Part One
Moaning branches of the midnight, with your melancholy rune,
With the mournful, mystic music of your cries;
Wail of late November waters; mocking laughter of the loon,
That within the arms of desolation dies;
Weave your glamor through my song:
Haunt it at your doleful pleasure,
Till the woodland's wilding throng
Dance upon my page a measure.
Life and song are tired of leisure; let my rune be wild and strong.
He was Trapper One—the dead man; I am Trapper Two who write
Of the ghost that came to haunt me through the long Ungavan night.
Moaning branches of the midnight! Have ye ever heard them moan
In those wilds that God reserved to shame the soul;
When you've buried a companion and you're in a world, alone,
Where no echo from a living land can roll?
In the winter's gothic light,
When the sun's a dying ember
And the only joy of night
Is the pleasure you remember
From a merry old December when a comrade's eyes were bright,
Have ye ever heard the hemlock, underneath the wistful sky,
Chill the marrow bones of winter with the sadness of her cry?
It is midnight in December as I write these mystic lines:
And the burning branch is etching spectral walls.
In the Gordian interlacing of its intricate designs
Pleads a witchery of motion that enthralls.
In this cabin's haunt, alone,
Sole companion of my sorrow,
While the pines, in monotone,
Wail to every wind a haro
I am waiting for the morrow, all my courage overthrown;
Fearful of the endless night and the gliding form in white
That descends to chill my senses from a wild Ungavan height.
Softer than an infant's breathing is the music of the pines:
When they sing I know how Sound doth reverence God.
O'er this life's abundant discord I can hear their mellow lines
As their harpist pave, with broken strings, the sod.
Yet the pine hath lost its power
To renew my fainting spirit:
I, who loved its singing tower,
Draw my cloak and madly fear it.
I could rest but that I hear it wail her sorrow at this hour:
Wail her sorrow, and his sorrow, as the pine alone can wail
In the depths of old Ungava, on the boldest trapper's trail.
Search the symbols faintly crawling o'er this yellow scroll of birch:
Ride the dipping, curving tremor of my pen.
And the day you find me lifeless, in this cabin, gently search
For a testament to prove my words to men.
Should they challenge truth you'll find
Foil to parry in a pocket.
When you reach it, pray unwind
Someone's hair within a locket.
Hold it to mine eye's grim socket: I shall see it, dead and blind.
Would you grant a dead man bliss press it to my lips to kiss:
Though I'm dead I swear I'll kiss it with a dead man's sacred kiss.
It was years ago, in Levis—from Quebec a river's cry—
That two sons of Scotia loved a flower of France.
And they wooed her in the autumn where the forts in ruin lie
And the scarlet ranks of maple make advance,
But the end of wooing came
With the curving snow in billow;
For a zephyr blew the flame
From the roses on her pillow.
And we laid her neath the willow and the gentle springtime came,
Bringing back her thousand roses; but the fairest of them all
At the bugle cry of April never answered to the call.
But before the color faded from the petal of the rose,
I, who loved her, knew how subtle was the thorn.
When her favor chose the other all the joys of life arose
And re-clad their forms in sable, most forlorn.
For the maid with fingers fair,
In a lover's hour of leisure,
Granted him a breadth of hair
Which would mate a finger's measure:
Great enough to clasp his pleasure, big enough for my despair.
Touch thy glass to mine, O comrade, who know sorrow such as mine:
Legion of the hopeless lovers! drink with me this bitter wine.
Northward came we in an autumn; Trapper One and Trapper Two,
To a hut that tamed the wildness with its light.
And we sentineled the valleys with as treacherous a crew
As did ever clasp a velvet foot at night.
And we thinned the tribes of fur—
Never touched by brand or tiver—
In a land where not a stir
Woke the slumber of the river
Save the tamarack, ashiver, and the pheasant's startled whirr.
But the wistful waves of sky saw my comrade droop and die.
And I closed his lips aquiver with the music of goodbye.
This is all: I stole his treasure when I crudely formed his bed
In a scraping, cruel, frozen bit of ground.
And, although I ever loved him as the only link that led
Back where music of her foot made sacred sound,
Yet the love of her was more
Than the solemn vow I carried.
And though, at his bed, I swore
The sweet locket should be buried
All my good resolves miscarried: and I almost madly tore
From his throat the silken compact: Life had given him her breath:
Was I wrong to press my warm lips on the thing he claimed in death?
I was happy with my comfort though I kept a dead man's right.
(Could he care, asleep beneath the forest floor?)
I would seek that Ancient City when the springtime's balmy light
Fell on basking babies through the open door.
But a night when clouds, aflush,
Paled to pink, and amber after,
Laughed a loon, across the hush,
With her revenantic laughter
Rising wild and growing dafter as it wailed above the rush.
And a warning in her message made me look across the night
Where I saw the damning spirit in its gleaming robe of white.
Moving like a light o' lantern o'er the bare cliff's rugged face:
(Walls of rock so sheer the snow could never cling)
With a melancholy motion, that was spectral in its grace,
Fled the sprite; if ghost you call a nameless thing.
I had often hurled the boast,
When I made the circle's number,
That a spectre or a ghost
Was a phantasy of slumber;
Or a gentle myth to cumber timid children at the most.
But my boastful lips grew silent and my heart did wildly thrill
When I first beheld the phantom moving slowly up the hill.
He had said a thing should haunt me if I broke his last request:
But I always scorned his necromantic brain.
Could a wisp of hair and locket, stolen from a lifeless breast,
Have the power to call a spirit back again.
So, in anger, I did cry:
“'Tis my fancy sees the spirit:
To the ghostly ledge I'll fly:
And, since folly bids me fear it,
I will look not up till near it lest my resolution die.”
But anear the crag I stumbled and the partridge rose in flock:
And a silver elk—the vision—I beheld against the rock.
Soon my rifle soiled that silver with the crimson's piteous mark:
And the phantom was a legend with its flash.
And I washed the ruddy satin as, at eventide, the dark
From the silvern cloud doth wash the scarlet splash.
And I hung the fur on high;
And grew festive o'er the savor,
As the flame, with eager cry,
Freed the haunch's garish flavor.
Smack of wintergreen for favor: e'en the breezes passing by
Carried through the night its fragrance: such a zest as might enthuse
E'en the jaded lip of Gotham, lashed beneath the spice's ruse.
Fool was I: no sprite pays homage to the lucent leap o' lead.
'Twas a phantom and my brother had not lied.
Not an evening since my feasting but the silver elk hath fled
Through the darkness with the mark upon its side.
I have prayed a day's respite
But the breezes laugh in answer;
While the snow in wraith of white
Whirls beside me like a dancer.
And a pale and stately Lancer rides to meet me through the night.
Brief the season I can brave it for the hours are strange and cold;
And my spirit feels the burden of a heart that's growing old.
With the mournful, mystic music of your cries;
Wail of late November waters; mocking laughter of the loon,
That within the arms of desolation dies;
Weave your glamor through my song:
Haunt it at your doleful pleasure,
Till the woodland's wilding throng
Dance upon my page a measure.
Life and song are tired of leisure; let my rune be wild and strong.
He was Trapper One—the dead man; I am Trapper Two who write
Of the ghost that came to haunt me through the long Ungavan night.
Moaning branches of the midnight! Have ye ever heard them moan
In those wilds that God reserved to shame the soul;
When you've buried a companion and you're in a world, alone,
Where no echo from a living land can roll?
In the winter's gothic light,
When the sun's a dying ember
And the only joy of night
Is the pleasure you remember
From a merry old December when a comrade's eyes were bright,
Have ye ever heard the hemlock, underneath the wistful sky,
Chill the marrow bones of winter with the sadness of her cry?
It is midnight in December as I write these mystic lines:
And the burning branch is etching spectral walls.
In the Gordian interlacing of its intricate designs
Pleads a witchery of motion that enthralls.
In this cabin's haunt, alone,
Sole companion of my sorrow,
While the pines, in monotone,
Wail to every wind a haro
I am waiting for the morrow, all my courage overthrown;
Fearful of the endless night and the gliding form in white
That descends to chill my senses from a wild Ungavan height.
Softer than an infant's breathing is the music of the pines:
When they sing I know how Sound doth reverence God.
O'er this life's abundant discord I can hear their mellow lines
As their harpist pave, with broken strings, the sod.
Yet the pine hath lost its power
To renew my fainting spirit:
I, who loved its singing tower,
Draw my cloak and madly fear it.
I could rest but that I hear it wail her sorrow at this hour:
Wail her sorrow, and his sorrow, as the pine alone can wail
In the depths of old Ungava, on the boldest trapper's trail.
Search the symbols faintly crawling o'er this yellow scroll of birch:
Ride the dipping, curving tremor of my pen.
And the day you find me lifeless, in this cabin, gently search
For a testament to prove my words to men.
Should they challenge truth you'll find
Foil to parry in a pocket.
When you reach it, pray unwind
Someone's hair within a locket.
Hold it to mine eye's grim socket: I shall see it, dead and blind.
Would you grant a dead man bliss press it to my lips to kiss:
Though I'm dead I swear I'll kiss it with a dead man's sacred kiss.
It was years ago, in Levis—from Quebec a river's cry—
That two sons of Scotia loved a flower of France.
And they wooed her in the autumn where the forts in ruin lie
And the scarlet ranks of maple make advance,
But the end of wooing came
With the curving snow in billow;
For a zephyr blew the flame
From the roses on her pillow.
And we laid her neath the willow and the gentle springtime came,
Bringing back her thousand roses; but the fairest of them all
At the bugle cry of April never answered to the call.
But before the color faded from the petal of the rose,
I, who loved her, knew how subtle was the thorn.
When her favor chose the other all the joys of life arose
And re-clad their forms in sable, most forlorn.
For the maid with fingers fair,
In a lover's hour of leisure,
Granted him a breadth of hair
Which would mate a finger's measure:
Great enough to clasp his pleasure, big enough for my despair.
Touch thy glass to mine, O comrade, who know sorrow such as mine:
Legion of the hopeless lovers! drink with me this bitter wine.
Northward came we in an autumn; Trapper One and Trapper Two,
To a hut that tamed the wildness with its light.
And we sentineled the valleys with as treacherous a crew
As did ever clasp a velvet foot at night.
And we thinned the tribes of fur—
Never touched by brand or tiver—
In a land where not a stir
Woke the slumber of the river
Save the tamarack, ashiver, and the pheasant's startled whirr.
But the wistful waves of sky saw my comrade droop and die.
And I closed his lips aquiver with the music of goodbye.
This is all: I stole his treasure when I crudely formed his bed
In a scraping, cruel, frozen bit of ground.
And, although I ever loved him as the only link that led
Back where music of her foot made sacred sound,
Yet the love of her was more
Than the solemn vow I carried.
And though, at his bed, I swore
The sweet locket should be buried
All my good resolves miscarried: and I almost madly tore
From his throat the silken compact: Life had given him her breath:
Was I wrong to press my warm lips on the thing he claimed in death?
I was happy with my comfort though I kept a dead man's right.
(Could he care, asleep beneath the forest floor?)
I would seek that Ancient City when the springtime's balmy light
Fell on basking babies through the open door.
But a night when clouds, aflush,
Paled to pink, and amber after,
Laughed a loon, across the hush,
With her revenantic laughter
Rising wild and growing dafter as it wailed above the rush.
And a warning in her message made me look across the night
Where I saw the damning spirit in its gleaming robe of white.
Moving like a light o' lantern o'er the bare cliff's rugged face:
(Walls of rock so sheer the snow could never cling)
With a melancholy motion, that was spectral in its grace,
Fled the sprite; if ghost you call a nameless thing.
I had often hurled the boast,
When I made the circle's number,
That a spectre or a ghost
Was a phantasy of slumber;
Or a gentle myth to cumber timid children at the most.
But my boastful lips grew silent and my heart did wildly thrill
When I first beheld the phantom moving slowly up the hill.
He had said a thing should haunt me if I broke his last request:
But I always scorned his necromantic brain.
Could a wisp of hair and locket, stolen from a lifeless breast,
Have the power to call a spirit back again.
So, in anger, I did cry:
“'Tis my fancy sees the spirit:
To the ghostly ledge I'll fly:
And, since folly bids me fear it,
I will look not up till near it lest my resolution die.”
But anear the crag I stumbled and the partridge rose in flock:
And a silver elk—the vision—I beheld against the rock.
Soon my rifle soiled that silver with the crimson's piteous mark:
And the phantom was a legend with its flash.
And I washed the ruddy satin as, at eventide, the dark
From the silvern cloud doth wash the scarlet splash.
And I hung the fur on high;
And grew festive o'er the savor,
As the flame, with eager cry,
Freed the haunch's garish flavor.
Smack of wintergreen for favor: e'en the breezes passing by
Carried through the night its fragrance: such a zest as might enthuse
E'en the jaded lip of Gotham, lashed beneath the spice's ruse.
Fool was I: no sprite pays homage to the lucent leap o' lead.
'Twas a phantom and my brother had not lied.
Not an evening since my feasting but the silver elk hath fled
Through the darkness with the mark upon its side.
I have prayed a day's respite
But the breezes laugh in answer;
While the snow in wraith of white
Whirls beside me like a dancer.
And a pale and stately Lancer rides to meet me through the night.
Brief the season I can brave it for the hours are strange and cold;
And my spirit feels the burden of a heart that's growing old.
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