Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/60



''Lecturer in English in the University of Manitoba. Author of 'The Fighting Men of Canada,' a first book of virile poems received with acclaim in London, England. "Born in the Swan Lake district of Manitoba some thirty odd years ago."''

AME once a call on the midnight,
 * Rose once a cry from the sea,

'Daughter of mine in my day-pride,
 * Art thou still daughter to me?'

Spoke then the heart of a nation,
 * Clarion-voiced from the hill,

'Lo, in our day thou hast long been our stay,
 * Mother art thou to us still!'

Came then a murmur of voices,
 * Sounds of the marching of men;

Hearts that had slumbered in silence
 * Quickened with passion again;

Down where the rumble of traffic
 * Grew with the dawn of the day

Broke the stern beat of a drum in the street,
 * Marshalling men for the fray.

Cold-hearted stewards of credit,
 * Faint-hearted counters of pelf,

Leaped at the blare of the trumpet
 * Free from the shackles of self;

Haggling tongues on the market,
 * Babbling lips on the square,

Fashioned a word that the high heavens heard,
 * Whispered it once in a prayer.

Silent-tongued dwellers on frontiers,
 * Peace-loving souls on the grange,

Brawny-limbed brood of the mountains,
 * Weather-bronzed sons of the range,