Canada / John Frushard Waddington

Canada

I

O Canada! Thou art loveliest
     Of Northern lands of sun and snow,
     Where fall and river swiftest flow
To mighty lake from mountain crest,
Crown'd Queen of Continents, thy name
A letter on the scroll of Fame —
     Thy proud course scarce begun —
          A fairy-land,
          A prairie-land,
Where silent sinks the sun.


II 

          With flying feet
          The seasons fleet
Swoop circlng through thy changeful skies.
          Trailing her flowers,
Blown freshly sweet with April showers,
          Thy soft Spring flies
Swift-wing'd as swallows in their southward flight
          And all thy Summer long
          Is but a song
               Of June
          And sun and moon.
Northward, 'mid Arctic day and Northern night,
     Thy fallow fields, all white with Winter, dream;
     Snow-dressed the trees, silent the frozen stream,
          And crown'd with ice the hill —
               While Southward still
Brown with her bracken and her fading ferns
          The burnished Autumn burns.


III 

Youth holds thy destiny. O Canada!
           Crude shape, not shamed
By cities nor by shambles. From afar
     Thy conquerors come, all eager and untamed.
Wild pasture! Not yet brought beneath the ban
           Of meddling man.
The burrower and the borer and the bold,
     Strong husbandmen, thy children - sons of toil
     Who live by delving deep thy virgin soil;
Uncouth, yet born to brave thy biting cold,
           These are thy sons, O Canada,
More dear to them the yellow wheat than gold.

~~
John Frushard Waddington (1915-1934 fl.)
from Canada, and other poems, 1915

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

John Frushard Waddington biography