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Home  »  A Treasury of War Poetry  »  Canada to England

George Herbert Clarke, ed. (1873–1953). A Treasury of War Poetry. 1917.

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

Canada to England

GREAT names of thy great captains gone before

Beat with our blood, who have that blood of thee:

Raleigh and Grenville, Wolfe, and all the free

Fine souls who dared to front a world in war.

Such only may outreach the envious years

Where feebler crowns and fainter stars remove,

Nurtured in one remembrance and one love

Too high for passion and too stern for tears.

O little isle our fathers held for home,

Not, not alone thy standards and thy hosts

Lead where thy sons shall follow, Mother Land:

Quick as the north wind, ardent as the foam,

Behold, behold the invulnerable ghosts

Of all past greatnesses about thee stand.