Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

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Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated) Page 804

by John Buchan


  In toil of tempest and the dust of war

  Seek your continuing city. Seek and pray,

  Gird ye and strive and faint not on the way.

  God be your strength, your buckler and your sword.

  Then forth my sons! Who followeth with the Lord?

  What came you out to seek? A path of flowers,

  A sleep-lulled valley and the silent bowers

  Of sinless Edens, where the slumbrous days

  Slip past unheeded, and the noon-day blaze

  Is cheered by zephyrs born of the warm South,

  And grapes of Eschol cool the parched mouth?

  Thirst ye for these, or for the soft green fold

  Of summer hills, where like a chart unrolled

  Lie town and hamlet girt with woody lea

  And dewy lawns and the unchanging sea?

  Long leagues of ocean whitening to the sky

  Sever our path from lands of infancy.

  Our homes are lost us, lost the song and rhyme,

  The hearth’s red glow, the stories of old time,

  Com on the holm-land, fruit upon the tree

  And the far-hallowed seats of memory.

  But clear our faith as April’s first sunrise,

  Which bursts the dark and cheers the lonely eyes:

  No faltering shakes their steadfastness whose ways

  Lie on the King’s Path to the end of days.

  Ay! on the King’s Path! Men have toiled and bled

  On the old quest; and we, with the king-like head,

  Fronting the sword of monarchs and their scorn,

  Have dared their terrors; and have trod forlorn

  A prouder path than captains of great might

  Fair with the pomp and panoply of fight.

  Ours is the weary way, which knows no end

  Save with the coming of great Death, the Friend;

  Ours is the ageless day which sees no close

  Till the last sunset bring the set of woes.

  Each moment throngs with strife, the lists are built,

  The untiring foe is near to ride a-tilt.

  Our arm is never slack, our eyes are sore

  With dust of tumult surging evermore:

  While, like a clarion, rings the immortal word,

  “Not peace I bring, not comfort, but a sword.”

  What came you out to seek? A wilderness

  Untilled, untouched, a home of loneliness

  Set in some forest haunt whose trackless deeps

  Darken the shining dawn? The wild deer sleeps

  On fields which ye must sow, and by the spring,

  Which now is stirred but by the mere-fowl’s wing,

  The austere chant of thanksgiving must rise

  And rugged hearths smoke to the morning skies.

  Ours was the quiet lot, where each new day

  Brought the old duties. Clear our passage lay

  ‘Mid sunlit meadows; smoothly through each stage

  Life’s journey ran, an easy pilgrimage.

  So fond our hopes; but sudden came the frost,

  Untimely, bitter, and our peace was lost.

  “Quit ye like men” — Who wills it, let him hear,

  And his the faith which casteth out all fear!

  Steeled in his heart to bid the long good-night,

  Unblenched he fronts the desert and the fight.

  What came ye out to seek? Regret and tears

  And the long void of immemorial years?

  Not so, my children. Shall a man be upbraid

  The Lord who him and all his joys hath made?

  He, the poor creature, born of grief and shame,

  A clot of dust, a spark of heavenly flame!

  Shall he by seeking find the majesty

  That plants its footsteps on the hills and sea?

  For man the servant’s task, the bond-slave’s place,

  To toil and see not of his labour’s grace.

  The wide creation travaileth in pain;

  And shall the pigmy in his griefs complain?

  Our lot hath blessings. Fare we near or far,

  Our quiet mind shall light its evening star;

  Wearied with toil, our bed in desert lands

  Shall be the old green couch not made with hands;

  The twilights cool our mead when day is done,

  And the sweet comfort of the morning sun.

  For us, unasked, the autumn fruit shall glow,

  The loud fire crackle when the winters blow.

  Ours the forgotten life, the elder birth

  Of men unwearied in the ancient earth.

  Though o’er our path the wrack of battle roll,

  No wars perplex the sabbath of our soul.

  What though the body be a sacrifice

  To the fierce sun or the inclement skies,

  The lurking wild beast or the savage king,

  We are not sad for all their threatening.

  Life is not meat nor drink nor raiment fine,

  But a man’s courage and the fire divine.

  Yea, hearts insurgent ‘mid the obedient crowd

  We ever bore, and walked upon the loud

  And perilous road of honour. Man may fall

  And yet attain. And he who hears the call,

  And tracks the gleam through rock and wood and fen,

  Haps on the treasure hid from petty men.

  And as in desert sands the holy race,

  Fleeing from Egypt to their destined place,

  Nursing their hope through pity and distress,

  Set up a shrine amid the wilderness;

  So we, lone outlaws in these evening lands,

  Yet to the past hold forth unfaltering hands,

  And bear old faiths in vanguard of our wars,

  And set our eyes upon the ancient stars.

  Then forth my children! lo! the gold of dawn

  Bums on yon eastern hill; the grassy lawn,

  The tangled forests, fire with mom; the beams

  Of a new sun fall on the virgin streams.

  Clear sings the bird of hope, and far and nigh

  Winds wake the embattled silence of the sky.

  The shining footprints of the light to be

  Tremble and glow along the inviolate sea.

  The world awakes for you, the young the strong;

  And we, the old, who wait and wait not long

  On the last call, give you a glad God-speed,

  True heart in peril and stout arm in need,

  While with untroubled eyes we watch and pray

  Till the brief dark that fadeth into day.

  Ballad for Grey Weather

  1898

  Cold blows the drift on the hill,

  Sere is the heather,

  High goes the wind and shrill,

  Mirk is the weather.

  Stout be the front I show,

  Come what the gods send!

  Plaided and girt I go

  Forth to the world’s end.

  My brain is the stithy of years,

  My heart the red gold

  Which the gods with sharp anguish and tears

  Have wrought from the old.

  In the shining first dawn o’ the world

  I was old as the sky, —

  The morning dew on the field

  Is no younger than I.

  I am the magician of life,

  The hero of runes;

  The sorrows of eld and old strife

  Ring clear in my tunes.

  The sea lends her minstrel voice,

  The storm-cloud its grey;

  And ladies have wept at my notes,

  Fair ladies and gay.

  My home is the rim of the mist,

  The ring of the spray.

  The hart has his corrie, the hawk has her nest,

  But I — the Lost Way.

  Come twilight or morning, come winter or spring,

  Come leisure, come war,

  I tarry not, I, but my b
urden I sing

  Beyond and afar.

  I sing of lost hopes and old kings,

  And the maids of the past.

  Ye shiver adread at my strings,

  But ye bear them at last.

  I sing of vain quests and the grave, —

  Fools tremble, afraid.

  I sing of hot life, and the brave

  Go forth, undismayed.

  I sleep by the well-head of joy

  And the fountain of pain.

  Man lives, loves, and fights, and then is not, —

  I only remain.

  Ye mock me and hold me to scorn, —

  I seek not your grace.

  Ye gird me with terror — forlorn,

  I laugh in your face.

  Lady Keith’s Lament

  1898

  This poem appeared in ‘A Lost Lady of Old Years’ (1899).

  “A’are gane, the gude, the kindly,

  Low in the moss and far on the sea,

  Men o’ the North, men o’ the muirlands,

  Brave to battle and laith to flee.

  I was aince a lady o’pride,

  High my hame abune the heather;

  Now my silken gown I tine,

  I maun fare in wind and weather.”

  “Kin and kith in weary battle

  By stranger waters across the faem

  Fell, and dying had mind o’ sweet Argos,

  The man of auld and the hills of hame

  The ship is rocking by the pier,

  The hour draws nigh when we maun pairt.

  Then fare thee weel, my loved, my dear,

  Bide I canna, though breaks my hert.”

  “But though I now maun wander dowie,

  And drap the tear on cheek sae pale,

  Yet shall our dule be turned to joy,

  For God maun let the richt prevail.

  My father was a guid lord’s son,

  My mither was an earl’s daughter;

  And I’ll be Lady Keith again

  The day the King comes ower the water.”

  The Gipsy’s Song to the Lady Cassilis

  1898

  The door is open wide, my love,

  The air is bright and free;

  Adown the stair, across the hall,

  And then — the world and me;

  The bare grey bent, the running stream,

  The fire beside the shore;

  And we will bid the hearth farewell,

  And never seek it more,

  My love,

  And never crave it more.

  And you will wear no silken gown,

  No maid shall bind your hair;

  The yellow broom shall be your gem,

  Your braid the heather rare.

  Athwart the moor, adown the hill,

  Across the world away; —

  The path is long for happy hearts

  That sing to greet the day,

  My love,

  That sing to greet the day.

  And at the last no solemn stole

  Shall on thy breast be laid;

  No mumbling priest shall speed thy soul,

  No charnel vault thee shade.

  But by the shadowed hazel copse,

  Aneath the greenwood tree,

  Where airs are soft and waters sing,

  Thou’lt ever sleep by me,

  My love,

  Thou’lt ever sleep by me.

  The door is open to the wall,

  The air is bright and free;

  Adown the stair, across the hall,

  And then — the world and me;

  The bare grey bent, the running stream,

  The fire beside the shore,

  And we will bid the hearth farewell,

  And never seek it more,

  My love,

  And never crave it more.

  And you shall wear no silken gown,

  No maid shall bind your hair;

  The yellow broom shall be your gem,

  Your braid the heather rare.

  Athwart the moor, adown the hill,

  Across the world away;

  The path is long for happy hearts

  That sing to greet the day,

  My love,

  That sing to greet the day.

  When morning cleaves the eastern grey

  And the lone hills are red;

  When sunsets light the evening way

  And birds are quieted;

  In autumn noon and spring-tide dawn,

  By hill and dale and sea,

  The world shall sing its ancient song

  Of hope and joy for thee,

  My love,

  Of hope and joy for thee.

  And at the last no solemn stole

  Shall on thy breast be laid;

  No mumbling priest shall speed thy soul,

  No charnel vault thee shade.

  But by the shadowed hazel copse,

  Aneath the greenwood tree

  Where airs are soft and waters sing,

  Thou’lt ever sleep by me,

  My love,

  Thou’lt ever sleep by me.

  The Soldier of Fortune

  1899

  I have seen thy face in the foray, I have heard thy voice in the fray,

  When the stars shrunk in the silence or the great midnights blew;

  Men have worn their steel-blades, seeking by night and day,

  Selling their souls for the vain dreams, — I have followed the true.

  Frosts have dulled the scabbard, suns have furrowed the thong,

  And the great winds of the north-west have steeled the vagrant eye;

  So through the world I wander, haggard and fierce and strong,

  Seeking the goal I see not, toiling I tell not why.

  I have loved all good things, song and foray and wine,

  The hearth’s red glow at the even, the gladsome face of a friend,

  The sun and snows of the hill-lands, the sting of the winter’s brine,

  Dawn and noon and the twilight, day and the day-light’s end.

  I have ridden the old path, ridden it fierce and strong,

  By camp and city and moorland and the grey face of the sea;

  Wrath abides on my forehead, but at my heart a song,

  The ancient wayfaring ballad, the royal chaunt of the free.

  For ever in cloud or May-tide thy voice has been in my ear,

  In the quivering mists of battle thy face has shone like a star;

  Never the steel ranks broke when the Lord sent forth His fear,

  But thy hand has held my bridle and girt my soul for war.

  I am broken and houseless, lost my clan and my name,

  A stranger treads on my homelands, no heart remembereth me.

  But be thou my portion, lady of stars and flame,

  Little I ask of the red gold, having the winds and thee.

  The Last Song of Oisin

  (1901)

  Here is the cold, and there the sun and spring-tide,

  Here the grey dunes, and there the meads of peace,

  Here the dim silence, there the joys of song-tide,

  Dull longing here, and pain that shall not cease.

  Lo! I am wrinkled, old, and worn unsightly,

  Weary my step and faint my faltering knee,

  Yet was I joyful once, and blithe, and knightly,

  In the lost lands adown the western sea.

  From hut and hall the little peoples hasten:

  Crooked they come, and fickle in their ways:

  They toil and sweat with weary breath to chasten

  The niggard earth through melancholy days.

  And black-stoled men with dirge and chant assail them,

  And pedlar monarchs fatten on their woe.

  Then at the even, when their sinews fail them,

  From the great toil to the great dark they go.

  I was a lord and prince in the Far Islands,

  Where in the seas the dawn and twilight die,

 
Sweet with the winds of mom, the scent of highlands,

  The blush of fruit, the gold of western sky.

  There dwell the kings who rode the kingly questing,

  The bards who chanted in the long ago,

  There the high warriors from the battle resting

  Drink the full cups which the immortals know.

  Among the lilied fields of the Hereafter

  Dwell they whom all men sought the wide world through,

  Star-eyed, bright-tressed, before whose tears and laughter

  Steel turned to wax, and rosemary to me.

  More faint and far than elfin bells in May-time

  Comes their dear voice across the sundering snow,

  And through the mist and sleet of this dark daytime

  Their rose-fringed garments trail and gleam and go.

  I shiver! Lo! the little peoples cluster,

  Poor twisted things that stare and, wondering, flee.

  ‘Tis even; from afar the toilers muster;

  A little bell rings by the cold grey sea.

  They laugh and flaunt among their barren places,

  Poor joyless mirth, poor passionless base tears!

  A coward death grins from their pallid faces,

  For truth has fled with the old kingly years.

  My breath is heavy. Haste thou, Death the master,

  Come with the great winds from the shoreless deep!

  Carry me far into the hills, O! faster,

  Through white-fanged pass to the still place of sleep.

  Snow blinds my eyes: I faint: a light is glowing:

  The last shrill music in the tempest rings.

  And the great midnight, wide and wild and blowing,

  Gathers my heart into its wandering wings.

  The Semitic Spirit Speaks (1902/1903)

  Before was made the earth and sea

  Or Adam sprang from God his sire,

  Of equal parts of guile and mire

  The Lord in jest created me.

  Though men may curse and men may laud,

  Even now as when the world was young,

  Inserting in my cheek my tongue,

  I am the oldest kind of Fraud.

  For me the courage of the lare,

  The humour of the affair is mine,

  My tastes are even of the swine,

 

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