With pure virtue’s hand I guard the might of my hijāb
and with faultless self-shielding, among my peers I rise
With my thoughts taking fire and my gift for sharp critique
I have brought my poet’s skills to new and perfect highs
I composed poetry expressing an assemblage:
before me, women sheltered, most noble, esteemed, wise
I uttered my verses just as light and playful speech
yet the eloquence of books and logic I much prize
Mahdī’s daughter, Laylā—these are my choice models
as with innate acuity my best thoughts I poetize
How superb these ladies are! A noble weave indeed
in women and in maidens the men do recognize
Given precious pearls of mind, a poet like Khansa’
wanders rocky paths and for a brother, frantic, cries
From the brow of my notebooks I fashioned my mirror
and of ink’s jet-black traces I created my dyes
How often my fingertip adorns my paper’s cheeks
with script’s downy touch or the skin of my youth’s sighs
The candles of my intellect sent their brilliance far,
as the scent of my words perfumed dear ones’ garden skies
Women of great splendor wrapped in shawls of logic fine:
and their envy my presence or my absence defies
In sentiment’s assembly my tresses I undid:
those of goodly lineage their symbols will surmise
The arts of my eloquence, my mind I protected:
talisman dear, hijab’s amulet: danger denies
My literature and my learning did me no harm
save in making me the finest flower of minds wise
Solitary bower, scarf’s knot, are no affliction
nor my gown’s cut nor proud and strong guarded paradise
My bashfulness, no blockade to keep me from the heights
nor could the veil’s lowering o’er my ringlets disguise
the wager’s arena though the horsemen’s ambitions
from the hardships of the race suffered demise
No! my might is my repose, my knightly prowess lies
in the beauty of my striving: finest goals I prize
Not to mention a secret whose essence is sheltered
though word spread far to strangers of its rarity and size
Like musk it is sealed in the drawers of treasuries:
but the fragrance of its sweetness spreads in saffron sighs
Or like the seas as they embraced hidden gemlike pearls:
when the hands of seekers touch, the touch will paralyze
Desiring to obtain and to have those lovely pearls,
what troubling trials these divers brave, deeds that sense defies!
World-renowned amber agreed to give pearls protection:
its nature is recited in every book one buys
So I touch my fire to the wick in the lamp of skills
granted me by holy God, gifts of the Giver Wise
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 175th birthday.
Gerard Manley Hopkins English 1844 – 1889
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 235th birthday.
Denis Davydov Russian 1784 – 1839
While honouring the grape’s ruby nectar,
All sportingly, laughingly gay;
We determined — I, Silvia, and Hector,
To drive old dame Wisdom away.
“O my children, take care,” said the beldame,
“Attend to these counsels of mine:
Get not tipsy! for danger is seldom
Remote from the goblet of wine.”
“With thee in his company, no man
Can err,” said our wag with a wink;
“But come, thou good-natured old woman,
There’s a drop in the goblet — and drink!”
She frowned — but her scruples soon twisting,
Consented: — and smilingly said:
“So polite — there’s indeed no resisting,
For Wisdom was never ill-bred.”
She drank but continued her teaching:
“Let the wise from indulgence refrain;”
And never gave over her preaching,
But to say, “Fill the goblet again.”
And she drank, and she totter’d, but still she
Was talking and shaking her head:
Muttered “temperance” – “prudence” –
until she Was carried by Love to bed.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 170th birthday.
Emma Lazarus American 1849 – 1887
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
I have laid my cheek to Nature’s, placed my puny hand in hers,
Felt a kindred spirit warming all the life-blood of my face,
Moved amid the very foremost of her truest worshippers,
Studying each curve of beauty, marking every minute grace;
Loved not less the mountain cedar than the flowers at its feet,
Looking skyward from the valley, open-lipped as if in prayer,
Felt a pleasure in the brooklet singing of its wild retreat,
But I knelt before the splendour of the thunderous Chaudiere.
All my manhood waked within me, every nerve had tenfold force,
And my soul stood up rejoicing, looking on with cheerful eyes,
Watching the resistless waters speeding on their downward course,
Titan strength and queenly beauty diademed with rainbow dyes.
Eye and ear, with spirit quickened, mingled with the lovely strife,
Saw the living Genius shrined within her sanctuary fair,
Heard her voice of sweetness singing, peered into her hidden life,
And discerned the tuneful secret of the jubilant Chaudiere:
‘Within my pearl-roofed shell,
Whose floor is woven with the iris bright,
Genius and Queen of the Chaudiere I dwell,
As in a world of immaterial light.
My throne, an ancient rock,
Marked by the foot of ages long-departed,
My joy, the cataract’s stupendous shock,
Whose roll is music to the grateful-hearted.
I’ve seen the eras glide
With muffled tread to their eternal dreams,
While I have lived in vale and mountain side,
With leaping torrents and sweet purling streams.
The Red-Man’s active life;
His love, pride, passions, courage, and great deeds;
His perfect freedom, and his thirst for strife;
His swift revenge, at which the memory bleeds:
The sanguinary years,
When sullen Terror, like a raging Fate,
Swept down the stately tribes like slaughtered deers,
And war and hatred joined to decimate
The remnants of the race,
And spread decay through centuries of pain-
No more I mark their sure, avenging pace,
And forests wave where war-whoops shook the plain.
Their deeds I envied not.
The royal tyrant on his purple throne,
I, in secluded grove or shady grot,
Had purer joys than he had ever known,
God made the ancient hills,
The valleys and the solemn wildernesses,
The merry-hearted and melodious rills,
And strung with diamond dews the pine-trees’ tresses;
But man’s hand built the palace,
And he that reigns therein is simply man;
Man turns God’s gifts to poison in the chalice
That brimmed with nectar in the primal plan.
Here I abide alone-
The wild Chaudiere’s eternal jubilee
Has such sweet divination in its tone,
And utters nature’s truest prophecy
In thunderings of zeal!
I’ve seen the Atheist in terror start,
Awed to contrition by the strong appeal
That waked conviction in his doubting heart:
‘Teachers speak throughout all nature,
From the womb of Silence born,
Heed ye not their words, O Scoffer?
Flinging back thy scorn with scorn!
To the desert spring that leapeth,
Pulsing, from the parched sod,
Points the famished trav’ler, saying-
‘Brothers, here, indeed, is God!’
From the patriarchal fountains,
Sending forth their tribes of rills,
From the cedar-shadowed lakelets
In the hearts of distant hills,
Whispers softer than the moonbeams
Wisdom’s gentle heart have awed,
Till its lips approved the cadence-
‘Surely here, indeed, is God!’
Lo! o’er all, the Torrent Prophet,
An inspired Demosthenes,
To the Doubter’s soul appealing,
Louder than the preacher-seas:
Dreamer! wouldst have nature spurn thee
For a dumb, insensate clod?
Dare to doubt! and these shall teach thee
Of a truth there lives a God!’
By day and night, for hours,
I watch the cataract’s impulsive leap,
Refreshed and gladdened by the cheering showers
Wrung from the passion of the seething deep.
Pleased when the buried waves
Emerge again, like incorporeal hosts
Rising, white-sheeted, from their gloomy graves,
As if the depths had yielded up their ghosts.
And when the midnight storm
Enfolds the welkin in its robe of clouds,
Through the dim vapours of the cauldron swarm
The sheeted spectres in their whitest shrouds,
By the lightning’s flash betrayed.
These gather from the insubstantial vapour
The lunar rainbows, which by them are made-
Woven with moonbeams by some starry taper,
To decorate the halls
Of my fair palace, whence I’m pained to see
Thy human brethren watch the waterfalls-
Not with such rev’rence as I’ve found in thee:
Too many with an eye
To speculation and the worldling’s dreams;
Others, who seek from nature no reply,
Nor read the oral language of the streams.
But of the few who loved
The beautiful with grateful heart and soul,
Who looked on nature fondly, and were moved
By one sweet glance, as by the mighty whole:
Of these, the thoughtful few,
Thou wert the first to seek the inner temple,
And stand before the Priestess. Thou wert true
To nature and thyself. Be thy example
The harbinger of times
When the Chaudiere’s imposing majesty
Will awe the spirits of the heartless mimes
To worship God in truth, with nature’s constancy.’
Still I heard the mellow sweetness of her voice at intervals,
Mingling with the fall of waters, rising with the snowy spray,
Ringing through the sportive current like the joy of waterfalls,
Sending up their hearty vespers at the calmy close of day.
Loath to leave the scene of beauty, lover-like I stayed, and stayed,
Folding to my eager bosom memories beyond compare;
Deeper, stronger, more enduring than my dreams of wood and glade,
Were the eloquent appeals of the magnificent Chaudiere.
E’en the solid bridge is trembling, whence I look my last farewell,
Dizzy with the roar and trampling of the mighty herd of waves,
Speeding past the rocky Island, steadfast as a sentinel,
Towards the loveliest bay that ever mirrored the Algonquin Braves.
Soul of Beauty! Genius! Spirit! Priestess of the lovely strife!
In my heart thy words are shrined, as in a sanctuary fair;
Echoes of thy voice of sweetness, rousing all my better life,
Ever haunt my wildest visions of the jubilant Chaudiere.
In honor of Discovery Day, we present this work by one of Canada’s greatest immigrant poets.
Evan MacColl Canadian 1808 – 1898
Though Missouri’stide may majestic glide,
There’s a curse on the soil it laves;
The Ohio, too, may be fair, but who
Would sojourn in the land of slaves?
Be my prouder lot a Canadian cot
And the bread of a freeman’s toils;
Then hurrah for the land of the forests grand,
And the Lake of the Thousand Isles!
I would seek no wealth, at the cost of health,
‘Mid the city’s din and strife;
More I love the grace of fair nature’s face,
And the calm of a woodland life;
I would shun the road by ambition trod,
And the lore which the heart defiles;–
Then hurrah for the land of the forests grand,
And the Lake of the Thousand Isles!
O away, away! I would gladly stray
Where the freedom I love is found;
Where the pine and oak by the woodman’s stroke
Are disturbed in their ancient bound;
Where the gladsome swain reaps the golden grain,
And the trout from the stream beguiles;
Then hurrah for the land of the forests grand,
And the Lake of the Thousand Isles.
How dreadful it is to go over the moor
When it is teeming with will o’ the wisps
And mists are whirling like phantoms
As brambles are hooking on bushes.
A pool springs up below each of his steps
When from the cleft it hisses and sings
How dreadful it is to go over the moor
When the reed beds are rustling in wind!
The child all atremble holds fast to his books
And runs as if he were hunted;
Hollowly whistles the wind o’er the plain-
What’s rustling there in the bushes?
The ghostly ditch digger it is
Who steals the best peat from the master;
Hu, hu, it sounds like a cow that is mad
As the boy ducks low in his fear.
From the bank, the stumps stare forth
The pines are eerily nodding
The boy runs on, pricking his ears,
Through gigantic grasses like spears;
And how it crumbles and crushes in there!
That is the unfortunate spinner
That is Leonore who is spinning enchanted
Winding her distaff there in the reeds.
Onwards, onwards, but always at speed
Onwards, as if it wanted to catch him;
By his feet it’s swirling and seething
It’s whistling under his soles
Like a tune set to haunt him;
That is the treacherous violinist;
That is the thieving fiddler, Knauf,
Who stole the marriage farthing.
The moor is breaking asunder, a sigh
Rises up from the cavernous gap;
Woe, woe, it is damned Margret who calls:
‘Ho, ho, my poor little soul’!
The boy leaps on like a wounded deer:
Were protecting angels not near him,
His whitened bones would later be found
By a digger in a dried up peat ditch.
Gradually, the ground becomes firmer
And there, next to the meadow,
The lamp flickers so homely.
The boy stands at the border;
Deeply he breathes, and back to the moor
Casts yet another horror struck look:
Yes, in the reeds, it was a terror,
How dreadful it was on the heath!
Poets Corner 