Charles Heavysege

"This very unequal but at his best truly noteworthy poet was a Canadian, and distinctly the most original writer in verse whom the Dominion has produced. His sonnets (generally irregular and sometimes consisting merely of seven rhymed couplets) are mainly comprised in the volume called Jephthah's Daughter. Heavysege is best known, both in Canada and Great Britain, by his tragedy Saul." (Sharp)

The Face of Charles Heavysege by Sandra Campbell (from Canadian Poetry).

Night
The Dead
Beyond the Sunset
Winter Skies
The Coming of Morn
The Stream
The Mystery of Doom
The Fallen Angels
Winter Night
Clouds

Night

'Tis solemn darkness; the sublime of shade;

Night, by no stars nor rising moon relieved;

The awful blank of nothingness arrayed,

O'er which my eye-balls roll in vain, deceived.

Upward, around, and downward I explore,

E'en to the frontiers of the ebon air,

But cannot, though I strive, discover more

Than what seems one huge cavern of despair.

Oh, Night, art thou so grim, when, black and bare

Of moonbeams, and no cloudlets to adorn,

Like a nude Ethiop 'twixt two houris fair,

Thou stand'st between the evening and the morn?

I took thee for an angel, but have wooed

A cacodaemon in mine ignorant mood.

The Dead

How great unto the living seem the dead!

How sacred, solemn; how heroic grown;

How vast and vague, as they obscurely tread

The shadowy confines of the dim unknown!--

For they have met the monster that we dread,

Have learned the secret not to mortal shown.

E'en as gigantic shadows on the wall

The spirit of the daunted child amaze,

So on us thoughts of the departed fall,

And with phantasma fill our gloomy gaze.

Awe and deep wonder lend the living lines,

And hope and ecstasy the borrowed beams;

While fitful fancy the full form divines,

And all is what imagination dreams.

Beyond the Sunset

Hushed in a calm beyond mine utterance,

See in the western sky the evening spread;

Suspended in its pale, serene expanse,

Like scattered flames, the glowing cloudlets red.

Clear are those clouds, and that pure sky's profound,

Transparent as a lake of hyaline;

Nor motion, nor the faintest breath of sound,

Disturbs the steadfast beauty of the scene.

Far o'er the vault the winnowed welkin wide,

From the bronzed east unto the whitened west,

Moored, seem, in their sweet, tranquil, roseate pride,

Those clouds the fabled islands of the blest;--

The lands where pious spirits breathe in joy,

And love and worship all their hoiurs employ.

Winter Skies

The stars are glittering in the frosty sky,

Numerous as pebbles on a broad sea-coast;

And o'er the vault the cloud-like galaxy

Has marshalled its innumerable host.

Alive all heaven seems! with wondrous glow

Tenfold refulgent every star appears,

As if some wide, celestial gale did blow,

And thrice illume the ever-kindled spheres.

Orbs, with glad orbs rejoicing, burning, beam

Ray-crowned, with lambent lustre in their zones,

Till o'er the blue, bespangled spaces seem

Angels and great archangels on their thrones;

A host divine, whose eyes are sparkling gems,

And forms more bright than diamond diadems.

The Coming of Morn

See how the Morn awakes. Along the sky

Proceeds she with her pale, increasing light,

And, from the depths of the dim canopy,

Drives out the shadows of departing night.

Lo, the clouds break, and gradually more wide

Morn openeth her bright, rejoicing gates;

And ever, as the orient valves divide,

A costlier aspect on their breadth awaits.

Lo, the clouds break, and in each opened schism

The coming Phoebus lays huge beams of gold,

And roseate fire and glories that the prism

Would vainly strive before us to unfold;

And, while I gaze, from out the bright abysm

A flaming disc is to the horizon rolled.

The Stream

'Twas Sabbath morn. I lay 'neath pensive spell,

And saw, in reverie or waking dream,

My life elapse, in likeness of a stream

That in a slant and steady torrent fell,

As if it gushed beneath the force supreme

Of some high reservoir or lofty well.

E'en such a stream I saw as, from a bank

Verdant with mosses and perpetual dank,

I have observed leap forth when heavy rains

Have, through the uplands filtered, fed earth's veins

To bursting. This I saw with troubled eye,

Anticipating when the stream no more

In ceaseless, crystalline cascade should pour,

But sudden stop, or slowly dribble dry.

The Mystery of Doom

'Twas on a day, and in high, radiant heaven,

An angel lay beside a lake reclined,

Against whose shores the rolling waves were driven,

And beat the measure to the dancing wind.

There, rapt, he meditated on that story

Of how Jehovah did of yore expel

Heaven's aborigines from grace and glory,--

Those mighty angels that did dare rebel.

And, as he mused upon their dread abode

And endless penance, from his drooping hands

His harp sank down, and scattered all abroad

Its rosy garland on the golden sands;

His soul mute wondering that the All-wise Spirit

Should have allowed the doom of such demerit.

The Fallen Angels