Emily Pauline Johnson

My forest brave, my Red-skin love, farewell; We may not meet to-morrow; who can tell What mighty ills befall our little band,

My heart forgot its God for love of you, And you forgot me, other loves to learn; Now through a wilderness of thorn and rue

There's wine in the cup, Vancouver, And there's warmth in my heart for you, While I drink to your health, your youth, and your wealth,

(Tennyson) Time and its ally, Dark Disarmament, Have compassed me about,

Captive! Is there a hell to him like this? A taunt more galling than the Huron's hiss? He - proud and scornful, he - who laughed at law,

At Crow's Nest Pass the mountains rend Themselves apart, the rivers wend A lawless course about their feet,

You didn't know Billy, did you? Well, Bill was one of the boys, The greatest fellow you ever seen to racket an' raise a noise, - An' sing! say, you never heard singing 'nless you heard Billy sing.

At husking time the tassel fades To brown above the yellow blades, Whose rustling sheath enswathes the corn

To-night the west o'er-brims with warmest dyes; Its chalice overflows With pools of purple colouring the skies,

(INSCRIBED TO ONE BEYOND SEAS) Know by the thread of music woven through This fragile web of cadences I spin,

I Speak of you, sir? You bet he did. Ben Fields was far too sound To go back on a fellow just because he weren't around.

(ACROSTIC) Born on the breast of the prairie, she smiles to her sire - the sun, Robed in the wealth of her wheat-lands, gift of her mothering soil,

Because, dear Christ, your tender, wounded arm Bends back the brier that edges life's long way, That no hurt comes to heart, to soul no harm,

Not of the seething cities with their swarming human hives, Their fetid airs, their reeking streets, their dwarfed and poisoned lives, Not of the buried yesterdays, but of the days to be,

(ACROSTIC) Crown of her, young Vancouver; crest of her, old Quebec; Atlantic and far Pacific sweeping her, keel to deck.

We first saw light in Canada, the land beloved of God; We are the pulse of Canada, its marrow and its blood: And we, the men of Canada, can face the world and brag

I may not go to-night to Bethlehem, Nor follow star-directed ways, nor tread The paths wherein the shepherds walked, that led

So near at hand (our eyes o'erlooked its nearness In search of distant things) A dear dream lay - perchance to grow in dearness

There's a spirit on the river, there's a ghost upon the shore, They are chanting, they are singing through the starlight evermore, As they steal amid the silence,

All yesterday the thought of you was resting in my soul, And when sleep wandered o'er the world that very thought she stole To fill my dreams with splendour such as stars could not eclipse,

April 1, 1888 Lent gathers up her cloak of sombre shading In her reluctant hands.

A dash of yellow sand, Wind-scattered and sun-tanned; Some waves that curl and cream along the margin of the strand;

'Tis morning now, yet silently I stand, Uplift the curtain with a weary hand, Look out while darkness overspreads the way,

And only where the forest fires have sped, Scorching relentlessly the cool north lands, A sweet wild flower lifts its purple head,

There was a man - a Jew of kingly blood, But of the people - poor and lowly born, Accused of blasphemy of God, He stood

A trail upwinds from Golden; It leads to a land God only knows, To the land of eternal frozen snows,

Sounds of the seas grow fainter, Sounds of the sands have sped; The sweep of gales,

Halifax sits on her hills by the sea In the might of her pride, - Invincible, terrible, beautiful, she

Pillowed and hushed on the silent plain, Wrapped in her mantle of golden grain, Wearied of pleasuring weeks away,

Measures of oil for others, Oil and red wine, Lips laugh and drink, but never

I am sailing to the leeward, Where the current runs to seaward Soft and slow,

A meadow brown; across the yonder edge A zigzag fence is ambling; here a wedge Of underbush has cleft its course in twain,

Little Lady Icicle is dreaming in the north-land And gleaming in the north-land, her pillow all a-glow; For the frost has come and found her

I Lady Lorgnette, of the lifted lash, The curling lip and the dainty nose,

(NEW BRUNSWICK) The long red flats stretch open to the sky, Breathing their moisture on the August air.

Little brown baby-bird, lapped in your nest, Wrapped in your nest, Strapped in your nest,

A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim, And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh's brim. The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,

Idles the night wind through the dreaming firs, That waking murmur low, As some lost melody returning stirs

When each white moon, her lantern idly swinging, Comes out to join the star night-watching band, Across the grey-green sea, a ship is bringing

Night of Mid-June, in heavy vapours dying, Like priestly hands thy holy touch is lying Upon the world's wide brow;

I am Ojistoh, I am she, the wife Of him whose name breathes bravery and life And courage to the tribe that calls him chief.

Sleep, with her tender balm, her touch so kind, Has passed me by; Afar I see her vesture, velvet-lined,

Soulless is all humanity to me To-night. My keenest longing is to be Alone, alone with God's grey earth that seems

C.P.R. "NO. 1," WESTBOUND I swing to the sunset land - The world of prairie, the world of plain,

From out the west, where darkling storm-clouds float, The 'waking wind pipes soft its rising note. From out the west, o'erhung with fringes grey,

What of the days when we two dreamed together? Days marvellously fair, As lightsome as a skyward floating feather

MUSKOKA A stream of tender gladness, Of filmy sun, and opal tinted skies;

The sky-line melts from russet into blue, Unbroken the horizon, saving where A wreath of smoke curls up the far, thin air,

I Stripped to the waist, his copper-coloured skin Red from the smouldering heat of hate within,

There is no song his colours cannot sing, For all his art breathes melody, and tunes The fine, keen beauty that his brushes bring

(A LEGEND OF THE PACIFIC COAST) There are fires on Lulu Island, and the sky is opalescent With the pearl and purple tinting from the smouldering of peat.

I Sing to us, cedars; the twilight is creeping With shadowy garments, the wilderness through;

Night 'neath the northern skies, lone, black, and grim: Naught but the starlight lies 'twixt heaven, and him. Of man no need has he, of God, no prayer;

Up the dusk-enfolded prairie, Foot-falls, soft and sly, Velvet cushioned, wild and wary,

They were coming across the prairie, they were galloping hard and fast; For the eyes of those desperate riders had sighted their man at last - Sighted him off to Eastward, where the Cree encampment lay,

I To none the city bends a servile knee; Purse-proud and scornful, on her heights she stands,

Hard by the Indian lodges, where the bush Breaks in a clearing, through ill-fashioned fields, She comes to labour, when the first still hush

The autumn afternoon is dying o'er The quiet western valley where I lie Beneath the maples on the river shore,

Into the rose gold westland, its yellow prairies roll, World of the bison's freedom, home of the Indian's soul. Roll out, O seas! in sunlight bathed,

You are belted with gold, little brother of mine, Yellow gold, like the sun That spills in the west, as a chalice of wine

The sun's red pulses beat, Full prodigal of heat, Full lavish of its lustre unrepressed;

He needs must leave the trapping and the chase, For mating game his arrows ne'er despoil, And from the hunter's heaven turn his face,

I Love, was it yesternoon, or years agone, You took in yours my hands,

I am the one who loved her as my life, Had watched her grow to sweet young womanhood; Won the dear privilege to call her wife,

All the long day the vapours played At blindfold in the city streets, Their elfin fingers caught and stayed

It is dusk on the Lost Lagoon, And we two dreaming the dusk away, Beneath the drift of a twilight grey,

WRITTEN FOR "THE SPECTATOR" There's a brave little berry-brown man At the opposite side of the earth;

"Wreck and stray and castaway." - SWINBURNE. Once more adrift. O'er dappling sea and broad lagoon,

"False," they said, "thy Pale-face lover, from the land of waking morn; Rise and wed thy Redskin wooer, nobler warrior ne'er was born; Cease thy watching, cease thy dreaming,

Plains, plains, and the prairie land which the sunlight floods and fills, To the north the open country, southward the Cyprus Hills; Never a bit of woodland, never a rill that flows,

Who is it lacks the knowledge? Who are the curs that dare To whine and sneer that they do not fear the whelps in the Lion's lair? But we of the North will answer, while life in the North remains,

(THUNDER BAY, LAKE SUPERIOR) When did you sink to your dreamless sleep Out there in your thunder bed?

West wind, blow from your prairie nest, Blow from the mountains, blow from the west. The sail is idle, the sailor too;

Music, music with throb and swing, Of a plaintive note, and long; 'Tis a note no human throat could sing,

Sob of fall, and song of forest, come you here on haunting quest, Calling through the seas and silence, from God's country of the west. Where the mountain pass is narrow, and the torrent white and strong,

Out of the night and the north; Savage of breed and of bone, Shaggy and swift comes the yelping band,

What saw you in your flight to-day, Crows, awinging your homeward way? Went you far in carrion quest,

Like a grey shadow lurking in the light, He ventures forth along the edge of night; With silent foot he scouts the coulie's rim

Beyond a ridge of pine with russet tips The west lifts to the sun her longing lips, Her blushes stain with gold and garnet dye

Unknown to you, I walk the cheerless shore. The cutting blast, the hurl of biting brine May freeze, and still, and bind the waves at war,

Lichens of green and grey on every side; And green and grey the rocks beneath our feet; Above our heads the canvas stretching wide;

To-night I hunger so, Beloved one, to know If you recall and crave again the dream

Cards, and swords, and a lady's love, That is a tale worth reading, An insult veiled, a downcast glove,

I What dream you in the night-time When you whisper to the moon?

"Yes, sir, it's quite a story, though you won't believe it's true, But such things happened often when I lived beyond the Soo." And the trapper tilted back his chair and filled his pipe anew.

Across the street, an humble woman lives; To her 'tis little fortune ever gives; Denied the wines of life, it puzzles me

Methinks I see your mirror frame, Ornate with photographs of them. Place mine therein, for, all the same,