March Morning in Canada / William Wilfred Campbell

March Morning in Canada

This limpid, sweet, spring morning, all the air
     Is full of far-off, echoing, long-drawn sound;
The very city, like a dream, is fair,
     And, mirage-like, floats upward from the ground.

The fleecy clouds are loose like sails of ships,
     Windless, in harbour safe, of storms undriven;
And like a breath exhaled from dying lips,
     The censer-smoke ascends into the heaven.

The warming year flames inward in a breath;
     And like some Titan rousing to be free,
The lakes their bonds have burst of icy death,
     And all their streams go roaring to the sea.

Far in the lonely, wintry woods, I know,
     Creatures of earth turn blindly to the sun:
And o'er the barren lands, the raucous crow
     Prophesies, sole ill, of death undone.

And I, too, child of nature, like those others,
     Linked to the life of earth, throughout her rind,
Do feel the pagan joy with my glad brothers,
     And live anew with bud and bird and wind.

~~
William Wilfred Campbell (1860-1918)
from Poetical Works, 1922

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

William Wilfred Campbell biography