they do not con
tain any of Miss Crawford s poems. "Where, Love,
Art Hid ? " was written ia Toronto, July, 1876.

THE EVENING TELEGRAM, TORONTO

"Erin to her Grandson: Ned Hanlan," June
25, 1879; "War," August 4, 1879; "To the Princess
Louise," September 3, 1879; "A Song of the Sea,"
September 3, 1879; "Joy s City," September 12,
1879; "Lines: on the Picture of Semiramis Re
ceiving News of a Revolt hi Babylon," October 6,
1879; "How Deacon Fry Bought a Duchess,"
October 22, 1879; "Wealth," November 26, 1879;
"Beside the Burgomeister s Well," December 12,
1879; "The King is Dead! Long Live the King,"
December 31, 1879; "Farmer Downs Changes his
Opinion on Nature," January 16, 1880; "Beside the
Sea," February 4, 1880; "A Creed," February 21,
1880; "Love me, Love my Dog," March 25, 1880;
"The West Wind," May 14, 1880; "Sylvius to
Chloris," May 27, 1880; "June," June 3, 1880;
"True and False," June 19, 1880; "The Deacon
and his Daughter," July 7, 1880; "The Camp of
Souls," August 9, 1880; "Said the Daisy," August
19, 1880; "The City Tree," September 4, 1880;
"Old Spence," September 29, 1880; "The Billet-
Doux," October 15, 1880; "The Pilgrims," Novem
ber 27, 1880; "The Sailor and his Bride," Decem
ber 9, 1880; "1880," January 19,1881; "AHungry
Day," February 15, 1881; "Erin s Warning,"
March 7, 1881; "March," March 19, 1881; "The
Rowan Tree," April 27, 1881; "A Fragment,"
June 4, 1881; "Curtius," July 16, 1881; "A
Wooing," August 20, 1881; "The White Bull,"
October 3, 1881; "The Deacon s Fate," October

115



BIBLIOGRAPHY

13, 1881; "Youth," January 7, 1882; "Life,"
February u, 1882; "Two Songs," March 13, 1882;
"O Eyes that See Not," May n, 1882; "Some of
Farmer Stebbins Opinions," June 2, 1882;
"Verses, entitled "Late Loved, Well Loved,"
in "Old Spookses Pass, etc.," July 21, 1882;
"Good-Bye s the Word Good-Bye," Septembers,
1882; "At the Opera" A Fragment," October 27,
1882; "Thanksgiving Day," November 8, 1882;
"Mavourneen," December 2, 1882; "He Arose
and Went Into Another Land," February 9, 1883;
"The Earth Waxeth Old," April 16, 1883; "The
Blue Forget-Me-Not," . . . Song Second
and Song First. (In "Collected Poems," the
Second Song is entitled "A Perfect Strain"),
June i, 1883; "A Lover s Quarrel," June 18, 1883;
"Love, Stay for Me," July 30, 1883; "September
in Toronto," September 15, 1883; "The Butter
fly." (In "Collected Poems" entitled "The
Mother s Soul"), November 14, 1883; "The Dark
Stag," November 28, 1883; "My Irish Love,"
December 5, 1883 ; "The Legend of the Mistletoe,"
December 22, 1883; "Roses in Madrid," January
19, 1884; "The Canoe," Written December 8,
1883, (In "Collected Poems" entitled "Said the
Canoe") February 26, 1884; "Toronto, June,
1884," June 25, 1884; "Song of Michaelmas,"
September 24, 1884; "His Clay," October 22, 1884;
"The Lily Bed," written January 4, 1884, October
30, 1884; "The King s Kiss," November 1 1, 1884;
"The Christmas Baby," December 22, 1884; "An
Apology for the Spring Poet," March 18, 1885;
"To Gladstone" ; "Imitation is the Sincerest Form
of Flattery," May 4, 1885; "The Red Cross Corps,"
April 20, 1885; "The Dauntless Daughter of the
Dane," May 22, 1885; "The Rose of a Nation s
Thanks," (Reprinted by request in The Evening
Telegram, February 5, 1887,) June n, 1885;
"Songs for the Soldiers," July 17, 1885; "The
Gallant Lads in Green," July 22, 1885; "Peace,"

116



BIBLIOGRAPHY

August 8, 1885; "Yule," December 23, 1885;
"The Rolling Pin," (In "Collected Poems" en
titled "Fairy Toil"), May 29, 1886.

THE TORONTO GLOBE

"Phyllis," October 10, 1885; "All Men are Born
Free and Equal," November 18, 1885; "Co Boss,"
November 30, 1885; "Hats Hout" an error.
(Correct title, "Hast Thou," given the next day,
when poem was reprinted), January i, 1886;
"The Sabot Maker," April 14, 1886; "The Harp of
Spring," May i, 1886; "The Pessimist," May 29,
1886; "Extradited" (a short story), September
4, 1886.

THE COLLECTED POEMS OF ISABELLA
VALANCY CRAWFORD

Edited by J. W. Garvin, B.A., with introduction
by Ethelwyn Wetherald. Toronto: William
Briggs, 1905. Crown 8vo. cloth (also half calf),
pp. 309, with portrait and facsimile poem.

THE GLOBE,

Toronto, January 6, 1886, has this advertise
ment: "A new novel, written for The Globe,
entitled The Little Bacchante; or Some Black
Sheep, by Isabella Valancy Crawford, author of
Old Spookses Pass, Winona, Hate,
Wrecked, etc., etc., will shortly be commenced
in these columns, and will be continued from day
to day until completed." The leading features
of the novel are then strongly praised. The
Varsity of January 23, 1886, refers to this novel
in these words: "The novel of Isabella Valancy
Crawford, in the Globe, is vastly superior to the
ordinary run of newspaper fiction." This novel
appeared in The Evening Globe and not in the
morning edition.

117



BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOK REFERENCES
THE CANADIAN BIRTHDAY BOOK

With Poetical Selections for every day in the
year from Canadian writers, English and French.
[Compiled by] Seranus [Mrs. J. W. F. Harrison].
Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson, 1887.

Contains sixteen poems, or extracts from poems,
of Miss Crawford, being the first Canadian
anthology to contain work of hers. The compiler in
index reference speaks of Miss Crawford s verse
as being "almost the finest yet produced in
Canada, being instinct with a breadth and vigour
and melody unsurpassed (sic) by few living
writers."

SONGS OF THE GREAT DOMINION

Voices from the Forests and Waters, the
Settlements and Cities of Canada. Selected and
edited by William Douw Lighthall, M.A., Mont
real. London: Walter Scott, 1889. Pp. xxvi-
vii and 450, with selections interspersed through
the volume.

CANADIAN POEMS AND LAYS

Selections of Native Verse, reflecting the Sea
sons, Legends, and Life of the Dominion. Ar
ranged and edited by William Douw Lighthall,
M.A., Montreal. London : Walter Scott (Limited),
(1891). (Re-issue, condensed and in smaller
format, of Songs of the Great Dominion), pp. xxii-
iii, with selections interspersed throughout the
volume.

CANADA: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE COUNTRY

Edited by J. Castell Hopkins, 6 vols. Toronto:
The Linscott Publishing Co. (1891). Vol. V,
p. 170, "Canadian Women Writers," by Thomas
O Hagan.

118



BIBLIOGRAPHY

YOUNGER AMERICAN POETS (1830-1890;

Edited by Douglas Sladen, with an Appendix
of Younger Canadian Poets. Edited by Good-
ridge Bliss Roberts. The Cassell Publishing
Company, New York, 1891, "The Canoe," quoted
PP- 543-5> constituting the first appearance of
Miss Crawford s verse in an American Anthology.

A VICTORIAN ANTHOLOGY (1837-1895)-

Edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman. Bos
ton and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Com
pany, 1895. "Isabella Valancy Crawford," pp.
646-8 (including selections).

CANADIAN ESSAYS

By Thomas O Hagan, M.A., Ph.D. Toronto:
William Briggs, 1901. Pp. 57-8, "Canadian
Women Writers."

CANADIAN SINGERS AND THEIR SONGS

An Album of Portraits and Autograph Poems.
Toronto: William Briggs, MDCCCCII. "Isabella
Valancy Crawford," pp. 12-13 (facsimile of "Faith,
Hope and Charity," with portrait).

HANDBOOK OF CANADIAN LITERATURE

(ENGLISH)

By Archibald MacMurchy. M.A. Toronto:
William Briggs, 1906. "Isabella Valancy
Crawford," pp. 144-7.

A LITTLE BOOK OF CANADIAN ESSAYS

By Laurence J. Burpee. Toronto : The Musson
Book Co., Ltd. (1909). "Isabella Valancy Craw
ford," pp. 1-16.

ENGLISH-CANADIAN LITERATURE

By T. G. Marquis. Toronto: Glasgow, Brook
& Co., 1913. (Advance issue for private cir
culation of Chap. 74 from vol. XII: The Domin-

119
V.C. 9



BIBLIOGRAPHY

ion: Missions, Arts and Letters of Canada and
its Provinces. A History of the Canadian People
and Their Institutions. By One Hundred As
sociates. Adam Shortt and Arthur G. Doughty,
general editors. 22 Vols. Toronto: Glasgow,
Brook & Co., 1914.) Pp. 585-6.

CANADIAN POETS

Chosen and Edited by John W. Garvin, B.A.,
Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart (1916).
"Isabella Valancy Crawford," pp. 33-46 (including
12 pages of selections), with portrait.

CANADA THE SPELLBINDER

By Lilian Whiting. London and Toronto:
J. M. Dent & Sons, Limited, 1917. Pp. 274-5,
"Canadian Poets and Poetry."

CANADIAN SINGERS AND THEIR SONGS

A Collection of Portraits and Autograph Poems.
Compiled by Edward S. Caswell. Toronto:
McClelland & Stewart (1919). "Isabella Valancy
Crawford," pp. 30-1 (facsimile of poem, "Faith,
Hope and Charity," with portrait (different from
that in edition of 1902).

AMERICAN WRITERS OF THE PRESENT DAY
Second Edition, revised and enlarged. By
T. E. Rankin, Professor of Rhetoric in the Uni
versity of Michigan. Ann Arbor: George Wahr,
1920. Pp. 137 and 150.

CANADA AND ITS PROVINCES

A History of the Canadian People and Their
Institutions, by One Hundred Associates. The
general editors are Adam Shortt and Arthur
Doughty. Printed by C. and A. Constable at
Edinburgh University Press for the Publishers
Association of Canada, Limited. Toronto, Glas
gow, Brook and Co., 1914. Vol. 12, by T. G.

120



BIBLIOGRAPHY

Marquis, entitled MISSION, ART, AND LET
TERS, No. 2, pages 585-587. Photograph in
cluded.

NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES
THE TORONTO GLOBE, JUNE 4, 1884
Review of "Old Spookses Pass."
THE TORONTO EVENING TELEGRAM, JUNE n,

1884

Review of "Old Spookses Pass."
THE WEEK (Toronto), SEPT. n, 1884
Review of "Old Spookses Pass."
THE SPECTATOR (London), OCT. 18, 1884

Review of "Old Spookses Pass."
THE LEISURE HOUR (London), MARCH, 1885

Review of "Old Spookses Pass," by Rev. Harry
Jones.
THE GRAPHIC (London), APRIL 4, 1885

Review of "Old Spookses Pass."
SATURDAY REVIEW (London), MAY 23, 1885

Review of "Old Spookses Pass."
THE LITERARY WORLD (London), MARCH 19, 1886.

Review of "Old Spookses Pass."
THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, APRIL 3

1886

Review of "Old Spookses Pass."
THE WEEK (Toronto), FEB. 24, 1887

"Isabella Valancy Crawford," by "Seranus"
(Mrs. J. W. F. Harrison).
THE CANADIAN MAGAZINE, OCTOBER, 1895

"Isabella Valancy Crawford," By E. J. Hath
away.
THE TORONTO GLOBE, DEC. 16, 1905

Editorial: "Two Canadian Poets" (William
Wilfred Campbell and Isabella Valancy Crawford.)

121



BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE GLOBE MAGAZINE

Toronto, April 15 and 22, 1905, contains a sketch
of the life of Miss Crawford, by Maud Wheeler
Wilson.

Toronto, December 30, 1905, contains a lengthy
review of "The Collected Poems of Isabella
Valancy Crawford."

THE SENTINEL-REVIEW

Woodstock, December 18, 1905, has a lengthy
editorial, entitled, "Isabella Valancy Crawford."

METHODIST MAGAZINE AND REVIEW

December, 1905, reviews at length "The Col
lected Poems of Isabella Valancy Crawford."

CANADA WEEKLY, MARCH 30, 1918

"Canadian Poets: The Tragic Story of Isabella
Valancy Crawford," by Katharine Hale (Mrs.
John W. Garvin).

THE WEEK,

Toronto, September u, 1884, page 633, has a
short review of "Old Spookses Pass and Other
Poems."

Toronto, February 24, 1887, has an appreciative
article on Miss Crawford by "Seranus."

THE VARSITY

University of Toronto, January 23, 1886, page 116,
has an editorial reference.

THE TORONTO GLOBE

Toronto, February 14, 1887, an obituary ap
preciation.

THE EVENING TELEGRAM

Toronto, February 14, 1887, an obituary ap
preciation.

Toronto, November 8, 1884, contains the
review of the Spectator, London, England, of
"Old Spookses Pass, etc."

122



INDEX



Algoma, 7.
Anthology, 17.
Appreciation, An, 93.
Athenaeum, The, n.

Battle, A, 48.

Between the Wind and Rain, From, 55, 103.

Bibliography, in.

Biographical, i.

Branch, Anna Hempstead, 104.

Browning, Mrs. 107.

Brynhild, 105.

Burleigh Falls, 4.

Butterfly, The, 43, 104.

Bynner, Witter, 107.

Caesar s Wife, 101.

Camp of Souls, The, 33, 104.

Campbell, W. W., 10.

Canada to England, 56.

Carman, Bliss, 9.

City Tree, The, 30.

Collected Edition of her Poems, 95.

Crawford, Dr. John Irwin, 13.

Crawford, Stephen Dennis, 1,2.

Crawford, Stephen Walter, 95.

Cry of the Children, The, 107.

Curtius, 60, 101.

Dante, 3, 99, 103.
Dark Stag, The, 36.
Dufferin, Lord, n.
Duncan, Sara Jeanette, 10.

Fairy Toil, 96.

123



INDEX

Garvin, John W., 95.

Gisli, The Chieftain, 76, 105.

Globe, The, g.

Good-Bye s the Word, 24, 103.

Harrison, Mrs. J. W. F., 10, n.
Harvest Song, A, 26.
Heffernan, Mrs. A. J., n, 15.
Helot, The, 101.
His Clay, 41, 96, 102.
Horace, 3.
Housman, 106.

Illustrated London News, The, u.
Interregnum, An, 51.

Kawartha Lakes, 3, 4.

Keats, 103.

King s Garments, The, 102.

Lakefield, 3, 4.

Lampman, Archibald, 9.

Lanier, Sidney, 97.

La Tricoteuse, 108.

Laughter, 39, 104.

Legend of the Mistletoe, The, 98.

Little Lake Cemetery, 15.

Malcolm s Katie, From, 6, 68, 104.

March, 100.

Monk in the Kitchen, The, 104.

Mother s Soul, The, 104.

Morin, 109.

Morris, William, 97.

Moodie, Susanna, 3.

Naomi, Emma, 7.

Old Spookses Pass, 6, 10, 14, 95.
Otonabee River, 5, 15.

124



INDEX

Paisley, 2, 3, 6.
Paris, 109.
Peace, 96.

Peterborough, 5, 14, 15.
Pickthall, Marjorie, 101.

Roberts, Charles, G. D., 9.

Rose, The, 20, 96.

Rose of a Nation s Thanks, From The, 15, 46, 96.

Scott, Sydney, i.

Said the Canoe, From, 66.

Said the Daisy, 21.

Said the West Wind, 53.

Saugeen River, 2.

Shakespeare, 103.

Shelley, 103.

Smith, Goldwin, 9.

Spectator, The, n.

Stony Lake, 4.

Stuart, Mrs. Charles J., 8.

Telegram, The Toronto Evening, 9, 96.

Tennyson, 99.

Toronto, 58.

Traill, Catherine Parr, 3.

Urquhart, Mrs. Donald, 13, 14.

Varsity, An Editorial in, 7.
Vesper Star, The, 50.
Vashti the Queen, 101.

Wallis, Katherine, 14.

Walt Whitman s democrat, 97.

Week, The, 9, n.

Wetherald, Ethelwyn, 95.

Who Sees a Vision, From, 19, 104.

Wilson, Maude Millet, 5.



125



THIS BOOK IS A
PRODUCTION OF




TORONTO, CAN ADA



PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY



PS

8455
R3A6
1923a
cop. 3



Crawford, Isabella Valancy
Isabella Valancy Crawford
Next - Crawford, Isabella Valancy Part 2 - Ontario Poet Anthology