Lest it be said
One sits at ease
Westward, beyond the outer seas,
Who thanks me not that my decrees
Fall light as love, nor bends her knees
To make one prayer
That peace my latter days may find,—
Lest all these bitter things be said
And we be counted as one dead,
Alone and unaccredited
I give this message to the wind:
Secure in thy security,
Though children, not unwise are we;
And filled with unplumbed love for thee,—
Call thou but once, if thou wouldst see!
Where the grey bergs
Come down from Labrador, and where
The long Pacific rollers break
Against the pines, for thy word’s sake
Each listeneth,—alive, awake,
And with thy strength made strong to dare.
And though our love is strong as spring,
Sweet is it, too,—as sweet a thing
As when the first swamp-robins sing
Unto the dawn their welcoming.
Yea, and more sweet
Than the clean savour of the reeds
Where yesterday the June floods were,—
Than perfumed piles of new cut fir
That greet the forest-worshipper
Who follows where the wood-road leads.
But unto thee are all unknown
These things by which the worth is shown
Of our deep love; and, near thy throne,
The glory thou hast made thine own
Hath made men blind
To all that lies not to their hand,—
But what thy strength and theirs hath done:
As though they had beheld the sun
When the noon-hour and March are one
Wide glare across our white, white land.
For what reck they of Empire,—they,
Whose will two hemispheres obey?
Why shouldst thou not count us but clay
For them to fashion as they may
In London-town?
The dwellers in the wilderness
Rich tribute yield to thee their friend;
From the flood unto the world’s end
Thy London ships ascend, descend,
Gleaning—and to thy feet regress.
Yea, surely they think not at all
Of us, nor note the outer wall
Around thy realm imperial
Our slow hands rear as the years fall;
Which shall withstand
The stress of time and night of doom;
For we, who build, build of our love,—
Not as they built, whose empires throve
And died,—for what knew they thereof
In old Assyria, Egypt, Rome?
Therefore, in my dumb country’s stead,
I come to thee, unheralded,
Praying that Time’s peace may be shed
Upon thine high, anointed head,
—One with the wheat,
The mountain pine, the prairie trail,
The lakes, the thronging ships thereon,
The valley of the blue Saint John,
New France—her lilies,—not alone
Empress, I bid thee, Hail!
Francis Sherman.
