Out of the North

Excerpt

FOREWORD

Songs from a far-away world; a cry from another sphere. To those of us who once experienced the still and pitiless cold, a cry terribly suggestive of the horror-charged gloom, of the icy silence as unbroken as that of unfathomable deeps, of the stern and uncompromising individuality of a disturbed and vengeful North.

Yet one is also reminded that, even in the Klondyke, in due season the brooding spruces are awakened from slumber by the songs of happy-throated songsters, that the melancholy of the forest is brightened by gay flowers. The weight is then lifted from men's hearts; singing is heard in the cabin, and the sound of laughter on the trail. When the mighty Yukon is open to the Behring Sea, the far North is in touch with the world and men are glad.

But the Arctic summer is short-lived. The days of the bird and the flower and the rippling creeks are numbered. Soon the sky turns grey, the wind chants the sun's requiem, the snow falls; and then returns the cold, the gloom, the feeling of isolation, the indescribable terror.

I heard these songs sung in the Arctic, the singer at my side—these songs of nature, songs of hope, home, heart. They seem a part of my life. I heard them as the cry of a lone bird in the vast silence of eternal snows.

JOAQUIN MILLERThe Heights, Cal.
Nov. 15th '99

Who drapes that mystic veil across that everbrooding sky?
Who hues it with a soul of pearl? Who draws it to and fro?
Who breathes upon it with the breath that makes it glow and die,
Lighting that crystal river, those mountains cowl'd with snow?

In Winter

Beneath the snow the mosses sleep
Amid the forest's silence;
Above, the stately birches keep
Unbroken vigils.
The spruce trees dream of summer hours
And birds that carrolled sweetly,
Of gentle winds and smiling flowers
That died too quickly.

Tell me, tell me, gentle stars,
Ever watchful, ever bright,
From your stations in the sky
Do you see my love to-night?
White the snow beneath my feet,
Whiter far her holy breast;
Peaceful are the mighty woods,
But her eyes are soft with rest.
Sweet the scent of spruce and pine,
Sweeter, though, her fragrant breath;
Tell her, tell her, gentle stars,
I am hers alone till death.

Dark Days

The sun has left his throne,
The sky is leaden-hued;
The hopeless winds bemoan,
In icy aisles, their fate.
All day the shadows press
About the forest's nuns,
That dream in loneliness
Their dreams of birds and spring.

O sombre skies that ever mourn,
O silent skies so grey and stern,
Are ye the curtains of that bourne
Where we at last our fate must learn?
Is it behind your gloomy veil
The Judge with Book of Judgment stands?
Where we must pass, with faces pale,
Awaiting judgment at His hands?
O sombre skies that frown all day
Upon us hopeless, hapless men,
When Death shall beckon us away
What happens then? What happens then?

Vain Dreams

The trees, my sisters, robed in white,
Now dream of spring;
Of sun-lit day and fragrant night,
Of birds that sing.
They little think that I can tell
About their pain;
They do not know I dream as well
A dream most vain.

Beneath a shroud of unpolluted white,
The frozen hills lie silent and asleep;
And moveless spruce and ghostly birches keep
Their silent vigils through the endless night.
The frozen creeks, long voiceless, partly veiled
'Neath drifting snow, dream fondly of the trees;
Within the woods no bird's song and no breeze
Make wondrous music when the skies have paled.
The kingly sun ne'er sends his laughing rays
To wake the hills and warm the trees and streams;
His face is hid, and hid are now the beams
That woke the world on long-dead summer days.
The patient moon with all her silent train
Of maiden stars patrols the roads on high,
And watches well all things that sleeping lie
Till Spring's first song shall waken them again.
The white world sleeps, and all is very still,
Except when rises on the frosted air
From out its chilly and forbidding lair
A lone wolf's howl, long-drawn and terrible.

The Unassuageable

I sometimes hear among the snow-clad trees
The lone wind chanting solemn symphonies.
I sometimes smell, while yet the woods are bare,
The breath of unborn blossoms in the air.
I am at times aware of gentle sighs
There where the creek, ice-fettered, dreaming lies....