Ave! (An Ode for the Shelley Centenary, 1892) (Charles G. D. Roberts Poems)
I O tranquil meadows, grassy Tantramar, Wide marshes ever washed in clearest air, Whether beneath the ...
Charles G. D. Roberts Poems on Dreams (10 Poems)
Canada (Charles G. D. Roberts Poems)
O Child of Nations, giant-limbed, Who stand'st among the nations now Unheeded, unadored, unhymned, With unanointed brow, — How long the ignoble sloth, how long The trust in greatness not thine own? Surely the lion's brood is strong To front the world alone! How long the indolence, ere thou dare Achieve thy destiny, seize thy fame, — Ere our proud eyes behold thee bear A nation's franchise, nation's name? The Saxon force, the Celtic fire, These are thy manhood's heritage! Why rest with babes and slaves? Seek higher The place of race and age. I see to every wind unfurled The flag that bears the Maple Wreath; Thy swift keels furrow round the world Its blood-red folds beneath; Thy swift keels cleave the furthest seas; Thy white sails swell with alien gales; To stream on each remotest breeze The black smoke of thy pipes exhales. O Falterer, let thy past convince Thy future, — all the growth, the gain, The fame since Cartier knew thee, since Thy shores beheld Champlain! (Montcalm and Wolfe! Wolfe and Montcalm! Quebec, thy storied citadel Attest in burning song and psalm How here thy heroes fell! O Thou that bor'st the battle's brunt At Queenston and at Lundy's Lane, — On whose scant ranks but iron front The battle broke in vain! — Whose was the danger, whose the day, From whose triumphant throats the cheers, At Chrysler's Farm, at Chateauguay, Storming like clarion-bursts our ears? On soft Pacific slopes, — beside Strange floods that northward rave and fall, — Where chafes Acadia's chainless tide — Thy sons await thy call. They wait; but some in exile, some With strangers housed, in stranger lands, — And some Canadian lips are dumb Beneath Egyptian sands. O mystic Nile! Thy secret yields Before us; thy most ancient dreams Are mixed with far Canadian fields And murmur of Canadian streams. But thou, my country, dream not thou! Wake, and behold how night is done, — How on thy breast, and o'er thy brow, Bursts the uprising sun!(Charles G. D. Roberts)
Tantramar Revisited (Charles G. D. Roberts Poems)
Summers and summers have come, and gone with the flight of the swallow; Sunshine and thunder have been, storm, and ...
The Great and Little Weavers (Charles G. D. Roberts Poems)
The great and the little weavers, They neither rest nor sleep. They work in the height and the glory, They toil in the dark and the deep. The rainbow melts with the shower, The white-thorn falls in the gust, The cloud-rose dies into shadow, The earth-rose dies into dust. But they have not faded forever, They have not flowered in vain, For the great and the little weavers Are weaving under the rain. Recede the drums of the thunder When the Titan chorus tires, And the bird-song piercing the sunset Faints with the sunset fires, But the trump of the storm shall fail not, Nor the flute-cry fail of the thrush, For the great and the little weavers Are weaving under the hush. The comet flares into darkness, The flame dissolves into death, The power of the star and the dew They glow and are gone like a breath, But ere the old wonder is done Is the new-old wonder begun, For the great and the little weavers Are weaving under the sun. The domes of an empire crumble, A child's hope dies in tears; Time rolls them away forgotten In the silt of the flooding years; The creed for which men died smiling Decays to a beldame's curse; The love that made lips immortal Drags by in a tattered hearse. But not till the search of the moon Sees the last white face uplift, And over the bones of the kindreds The bare sands dredge and drift, Shall Love forget to return And lift the unused latch, (In his eyes the look of the traveller, On his lips the foreign catch), Nor the mad song leave men cold, Nor the high dream summon in vain, — For the great and the little weavers Are weaving in heart and brain.(Charles G. D. Roberts)
The Skater (Charles G. D. Roberts Poems)
My glad feet shod with the glittering steel I was the god of the wingèd heel. The hills in the far white sky were lost; The world lay still in the wide white frost; And the woods hung hushed in their long white dream By the ghostly, glimmering, ice-blue stream. Here was a pathway, smooth like glass, Where I and the wandering wind might pass To the far-off palaces, drifted deep, Where Winter's retinue rests in sleep. I followed the lure, I fled like a bird, Till the startled hollows awoke and heard A spinning whisper, a sibilant twang, As the stroke of the steel on the tense ice rang; And the wandering wind was left behind As faster, faster I followed my mind; Till the blood sang high in my eager brain, And the joy of my flight was almost pain. The I stayed the rush of my eager speed And silently went as a drifting seed, — Slowly, furtively, till my eyes Grew big with the awe of a dim surmise, And the hair of my neck began to creep At hearing the wilderness talk in sleep. Shapes in the fir-gloom drifted near. In the deep of my heart I heard my fear. And I turned and fled, like a soul pursued, From the white, inviolate solitude.(Charles G. D. Roberts)
Canadian Streams (Charles G. D. Roberts Poems)
O rivers rolling to the seaFrom lands that bear the maple-tree, How swell your voices with the strainOf loyalty and ...
In an Old Barn (Charles G. D. Roberts Poems)
Tons upon tons the brown-green fragrant hay O'erbrims the mows beyond the time-warped eaves, Up to the rafters where the spider weaves, Though few flies wander his secluded way. Through a high chink one lonely golden ray, Wherein the dust is dancing, slants unstirred. In the dry hush some rustlings light are heard, Of winter-hidden mice at furtive play. Far down, the cattle in their shadowed stalls, Nose-deep in clover fodder's meadowy scent, Forget the snows that whelm their pasture streams, The frost that bites the world beyond their walls. Warm housed, they dream of summer, well content In day-long contemplation of their dreams.(Charles G. D. Roberts)
When The Sleepy Man Comes (Charles G. D. Roberts Poems)
When the Sleepy Man comes with the dust on his eyes,(Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)He shuts up the earth, ...
Twilight on Sixth Avenue at Ninth Street (Charles G. D. Roberts Poems)
Over the tops of the houses Twilight and sunset meet. The green, diaphanous dusk ...
At the Gates of Spring (Charles G. D. Roberts Poems)
With April here,And first thin green on the awakening bough,What wonderful things and dear,My tired heart to cheer,At last appear!Colours ...