Isabella Valancy Crawford (Изабелла Валанси Кроуфорд)
Canada to England
GONE are the days, old Warrior of the Seas, When thine armed head, bent low to catch my voice, Caught but the plaintive sighings of my woods, And the wild roar of rock-dividing streams, And the loud bellow of my cataracts, Bridged with the seven splendours of the bow. When Nature was a Samson yet unshorn, Filling the land with solitary might, Or as the Angel of the Apocalypse, One foot upon the primeval bowered land, One foot upon the white mane of the sea, My voice but faintly swelled the ebb and flow Of the wild tides and storms that beat upon Thy rocky girdle,—loud shrieking from the Ind Ambrosial-breathing furies; from the north Thundering with Arctic bellows, groans of seas Rising from tombs of ice disrupted by The magic kisses of the wide-eyed sun. The times have won a change. Nature no more Lords it alone and binds the lonely land A serf to tongueless solitudes; but Nature's self Is led, glad captive, in light fetters rich As music-sounding silver can adorn; And man has forged them, and our silent God Behind His flaming worlds smiles on the deed. "Man hath dominion"—words of primal might; "Man hath dominion"—thus the words of God. If destiny is writ on night's dusk scroll, Then youngest stars are dropping from the hand Of the Creator, sowing on the sky My name in seeds of light. Ages will watch Those seeds expand to suns, such as the tree Bears on its boughs, which grows in Paradise. How sounds my voice, my warrior kinsman, now? Sounds it not like to thine in lusty youth— A world-possessing shout of busy men, Veined with the clang of trumpets and the noise Of those who make them ready for the strife, And in the making ready bruise its head? Sounds it not like to thine—the whispering vine, The robe of summer rustling thro' the fields, The lowing of the cattle in the meads, The sound of Commerce, and the music-set, Flame-brightened step of Art in stately halls,— All the infinity of notes which chord The diapason of a Nation's voice? My infants' tongues lisp word for word with thine; We worship, wed, and die, and God is named That way ye name Him,—strong bond between Two mighty lands when as one mingled cry, As of one voice, Jehovah turns to hear. The bonds between us are no subtle links Of subtle minds binding in close embrace, Half-struggling for release, two alien lands, But God's own seal of kindred, which to burst Were but to dash his benediction from Our brows. "Who loveth not his kin, Whose face and voice are his, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?"
Isabella Valancy Crawford’s other poems:
- The Helot
- Malcolm’s Katie: A Love Story – Part 4
- “The Earth Waxeth Old”
- The Mother’s Soul
- The Dark Stag
Poems of other poets with the same name (Стихотворения других поэтов с таким же названием):
