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.

March 10, 1861

March 7, 1913

English

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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

Moonset

Idles the night wind through the dreaming firs,
That waking murmur low,
As some lost melody returning stirs
The love of long ago;
And through the far, cool distance, zephyr fanned.
The moon is sinking into shadow-land.

The troubled night-bird, calling plaintively,
Wanders on restless wing;
The cedars, chanting vespers to the sea,
Await its answering,
That comes in wash of waves along the strand,
The while the moon slips into shadow-land.

O! soft responsive voices of the night
I join your minstrelsy,
And call across the fading silver light
As something calls to me;
I may not all your meaning understand,
But I have touched your soul in shadow-land.

Emily Pauline Johnson

My English Letter

When each white moon, her lantern idly swinging,
    Comes out to join the star night-watching band,
Across the grey-green sea, a ship is bringing
    For me a letter, from the Motherland.

Naught would I care to live in quaint old Britain,
    These wilder shores are dearer far to me,
Yet when I read the words that hand has written,
    The parent sod more precious seems to be.

Within that folded note I catch the savour
    Of climes that make the Motherland so fair,
Although I never knew the blessed favour
    That surely lies in breathing English air.

Imagination's brush before me fleeing,
    Paints English pictures, though my longing eyes
Have never known the blessedness of seeing
    The blue that lines the arch of English skies.

A...

Emily Pauline Johnson

Nocturne

Night of Mid-June, in heavy vapours dying,
Like priestly hands thy holy touch is lying
Upon the world's wide brow;
God-like and grand all nature is commanding
The "peace that passes human understanding";
I, also, feel it now.

What matters it to-night, if one life treasure
I covet, is not mine! Am I to measure
The gifts of Heaven's decree
By my desires? O! life for ever longing
For some far gift, where many gifts are thronging,
God wills, it may not be.

Am I to learn that longing, lifted higher,
Perhaps will catch the gleam of sacred fire
That shows my cross is gold?
That underneath this cross - however lowly,
A jewel rests, white, beautiful and holy,
Whose worth can not be told.

Like to a scene I watched one day in wonder: -
A ...

Emily Pauline Johnson

Ojistoh

I am Ojistoh, I am she, the wife
Of him whose name breathes bravery and life
And courage to the tribe that calls him chief.
I am Ojistoh, his white star, and he
Is land, and lake, and sky - and soul to me.

Ah! but they hated him, those Huron braves,
Him who had flung their warriors into graves,
Him who had crushed them underneath his heel,
Whose arm was iron, and whose heart was steel
To all - save me, Ojistoh, chosen wife
Of my great Mohawk, white star of his life.

Ah! but they hated him, and councilled long
With subtle witchcraft how to work him wrong;
How to avenge their dead, and strike him where
His pride was highest, and his fame most fair.
Their hearts grew weak as women at his name:
They dared no war-path since my Mohawk came
With ashe...

Emily Pauline Johnson

Overlooked

Sleep, with her tender balm, her touch so kind,
                Has passed me by;
Afar I see her vesture, velvet-lined,
                Float silently;
O! Sleep, my tired eyes had need of thee!
Is thy sweet kiss not meant to-night for me?

Peace, with the blessings that I longed for so,
                Has passed me by;
Where'er she folds her holy wings I know
                All tempests die;
O! Peace, my tired soul had need of thee!
Is thy sweet kiss denied alone to me?

Love, with her heated touches, passion-stirred,
                Has passed me by.
I called, "O stay thy flight," but all unheard
                My lonely cry:
O! Love, my tired heart had need of thee!
Is thy sweet kiss withheld alone from me?

Sleep, sister-twin of ...

Emily Pauline Johnson

Penseroso

Soulless is all humanity to me
To-night. My keenest longing is to be
Alone, alone with God's grey earth that seems
Pulse of my pulse and consort of my dreams.

To-night my soul desires no fellowship,
Or fellow-being; crave I but to slip
Thro' space on space, till flesh no more can bind,
And I may quit for aye my fellow kind.

Let me but feel athwart my cheek the lash
Of whipping wind, but hear the torrent dash
Adown the mountain steep, 'twere more my choice
Than touch of human hand, than human voice.

Let me but wander on the shore night-stilled,
Drinking its darkness till my soul is filled;
The breathing of the salt sea on my hair,
My outstretched hands but grasping empty air.

Let me but feel the pulse of Nature's soul
Athrob on mine...

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

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

Re-Voyage

What of the days when we two dreamed together?
    Days marvellously fair,
As lightsome as a skyward floating feather
    Sailing on summer air -
Summer, summer, that came drifting through
Fate's hand to me, to you.

What of the days, my dear? I sometimes wonder
    If you too wish this sky
Could be the blue we sailed so softly under,
    In that sun-kissed July;
Sailed in the warm and yellow afternoon,
With hearts in touch and tune.

Have you no longing to re-live the dreaming,
    Adrift in my canoe?
To watch my paddle blade all wet and gleaming
    Cleaving the waters through?
To lie wind-blown and wave-caressed, until
Your restless pulse grows still?

Do you not long to listen to the purling
    Of foam athwart the keel?
...

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

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

The Archers

I

Stripped to the waist, his copper-coloured skin
Red from the smouldering heat of hate within,
Lean as a wolf in winter, fierce of mood -
As all wild things that hunt for foes, or food -
War paint adorning breast and thigh and face,
Armed with the ancient weapons of his race,
A slender ashen bow, deer sinew strung,
And flint-tipped arrow each with poisoned tongue, -
Thus does the Red man stalk to death his foe,
And sighting him strings silently his bow,
Takes his unerring aim, and straight and true
The arrow cuts in flight the forest through,
A flint which never made for mark and missed,
And finds the heart of his antagonist.
Thus has he warred and won since time began,
Thus does the Indian bring to earth his man.

II

Ungarmented, s...

Emily Pauline Johnson

The Art Of Alma-Tadema

There is no song his colours cannot sing,
    For all his art breathes melody, and tunes
The fine, keen beauty that his brushes bring
    To murmuring marbles and to golden Junes.

The music of those marbles you can hear
    In every crevice, where the deep green stains
Have sunken when the grey days of the year
    Spilled leisurely their warm, incessant rains

That, lingering, forget to leave the ledge,
    But drenched into the seams, amid the hush
Of ages, leaving but the silent pledge
    To waken to the wonder of his brush.

And at the Master's touch the marbles leap
    To life, the creamy onyx and the skins
Of copper-coloured leopards, and the deep,
    Cool basins where the whispering water wins

Reflections from the gold and glowi...

Emily Pauline Johnson

The Ballad Of Yaada [1]

(A LEGEND OF THE PACIFIC COAST)

There are fires on Lulu Island, and the sky is opalescent
    With the pearl and purple tinting from the smouldering of peat.
And the Dream Hills lift their summits in a sweeping, hazy crescent,
    With the Capilano canyon at their feet.

There are fires on Lulu Island, and the smoke, uplifting, lingers
    In a faded scarf of fragrance as it creeps across the day,
And the Inlet and the Narrows blur beneath its silent fingers,
    And the canyon is enfolded in its grey.

But the sun its face is veiling like a cloistered nun at vespers;
    As towards the alter candles of the night a censer swings,
And the echo of tradition wakes from slumbering and whispers,
    Where the Capilano river sobs and sings.

It was Yaada, love...

Emily Pauline Johnson

The Birds' Lullaby

I

Sing to us, cedars; the twilight is creeping
    With shadowy garments, the wilderness through;
All day we have carolled, and now would be sleeping,
    So echo the anthems we warbled to you;
                While we swing, swing,
                And your branches sing,
        And we drowse to your dreamy whispering.

II

Sing to us, cedars; the night-wind is sighing,
    Is wooing, is pleading, to hear you reply;
And here in your arms we are restfully lying,
    And longing to dream to your soft lullaby;
                While we swing, swing,
                And your branches sing,
        And we drowse to your dreamy whispering.

III

Sing to us, cedars; your voice is so lowly,
    Your breathing so fragrant, your branc...

Emily Pauline Johnson

The Camper

Night 'neath the northern skies, lone, black, and grim:
Naught but the starlight lies 'twixt heaven, and him.

Of man no need has he, of God, no prayer;
He and his Deity are brothers there.

Above his bivouac the firs fling down
Through branches gaunt and black, their needles brown.

Afar some mountain streams, rockbound and fleet,
Sing themselves through his dreams in cadence sweet,

The pine trees whispering, the heron's cry,
The plover's passing wing, his lullaby.

And blinking overhead the white stars keep
Watch o'er his hemlock bed - his sinless sleep.

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

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