Marshlands

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,
Glint through their mildews like large cups of gold.

Among the wild rice in the still lagoon,
In monotone the lizard shrills his tune.

The wild goose, homing, seeks a sheltering,
Where rushes grow, and oozing lichens cling.

Late cranes with heavy wing, and lazy flight,
Sail up the silence with the nearing night.

And like a spirit, swathed in some soft veil,
Steals twilight and its shadows o'er the swale.

Hushed lie the sedges, and the vapours creep,
Thick, grey and humid, while the marshes sleep.

Emily Pauline Johnson

Emily Pauline Johnson was a Canadian poet of mixed Mohawk and English heritage. She was born on March 10, 1861, on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario. Johnson became known for her performances, where she often wore a traditional Mohawk dress. Her published works include poetry, short stories, and essays that explore themes of identity, cultural heritage, and nature. She passed away on March 7, 1913, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Emily Pauline Johnson

The Sleeping Giant

Emily Pauline Johnson, Simple Poetry

The Songster

Emily Pauline Johnson, Simple Poetry

Easter

Emily Pauline Johnson, Simple Poetry

Penseroso

Emily Pauline Johnson, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

In The Shadows

I am sailing to the leeward,
Where the current runs to seaward
        Soft and slow,
Where the sleeping river grasses
Brush my paddle as it passes
        To and fro.

On the shore the heat is shaking
All the golden sands awaking
        In the cove;
And the quaint sand-piper, winging
O'er the shallows, ceases singing
        When I move.

On the water's idle pillow
Sleeps the overhanging willow,
        Green and cool;
Where the rushes lift their burnished
Oval heads from out the tarnished
        Emerald pool.

Where the very silence slumbers,
Water lilies grow in numbers,
        Pure and pale;
All the morning they have rested,
Amber crowned, and pearly crested,
        Fair and frail.

Here, impo...

Emily Pauline Johnson

The Lost Lagoon

It is dusk on the Lost Lagoon,
And we two dreaming the dusk away,
Beneath the drift of a twilight grey,
Beneath the drowse of an ending day,
And the curve of a golden moon.

It is dark in the Lost Lagoon,
And gone are the depths of haunting blue,
The grouping gulls, and the old canoe,
The singing firs, and the dusk and - you,
And gone is the golden moon.

O! lure of the Lost Lagoon, -
I dream to-night that my paddle blurs
The purple shade where the seaweed stirs,
I hear the call of the singing firs
In the hush of the golden moon.

Emily Pauline Johnson

Shadow River

MUSKOKA

A stream of tender gladness,
Of filmy sun, and opal tinted skies;
Of warm midsummer air that lightly lies
In mystic rings,
Where softly swings
The music of a thousand wings
That almost tones to sadness.

Midway 'twixt earth and heaven,
A bubble in the pearly air, I seem
To float upon the sapphire floor, a dream
Of clouds of snow,
Above, below,
Drift with my drifting, dim and slow,
As twilight drifts to even.

The little fern-leaf, bending
Upon the brink, its green reflection greets,
And kisses soft the shadow that it meets
With touch so fine,
The border line
The keenest vision can't define;
So perfect is the blending.

The far, fir trees that cover
The brownish hills with needles green and gold,

Emily Pauline Johnson

The Lake Shore Road.

    'Tis noon, the meadow stretches in the sun,
    And every little spear of grass uplifts its slimness to the glow
    To let the heavy-laden bees pass out.

    A stream comes at a snail's pace through the gloom
    Of shrub and fern and brake,
    Leaps o'er a wall, goes singing on to find
    The coolness of the lake.

    A wild rose spreads her greenness on a hedge,
    And flings her tinted blossoms in the air;
    The sweetbriar neighbors with that porcupine
    Of shrubs, the gooseberry; with parasol
    Of white the elderberry shades her head
    And dreams of purple fruit and wine-press chill.

    From off her four warm eggs of mottled shade,
    A bird flies with a call of love and joy
    That wins an answer straight
    From that...

Jean Blewett

Rainfall

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,
The wind preludes with sighs its roundelay,

Then blowing, singing, piping, laughing loud,
It scurries on before the grey storm-cloud;

Across the hollow and along the hill
It whips and whirls among the maples, till

With boughs upbent, and green of leaves blown wide,
The silver shines upon their underside.

A gusty freshening of humid air,
With showers laden, and with fragrance rare;

And now a little sprinkle, with a dash
Of great cool drops that fall with sudden splash;

Then over field and hollow, grass and grain,
The loud, crisp whiteness of the nearing rain.

Emily Pauline Johnson

An Idyl

        Upon a gnarly, knotty limb
            That fought the current's crest,
        Where shocks of reeds peeped o'er the brim,
            Wild wasps had glued their nest.

        And in a sprawling cypress' grot,
            Sheltered and safe from flood,
        Dirt-daubers each had chosen a spot
            To shape his house of mud.

        In a warm crevice of the bark
            A basking scorpion clung,
        With bright blue tail and red-rimmed eyes
            And yellow, twinkling tongue.

        A lunging trout flashed in the sun,
            To do some petty slaughter,
        And set the spiders all a-run
            On little stilts of water.

        Toward noon upon the swamp there stole
            A deep, ...

John Charles McNeill