Duncan Campbell Scott

My heart would need the earth,
My voice would need the sea,
To only tell the one half
How dear you are to me.And if I had the winds,…

Wind of the gentle summer night,
Dwell in the lilac tree,
Sway the blossoms clustered light,
Then blow over to me.

She stands full-throated and with careless pose,
This woman of a weird and waning race,
The tragic savage lurking in her face,
Where all her pagan passion burns and glows;

I rested on the breezy height,
In cooler shade and clearer air,
Beneath a maple tree;
Below, the mighty river took…

TO H.D.S.Are the little breezes blind,
They that push me as they pass?
Do they search the tangled grass
For some path they want to find?…

It would be sweet to think when we are old
Of all the pleasant days that came to pass,
That here we took the berries from the grass,
There charmed the bees with pans, and smoke unrolled,…

Now, in the moonrise, from a wintry sky,
The frost has come to charm with elfin
This quiet room; to draw with symbols
Faces and forms in fairest

EN the deep cunning
Had the great minster planned,
They worked in faith for twice two hundred
And reared the building grand;

This is the land!
It lies outstretched a vision of delight,
Bent like a shield between the silver seas
It flashes back the hauteur of the sun;…

TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHERThis is the acre of unfathomed rest,
These stones, with weed and lichen bound, enclose
No active grief, no uncompleted woes,
But only finished work and harboured quest,…

She is free of the trap and the paddle,
The portage and the trail,
But something behind her savage life
Shines like a fragile veil.

March wind
Clashed the trees,
Flung the snow;
Breaking stones,

Here is the height of land:
The watershed on either
Goes down to Hudson
Or Lake Superior;

Come, O thou conqueror of the flying year;
Come from thy fastness of the Arctic suns;
Mass on the purple waste and wide frontier
Thy wanish hosts and silver clarions.Then heap this sombre shoulder of the world…

I Once in the winter Out on a lake In the heart of the north-land, Far from the Fort And far from the hunters, A Chippewa woman With her sick baby, Crouched in the last hours Of a great storm. Frozen and hungry, She fished through the ice With a…

When April moved in maiden guise
Hiding her sweet inviolate eyes,
You saw about the hazel roots,
Beyond the ruddy osier shoots,…

RE Morris, on the plains that we have loved,
Think of the death of Akoose, fleet of foot,
Who, in his prime, a herd of
From sunrise, without rest, a hundred

Set within a desert lone,
Circled by an arid sea,
Stands a figure carved in stone,
Where a fountain used to be.

Sun on the mountain,
Shade in the valley,
Ripple and
Leaping along the world,

Here there is balm for every tender heart Wounded by life;
Rest for each one who bore a valiant part Crushed in the strife.
I suffered there and held a losing fight Even to the grave;
And now I know that it was very right To suffer…

The shore-lark soars to his topmost flight, Sings at the height where morning springs,
What though his voice be lost in the light, The light comes dropping from his wings.
Mount, my soul, and sing at the height Of thy clear flight in…

TO A.L.Pallid saffron glows the broken stubble,
Brimmed with silver lie the ruts,
Purple the ploughed hill;
Down a sluice with break and bubble…

The Earth moans in her sleep
Like an old mother
Whose sons have gone to the war,
Who weeps silently in her heart…