A Song to Canada

My land is a woman who knows
Not the child at her breast.
All her quest
Hath been gold.
All her joys, all her woes
With the thin, yellow leaf are unrolled.
And here is my grief that no longer she cares
For the tumult that crowds in a rune
When the white curving throat of a cataract bares
In a song to the high floating moon.
I am Caneo,
The poet she loves not, grown bold.
Bold am I as all men grow bold
Who wash themselves long in the sun:
I know what she lost when she gathered the gold
And she alone knows what she won.

My land is a woman who loves
All whose word is a lie;
The limitless doves
That coo in the hour when her peril is nigh;
The poets who sing:
" Very fair is the bride of the North
As she now steppeth forth
To enter that council which girdles the world with its ring. "
But this is my grief that no longer she cares
For the old wounding message of truth.
That sounds on the lips of a poet, who dares
Look under the rouge of her youth.

My land is a woman whose boast
Is of iron and of stone.
She hath thrown
To the wind
All that yielded her most.
And to-night she must walk with the blind.
And this is my grief that her gold and her gain
Buys never a fragment of joy,
A morsel of truth or of honor a grain
Or a love that is free from alloy.

Hiss of hate or rain of applause,
I shall sing my song in a freeman's cause.
I have bathed in the spray
On the long, sweet sands of Digby Bay.
And from Labrador
To Juan de Fuca, the toreador,
Who tames the bull at our western door
I have smoothed each rood of my country's floor.
Great is all God lay on our sod,
The cricket's song or the Selkirk's reach;
And small is all we have given to God;
A heart of hate and a braggart's speech.
A span of steel and a tier of stone;
What boast to fling against His throne!
We twist His trees and they plough His main:
We sow His seed and we reap His grain;
Our kingdom's girth
Is the poet's toast:
But is it God or we should boast?

My love for my land is as strong
As the love of the sap for the tree;
For she is the channel through which I upreached to the air.
In the lilt of my song
A garland of sheltering leaves I wove her to wear;
And she gave not a hint of her love to the sheen
Of their shimmering green,
But fingered away at her gold; I despair; I despair:
And yet comes a day she will listen to me.
I am Caneo,
The poet she loves not, grown bold:
Bold am I as all men grow bold
Who wash themselves long in the sun.
I know what she lost when she gathered the gold,
And she alone knows what she won.
Translation: 
Language: 
Rate this poem: 

Reviews

No reviews yet.