INTRODUCTION TO NOTES
|
|
The
following notes are added at the request of many
friends who are always asking me where and how
I wrote my poems amid the distractions of a busy
life.
I
submit them in a spirit of humility and with the
desire of showing to others, if they will only
pause now and then in the bustle of modern life,
how much beauty and poetry lie around at every
turn, if we only open our eyes to see it. |
—F.G.S
[Page 175] |
In
the Woods |
Written in the vestry of the old stone Church at
Drummondville one lovely September day, while preparing
to go for a picnic in the woods by the Black River.
I intended it as a souvenir of the picnic. |
The
Temple of the Ages
|
Written in the train one winter’s day when
I was going up to Lake Edward. The sun shone with
dazzling brightness on the snow-covered mountains,
and the spruce forests looked black and grim by
contrast. One thought of the forces which have formed
those ancient Laurentian Mountains, with their store
of huge boulders and granite precipices going back
to the very beginning of the world. The appeal which
nature makes to man in this vast country is full
of the sense of being haunted by gigantic prehistoric
forces. |
Moonlight
|
|
Written in Quebec in front of the fire one evening
during the playing of a record on the victrola. |
The Burden of Time
|
Written in my garden in Quebec. Time is the greatest
force in the universe, and to it all others are
subservient. In the stanza beginning
“I plunged whole continents beneath the
deep,
And left them sepulchred a million years,”
in which the coal formations are described, I was
bothered to find the concluding lines. At such times,
it is my custom to have my hair cut. It seems to
make my brain work more clearly. I did so on this
occasion, and coming out of the barber’s at
sunset, the cool east wind blew upon my shorn head
and the two closing lines came to me:
“I called, and lo, the drowned lands rose
from sleep,
Sundering the waters of the hemispheres.”
[Page 176] |
In the Winter Woods
|
Written in the brakeman’s van, a rude box
car called locally “The Red Susan”,
at the end of a freight train on the Drummond County
Railway. It was heated by a red-hot wood stove,
and was filled with tobacco smoke. I used to travel
in it into the woods to visit some families at a
place called “Carmel Hill”, long since
developed into a farming country. One afternoon,
the train was delayed until after sunset. I seized
the opportunity of going out among the glorious
old trees and imbibing their mysterious life-message
as the great red sunset burnt in the west. The poem
came to me then. |
The Unnamed Lake
|
Written one lovely day in September, 1897, when
taking my children for a hay-cart drive towards
the “Little Saguenay” behind St. Raymond,
Quebec. On ascending a hill, we saw before us a
blue sheet of water nestling among the mountains
and the two lines:
“It sleeps among the thousand hills
Where no man ever trode;”
flashed
upon me. As I walked on beside the hay-cart, enraptured
by the scenery, I elaborated the poem into the
form in now wears, remembering to embody the cry
of the fish-hawk which we heard later on over
a piece of water. Whenever I recite the poem,
memories come back to me of the green hills drenched
in sunshine, and the merry children in the hay-cart.
|
The Wayside Cross
|
I was returning to Drummondville in my sleigh one
dull winter’s day at twilight when I passed
the cross, still standing near the village, and
I began the poem.
The poem is now in raised letters on a bronze tablet
affixed to a large memorial cross on a scenic driveway
near Los Angeles, California. [Page 177] |
The Storm
|
Written in the woods behind the Falls of Montmorency
when a storm was gathering. A coming storm is one
of the most magnificent sights in nature, but the
moment the rain comes the beauty is over;
“The charging clouds in fury dash
And blind the world
with rain.” |
The River
|
Written near the old bridge which crosses the river
at Valcartier. I spent a delightful day alone beside
the stream, almost on a level with the water. I
fell asleep in the afternoon and woke up and, in
a sort of waking dream, watched the current hurrying
along between the overhanging trees. In the meadows
beyond, cattle were feeding. |
My Lattice
|
Written in Drummondville, Quebec. One of the windows
in my bed-room in the rectory was high above the
floor and nothing could be seen through it but the
sky and the clouds, and at night the mystery of
the stars. In imagination, I used to love to let
my mind pierce the depths of space. |
|
The Snowstorm
|
Written on one of my long winter drives through
the woods at Drummondville. Religion enables us
to see two worlds at the same time. |
Samson
|
Written at Drummondville. The inner meaning is revolt
against the law of heredity. The poem was written
at one sitting. [Page 178] |
God’s Youth
|
Written in Quebec one day as I passed a lovely little
child in the street. |
My Friend, Death
|
|
Written in the smoking car of a train going from
Quebec to Montreal. |
The Frenzy of Prometheus
|
The myth of Prometheus has always appealed to me.
The Demi-god is here represented as having gone
mad under the blazing sun through his long solitude
on the rock to which he was chained by Jupiter for
his over-weening ambition and his treachery in bringing
the gift of fire to mortals. In his frenzy he sees
the transition of empire from the Greeks and Romans
and Tartars, till the end comes with its passing
to the western world. In the death of the world,
his madness reaches its climax, and he believes
himself to be the lone ruler of the universe. |
The Charcoal Burner
|
Written after climbing Mount Washington, N. H. On
driving to Glen House at the base, we saw smoke
curling up from a rude cabin on the side of the
mountain. When I asked who lived there, the driver
said it was a charcoal burner. |
In Via Mortis
(In the Way of Death)
|
Written at Drummondville while I was deep in Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. During long
country drives in the winter, the scenes and characters
of the history became an integral part of the solitude.
There were no distractions to destroy the illusion
of the living reality of the great drama of the
past. One seemed to be constantly in the midst of
the events and heroes of olden times. I have often
thought it was a kind of premonition of my experience,
years after, in the Great War. [Page 179] |
Nature’s Recompense
|
Written at Cap à l’Aigle, Quebec. I
was tired and had gone into the woods, perhaps too
eager to feel the old thrill which nature alone
can give. My impatience, no doubt, closed the avenues
of sense. Then I just lay on the ground and gave
up trying to feel. I was rewarded, for soon the
scents and the little voices of the woods, and the
twinkling of sunlit leaves against the sky, gave
me the old delight. |
The Feud
|
The ballad was written one evening in Drummondville. |
Dawn
|
Written in Quebec. One’s attitude towards
death ought to be the looking for a larger and more
glorious life, an entrance into those regions of
existence which the limitations of our senses in
a bodily state preclude our entering. |
A Reverie
|
Written at Drummondville. |
Old Letters
|
Written at Drummondville. I had been reading some
old letters and was feeling sad, when, at sunset,
the children returned from a walk and their joyousness
dispelled the gloom. |
The Old Gardener
|
Written after the funeral of an old man who had
been gardener at Wolfesfield for many years. I remember
he had a fine head of silvery hair. [Page
180] |
His Parting
|
This, and the three following poems, “Little
Friend’s” Grave, My Little Son, and
Anniversary, were written in Quebec after the death
of my little son. He took ill one summer at Lake
St. Joseph and had to be brought to town on a stretcher.
In the family, we always called him “Little
Friend”. Although very sacred and personal,
I publish these verses as a message of hope to other
stricken parents. |
A Dream of the Prehistoric
|
Written in Drummondville. First published in the
New York “Independent”. I was reading
Darwin’s “Origin of Species” at
the time. |
On An Old Venetian Portrait
|
The picture was given to me years ago by a cousin
in New York, and has hung for years in my hall.
The subject and painter are unknown, and the canvas
shows the marks of age. But “The Old Cardinal”
is quite a member of the family. |
The Poets of the Woods
|
Written in the train from Montreal to Quebec at
a time of anxiety. |
The Sprite
|
Written at Sheffield in 1886 on the day I was sailing
for home. |
The Poet’s Song
|
Written during a divinity lecture at Bishop’s
College, Lennoxville, in 1882, when I was a student.
[Page 181] |
My Garden
|
Written in the old garden of St. Matthew’s
Rectory, Quebec, which was my home for thirty-four
years. The view from the “Poet’s Seat”
in the garden, towards the Laurentian Hills, is
superb. |
Crucifixion
|
Written in the train leaving Quebec for Montreal
at a time of anxiety and distress. |
Van Elsen
|
Written while I was riding on horseback from St.
Germain to Drummondville, after visiting a husband
and wife in great sorrow through the loss of their
little baby. I was thinking of the special mission
on earth which the child had fulfilled in so short
a space of time. |
In Te Domine
|
Written on the back of a telegraph form in the train
from Montreal to Quebec. |
“Cease Fire”
|
Written in the train to Hamilton when I was going
to give an address at a dinner on Armistice Day. |
Jehoram
|
Written in Quebec after reading the striking story
of a king that failed, which came in the Old Testament
lesson for the day. |
The Sea’s Mystery
|
Written on the rocks at Cap à l’Aigle,
below Murray Bay, when the tide was coming in one
afternoon and engulfing the rocks on which I was
sitting. [Page 182] |
Among the Spruces
|
Written in Drummondville, Quebec, where I was rector
for nearly ten years. To me, the thought of God
is inseparable from nature, and I have always loved
to say my prayers out of doors. The charming silence
which settles upon the woods after a heavy snowfall
in the winter, is always provocative of deep thoughts.
The trees, bowed with the weight of snow, gradually
being shaken off by slight breezes, seem to be thrilled
with the same emotions as myself, and the deep blue
sky overhead is the domed roof of nature’s
great temple. |
On Being Given a Piece of Edelweiss Before
Visiting Switzerland
|
Written at Coggeshall, Essex, in 1886, after spending
an evening with my vicar, the late H. M. Patch,
who was a member of the Alpine Club, and who had
been telling me of what I was to see during my coming
holiday in Switzerland. |
Rome
|
Written at Drummondville in one of the volumes of
Gibbon’s History, when I had finished reading
it. |
The Heaven of Love
|
Written at Drummondville on a hand car returning
from a service at Carmel Hill. The night before,
as I was deep in a book on astronomy, I got up at
midnight and went out and looked at the stars. Then,
full of the awe which such a sight engenders, I
went to the nursery and saw my little boy asleep,
and thought how human love transcends the mysteries
of the physical universe. |
At Nightfall
|
Written one windy evening at Drummondville when
the trees around the rectory were very noisy. [Page
183] |
Easter Island
|
Written on a hand car near Dummondville. I had been
reading an account of that mysterious island, about
two thousand miles west of Chile, and of the huge
statues there, the only expression of the religion
of an unknown race who perished long ago and left
no other trace of its existence. The pathos of the
blind groping for truth in a dead race impressed
me. |
Evensong in the Woods
|
Written in the late afternoon in the woods behind
the Falls of Montmorency. The October sun was sending
its level rays into the richly coloured leaves of
autumn. |
By the Grave of Keats
|
It was at sunset that my friend, Canon Balfour,
and I arrived at the English cemetery in Rome in
August, 1904. On paying a small fee, we were admitted
by the guardian and there read on the poet’s
tombstone, the epitaph he chose for himself,
“Here lies one whose name is writ in
water.”
I thought
how little Keats then knew that his influence
would illuminate England’s nature poetry
for ever.
|
The Divinity
|
Written in the train among the Laurentians as I
was returning from Lake Edward to Quebec. |
The Mill-stream
|
Written on a moss-covered boulder at the foot of
the mill dam in the little Jean le Rose River which
flows down the side of Mount St. Anne, behind Beauprè,
Quebec. [Page 184] |
Shakespeare
|
Read at the Shakespeare Club dinner in Montreal
in 1884. This sonnet is printed in the Memorial
Volume in the Shakespeare Library in Stratford-on-Avon.
The wonder of Shakespeare is his power of objective
vision. The characters he created bore no resemblance
to himself. He dwelt outside the world his genius
made. We cannot find himself in his works. |
Foch
|
Written in Quebec on the day before Foch died and
printed two weeks later in the London Morning Post.
I remember the thrill that went through our hearts
at the Front when we heard that General Foch had
taken over the supreme command. |
The King’s Bastion
|
Written in the bastion overlooking the City of Quebec,
on a hot summer’s day. Far off to the northeast,
I could see Cap Tourment where the widening of the
river stops the force of its current. The Battle
of the Plains was one of the turning points in the
world’s history. Somewhere into space the
sound and light waves from the struggle roll off
for ever. Gilbert Parker, to whom I was reciting
the sonnet one day on the bastion, got me to change
the last lines. I did so for a time, and then went
back to the original which I am convinced is better. |
The Laurentians
|
The Laurentian Mountains, which run from Lake Superior
to Labrador, are the oldest mountain range in the
world. They have been worn down and graved by many
ice ages, and show the marks of the passage of glaciers.
Now, all prehistoric activities have long ceased,
and the mountains wear a lonely and unique solitariness,
broken only by rapid streams with their waterfalls
and numerous lakes, and stretches of spruce forests
where the ravages of fires have left acres and acres
of grey burnt stems. [Page 185] |
Twilight
|
Written at Beauprê, Quebec, in the early evening
of a winter’s day, when old memories of camping
days there returned. |
Prelude
|
Written on the upper gallery of a house overlooking
the waters of Gaspé Basin. The sea was calm
and blue and the mountains a rich green in the sunshine. |
The Penalty
|
Written in Quebec. It was my sad duty on one occasion
in the War to have to prepare for death a man who
was to be shot for cowardice. The circumstances
of the case are given in my book, “The Great
War As I Saw It.”
I baptized the poor fellow, and gave him Holy Communion
in the prison at midnight, and then visited two
generals, interceding for his pardon. The order,
I was told, could not be changed, and he was executed,
exactly as I have described the scene, at daybreak
on a rainy hillside. I am thankful to say that the
death penalty for desertion from the Front has now
been abolished. I feel sure the British Line, wherever
it may be, will hold just as well without it. The
great task before us is to abolish war itself with
all its horrors. |
The Warrior
|
Written at Gaspé a few minutes after I had
finished “Prelude”. |
Yuletide in France
|
Written in a little garden at St. Jans Capelle,
near Baileul, France, in January, 1916. I had been
confined to my billet through an accident for some
weeks, and on going out into the garden I found
a bush of rosemary. The scent brought back memories
of an old garden in England. Rosemary, in the middle
ages, was used as a decoration in churches at Christmas,
and was placed around the boar’s head, the
ancient dish for the Christmas dinner. [Page
186] |
Solomon
|
Written beside the Black River at Drummondville
in a field by the road to St. Germain. |
A Grave in Flanders
|
Written at St. Jans Capelle in 1916. It was suggested
by a solitary grave beside the road near Hill 63,
Ploegsteert, Belgium. It seemed so quiet under the
trees and the continual stream of war traffic left
it undisturbed. |
Hymn of Praise
|
Written in Quebec and inspired by a gust of east
wind which struck me in St. John Street one day.
The poem is the creed of my philosophy. |
The Chamber of Peace
|
Written in Quebec. |
At Last
|
Written in the doctor’s house at Harrington
Harbour, Labrador, while waiting for dinner. I had
been reading “The Oxford Book of Verse”,
and I thought I would write a poem of passion. I
wrote the poem on the flyleaf of the book. |
The Silent Toast
|
Written on Vimy Ridge in a dugout at 4 a.m., a few
days after we had taken the ridge. When we came
out of the line, we used to have a dinner for the
battalion officers, and a good dinner, too, often
in some broken-down farmhouse. The Silent Toast
to the dead was always to me a very harrowing moment.
I used to look at the faces of the gallant young
men and wonder which of them, or how many of them,
would be absent from the next party. Then some face
would vividly come before one of a friend who had
gone into the unseen world. [Page 187] |
On the Rue du Bois
|
Near my little house on the Rue du Bois, in March,
1915, not far from Fleurbaix, stood a brick shrine
with a large white crucifix inside. One day the
Germans started shelling the place, and killed and
wounded some of our men. That night as I was returning
from burying the dead in a field beyond, I stopped
to look at the emblem of our salvation, when a German
flare light went up, and I beheld myself silhouetted
against the white figure. It gave me a shock. I
wrote the poem a few days after in a train going
to Rouen to see my son, who had been wounded and
had lost an eye. The poem was sent to the London
“Times” by General Smith-Dorien, and
was read out by Archdeacon Wilberforce during a
sermon in Westminster Abbey. |
On the Threshold
|
Written in a red sandstone cave on Grindstone Island,
one of the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of the St.
Lawrence, north-east of Prince Edward Island. It
was a cold Sunday afternoon, and the clouds were
torn with the wind as they sent rain down every
now and then. The sea was a dull grey, and the breakers
were long and white as they broke on the beautiful
red sand. I had a swim by myself, and then, after
dressing, I sat down on a rock and wrote the poem.
One longed to know what was behind the cold heartlessness
of the material universe; what goal lies beyond
the race of evolution and the mysteries of the stellar
universe.
“The infinite pathos of the Eternal Will
Supreme and still.” |
Call Back Our Dead
|
Printed in the “New York Times” on Armistice
Day several years ago. [Page 188] |
Ave Atque Vale
|
Dictated to my orderly, who was a stenographer in
civil life. I composed the poem at St. Jans Capelle
on waking early one morning. Later on in the year,
when things were going badly at the Front, my orderly
felt compelled to go back into the line, where he
was killed fighting bravely in an attack. “Ave
atque vale”, old friend! |
Journey’s End
|
Written in the train going to La Tuque, P.Q. |
The Last Raid
|
Written in Victoria, B.C., on the 29th of September,
1929, the fifteenth anniversary of the First Canadian
Division’s sailing from Quebec for Europe.
The “Last Raid” still awaits those who
escaped with their lives from the War, and must
be met some day. I think that for many an old soldier,
death has lost its terrors. The usual pomp and gloom
which surround funerals at home, were, thank God,
absent from the simple burials at the Front. |
Fairyland
|
Written on the beach at Cap a l’Aigle while
I was lying on the sand enjoying the rich sunshine
and salt air. |
The Prisoner
|
Written in a car at the foot of Cap Tourment below
Quebec, while I was waiting for some friends to
come down from the mountain. |
The Unbroken Line
|
Written in Quebec as a dedication poem to my book,
“The Great War As I Saw It”, published
(first edition) in 1922, and (second edition) in
1934. [Page 189] |
Dion
|
Written at one sitting in Drummondville, after finishing
one of the volumes of Grote’s History of Greece.
The old stoics have always won my admiration, and
Dion was a magnificent example of their heroism. |
The Cripple
|
Written one day near Drummondville, when I saw a
little girl hiding in the bushes, and I remembered
one who was very dear to me whom I had lost years
before, and who had been a cripple. |
The Gates of Time
|
Written in Quebec. Often in the War when I had to
go up a road or trench on which shells were falling,
I used to make the sign of the cross, and repeat
these lines, and then go on unconcernedly. |
Stella
|
This poem is from the Greek anthology, a collection
of verses and epigrams found in the Vatican library
some centuries ago. I composed the translation one
evening by the seaside at Cap à l’Aigle
to the noise of many crows in the trees overhead
whom my presence there was disturbing. |
Nirvana
|
Written in Quebec. There are times when nature seems
to draw us away from our soul life, with its problems
and emotions, and makes us long to blend with her
blind and impersonal fulfillment of destiny, attaining
peace thereby. |
The Airman
|
Written in Quebec on hearing of the death by accident
of that gallant airman, W. G. Barker, V.C., on a
winter’s day, when trying a new plane. Barker
was one of the outstanding heroes of the War.
[Page 190] |
Milton
|
Written in Quebec, on the tercentenary of Milton’s
birth, in 1908. If we look at Milton dispassionately,
the inspired consecration of himself to poetry in
his early and beautiful youth, and then look at
his accomplishment after years of hard self-discipline
in what he considered the cause of God and liberty,
I think we shall admit him to be probably the greatest
Englishman that ever lived. |
By the Sea
|
The first verse was written in our mission boat
going from Harrington to Mutton Bay on the Canadian
Labrador. The long, low coastline of treeless granite
rocks, worn smooth by tides and ice through millions
of years, produced a queer, eerie feeling in the
mind. Empires had risen and decayed and the ageless
sound of the lonely sea and winds seemed like the
passing bell of time ringing out the death of all
things. I wrote the second stanza on the moss-covered
hill above Mutton Bay on the following day. |
Thor
|
Written at one sitting in Drummondville. The tale
is entirely my own invention. |
A Waif
|
Written in Quebec after leaving the hospital where
a little orphan girl, who had long been a great
sufferer, had just died. |
A Sister of Charity
|
Written in Quebec after the death in Montreal of
my dear godmother who was one of God’s self-forgetting
and ministering angels, and never knew it. [Page
191] |
Quebec
|
Written when driving down to Quebec from the mountains
near Stoneham, about twenty miles northwest of the
city. |
The
Hand |
Written at Quebec one day after watching some men
putting in new drain pipes in one of the streets.
At the back of all our machinery is the labour of
the human hand. |
Requiescant
|
Begun while I was lying awake in a sleeping-bag
under a tarpaulin at Brielen, near Ypres. I had
been up with the Canadian Scottish during the gas
attack on April 22nd, 1915, and, having lost all
my kit in the town by shell fire, the next morning
I took refuge with the battalion transport who also
had lost most of their equipment. As I lay awake,
I wondered what all our comrades who had “passed
over” were doing now. We had not then grown
accustomed to the loss of friends. I finished the
poem at a little village called Robec. As I wrote
it, I could see through the window, my host, who
was a carpenter, making a baby’s coffin. The
poem was published in the London “Times”,
and is in several war anthologies. |
Winter
|
Written in the train to Montreal one winter’s
day at sunset. I was looking at the windows in the
farmhouses on a hill, shining like rubies in the
setting sun, and I thought of the pastoral content
of the families within the homes. |
A Master Mason
|
Written at the funeral of a dear old friend, who
was a Master Mason, and worked hard all his life,
honestly doing his duty both to God and man. [Page
192] |
The Wreck
|
Written in Quebec after the sinking of the “Titanic”.
I went into a shop where a gramophone record of
Sarah Bernhardt’s voice in a soliloquy from
l’Aiglon gave me the inspiration. |
The Sea
|
Written in the train from Metapedia to Gaspé,
when the sea first came into view. As we grow older,
the sea loses the charm which it wears in our childhood.
Bigger mysteries capture our imagination as we advance
in experience. |
“Jack”
|
“Jack” was a little skye terrier with
short legs and with blue-grey hair over his body
and shadowing his kind, brown eyes. For thirteen
years, he was one of the family circle, and well
deserves to be remembered here. His little body
has long rested near the Ordnance Stone in St. Matthew’s
Rectory garden, Quebec, but he is still remembered
and loved by the family. |
Out of the Storm
|
Written in 1895 after the death of my youngest brother
who died in St. Luke’s Hospital, Duluth. On
the night he died, there was a terrific storm. The
war of the elements outside and the ebbing away,
in the quiet room, of a noble young life, seemed
to be linked in a subtle harmony. At dawn, I went
to the window which overlooked the great Lake Superior.
The end of the life had come, and the storm too
had passed. I saw the morning star above the golden
gates of the opening day. |
Death and the Child
|
Written at Drummondville, one of a group of sonnets
about death. [Page 193] |
Canada
|
Written in Quebec and read at the meeting of the
Royal Society of Canada there in 1908, when we celebrated
the tercentenary of the founding of the city by
Champlain. The immense and wonderful natural features
of our Dominion will gradually mould our young nation
more and more. |
To France
|
Written while I was a patient at the hospital in
the beautiful Trappist Monastery at Mont des Cats,
near Popperinghe, Belgium, a well known mark on
the landscape in the Ypres Salient. |
The Shepherd
|
Written at Grindstone Island, one of the Magdalen
Islands, P.Q. |
To a Greek Statue Foud in Herculaneum
|
Written in the Boston Museum of Art one winter’s
day. Before it was quite finished, one of the attendants
came and told me it was the time they closed the
Museum in the winter. I said I was just composing
a poem, and he kindly allowed me to finish the sestette
before turning me out. |
The Sailor
|
Written in the cabin of our church mission boat
near Mutton Bay, Canadian Labrador. My companions
went on land to fish, but a drizzling rain and clouds
of mosquitoes made me prefer the protection of the
boat. I beguiled the time by writing the poem. |
To England
|
Written at La Tuque, Quebec, during the great strike
in England. Whatever mistakes British Governments
may make, one always feels that the inner soul of
England is on the side of humanity and fair play.
England has been the first country in the world
to come out of the depression. [Page 194] |
Azriman
|
Written on a beautiful day in May, lying on the
lawn of Francis McLenan’s house at Loretteville,
near Quebec. The longer I live, the more I feel
how very limited is the power our senses give us
of seeing the realities behind the phenomena of
existence. |
Last Post
|
Written in the train to Montreal in 1922. I had
visited the battlefields earlier in the year. |
In Memoriam
|
A tribute to my mother. Written in Montreal in 1883. |
A Birthday
|
Written at Drummondville, as were also, “In
the Churchyard” and “Sorrow’s
Waking”. |
Time
|
Written in England in 1886, during a rapid walk
of ten miles which I did from Colchester to Coggeshall,
Essex, in two hours. I had gone to Colchester by
train in the morning, and had travelled with a number
of labourers. As I studied their faces, wrinkled
by toil and years, I could see, underneath, remnants
of the beauty they had worn in childhood before
time had scarred them. This suggested the sonnet. |
Dead Man’s Isle
|
Written one winter’s day in the directors’
rooms of the Staff House at Kenogami, a paper-mill
town near Lake St. John, north-west of Quebec. In
the previous summer, I had visited the Magdalen
Islands in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, and a lonely
island, away in the distance, was pointed out to
me as “Dead Man’s Isle”. [Page
195] |
Christmas Day
|
Written in Quebec. Not all the hostile philosophies
of the world can stifle the wonderful message that
Christmas brings to the human hearts of both old
and young. |
Hymn to the Infant Saviour
A Carol
|
The utterance of humanity before the Holy Child
at Christmas. |
The Hermit
|
Written this Summer (1934) in the same red sandstone
cave on Grindstone Island, in the Gulf of the St.
Lawrence, where I wrote “On the Threshold”
some years ago. Every man who withdraws into his
secret heart and there lives in Communion with Nature
is a hermit. Nature on the sea shore, with its tides
and storms and teeming life, brings man a wonderful
message. |
The Crown of Empire
|
Written in St. Jans Cappelle, France, in 1916. The
poem was printed by Canadian Corps Headquarters
in the orders for the day and also appeared in the
“Morning Post.” Peace at that time seemed
to be near. Alas, the war was to go on for two years
longer. |
The Everlasting Father
|
Written at Drummondville. Nature and man reveal
God. Nature witnesses to His power and majesty,
and man, who was made in God’s image, reveals
His love and moral nature. [Page 196] |
A Song of Triumph
|
Written in Drummondville in 1895, while I was exhilarated
by a most laudatory review in the London “Speaker,”
of my poem “Samson.”
The rhythm and sweep of the verses is intended to
be a wild chorus of all those elements in Nature
which by the constant urge of evolution, have resulted
in the production of man, the flower of creation,
whose home is in the bosom of God. |
Montenegro
|
This sonnet was written in France, in 1916, when
Montenegro was threatened with invasion, and England’s
hands were already so full that she could not come
to the assistance of that wild, but liberty loving
land. |
At the Cross Roads
|
Written before leaving Drummondville, to a great
friend of mine, who was a locomotive engineer and
often used to allow me to enjoy the thrilling sensation
of taking a trip on that part of the engine called
“The Cow Catcher.” |
The Key of Life
|
Written in Quebec. This little play was acted in
St. Matthew’s Parish Hall, on two occasions,
running for four nights each time. Very charming
music has been written for it by Mr. William Reed,
B.A., Oxon, who won the organ scholarship at Keble
College when a young man. The simple appeal which
the Incarnation makes to the human heart, as the
only explanation of life’s mysteries and problems,
drew large audiences. [Page 197] |
