Canada Not Last

William Douw Schuyler-Lighthall (1857–1954)

AT VENICE

LO Venice, gay with color, lights and song,

Calls from St. Mark’s with ancient voice and strange:

I am the Witch of Cities! glide along

My silver streets that never wear by change

Of years: forget the years, and pain, and wrong,

And ever sorrow reigning men among.

Know I can soothe thee, please and marry thee

To my illusions. Old and siren strong,

I smile immortal, while the mortals flee

Who whiten on to death in wooing me.

AT FLORENCE

Say, what more fair by Arno’s bridgèd gleam

Than Florence, viewed from San Miniato’s slope

At eventide, when west along the stream

The last of day reflects a silver hope!—

Lo, all else softened in the twilight beam:—

The city’s mass blent in one hazy cream,

The brown Dome ’midst it, and the Lily tower,

And stern Old Tower more near, and hills that seem

Afar, like clouds to fade, and hills of power

On this side greenly dark with cypress, vine and bower.

AT ROME

End of desire to stray I feel would come

Though Italy were all fair skies to me,

Though France’s fields went mad with flowery foam

And Blanc put on a special majesty,

Not all could match the growing thought of home

Nor tempt to exile. Look I not on Rome—

This ancient, modern, mediæval queen—

Yet still sigh westward over hill and dome,

Imperial ruin and villa’s princely scene

Lovely with pictured saints and marble gods serene.

REFLECTION

Rome, Florence, Venice—noble, fair and quaint,

They reign in robes of magic round me here;

But fading, blotted, dim, a picture faint,

With spell more silent, only pleads a tear.

Plead not! Thou hast my heart, O picture dim!

I see the fields, I see the autumn hand

Of God upon the maples! Answer Him

With weird, translucent glories, ye that stand

Like spirits in scarlet and in amethyst!

I see the sun break over you: the mist

On hills that lift from iron bases grand

Their heads superb!—the dream, it is my native land.