Piper, rest! Piper, rest!
Now, a carol of the moon!
Piper, piper, play your best!

Melt the sun into your tune!

We are of the humblest grade;
Yet we dare to dance our fill:
Male and female were we made-
Fathers, mothers, lovers still !
Piper-softly; soft and low;

Pipe of love in mellow notes,

Till the tears begin to flow,

Till our hearts are in our throats.

Nameless as the stars of night
Far in galaxies unfurled,

Yet we wield unrivalled might,

Joints and hinges of the world!

Night and day! Night and day!
Sound the song the hours rehearse!
Work and play! Work and play!
The order of the universe!

Now the furnaces are out,

And the aching anvils sleep;

Down the road a merry rout
Dances homeward twenty deep.
Piper, play! Piper, play!

Wearied people though we be,
Ripe for rest, pipe your best !
For a little we are free!

A BALLAD OF HEAVEN.

He wrought at one great work for years;
The world passed by with lofty look:
Sometimes his eyes were dashed with tears;
Sometimes his lips with laughter shook.
His wife and child went clothed in rags,
And in a windy garret starved;

He trod his measures on the flags,

And high in heaven his music carved.

Wistful he grew, but never feared;
For always on the midnight skies
His rich orchestral score appeared

VOL. V.

In stars and zones and galaxies.

He thought to copy down his score; The moonlight was his lamp; he said, 'Listen, my love;' but on the floor

His wife and child were lying dead.

Her hollow eyes were open wide;

He deemed she heard with special zest: Her death's-head infant coldly eyed

The desert of her shrunken breast.

Listen, my love: my work is done;
I tremble as I touch the page

To sign the sentence of the sun,
And crown the great eternal age.

'The slow adagio begins;

The winding-sheets are ravelled out
That swathe the minds of men, the sins
That wrap their rotting souls about.

'The dead are heralded along

With silver trumps and golden drums,
And flutes and oboes, keen and strong,
My brave andante singing comes.

'Then like a python's sumptuous dress
The frame of things is cast away,
And out of Time's obscure distress,
The thundering scherzo crashes Day.

'For three great orchestras I hope

My mighty music shall be scored:

On three high hills they shall have scope
With heaven's vault for a sounding-board,

'Sleep well, love; let your eyelids fall;
Cover the child; good-night, and if . .
What? Speak . . . the traitorous end of all!
Both ... cold and hungry. cold and stiff!

6

But no, God means us well, I trust:
Dear ones, be happy, hope is nigh:
We are too young to fall to dust,
And too unsatisfied to die.'

He lifted up against his breast

The woman's body, stark and wan; And to her withered bosom pressed The little skin-clad skeleton.

'You see you are alive,' he cried.
He rocked them gently to and fro.
'No, no, my love, you have not died,
Nor you, my little fellow; no.'

Long in his arms he strained his dead,
And crooned an antique lullaby;

Then laid them on the lowly bed,
And broke down with a doleful cry.

'The love, the hope, the blood, the brain, Of her and me, the budding life,

And my great music-all in vain!

My unscored work, my child, my wife!

'We drop into oblivion,

And nourish some suburban sod:. My work, this woman, this my son. Are now no more: there is no God.

'The world's a dustbin; we are due,

And death's cart waits: be life accurst!' He stumbled down beside the two,

And clasping them, his great heart burst.

Straightway he stood at heaven's gate,
Abashed and trembling for his sin:
I trow he had not long to wait,

For God came out and led him in.

And then there ran a radiant pair,

Ruddy with haste and eager-eyed,
To meet him first upon the stair-
His wife and child beatified.

They clad him in a robe of light,
And gave him heavenly food to eat;
Great seraphs praised him to the height,
Archangels sat about his feet.

God, smiling, took him by the hand,

And led him to the brink of heaven":
He saw where systems whirling stand,"
Where galaxies like snow are driven.

Dead silence reigned; a shudder ran

Through space; Time furled his wearied wings; A slow adagio then began,

Sweetly resolving troubled things.

The dead were heralded along:

As if with drums and trumps of flame,
And flutes and oboes keen and strong,
A brave andante singing came.

Then like a python's sumptuous dress,
The frame of things was cast away,
And out of Time's obscure distress

The conquering scherzo thundered Day.

..

He doubted; but God said, 'Even so:

Nothing is lost that's wrought with tears:

The music that you' made below

Is now the music of the spheres.'

CANADIAN POETRY.

[BY PROFESSOR PELHAM EDGAR, TORONTO.]

IN writing of Canadian poetry one can be more enthusiastic in anticipation than in retrospect. We were slow in making a beginning. Until the eighties of the last century everything with us had been weakly imitative, and Howe, Heavysege, Sangster, and MacLachlan, the poets of the earlier time, are mere names in a meaningless enumeration. The poets of Lampman's generation gave us our real start, and since then we have accumulated a body of verse that is sufficiently distinguished to merit attention beyond the limits of our local boundaries.

It is mistaken kindness to expect of the transatlantic poet something naively crude and aboriginal, In any event our poets have never responded to any tacit invitation to eccentricity, and we can point to no abnormal developments born of the desire to be at all costs and hazards Canadian. In French Canada, indeed, since the passing of that eminently national poet Fréchette, the tendency has been quite in the other direction, and in the interesting work of Nelligan and Jean Morin the divorce from local influence is absolute. Our English Canadian poets of the recent time have submitted themselves to a dual control, leaving their minds open alike to the suggestions that flow in from their immediate surroundings and to the impressions inspired by contact with the world's best thought. If the imputation of provinciality still clings to us it is for the reason that we are not even yet in the main current of ideas, and our intellectual life has not yet reached the pitch of intensity that demands artistic utterance. Our early writers suffered the inevitable penalties of isolation, and not knowing where to turn for inspiration they became timid copyists of indifferent models. Their successors, with a surer sense of poetic values, have written in a spirit of free and ideal imitation, and have been wisely content to let their originality take care of itself, knowing instinctively that a distinguishing quality would inevitably communicate itself to their work either from the special conditions of their environment, or, if they were themselves not highly sensitive to local suggestion, at least from the special complexion of their own minds.