Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/206

 Duncan Campbell Scott

TO THE HEROIC SOUL

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��URTURE thyself, O soul, from the clear spring That wells beneath the secret inner shrine; Commune with its deep murmur, tis divine; Be faithful to the ebb and flow that bring The outer tide of spirit to trouble and swing The inlet of thy being. Learn to know These powers, and life with all its venom and show Shall have no force to dazzle thee or sting:

And when Grief comes thou shalt have suffered more

Than all the deepest woes of all the world ;

Joy, dancing in, shall find thee nourished with mirth;

Wisdom shall find her Master at thy door;

And Love shall find thee crowned with love empearled ;

And Death shall touch thee not but a new birth.

II

Be strong, O warring soul ! For very sooth Kings are but wraiths, republics fade like rain, Peoples are reaped and garnered as the grain, And that alone prevails which is the truth : Be strong when all the days of life bear ruth And fury, and are hot with toil and strain : Hold thy large faith and quell thy mighty pain : Dream the great dream that buoys thine age with youth.

Thou art an eagle mewed in a sea-stopped cave : He, poised in darkness with victorious wings, Keeps night between the granite and the sea, Until the tide has drawn the warder- wave: Then from the portal where the ripple rings, He bursts into the boundless morning, free!

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