Sound the note of rejoicing from trumpet and horn;
Thy bosom begirt with a golden zone,
July 1st, 1967
Happy Canada Day!
A JOURNEY THROUGH CANADA'S FORGOTTEN, NEGLECTED AND SUPPRESSED WRITING
Happy Canada Day!
Say what you will about Satan, he's no dummy.
I think I'm right about this, but am not sure.
He had no place in my family's place of worship. I never once heard mention of the Prince of Darkness in church school, confirmation class or even a sermon. This could have something to do with having been raised Anglican.
I am not sure.
My early reading on Satan was extremely limited. It began in October 1974 with 'The Ecchorcist,' MAD magazine's parody of The Exorcist, continued with Joy Carroll's horror romance Satan's Bell (1976), and more or less ended with novelizations of the films The Omen (1976) and Damien:The Omen II (1978).
I may be wrong.
From everything I've read, Satan is cunning, creative, devious, and extremely intelligent. What he isn't is a good poet.
I can say this with certainty having browsed Michelle Remembers, the 1980 bestseller credited with providing the spark for the Satanic Panic. I'm planning on writing about it later this year, but for now, this being the first day of National Poetry Month, I thought it might be appropriate to share one of the many samples of Satan's verse recorded in the book by authors Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder:
If you say one word I say to you,
You'll say it all until it's through.
You'll run out of time, run out of space,
Run at the mouth all over the place.
You can only go inside your head,
And if you go there, then you're dead.So you see, I've turned it inside out;I've turned you around, turned you about,You always come back to me,The only way out is to see through me.The more goes out, the more comes in,You'll start to end when you begin.
So begins a theological debate. Is there something lacking in the Prince of Darkness – a heart, perhaps – that prevents him from being anything other than a rotten poet or is his verse intentionally bad so as to bring hell on Earth?
Frankly, I'm beginning to have doubts that Satan composed any of the poems in Michelle Remembers.
My thanks to fellow CanLit scholar Brad Middleton, who generously donated two copies of Michelle Remembers to The Dusty Bookcase.
'Fair Canada' is the first of six patriotic pieces featured in poet/publisher John Imrie's Sacred Songs, Sonnets, and Miscellaneous Poems (Toronto: Imrie & Graham, 1886).
It's sure to raise the ire of Ezra Levant, but I quite like it.
Best wishes to all on this Canada Day!
These past few weeks have been remarkably busy, which explains how it is that I've read and reviewed just one old, forgotten book this month. Sadly, that volume is John Wesley White's The Man From Krypton.
Heaven help me.
And yet somehow, despite it all, I found time yesterday to thumb through Sacred Songs, Sonnets and Miscellaneous Poems, an 1886 collection by John Imrie (1836-1903).
I wonder what the poet, a staunch Presbyterian, might've made of White's interpretation and misrepresentation of the Holy Bible and Superman: The Movie. I expect he would have been mystified. Imrie died in Toronto three years before the first motion picture was screened in that city, thirty-eight years before Action Comics #1, and long before televangelists took to the air.
John Imrie was obviously of a very different time, as reflected in his Sacred Songs, etc. Amongst the 210 pages – referencing orphan boys, newspaper boys, Sunday school teachers, and the Knights of Labour – is this unusual and unexpected verse. It's not brilliant, but it is delightful. To think that when 'A Kiss Through the Telephone' was published, Bell's invention had been available commercially just six years.
Enjoy!
Très tard le soleil sombre à l’horizon fumant,Qui garde dans la nuit ses luisantes traînées.Le fécond Prairial sous un clair firmamentProdigue la splendeur des plus longues journées.Une flamme de vie emplit l’immensité.Le bleu de l’eau miroite... Adieu la nostalgie!L’Été s’épanouit dans toute sa beauté,Dans toute sa verdeur et toute sa magie.Des vagues de lumière inondent les halliers;Les oiseaux de leurs chants enivrent les bocages,Et, gais et turbulents comme eux, les écoliers— Les vacances ont lui — s’évadent de leurs cages.Sur les arbres, les fleurs, les ondes, les sillons,Partout nous entendons vibrer l’âme des choses...Nous voyons par milliers éclore papillons,Anémones et lis, trèfles, muguets et roses.Et l’écureuil criard et le bouvreuil siffleurDe nos vastes forêts font tressaillir les dômes...Les pruniers, les sureaux, les pommiers, sont en fleur,Et nul mois canadien ne verse autant d’aromes.Des souffles caressants frangent nos grandes eaux.Un invisible encens flotte sur chaque grève;Et, tels les pins, les foins, les mousses, les roseaux,Nous sentons en nous plus de chaleur, plus de sève.Nous aimons mieux nos bois, nos champs; nous aimons mieuxNos pères, dont le culte à nos foyers persiste...Et dans l’air embaumé vibre l’écho joyeuxDes chants et des vivats de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste.
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The old year dies! Of this be sure,The old leaves rot beneath the snow.The old skies falter from the blowDealt by the heavens that shall endureWhen sky and leaf together go.And some are glad and some are grieved.Much as when some poor mortal dies;The first sensation of surpriseIs lost in sobs of his bereaved.Or cold relief with dry-dust eyes,That view his coffin absently,And wonder first how much it cost,And next, how came his fortune lost,And how will live his family.And how he looked when he was crost.But tears—no, no—they only surgeFrom those who knew him. They were few;He had his faults; he seldom knewThe thing to say, condemn, or urge;Tis better he has gone from view.So neither do we weep—God knows,We have but little time for tears!A time for hopes, a time for fears,A time for strife, a time for woesWe have—but hardly time for tears.O it were good, and it were sweet.If we might weep our fill somewhere,In other world, in purer air,Perhaps in heaven's golden street,Perhaps upon its crystal stair!For "power and leave to weep" shall beThe golden city's legend dear;Though wiped away be every tear.First for a season shall flow freeThe floods that leave the vision clear!So if we could we would, Old Year,Conjure a tear up when you go,And pace in solemn order slowBehind your gray and cloud -borne bier,Draped with the wan and fluttering snow.Yet what is it, this year we miss?An arbitrary thing, a mark;A rapid writing in the dark;Dead wire, that with a futile hissStrikes back no single answering spark.There is no year, we dream and say,Again, no year, we say and dream,And dumbly note the frozen stream,And note the bird on barren spray.And note the cold, though bright sunbeam.We quarrel with the times and hours,The year should end—we say—when comeThe last long rolls of March's drum.And too—we say—with grass and flowersShould rise the New Year, like to someGay antique goddess, ever young,With pallid shoulders touched with rose,Firm waist that mystic zones enclose,White feet from violets shyly sprung.Her raiment—that the high gods chose.And yet the poet, born to preachWith yearning for his human kind,His verse but sermon undefined,Will fail in what he means to teach,If he proclaim not, high designed,
The Old Year dies! It is enough!And he has won, for eyes grow dimAs passeth slow his pageant grim,And many a hand both fair and roughShall wipe away a tear for him—For him, and for the wasted hours,The sinful days, the moments weak.The words we did or did not speak,The weeds that crowded out our flowers,The blessings that we did not seek.
An old poem for the New Month by daughter of Toronto Susie Frances Harrison (née Riley; a/k/a Seranus). This version comes from her second collection, Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis (Toronto: Hart & Co, 1891).
I long for a noble mood. I long to rise,Like those large rolling clouds of ashen pinkThat deepen into purple, over strifeAnd small mechanic doings. How superbThat landscape in the sky to which I walk,And gain at will a spacious colour-world,In which my finer self may feel no fear!The distance far between that goal and meSeems lightly bridged; breathless, I win that goal—The shores of purple and the seas of gold.Below, how flat the still small earth—a sphereThat only the leaden soul takes solace in!The long pine stretches, barred in sombre black,Cross at right-angles fields that are gray with snow—Not white, but gray, for all the colours is here,Colour—a new sacrament—melted gems,The hearts of all water-lilies, the tips of their wings—Young angels', plumed in topaz, garnet, rose—The dazzling diamond white, the white of pearl.How poor a place the little dark world appears,Seen from this gold-cloud region, basoned in fire!Only a step away, and nothing is seenOf the homes, huts, churches, palaces it bearsUpon its dry brown bosom. There remainsBut the masterful violet sea, that angrilyThis moment somewhere gnashes its yellow teethAgainst a lonely reef. What's most like GodIn the universe, if not this same strong sea,Encircling, clasping, bearing up the world,Blessing it with soft caresses, then, for faults,Chiding in God-like surges of wrath and storm?But the ocean of cloud is placid, and the shores,Rolled up in their amethyst bulk towards the stars,Fade noiselessly from pearl to purple dark.The shades fall even here. Here—not exemptFrom death and darkness even these shining airs—The night comes swifter on than when on earth.The fringes of faintest azure, where the barsOf paler cloud are fading into gray,Are dulled and blotted out. Opaque has grownThe molten in one moment; fleecy paleAnd ghastly all the purple lonely then,And awed to horror of those glacial peaks,I bridge the vaporous barrier once again,And tread the despised earth. Then how too dearDoth the rude, common light of earth appear—That of a street lamp, burning far, but clear!The sign of human life, of human love,Of habitation sweet, of common joysAnd common plans, though precious, yet not prized,Till in a moment's fancy I had lost them.
A celebration of September from Harold Campbell "Hal" Mason's Three Things Only... (Toronto: Thomas Nelson, 1953). Much cheerier than his 'March, 1918' and 'Easter, 1942'.
SEPTEMBER
Let others sing of May and June —To me it doth appearSeptember is the finest monthOf all the rolling year.September days are warm and brightAs children trudge to school,And weary folk may sleep at night —September nights are cool.
She borrows from all seasons,She lends upon them all,Prolongs the spring and summerAnd draws them into fall,Prepares the way for winterAnd yet delays him, too —September, ah, September,I vote, both hands, for you!
Now by the reddening apple,Now by the ripening corn,By every cheerful pulletThat crackles in the morn,By harvest safely gathered,By fields no longer sere,September is the finest monthIn all the rolling year!
...August nights are coolIn these north regions. Summer goes so soon!
In gleam of pale translucent amber wokeThe perfect August day;Through rose-flushed bars of pearl and amber brokeThe sunset's golden way.
The river seemed transfigured in its flowTo tide of amethyst,Save where it rippled o'er the sands below,And granite boulders kissed.
The clouds of billowy woodland hung unstirredIn languorous slumber deep,While, from its green recesses, one small birdPiped to its brood asleep.
The clustering lichens wore a tenderer tint,The rocks a warmer glow;The emerald dewdrops, in the sunbeam's glint,Gemmed the rich moss below.
Our birchen shallop idly stranded layHalf mirrored in the stream,Wild roses drooped, glassed in the tiny bay,Ethereal as a dream!
You sat upon your rock, enthroned a queen,As on a granite throne,And all that world of loveliness sereneHeld but us twain alone.
Nay! but we felt another presence there,Around, below, above;
It breathed a poem through the fragrant air
Its name was LOVE!
One of the Fourscore years, Mary,Has passed like a dream away,A dream of laughter and tears, Mary,Like a showery summer's day,With its rainbow bright,In the warm twilight,Fair pledge of a happier day, Mary,God's pledge of a happier day.Swiftly the seasons roll, Mary,Like the waves o'er a mighty sea,Searching the depths of the soul, Mary,With their power and mystery.Every hour that flies,Tells in distant skiesThe words that it heard from thee, Mary,The deeds that are done by thee.See that the tale be pure, Mary,That the Hours may have to tell;Goodness and Truth, we are sure, Mary,Heav'n loveth exceeding well;And the beauteous mindWhere Truth is shrined,Glows bright as a sunny dell, Mary,Glows bright as a sunny dell.More of the Fourscore years, Mary,Must pass like the first away,Each, as its turn appears, Mary,May not be a summer's day;But Hope's rainbow bright,With its smile, will lightThe close of a happier day, Mary,The dawn of Eternal Day.
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Léon Lorrain 1855 - 1892 RIP |
Vingt-quatre juin! Salut! ― Ô fête solennelle!Apporte dans nos cœurs l'amitié fraternelle,Ce sentiment si beau qu'on le dit surhumain!Retardez votre cours, heures patriotiques!Laissez-nous savourer les plaisirs pacifiquesDont vous semez votre chemin!Le soleil radieux, comme un puissant génie,Répand à flots vermeils le jour et l'harmonie;Il féconde nos champs de ses subtils rayons;Il dispense partout dans sa course enflamméeLa vie et l'abondance; une brise embauméeS'élève de nos frais sillons.Notre libre drapeau flotte, au gré de la brise,Au sommet d'une tour, au clocher d'une égliseEt domine nos champs, ― resplendissants tableaux! ―Sous ses replis mouvants, l'enthousiaste fouleSe rallie et se presse, ensuite se dérouleOndulante comme les flots!Tous les cœurs sont émus par la même pensée.Voyez se réunir cette foule empressée.Elle confond ensemble, en ce jour patronal,Au seuil du temple saint où souvent elle prie,L'amour du Tout-Puissant, l'amour de la patrie,Dans le devoir national!IIDu ciel où vous vivez, de ces célestes dômes,Esprits de nos aïeux, ô bien-aimés fantômes,Venez contemplez vos enfants.Dans le ravissement leur âme se déploie;Leur chère liberté, le bonheur et la joieBrillent sur leurs fronts triomphants!Voyez qu'elle sied bien à leur tête ennoblie,La couronne de fleurs que vous avez cueillie, ―La couronne de liberté!Ils ne l'ont pas flétri, ce lys emblématique;Mais ils l'ont cultivé de leur main héroïqueComme on cultive un fruit d'été!