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And the black wraiths swoon upon the bright opening sea. With blood of his proud throat crimsoning the eastern sky The great Stag of the Dark in the van falls dying.

Here was I chief ere the coming of the white man;
Now is his village spread from this sea beyond my sight.
His canoes are floating villages;

They go by with a great noise and a black smoke.

His deeds are mighty; they leap with roaring clouds and thunder-fires

Into the blue quiet morning and the white moon-sky.

Yet have I heard no sound mightier

Than the sun shattering the night

On thy stone shoulder, Capilano.

Yet have I seen no sight more wonderful and fair

Than the coming of the light,

When Day, the silver-winged gull, down-swooping finds the

sea.

Yet have I known no thing sweeter, stronger,

Than the smell of piney winds and blue rippling sea-water, And the kindness of Kunāë-Kia, the living One,

Waking the heart of the old chief

To another dawn of life.

Constance Lindsay Skinner

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Old Man, or Lad's-love-in the name there's nothing
To one that knows not Lad's-love, or Old Man:
The hoar-green feathery herb, almost a tree,
Growing with rosemary and lavender.

Even to one that knows it well, the names
Half decorate, half perplex, the thing it is:
At least, what that is clings not to the name
In spite of time. And yet I like the names.

The herb itself I like not, but for certain
I love it, as some day the child will love it
Who plucks a feather from the door-side bush
Whenever she goes in or out of the house.
Often she waits there, snipping the tips and shrivelling
The shreds at last on to the path, perhaps
Thinking, perhaps of nothing, till she sniffs
Her fingers and runs off. The bush is still
But half as tall as she, though it is as old-
So well she clips it. Not a word she says;
And I can only wonder how much hereafter
She will remember, with that bitter scent,
Of garden rows, and ancient damson-trees
Topping a hedge, a bent path to a door,
A low thick bush beside the door, and me
Forbidding her to pick.

As for myself,

Where first I met the bitter scent, is lost.

I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds,

Sniff them and think and sniff again, and try
Once more to think what it is I am remembering,
Always in vain. I cannot like the scent,

Yet I would rather give up others more sweet,
With no meaning, than this bitter one.

I have mislaid the key. I sniff the spray
And think of nothing; I see and I hear nothing;
Yet seem, too, to be listening, lying in wait
For what I should, yet never can, remember:
No garden appears, no path, no hoar-green bush
Of Lad's-love, or Old Man, no child beside,
Neither father nor mother, nor any playmate;
Only an avenue, dark, nameless, without end.

THE WORD

There are so many things I have forgot, That once were much to me, or that were notAll lost, as is a childless woman's child

And its child's children, in the undefiled

Abyss of what can never be again.

I have forgot, too, names of the mighty men
That fought and lost or won in the old wars;

Of kings and fiends and gods, and most of the stars.

The Word

Some things I have forgot that I forget.

But lesser things there are, remembered yet,
Than all the others. One name that I have not-
Though 'tis an empty thingless name-forgot
Never can die because spring after spring
Some thrushes learn to say it as they sing.
There is always one at midday saying it clear
And tart-the name, only the name I hear.
While perhaps I am thinking of the elder scent
That is like food; or while I am content
With the wild rose scent that is like memory,
This name suddenly is cried out to me
From somewhere in the bushes by a bird.
Over and over again, a pure thrush word.

THE UNKNOWN

She is most fair;

And when they see her pass

The poets' ladies

Look no more in the glass,

But after her.

On a bleak moor

Running under the moon

She lures a poet,

Once proud or happy, soon

Far from his door.

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