With brief hot touch, so marvellous and shining,
A hundred steeples on the sky out-lining,
Like network threads of fire;
Above them all, with halo far outspreading,
I saw a golden cross in glory heading
A consecrated spire: 

I only saw its gleaming form uplifting,
Against the clouds of grey to seaward drifting,
And yet I surely know
Beneath the seen, a great unseen is resting,
For while the cross that pinnacle is cresting,
An Altar lies below.

. . . . .

Night of Mid-June, so slumberous and tender,
Night of Mid-June, transcendent in thy splendour
Thy silent wings enfold
And hush my longing, as at thy desire
All colour fades from round that far-off spire,
Except its cross of gold.

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.

And yet my letter brings the scenes I covet,
  Framed in the salt sea winds, aye more in dreams
I almost see the face that bent above it,
  I almost touch that hand, so near it seems.

Near, for the very grey-green sea that dashes
  ’Round these Canadian coasts, rolls out once more
To Eastward, and the same Atlantic splashes
  Her wild white spray on England’s distant shore.

Near, for the same young moon so idly swinging
  Her threadlike crescent bends the selfsame smile
On that old land from whence a ship is bringing
  My message from the transatlantic Isle.

Thus loves my heart that far old country better,
  Because of those dear words that always come,
With love enfolded in each English letter
  That drifts into my sun-kissed Western home.

CANADIAN BORN

(The following poems are from the author’s second book, “Canadian
Born,” first published in 1903.)

CANADIAN BORN

We first saw light in Canada, the land beloved of God;
We are the pulse of Canada, its marrow and its blood: 
And we, the men of Canada, can face the world and brag
That we were born in Canada beneath the British flag.