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    Newfoundland Verse
    Newfoundland Verse
    Newfoundland Verse
    Ebook131 pages1 hour

    Newfoundland Verse

    By E. J. Pratt

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    About this ebook

    E.J. Pratt was the premier Canadian poet of the first half of the 20th century. He was an author of 13 volumes of poetry and one of Canada's most prominent literary figures by the 1940s. Newfoundland Verse, published in 1923, was one of his first poetic collections.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGood Press
    Release dateNov 26, 2019
    ISBN4057664604439
    Newfoundland Verse

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      Book preview

      Newfoundland Verse - E. J. Pratt

      E. J. Pratt

      Newfoundland Verse

      Published by Good Press, 2022

      [email protected]

      EAN 4057664604439

      Table of Contents

      NEWFOUNDLAND VERSE

      Sea Variations

      The Toll of the Bells

      The Ground-Swell

      Magnolia Blossoms

      The Ice-Floes

      ?

      The Shark

      The Fog

      The Big Fellow

      The Morning Plunge

      In Absentia

      The Flood Tide

      The Pine Tree

      In Lantern Light

      The Secret of the Sea

      Loss of the Steamship Florizel

      The Drowning

      Monologues and Dialogues

      Creatures of Another Country

      Ode to December, 1917

      Newfoundland

      Flashlights and Echoes

      The Great Mother

      In Memoriam

      The Hidden Scar

      Evening

      In a Beloved Home

      The Conclusion of Rachel

      A Fragment from a Story

      NEWFOUNDLAND

      VERSE

      Table of Contents

      Sea Variations

      Table of Contents

      MORNING

      Old, old is the sea to-day.

      A sudden stealth of age

      Has torn away

      The texture of its youth and grace,

      And filched the rose of daybreak from its waters.

      Now lines of grey

      And dragging vapors on its brow

      Heavily are drawn;

      And it lies broken as with centuries,

      Though yesterday,

      Blue-eyed and shadowless as a child's face,

      It held the promise of a luminous dawn;

      Though through its merry after-hours

      It bade the sun to pour

      Its flaming mintage on the ocean floor

      That by a conjuror's touch was turned

      To rarer treasure manifold,

      Where jacinth, emerald and sapphire burned—

      A fringe around a core of gold....

      Old, old is the sea to-day,

      Forsaken, chill and grey,

      And banished is the glory of its waters;

      Though through the silent tenure of the night

      It bade the sterile moon to multiply

      A thousand-fold its undivided light,

      Within the nadir of a richer sky;

      When every star a thousand cressets glowed

      That, caught in wider conflagration, sent

      Vast leagues of silver fire wherever flowed

      The waters of its shoreless firmament.

      But old and grey

      Is the sea to-day,

      With the morning colors blanched upon its waters.

      MASKS

      What hidden soul residing

      Within these forms, O sea!

      Should, every hour changing,

      To Time yet changeless be?

      What masks hast thou not worn,

      What parts not played,

      Thou Prince of all the Revels

      In Life's Masquerade?

      Light-hearted as a jester,

      The motley fits thy mood,

      As the gold and the purple,

      Thy statelier habitude.

      At dawn—

      A trumpeter preluding a day's pageant.

      At noon—

      A dancer weaving new measures around the

      furrows of ships with white sails.

      Later—

      A courier with sealed tidings hastening towards the shore.

      At sunset—

      A dyer steeping colors on a bay.

      Again—

      A sculptor teasing faces out of the moonlit foam on a reef.

      Or carving bric-a-brac upon a beach,

      Or fashioning, with age-toiled hands, a grotto

      out of limestone.

      The wind blows—

      And a master puts a flute to his lips.

      It blows again—

      And his fingers take hold of organ stops ....

      THE DESTROYER

      Once more, the wind—

      And thou dost go on an old familiar way

      In tragic fashion,

      As a corsair, pursuing his prey

      With the lust of passion,

      Falls like a burst of hail

      On an autumn yield,

      Till every reach and gulf and bay

      Is left with the stubble of life and sail,

      With the face of the waters like unto the face of the field.

      IN RETREAT

      Now like a fugitive, who, on the desert sand,

      A moment broods upon the life he spilt.

      And, with averted gaze,

      Circling the dusky ruin of his hand,

      Surveys

      The Arab measure of his guilt

      Before a Presence standing there that calls

      His name; in cloud and shadow and in whirlwind reads

      The inviolate scripture of the fates;

      Then full across the desert speeds,

      Until he falls,

      Caught by the Avenger near the City Gates;—

      So underneath the heavens' lighted scroll,

      Ablaze with cryptic tokens of the slain,

      Headlong to shore thy spiral waters roll

      Swept by the besom of the winds; by rain

      And thunder driven in flight

      Along the galleries of the night,

      Until upon the surge-line locked in strife

      With reef and breaker thou art shattered, soon

      In fang and sinew to be strewn

      Around the cliffs that guard the ports of life.

      O wild, tumultuous sea!

      Thy waters mock our liturgy,

      For thou dost take the threads of faith apart.

      Wherewith the cables of our life are spun,

      Strand upon strand unravelling;—thou dost hear,

      Recited from a tide-wet shore,

      Our creeds. Each hope and fear

      Filtered from life's confessions—one by one,

      Out of the dumb confusions of the heart,

      Are spread before thy sight—thou Arch-Inquisitor!

      How in a ruthless moment dost thou strip

      The veilings from our eyes, and bid us cast

      Our glances on a labyrinthine past,

      Stirred by a flash that on a wave's white lip

      Gleams for an instant, or by some dark sign

      Within thy fearful hollows where night flings

      Her crape of shadow on a tossing line

      Of jetsam, will our years turn back,

      To gather from a weed-grown track

      A bitter tale of dimmed rememberings.

      RE-BORN

      As to its end the tempest drags

      Its way, thou art re-born

      To strength of body and beauty of face;

      And thou dost cover with a tranquil grace

      Those whom the winds had buffeted,

      And laid upon the waters—dead.

      In darkness dost thou cover them,

      As some white-winged mother of the crags,

      That daily gathering food

      From sea-weed and from tide-wash, brings,

      At fall of night, to her rock-nurtured brood

      The drowsy silence of her wings.

      THE DEAD CALM

      How like a Pontiff dost thou lie at last,

      Impassive, robed at Death's high-unctioned hour

      With those grey vestments that the storm,

      In the dread legacy of its power,

      Around thy level form

      Majestically hast cast,—

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