01 July 2014

Patriotic Verse from the Garden of a Girl's Dreams



For this day, the 147th anniversary of the birth of the Dominion of Canada, patriotic verse by the ever-charming Ethel Ursula Foran. A piece of juvenilia, it leads off Poems: A Few Blossoms from the Garden of My Dreams, her debut collection of "immature verses", published in 1922 by Librarie Beauchemin. "With all their imperfections they must remain just as they were composed", Miss Foran writes in the Preface. In accordance with her wishes, the poem is presented here with typos and misspellings intact.
CANADA 
I love this fair Dominion; my natvie land, all hail!
Its wondrous proportions are on the grandest scale;
Its endless virgin forests, its mighty inland seas,
Its Rockies and its Selkirks, like Alps and Pyranees;
Its vast expanse of prairies, where vision seeks in vain
The limits of the billowy fields of undulating grain;
Its rivers with their volumes, in their majestic sweep,
Through miles of fertile country down to Atlantic's deep;
Its cascades and the thunders of Niagara's giant fall;
The echoes of its vastness that from sea to mountains call;
Its Liberties as precious as the features that we trace,
Its blending of all elements of province, creed and race;
Its every noble aspect that God has pronounced "good,"
'Tis a marvellous mosaic of Canadian nationhood.
Yes, I love this fair Dominion, the grandest land on earth,
'Tis the land of a bright future, and the dear land of my birth.

Related posts:

No comments:

Post a Comment