Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse

Stella Flammarum

William Wilfred Campbell (1861–1918)

STRANGE Wanderer out of the deeps,

Whence, journeying, come you?

From what far, unsunned sleeps

Did fate foredoom you,

Returning for ever again

Through the surgings of man,

A flaming, awesome portent of dread

Down the centuries’ span?

Riddle! from the dark unwrung

By all earth’s sages;

God’s fiery torch from His hand outflung,

To flame through the ages:

Thou Satan of planets eterne,

’Mid angry path,

Chained, in circlings vast, to burn

Out ancient wrath.

By what dread hand first loosed

From fires eternal?

With majesties dire infused

Of force supernal,

Takest thy headlong way

O’er the highways of space?

Oh, wonderful, blossoming flower of fear

On the sky’s far face!

What secrets of destiny’s will

In thy wild burning?

What portent dire of humanity’s ill

In thy returning?

Or art thou brand of love

In masking of bale?

And bringest thou ever some mystical surcease

For all who wail?

Perchance, O Visitor dread,

Thou hast thine appointed

Task, thou bolt of the vasts outsped!

With God’s anointed,

Performest some endless toil

In the universe wide:

Feeding or curing some infinite need

Where the vast worlds ride.

Once, only once, thy face

Will I view in this breathing;

Just for a space thy majesty trace

’Mid earth’s mad seething:

Ere I go hence to my place,

As thou to thy deeps;

Thou flambent core of a universe dread,

Where all else sleeps.

But thou and man’s spirit are one:

Thou poet! Thou flaming

Soul of the dauntless sun,

Past all reclaiming!

One in that red unrest,

That yearning, that surge,

That mounting surf of the infinite dream

O’er eternity’s verge.