The Happy Hunting Grounds

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,
Your plains wind-tossed, and grass enswathed.

Farther than vision ranges, farther than eagles fly,
Stretches the land of beauty, arches the perfect sky,
Hemm'd through the purple mists afar
By peaks that gleam like star on star.

Fringing the prairie billows, fretting horizon's line,
Darkly green are slumb'ring wildernesses of pine,
Sleeping until the zephyrs throng
To kiss their silence into song.

Whispers freighted with odour swinging into the air,
Russet needles as censers swing to an altar, where
The angels' songs are less divine
Than duo sung twixt breeze and pine.

Laughing into the forest, dimples a mountain stream,
Pure as the airs above it, soft as a summer dream,
O! Lethean spring thou'rt only found
Within this ideal hunting ground.

Surely the great Hereafter cannot be more than this,
Surely we'll see that country after Time's farewell kiss.
Who would his lovely faith condole?
Who envies not the Red-skin's soul,

Sailing into the cloud land, sailing into the sun,
Into the crimson portals ajar when life is done?
O! dear dead race, my spirit too
Would fain sail westward unto you.

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

Canada

Emily Pauline Johnson, Simple Poetry

Overlooked

Emily Pauline Johnson, Simple Poetry

Shadow River

Emily Pauline Johnson, Simple Poetry

Dawendine

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.

Calgary Of The Plains

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,
The glory and the gateway of the yellow West is she.

The Northern Lights dance down her plains with soft and silvery feet,
The sunrise gilds her prairies when the dawn and daylight meet;
Along her level lands the fitful southern breezes sweep,
And beyond her western windows the sublime old mountains sleep.

The Redman haunts her portals, and the Paleface treads her streets,
The Indian's stealthy footstep with the course of commerce meets,
And hunters whisper vaguely of the half forgotten tales
Of phantom herds of bison lurking on her midnight trails.

Not hers the lore of olden l...

Emily Pauline Johnson

Silhouette

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

Etched where the lands and cloudlands touch and die
A solitary Indian tepee stands,
The only habitation of these lands,
That roll their magnitude from sky to sky.

The tent poles lift and loom in thin relief,
The upward floating smoke ascends between,
And near the open doorway, gaunt and lean,
And shadow-like, there stands an Indian Chief.

With eyes that lost their lustre long ago,
With visage fixed and stern as fate's decree,
He looks towards the empty west, to see
The never-coming herd of buffalo.

Only the bones that bleach upon the plains,
Only the fleshless skeleto...

Emily Pauline Johnson

Prairie Greyhounds

C.P.R. "NO. 1," WESTBOUND

        I swing to the sunset land -
The world of prairie, the world of plain,
The world of promise and hope and gain,
The world of gold, and the world of grain,
        And the world of the willing hand.

        I carry the brave and bold -
The one who works for the nation's bread,
The one whose past is a thing that's dead,
The one who battles and beats ahead,
        And the one who goes for gold.

        I swing to the "Land to Be,"
I am the power that laid its floors,
I am the guide to its western stores,
I am the key to its golden doors,
        That open alone to me.

C.P.R. "NO. 2," EASTBOUND

        I swing to the land of morn;
The grey old east with its grey old seas,
The land of le...

Emily Pauline Johnson

Thistle-Down

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
The shore, the river and the wide far sky;

Like floods of wine the waters filter through
The reeds that brush our indolent canoe.

I beach the bow where sands in shadows lie;
You hold my hand a space, then speak good-bye.

Upwinds your pathway through the yellow plumes
Of goldenrod, profuse in August blooms,

And o'er its tossing sprays you toss a kiss;
A moment more, and I see only this -

The idle paddle you so lately held,
The empty bow your pliant wrist propelled,

Some thistles purpling into violet,
Their blossoms with a thousand thorns afret,

And like a cobweb, shadowy and grey,
Far...

Emily Pauline Johnson

The Cattle Country

Up the dusk-enfolded prairie,
    Foot-falls, soft and sly,
Velvet cushioned, wild and wary,
    Then - the coyote's cry.

Rush of hoofs, and roar and rattle,
    Beasts of blood and breed,
Twenty thousand frightened cattle,
    Then - the wild stampede.

Pliant lasso circling wider
    In the frenzied flight -
Loping horse and cursing rider,
    Plunging through the night.

Rim of dawn the darkness losing
    Trail of blackened soil;
Perfume of the sage brush oozing
    On the air like oil.

Foothills to the Rockies lifting
    Brown, and blue, and green,
Warm Alberta sunlight drifting
    Over leagues between.

That's the country of the ranges,
    Plain and prairie land,
And the God who never changes

Emily Pauline Johnson

The Pilot Of The Plains

"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,
        Show the white thine Indian scorn."

Thus they taunted her, declaring, "He remembers naught of thee:
Likely some white maid he wooeth, far beyond the inland sea."
But she answered ever kindly,
        "He will come again to me,"

Till the dusk of Indian summer crept athwart the western skies;
But a deeper dusk was burning in her dark and dreaming eyes,
As she scanned the rolling prairie,
        Where the foothills fall, and rise.

Till the autumn came and vanished, till the season of the rains,
Till the western world lay fettered in midwinter's crystal chains,
Still she list...

Emily Pauline Johnson