The candle in the cabin :: :: University of Virginia Library

THE BEGINNING OF THE FOREST-RANGER'S HONEYMOON

THE HOUR OF FATE

The First Song of the Forest-Ranger's Honeymoon

The log cabin hearth fire dies away;
The embers turn to ashes, and we wait;
It is the hour of fate.

Here, by these two dim candles, we bend,
Each to each, at the riotous day's end.

Oh, the tremendous leaping of our souls
At dawn this morning because of the mountains' gold!
Till we improvised in song: meter and rhyme.
Oh, the tremendous leaping of ambition
When new strength came with the wind, and the high climb.
How we planned and plotted against gloom,
Against the sorrows of the world and time,
The gray hairs of the years,
The sod of the grave.
How we planned and plotted against tears.

Now we remember the red rocks at noon,
The great blue rivers and the yellow moss;
Now we remember the white aspen bowers;
Now we remember the purple lake, and how we swam across;

Now we remember the crimson Indian paint;
Now we remember the orange autumn leaves.
The embers turn to ashes and we wait.
It is the hour of fate.
Either the mighty bridal hour or the closing of love's gate.

BY AN OLD UNLIGHTED CANDLE

By an old
Unlighted candle in the cabin
In the moonlight
Strange flowers
Went up like arrows
Shot into the air.

Love-darts sprang up
By an old unlighted
Candle in a cabin
In the moonlight.

FINDING THE MYSTERIOUS CABIN

The Forest-Ranger's Honeymoon

We found an empty cabin
By a bend in the river,
In a forest of poplars, of aspens, lodge-pole pines,
In a circle of the steepest cliffs our eyes had ever known,
All of weird designs.
The narrowest, strangest valley
Our souls might hope to own,
Full of bewitching signs,
And deep as to the center of the earth
It seemed this morning
As we peeped down round the pass,
To take the reckoning,
And watch the dawn adorning
Glacial snow and grass.

Here in the empty cabin, we found our heart's delight,
And whispered plans to make the world all rhyme;
And whispered plans to find the golden heart of this strange time;
And planned deep deeds in this deep place
Throughout the forest night.

THE JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH

The Forest-Ranger's Honeymoon

Going-to-the-Sun is Going-to-To-morrow,
Going-to-Adventure, “with bells on,” as it were.
Once upon a time,
We had a strange adventure,
When we were dressed in feathers, leaves, and fur.

We found a very deep and quite extinct volcano,
With many circles of tall spruce around it,
And devil's club around it.
On and down we wandered when we found it;
Round and round we climbed inside around it.

The volcano was so wide
The eagles soared across it;
The echoes of its corridors were wonderful to hear;
And when we threw down pebbles, the thunder kept increasing,
And sent a deep earth trumpeting, to the inner ear.

Round and down we wandered,
Hand in hand kept going,
Eating huckleberries and blueberries all the way;
Killed and cooked big game, as down and down we wandered,

Till the blazing hour of noon was all we had of day.

All the flowers of Glacier Park bloomed down to the center.
A whispering wildcat soon made friends, and led us farther down.
He beckoned and he whined,
He skipped and rolled and signed,
With manners like a chipmunk's,—
Until he brought us to a wildcat-town.

Each cat had a tree,
Each cat had a cave,
Each cat took his turn at keeping deer, on the slope.
They fed us on deer's blood;—
They were like old friendly Indians,
And sent us farther earthward, with good-will signs, and hope.

In and down we wandered, following little streams,
Finding jeweled pebbles and Aztec designs
On the mattocks and the picks and drills of the jewel mines.

In and down we wandered,
Past many jeweled wonders,
And as the shadows tried us,

And as the nights grew longer,
The fireflies flew before us.
We lit brush fires to guide us,
We carried tall pine torches,
And the fireflies helped beside....
And then new lights began to shine
On a phosphorescent tree,
That was our guide.

A tree like a giant aspen
That grew on a narrow roadway—
One side of each aspen leaf shone with silvery white;
Who had put the trees here
In a winding path transcendent
To guide us when the sun no more gave light?

The way was never lonely,
The way was never weary,
For we had one another and loved as now to-day.
The wonders all went past us,
We played and we adventured,
And took it all for granted, as this cabin here to-day.
We do not know who built it,
It seems left for half a century.
Its history in the forest is as unknown and as strange
As that wild lost volcano we found behind the range.

Down and down we wandered,
The aspens, giant candles,
Lit our way as these two candles
Light our shack to-night.
We had our loving there as here,
Our big pine beds of hearts' delight,
And love's eternal rite.

Down and down we wandered,
To the wild earth's center.
There we found strange bluebell flowers whose music could be heard,
And wore them for our pleasure,
Frolicked and were absurd.
And there we found a nest of birds with eggs big as the moon,
Round as the moon.
They broke their bright shells singing,
And soon with father and mother,
Up the whirling whirl were winging,
Up the whirling fantasy
Were whirling, soaring, singing soon.

One of them stayed to beckon,
One of them stayed to whisper,
Just as the wildcat whispered,

With manners like a chipmunk, though as big as any moon.
There, with bluebells all over us,
He tied us to one feather,
And then all three together
Went up, went up, to his volcano tune.

Cry of a lost volcano!
Cry of the dear earth's center!
Cry of a dream volcano, where the fire is now a bird,
A bird and yet a giant ghost, singing a giant word!
A word that means great bird-love,
A word that means bright nesting,
A word that means dim wings of fire,
And love and vast unspent desire.
And this he sang, as on he sprang;
He was tender with us, too,
And left us here beside this shack, while he leaped into the blue,
And we waved at him with bluebells
While he leaped into the blue.

We called him “Going-to-the-Sun”
And “Going-to-To-morrow.”
If these were our adventures, in our silly yesterday,
(With bells on, with bells on)

We are going to adventure now,
Going-to-To-morrow;
And it is just past midnight, and the candle flames are gay.

The great fire-logs are roaring,
Whispering and singing
The love song of to-morrow and adventure and new day.
Going-to-the-Sun is Going-to-To-morrow
And is going out to frolic and to play.