He took the cross-road. Where I saw him go Wild fever-few made narrow paths of snow Through the flat fields of dying afternoon. Bravely in tune With every little part as with some whole A red wing answered to an oriole And met a cat bird’s call. The sun! The sun! The road to Kilbourn like a long green hall! The very air a spirit like our own So nearly shown That one could almost see. The veil so thin that presence was outrayed. But all the great blue day came facing me, And crying from the vault and from the sod: “Oh God, oh God. ‘_I’d like_,’ he said, ‘_to learn the artist trade!_’” II VIOLIN One night on some light errand I sat beside The cooking-stove in Johann’s sitting-room. Within there was the cheer of lamp and fire, The stove-draught yawning red and wide, The table with its rosy cotton spread, A blue chair-cover from a home-land loom, A baby’s bed. And in that odour of cleanliness and food Johann, the labourer worthy of his hire For seven days a week, twelve hours a day At some vague toil “down in the yard.” “Hard? What o’ that? Look at the luck I’ve got to keep the place And draw my pay.” He had been strong And still his body kept its ruggedness. Yet he was old and stiffened and he moved As one who is wrapped round in something thick. But O, his face, His face was like the faces that look out From bark and hole of trees all marred and grooved, All laid about With old varieties of silence and of wrong. Such faces are locked long In men, in stones, in wood, in earth, Awaiting birth. And Johann’s face was less Expectant than the happy dead awaiting to become the quick. His wife said much about how hard she tried. She chattered high and shrill About the burden and the eating ill. His mother, little, thin, half-blind and cross, With scarlet flannel round her throat, Put in her note, Muttered about the cold, the draught, her side---- Small ineffectual chants of little loss, With never a word Of the great gossip which she had not heard: That life had passed her by. The little room beset me like the din And prick of scourges. All At once I looked upon the spattered wall And saw a violin.