Page:Canada, and other poems by Herbin, John Frederic.djvu/6

 Dark from its secret womb, a continent came into being,

And lay on the breast of the deep, the child of a giant mother;

Strongest, and first, in the cradle of waves, of the children of Ocean.

Billows that broke, and nights that enshrouded, were songs and were nurses.

Storms were the teachers of power; and cycles, the seasons of growth.

Then, expanses of water began their lines of procession.

P'rom the east, the Atlantic murmurs adown dark leagues of beaches;

The Pacific lingers and listens, by echoing mountain and canon.

As words over heaven spake: "Do ye wait till my people come,"

Mystery power and beauty, set in a living mould,

Sealed on Mortality's scroll the writ of a hand divine.

Nature sprang up into verdure to bloom in these kingdoms of silence.

Where ages had wailed on the sea-shore, and levelled the mountains with change.

Heaven, long sleepless in vigil, looked on with the patience of waiting.

Seas moved restless and conscious, bending from border to border;

Shaping symmetrical sweeps of coast from disorder; and guided

By impulse creation-imparted encircled the living world.

Onward I held till cycles earth-annaled were shadows behind me;

Seeing the birth of men, and monarchies gather and fall.

River and mountain, calm and eruption, were letters of record,

Mute, yet remindful of change and of God in the order of things.

Then, from the shadows of forests outrose the language of races;

Nations, nameless, and fated to wander and fade like the seasons.

Southward they swept the continent over, marking the plains,

Like the flow of the tide to flood; like the ebb to fall away.

Here did Tlinger till pondering deepened my passion to know.

My being went out, thrilled with the hope that was given from heaven;