Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/56

 James B. Dollard

The Rev. James B. Dollard, Lift. D., Parish Priest of St. Monica s Church, North Toronto. Author of Irish Mist and Sunshine Poems Irish Lyrics and Ballads ; and a volume of short stories, The Gaels of Moondharrig. Born at Mooncoin, County Kilkenny, Ireland, August 30th, 1872. Educated at Kil kenny College, and at the Grand Seminary of Montreal. A dis tinguished graduate of Laval University. A relative of the late Archbishop Walsh of Toronto; and a grand-nephew of the Right Rev. William Dollard, first Roman Catholic Bishop of New Brunswick. \

. CLEAVERS OF THE AIR

CLEAVERS of the air, what bard can sing

Your skyey glory, since great Milton passed

Who sang the angel hosts on pinion free

Sweeping the empyrean, and told of him

The mighty spirit who on broken wing

From Heaven s high battlements went plunging down

To the unplumbed abime !

O ye who sail

On daring quest the azure seas of air, Piercing the clouds and leaving earth behind, To bathe in lakes of light we need a new, Sublimer language to record your deeds And trace your weird sensations as you glide To heights so dizzy that no eagle s wing May tarry there !

What think ye now of man

Whose bee-hive dwellings lie all dwarfed below The while he crawls about so like an ant? How small he is, to harbour pomp and pride, How poor his vision, and how short his day!

�� �