Page:Canadian Singers and Their Songs.djvu/155

CANADIAN SINGERS AND THEIR SONGS

O a lush green English meadow—it's
 * there that I would lie—

A skylark singing overhead, scarce present
 * to the eye,

And a row of windblown poplars against
 * an English sky.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx When the wind goes through the poplars
 * And blows them silver white,

The wonder of the universe is flashed
 * before my sight:

I see immortal visions: I know a god's
 * delight.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I catch the secret rhythm that steals
 * along the earth,

That swells the bud, and splits the
 * burr, and gives the oak its girth,

That mocks the blight and canker
 * with its eternal birth.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I see with the clear vision of that
 * untainted prime,

Before the fool's bells jangled in,
 * And Elfland ceased to chime,

That sin and pain and sorrow
 * are but a pantomime—

A dance of leaves in ether, of leaves
 * threadbare and sere,

From whose decaying husks at last
 * what glory shall appear

When the white winter angel leads in
 * the happier year

And so I sing the poplars and when
 * I come to die

I will not look for jasper walls, but
 * cast about my eye

For a row of windblown poplars Bernard F. Trotter 151
 * against an English sky.