I
Heed me, feed me, I
am hungry, I am red-tongued with desire;
Boughs of balsam, slabs
of cedar, gummy fagots of the pine,
Heap them on me, let
me hug them to my eager heart of fire,
Roaring, soaring up
to heaven as a symbol and a sign.
Bring me knots of sunny
maple, silver birch and tamarack;
Leaping, sweeping, I
will lap them with my ardent wings of flame;
I will kindle them to
glory, I will beat the darkness back;
Streaming, gleaming,
I will goad them to my glory and my fame.
Bring me gnarly limbs
of live-oak, aid me in my frenzied fight;
Strips of iron-wood,
scaly blue-gum, writhing redly in my hold;
With my lunge of lurid
lances, with my whips that flail the night,
They will burgeon into
beauty, they will foliate in gold.
Let me star the dim
sierras, stab with light the inland seas;
Roaming wind and roaring
darkness! seek no mercy at my hands;
I will mock the marly
heavens, lamp the purple prairies,
I will flaunt my deathless
banners down the far, unhouseled lands.
In the vast and vaulted
pine-gloom where the pillared forests frown,
By the sullen, bestial
rivers running where God only knows,
On the starlit coral
beaches when the combers thunder down,
In the death-spell of
the barrens, in the shudder of the snows;
In a blazing belt of
triumph from the palm-leaf to the pine,
As a symbol of defiance
lo! the wilderness I span;
And my beacons burn
exultant as an everlasting sign
Of unending domination,
of the mastery of Man;
I, the Life, the fierce
Uplifter, I that weaned him from the mire;
I, the angel and the
devil, I, the tyrant and the slave;
I, the Spirit of the
Struggle; I, the mighty God of Fire;
I, the Maker and Destroyer;
I, the Giver and the Grave.
II
Gather round me, boy
and grey-beard, frontiersman of every kind.
Few are you, and far
and lonely, yet an army forms behind:
By your camp-fires shall
they know you, ashes scattered to the wind.
Peer into my heart of
solace, break your bannock at my blaze;
Smoking, stretched in
lazy shelter, build your castles as you gaze;
Or, it may be, deep
in dreaming, think of dim, unhappy days.
Let my warmth and glow
caress you, for your trails are grim and hard;
Let my arms of comfort
press you, hunger-hewn and battle-scarred:
O my lovers! how I bless
you with your lives so madly marred!
For you seek the silent
spaces, and their secret lore you glean:
For you win the savage
races, and the brutish Wild you wean;
And I gladden desert
places, where camp-fire has never been.
From the Pole unto the
Tropics is there trail ye have not dared?
And because you hold
death lightly, so by death shall you be spared,
(As the sages of the
ages in their pages have declared).
On the roaring Arkilinik
in a leaky bark canoe;
Up the cloud of Mount
McKinley, where the avalanche leaps through;
In the furnace of Death
Valley, when the mirage glimmers blue.
Now a smudge of wiry
willows on the weary Kuskoquim;
Now a flare of gummy
pine-knots where Vancouver’s scaur is grim;
Now a gleam of sunny
ceiba, when the Cuban beaches dim.
Always, always God’s
Great Open: lo! I burn with keener light
In the corridors of
silence, in the vestibules of night;
’Mid the ferns
and grasses gleaming, was there ever gem so bright?
Not for weaklings, not
for women, like my brother of the hearth;
Ring your songs of wrath
around me, I was made for manful mirth,
In the lusty, gusty
greatness, on the bald spots of the earth.
Men, my masters! men,
my lovers! ye have fought and ye have bled;
Gather round my ruddy
embers, softly glowing is my bed;
By my heart of solace
dreaming, rest ye and be comforted!
III
I am dying, O my masters!
by my fitful flame ye sleep;
My purple plumes
of glory droop forlorn.
Grey ashes choke and
cloak me, and above the pines there creep
The stealthy silver
moccasins of morn.
There comes a countless
army, it’s the Legion of the Light;
It tramps in gleaming
triumph round the world;
And before its jewelled
lances all the shadows of the night
Back in to abysmal
darknesses are hurled.
Leap to life again,
my lovers! ye must toil and never tire;
The day of daring,
doing, brightens clear,
When the bed of spicy
cedar and the jovial camp-fire
Must only be a
memory of cheer.
There is hope and golden
promise in the vast portentous dawn;
There is glamour
in the glad, effluent sky:
Go and leave me; I will
dream of you and love you when you’re gone;
I have served
you, O my masters! let me die.
A little heap of ashes,
grey and sodden by the rain,
Wind-scattered,
blurred and blotted by the snow:
Let that be all to tell
of me, and glorious again,
Ye things of greening
gladness, leap and glow!
A black scar in the
sunshine by the palm-leaf or the pine,
Blind to the night
and dead to all desire;
Yet oh, of life and
uplift what a symbol and a sign!
Yet oh, of power and
conquest what a destiny is mine!
A little heap of ashes
Yea! a miracle divine,
The foot-print
of a god, all-radiant Fire.