The Call of the Mountains

and other Poems

By

James E. Pickering

Author of
"The King's Temptation," "The Cap of Care," etc.

London
A. C. Fifield, Clifford's Inn, E.C.
1913

PRINTED BY
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PLYMOUTH

The Cap of Care

By

James E. Pickering

Grey Board Series, No. 18. 1s. net

"Mr. Pickering's metrical faculties are as deft and cunning as those of anyone now writing verse."—Athenæum.

A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.C.

Contents

The Call of the Mountains
The Old Manor House
The Science Master
Through the Centuries
Winter
Pain and Death
Switzerland
Burial at Sea
The Master of the Marionettes
Love's Counterfeit
The Most Precious Thing
Autumn
To L
Duty

Sonnets

Glastonbury
Galileo
Stratford-on-Avon
To a Daffodil
The Appian Way
From the Fields
Vénus de Milo
Fire

The Call of the Mountains

Under the shade of the Kursaal veranda
Idly I follow the flight of the seagulls,
Gleaming like snow when their wings catch the sunshine,
While from the palm-house adjacent is wafted
Music half drowned in a babel of voices,
Fitting the mode of this temple of follies.

Far though the mountains, their influence, ever
Changeful in temper, from sombre to smiling,
Constant in wileful and mystic allurement,
Rouses unrest and a strange fascination.

Limpid and blue are the waters of Leman
Clear in the deepness, translucent and shining,
Blue as the ether's ineffable azure,
Bright in the glow of the midsummer sunshine.
Cleaving the air with their palpitant pinions,
Wheeling and drifting, the beautiful seagulls
Fly with the grace of unconscious perfection,
Crying exultant and wild in a chorus.

Are you not fit for the realm of immortals,
To float on the winds of the gardens Elysian?
Or must you hover a little while longer—
Wandering souls in a state of probation—
Half-way uplifted beyond our defilement,
Half-way removed from the land of the blessed?

Far in the distance beyond the blue water,
Rises the hoary old father of mountains,
Rugged and scarred with antiquity's furrows,
Crowned with the snows of a million winters.
Low in the shade of his ponderous presence,
Dappling the slopes, are the homesteads of peasants,
Each with its cloud of blue vapour ascending:
And sweetly the bells across the green pastures
Answer each other with voices persistent,
Telling the herdsman the tale of his charges.
Grim is the smile of the white-headed mountain
For toilers below in the slumbering valley,
Grim is the glance with a touch of derision,
Seeming to say to his towering brothers—
Catogne and the broad-shouldered heights of the Midi,
"Iguanodon,—Mastodon,—Man,—in their passing
Serve but as signs on the path of the ages."
Softly the plash of the waters of Leman
Sounds from the rough-tumbled stones at its margin:
Gently the zephyrs play over its surface,
Making it glitter with myriads of sparklets.
Swiftly the barques trim their sails in the sunshine—
Sails high and slender that swell to the breezes,
White as the snow on the breast of the Jungfrau—
Mirrored in whiteness upon the blue water.

As I sat watching the lake and the mountains,
Slowly a haze like a curtain of muslin,
Flimsy and fine like a texture of cobweb,
Drifted and rose till it shut out the bases
And bulk of the mountains across the still water,
Whilst high above it the crests and sierras
Stood out as castles and walls of enchantment,
Raised in the air like king Solomon's city,
Held up aloft by invisible genii.
Then in the faintly drawn lines of escarpment,
Battlements, pinnacles, turrets and bastions
Sprang into being, and fancy, untrammelled,
Pictured a palace with walls, and a fortress
Beleaguered and stormed by a shadowy army,
Massed under pennons seen dim through the vapour.

Over the drawbridge a desperate sortie
Made by the knights of the castle invested
Brings the foes quickly in conflict