Sarah Binks

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71It was during the interval between their meeting and the trip to Regina that Sarah wrote "Me and My Love and Me". She had ample time to write. Henry was engaged in selling the elder Binks a number of tooth harrows, of which the farm already had several but which both Jacob Binks and Ole loved to have around the yard and in the various fields. But it was not a period of great literary activity for Sarah. Only two poems have come down to us from +his interval, but these two must be counted among the finest� not only of Saskatchewan, but of the whole of western Canada, In "Me and My Love and Me" Sarah expresses in tones at once lyrical and subdued, her inner harmony with life.Me and My Love and Me.Over the moor at dusk there fled The dismal clouds, and we, Pacing the rain, with might and main, Me and my love and me.The sea-gull screamed, the reeds were bent, But hand-in-hand the three, We hurried on � going against wind, Me and my love and me.There is a gentle strain of melancholy running through this poem which has led Sir Gelding Blitherstrip to compare her to the Russians, especially to Pupkin. But the comparison is rather far-fetched. Whereas Pupkin's melancholy arises from his unfortunate habit of drinking a mixture of wood alcohol and turpentine, Sarah's melancholy is one of joyous resignation. One need only to read the other poem of this period to realise that Sarah's melancholy is neither the Kwas of the Russians nor the Weltschmertz of the Germans. Perhaps it is the joie de vivre of the French. In any case all great poetry is inter-
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72national. In this "The Song of the Chore", too well knownto he quoted in full, Sarah rises on splendid wings and undoubtedly sets a new all-time record for lyrical height.The Song of the Chore.I sing the song of the simple chore, Of quitting the downy bed at four, And chipping ice from the stable door � Of the simple chore I sing:To the forty below at break of day, To climbing up,and throwing down hay, To cleaning out and carting away, A paean of praise I bring.Oh, its time to milk or its time to not, Oh, its time for breakfast and time I got The pot of coffee in the coffee pot � I sing of the chore, "Hurray"! Oh, it's time for this and it's time for that, For mending unending end tending the brat � And it's time to turn in and put out the cat. To-morrow's another day.Thus the Sweet Songstress in her hour of happiness. But Sarah was not to sing again for many a long day; her joy, her exuberance, her delight in the simple things, in Rover, in Ole, in the perennial calf, all were swept away in the rush of events which followed.We do not know for certain how long Sarah spent in Regina. Professor Marrowfat, who for once treats Sarah sympathetically, even enthusiastically, limits the period to two and a half weeks. Doctor Taj Mahal, always a stickler for exactitude, has made a careful study of the railroad time tables of that period, and comes to the conclusion that the visit could not have lasted over a week, whereas Miss Rosalind Drool stretches it out to a full three weeks. Taking into account the personal error to which even the most careful investigators are
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73subject, we may safely conclude that two weeks represent the length of Sarah's visit. But what crowded weeks! In that interval Sarah and Henry Welkin visited all the places of interest. Twice they went to the opera. Again and again they rode on Regina's street car. The cafes, Chinatown, the Botanical Gardens, the Union station � Henry Welkin was eager that his young protege should drink life to the full. He took her to the aquarium and to the public library, and together they studied what fish and what manuscripts were available at these places. They made the rounds of the art galleries; they visited the parliament building and studied its geology. Nor was the world of commerce neglected; together they visited the department stores, the groceterias, the banks, the freight yards, and the big implement warehouse of the firm which Henry represented and which he was particularly anxious for her to see. Sarah drank it all in. She was eager and she had youth. But human nature, and especially a nature so human as Sarah's, can encompass only so much. From willows to Regina was a far bigger step than she had anticipated.It may be that Henry Welkin erred in judgement in showing her so much in so short a time. Had he not gone so fast and so far the history of literature in Saskatchewan might have been different, not so rich, perhaps, nor so deep, but different. Already the inevitable reaction was setting in for Sarah. She was growing: tired, one might almost say irritable. Certainly her reaction to Wascana Lake as a "mean little puddle, I could spit across it" is not the reaction of the Sarah we know to the great works of nature, and on the occasion of their visit to the implement warehouse on the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day it is believed that she was saddened by the sight of so much farm machinery. She hints as much in one of her letters to Mathilda, but also adds with some of her old-time recklessness and
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spirit," . . .I'm danged if it wasn't interesting."The visit was drawing to a close. Henry Welkin, probably inspired more than usual by the presence of the young authoress, decided upon some creative work of his own and took to the pen. Some confusion exists here as to the exact use of the terms "took to the pen" and "was took", terms which Sarah so often with careless indifference to the active and passive uses interchangeably in her letters. Marrowfat understands the term "was took" to mean that Sarah's influence was so great upon Henry Welkin that he was no longer able to resist the urge to write ; "In using the passive mood", says Marrowfat, "Sarah was undoubtedly expressing her own at the same time.Sarah herself must often have been aware of some inner necessity".Took, or was took, Sarah returned to the farm and literature was thrown for a loss of many yards. It is difficult to form a correct judgement of Henry Welkin and the part he played in Sarah's life, Mr. Justice Linseed, who recalls him in his book, "Eighty Years on the Bench", speaks of him as a man of diversified talents, and adds, "...had he employed his great gifts in public life, he might have become Premier, or at least leader of the opposition."
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75CHAPTER VIII. THE DARK HOUR.Regina had been too much for Sarah. She went into a literary decline which lasted for months and from which even her nearest friends seemed unable to arouse her. It marks a sharp line between the two periods of her work which scholars generally refer to as Pre-Regina, and Post-Regina, or more simply, P.R. and P.R., respectively. Sarah herself refers to this period between the two P.R. periods as "My Dark Hour". For a while she wrote nothing, and where she writes at all she strikes the pessimistic note, sometimes even the macabre. What shall one say of THEY AROSE, or I BURIED MY LOVE AT DAWN, or even of HIGH ON A CLIFF? There is something not entirely Saskatchewan in these verses, and the fragment,With grief engraven on my soul, I cannot roll in glee, The robin's note is but a dirge, The biscuit-bird grits me.touches the subsoil of human depression. "It is more than her DarkHour" cries Principal Pinhole in despairing tones, "it is DarkestAfrica".It is no mere coincidence that the manuscript of TAKE ME AWAY should be stained with tears, or what appear to be tears, for although later chemical analysis showed these to be butter and rhubarb jam, it does not alter the fact that in this period was her darkest moment. In TAKE HE AWAY she resists life's strongest appeal, that of food;
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76TAKE ME AWAY.Take me away, my eyes are red with weeping, Leave me alone, I cannot, cannot stay; Though you may offer these many things for eating � Take me away.Take me away, I feel I must he going, Hold me not back, I will not brook delay, See. look, my red-rimmed eyes ere glowing � Take me away.Take me away, in vain this voice appealing, I'll not remain; in vain I hear you say "It's early yet," my footsteps outward stealing � Take me away.Sarah descends to her darkest in that trilogy, ( Sarah was fond of trilogies) THEY AROSE, I BURIED MY LOVE AT DAWN, and HIGH ON ACLIFFTHEY AROSE.They arose, three dead men. Stiff and dank, From the gloomy depths Of a water tank; And they bowed full soon To the rising moon, For the one was Bill, And the other two, Hank.I BURIED MY LOVE AT DAWN.I buried my Love it dawn, And the bleak November wind, wailed low, "He is gone, he is gone" And the crow on the skeleton bough, Croaked, "He is gone, he is gone � " Alone on the heath I buried him, My Love, my Soul � and the song Of the wind and the crow still rings in my heart, Tolls like a distant "bell in my heart; "He is gone, he is gone, he is gone � "
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HIGH ON A CLIFF.High on a cliff of jasper and of quartz, I Bate at noon and looked upon the sea, And gazed with leaden eyes upon my Love, Drifting beyond this seeming world and me, My Love, in pinchback coat and new plug hat, Drifting upon an amber glowing sea; And glowing too, in the noonday sun, Three fountain pens, where the ripples run, A trick cigarette case and a package of gum; With leaden eyes I watched my Love drift by, And watched the ripples "blending with the sky.It is not Sarah at her absolute best. But on the other hand, it is not Sarah at her absolute worst; and no matter how deep her depression, she never forgets her geology.There are times, as in that classic lyric. TO A STAR, when Sarah seems to fall into a spirit of resignation:TO A STAR.Methought I heard the tinkling of a star, My heart did wilt within, and wiltering weeped, And snivelling tears did splash the little stones, And muffled sobs did make and sobbing peeped.With red-rimmed eyes, and through this moist, damp weep I glanced aloft, and hush, no more descried, The tinkling star, its tinkling it had ceased � Resoundingly I blew my nose and sighed.But she drifts again into utter depression with FATHER, THY BEARD:FATHER, THY BEARD."Father, thy beard no longer points, Thy voice has lost its shrill!"My son, I quake within the joints, Good luck hath turned to ill.""Father, thy face is turning green, Thou lookest like the hell!""My son, the things are what they seem, Good luck hath sound its knell; Yon pip-bird that we saw this morn, Presages monetary clash,And soon they'll take our hard-wrought com, Convert it into cash;They'll take the herd wrought corn and leave Us nothing but the shortage, They'll strip the cows, unbell the beeves, To meet the chattel mortgage","Oh father, father, we must fly, Oh father, we must out!""My son, here's mud into your eye, My joints-predict a drought."
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7*Here at least Sarah speaks again the voice of the people,sad as she is, and there is a ray of hope in the last two lines,but she falls again into that gloomy reverie with those sadstanzas beginningCome crush, harsh world, and snuff this life, And hid my sorrows cease, Rejected and dejected I But long for my decease.as well as in the fragmenthen I'm buried in a graveyard, And this feeble flame is snuffed, Will a spottled magpie murmur, Mutely sigh with ruff unfluffed?Sarah is not only deeply despondent but seems to be suffering from a bad cold in the head.To cap Sarah's misery it was at this time that Rover died. He had been complaining for some days of shortness of breath* but appeared to be otherwise in good health? certainly no one suspected that the end was so near. He was only sixteen years of age, and appeared to be in the full flush and power of his doghood. On Sunday morning he had caught six gophers, and had made a journey to one of the neighbors* dogs to get a fresh supply of fleas, of which he was running short. That same afternoon he complained of feeling unwell and his temperature rose. By the following afternoon his end was near, it came peacefully and painlessly, and his last effort was to wag his tail. No stone or board marks his last resting place. Somewhere on the edge of the coulee, overlooking the gopher meadows^ and the alkali flats, overlooking the boundless prairie and tint endless horizon broken only by the four elevators of willows Rover sleeps his long sleep, awaiting, as Sarah so poignantly puts it, "the last bark". The gophers scamper across his
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79grave, and the tumble-weed, which he had so often chased across the hundred and sixty acres, stirs restlessly above him.Two poems appeared in successive numbers of the Hitching, post. They are unsigned � Sarah was not the kind to make capital from the death of a friend and companion � but the authorship is in no doubt. The one is very short and appeared in the In Memoriam column of the POST under the heading, ROVER BINKS:I had a dog who danced and spun, Who Spun and danced when he was young, And when he breathed he whistled, For his heart was full of fun � But his breath was colored ash-grey, For he had an ash-grey lung; Death struck him down in the afternoon � Henceforth my heart is filled with gloom.in the other and longer poem entitled HYMN TO ROVER, Sarah expresses her longing and her hope.HYMN TO ROVERWhen on that day the last bark rings To call the dog-like throng, Rover shall rise and don his wings, And raise his voice in song; He'll raise his voice in song and sing, In ecstacy of dog-like things.And weaving patterns with their tails, The joyous dog-like hosts, Will lead him through celestial vales, And miles and miles pf posts, To meadows full of gopher holes, Which he can sniff and dig for moles.Then shall I shout and throw a stick, And bounce his ball and hide his bone, Or stop and help him find his tick, And call him to his home; His home where he can take his ease, In sunny spots and scratch his fleas.And I shall take him by the hand, And feed him mush, and pull his ears, And he will grin, and understand, And lick away my tears: On that great day of the final bark,Rover, (as usual) will beat the lark.
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There is a fine singing quality to these lines worthy ofRover himself, and it has been set to music. It was sung atthe last Binks Festival at North Willows "by the massed choirs of Quagmire, Pelvis, Detour, Hitching, Precox, Umlaut, Vigil, Oak Bluff, and Cactus Lake, and it was only due to the indisposition of the massed choirs of Eraser, Bentrib, Scandal, Flyspot Junction, Jitters, and Dugout City, who had to pass the welcoming Committee of the Festival and receive their badges at the Commercial House, that they were unable to join in the rendering of this great song.Between Rover and Regina life was almost too much for Sarah. At times there is a ray of hope:Perhaps some day I'll twang the harp, And smite the lute with joyful sound; Beribboned and bedecked in gay, I'll ride around and 'round.but her heart falters in the second verse and she falls againinto her gloomy reveries:But then perhaps in unknown grave, By burdock blown and boot betrod, I'll lie a full seven and a half feet deep, And push the daisies through the sod.Even her lines do not quite scan, although somemaintain that with the art that conceals art Sarah has deliberately introduced into the second from the last line the extra half dactyl in order to emphasise the extra half foot. Mies Diana Baby-Bunting, the literary critic of the L'ondon, OVER THE TEA POT, describes it as "Exquisite, exquisite*.Like all writers whose hearts are bruised, Sarah finally found refuge in nature. Nature and hard work are always the panaceas for the aching heart. Perhaps the last of the poems to come out of her Darkest Africa is DEATH AND TAXES, but even
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81here she is once more very near to the great heart of Saskatchewan:The grizzly Reaper with his scythe, Will never fail to take his tithe; And none there are within this life, Can ever dodge the Reaper's knife; The sticky infant in his crib, Or aged sire behind his bib, Or youth who dashes off to town, Are one and all cut down, cut down,Ah, some there are who have the luck, To last awhile and run amuck, Or spend their time in simple play With simple maidens in the hay; But king and colonel, dude and duke, Alike are bundled in the stock, And one and ell they pay his tax, And fall beneath the Reaper's axe.It is an old theme but Sarah puts new life into it.During all this time Sarah had been doing very littlework. Ole had helped her with the chores, and she had ampletime to write. But now the spread in season, always one of thebusiest on the farm, was at hand. Just as previously in THESONG Off THE CHORE she had hymned the praises of hard work, sonow she takes refuge in the labors of the farm. Hearken toSarah in that sweetly plaintive little lyric, I HAVE NO TIME:I have no time to write a line, No hour to pipe sweet lay,No urge to shout, Or muse roust out, The pitchfork calls away.I have no time to hunt for rhyme, No moments for delay, The hand that wrote Must grasp the spoke, And earn its chuck to-day.The stern voice of duty called Sarah back to work, butit repaid her in more than merely "earning her chuck to-day."It gave her renewed hope and confidence and vigor, and sheforgets Regina in her joy in being once more at home within,
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as she expresses it in SPREADING TIME "my own paternal fieldand fold". In SPREADING TIME Sarah is once more herself, andif she has any misgivings about the coming winter she dimissesthem with the thoughts of spring.SPREADING TIME.Its joy again, for spreading time has found me, Within my own paternal field and fold, Its spreading time, and once more all around me, The air is rich, and fields are flecked with gold; From yonder heap the busy sparrow flutters, To other heaps, and all the heaps surveys; And from the dump the barnyard chicken mutters, And rooster lifts his solemn voice in praise.Alas, that winter's heavy cloak should ever Enfold this scene in dreary white, and bring The golden spots that mark our high endeavour, Beneath its blighted snow-banks until spring: But spring will come, and what today we harrow, Will reappear, for spring makes all things new, The shovel and the stone-boat and the barrow, And what we spread will once more come to view.it is evident that Sarah is once more finding herself."It's joy again!" cries Sarah, and joy, sheer exuberance of joyis expressed in that paean of praise to the hunt, THE DUCK HUNT.THE DUCK HUNT.The duck hunt, the duck hunt, Ahoy, for the duck hunt, Yahoo, the duck hunt So fine; With my shot gun and duck dog, I'm off for the duck bog, And I leave for the duck hunt, While yet there is time; My loved one is weeping, And clings to my side; "Oh stay with me Oscar, The duck hunt can ride, Remain with me Oscar, And let the duck hunt slide." But hark, in the gloaming, The moor-hens are moaning, The marshes are sighing, The sea gulls are groaning, So I'm off for the duck hunt, The duck hunt, the duck hunt, I'm off for the duck hunt, While yet in my prime.

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