The Lover To His Lass

Crown her with stars, this angel of our planet,
Cover her with morning, this thing of pure delight,
Mantle her with midnight till a mortal cannot
See her for the garments of the light and the night.

How far I wandered, worlds away and far away,
Heard a voice but knew it not in the clear cold,
Many a wide circle and many a wan star away,
Dwelling in the chambers where the worlds were growing old.

Saw them growing old and heard them falling
Like ripe fruit when a tree is in the wind;
Saw the seraphs gather them, their clarion voices calling
In rounds of cheering labour till the orchard floor was thinned.

Saw a whole universe turn to its setting,
Old and cold and weary, gray and cold as death,
But before mine eyes were veiled in forgetting,
Something always caught my soul and held its breath.

Caught it up and held it, now I know the reason;
Governed it and soothed it, now I know why;
Nurtured it and trained it and kept it for the season
When new worlds should blossom in the springtime sky.

How have they blossomed, see the sky is like a garden!
Ah! how fresh the worlds look hanging on the slope!
Pluck one and wear it, Love, and ask the Gardener's pardon,
Pluck out the Pleiads like a spray of heliotrope.

See Aldebaran like a red rose clamber,
See brave Betelgeux pranked with poppy light;
This young earth must float in floods of amber
Glowing with a crocus flame in the dells of night.

O you cannot cheat the soul of an inborn ambition,
'Tis a naked viewless thing living in its thought,
But it mounts through errors and by valleys of contrition
Till it conquers destiny and finds the thing it sought.

Crown her with stars, this angel of our planet,
Cover her with morning, this thing of pure delight,
Mantle her with midnight till a mortal cannot
See her for the garments of the light and the night.

Duncan Campbell Scott

Duncan Campbell Scott was a Canadian poet, writer, and civil servant. He was born on August 2, 1862, in Ottawa, Ontario, and died on December 19, 1947. Scott is often associated with the Confederation Poets and is known for his contributions to Canadian literature. His poetic work often reflects themes of nature and the Canadian landscape, but he is also a controversial figure due to his role in the Canadian government's assimilation policies towards Indigenous peoples. Despite this, his literary works remain influential.

Duncan Campbell Scott

Frost Magic

Duncan Campbell Scott, Simple Poetry

At The Gill-Nets

Duncan Campbell Scott, Simple Poetry

Mid-August

Duncan Campbell Scott, Simple Poetry

The Apparition

Duncan Campbell Scott, 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.

Spring On Mattagami

Far in the east the rain-clouds sweep and harry,
Down the long haggard hills, formless and low,
Far in the west the shell-tints meet and marry,
Piled gray and tender blue and roseate snow;
East - like a fiend, the bolt-breasted, streaming
Storm strikes the world with lightning and with hail;
West - like the thought of a seraph that is dreaming,
Venus leads the young moon down the vale.

Through the lake furrow between the gloom and bright'ning
Firm runs our long canoe with a whistling rush,
While Potàn the wise and the cunning Silver Lightning
Break with their slender blades the long clear hush;
Soon shall I pitch my tent amid the birches,
Wise Potàn shall gather boughs of balsam fir,
While for bark and dry wood Silver Lightning searches;
Soon the smoke shall ...

Duncan Campbell Scott

The November Pansy

This is not June, - by Autumn's stratagem
Thou hast been ambushed in the chilly air;
Upon thy fragile crest virginal fair
The rime has clustered in a diadem;
The early frost
Has nipped thy roots and tried thy tender stem,
Seared thy gold petals, all thy charm is lost.

Thyself the only sunshine: in obeying
The law that bids thee blossom in the world
Thy little flag of courage is unfurled;
Inherent pansy-memories are saying
That there is sun,
That there is dew and colour and warmth repaying
The rain, the starlight when the light is done.

These are the gaunt forms of the hollyhocks
That shower the seeds from out their withered purses;
Here were the pinks; there the nasturtium nurses
The last of colour in her gaudy smocks;
The ruins yonder

Duncan Campbell Scott

A Lover's Litanies - Tenth Litany. Gloria in Excelsis.

i.

O Love! O Lustre of the sunlit earth
    That knows thy step and revels in the worth
Of thy much beauty! Is't thy will anew,
Famed as thou art, to marvel that I sue
With such persistence, and in such unrest
Amid the frenzies of my passion-quest?
    Wilt look ungently, and without a tear,
On all the pangs I bear at thy behest?


ii.

Morning and eve I cease not, when I kneel
    To my Redeemer for my spirit's weal
And for my body's,--as becomes a man,--
Morning and eve I cease not in the span
Of all my days, O thou Unconquer'd One!
To pray for thee, and do what may be done
    To re-acquire the friendship I have lost,
Which is the holiest thing beneath the sun.


iii.

For what is fame that with so loud a v...

Eric Mackay

A Mystery Play

CHARACTERS

The Father. The Child. Death. Angels.
        Two Travellers.

    *    *    *    *    *

The even settles still and deep,
In the cold sky the last gold burns,
Across the colour snow flakes creep.
Each one from grey to glory turns
Then flutters into nothingness;
The frost down falls with mighty stress
Through the swift cloud that parts on high;
The great stars shrivel into less
In the hard depth of the iron sky.

    *    *    *    *    *

The Child:

What is that light, dear father,
That light in the dark, dark sky?


The Father:

Those are the lights of the city
And the villages thereby.


The Child:

There must be fire in the city

Duncan Campbell Scott

Lines In Memory Of Edmund Morris

Dear Morris - here is your letter -
Can my answer reach you now?
Fate has left me your debtor,
You will remember how;
For I went away to Nantucket,
And you to the Isle of Orleans,
And when I was dawdling and dreaming
Over the ways and means
Of answering, the power was denied me,
Fate frowned and took her stand;
I have your unanswered letter
Here in my hand.
This - in your famous scribble,
It was ever a cryptic fist,
Cuneiform or Chaldaic
Meanings held in a mist.

Dear Morris, (now I'm inditing
And poring over your script)
I gather from the writing,
The coin that you had flipt,
Turned tails; and so you compel me
To meet you at Touchwood Hills:
Or, mayhap, you are trying to tell me
The sum of a painter's ills:
Is that...

Duncan Campbell Scott

The Wood-Spring To The Poet

Dawn-cool, dew-cool
Gleams the surface of my pool
Bird haunted, fern enchanted,
Where but tempered spirits rule;
Stars do not trace their mystic lines
In my confines;
I take a double night within my breast
A night of darkened heavens, a night of leaves,
And in the two-fold dark I hear the owl
Puff at his velvet horn
And the wolves howl.
Even daylight comes with a touch of gold
Not overbold,
And shows dwarf-cornel and the twin-flowers,
Below the balsam bowers,
Their tints enamelled in my dew-drop shield.
Too small even for a thirsty fawn
To quench upon,
I hold my crystal at one level
There where you see the liquid bevel
Break in silver and go free
Singing to its destiny.

Give, Poet, give!
Thus only shalt thou live.
...

Duncan Campbell Scott