Famous Canadian Poems by Famous Poets

• Best Canadian Poems by Famous Poets
• Canadian Poems by Members
• Best Canadian Poems by Members
• Canadian Quotes

Preludium to America

 The shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc, 
When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd o'er his dark abode:
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron:
Crown'd with a helmet and dark hair the nameless female stood;
A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,
When pestilence is shot from heaven: no other...Read more of this...

Santa Claus

 "HALT! Who goes there?” The sentry’s call 
Rose on the midnight air 
Above the noises of the camp, 
The roll of wheels, the horses’ tramp. 
The challenge echoed over all— 
“Halt! Who goes there?” 
A quaint old figure clothed in white, 
He bore a staff of pine, 
An ivy-wreath was on his head. 
“Advance, oh friend,” the sentry said,...Read more of this...

To a Canadian Aviator Who Died for his Country in France

 Tossed like a falcon from the hunter's wrist,
A sweeping plunge, a sudden shattering noise,
And thou hast dared, with a long spiral twist,
The elastic stairway to the rising sun.
Peril below thee and above, peril
Within thy car; but peril cannot daunt
Thy peerless heart: gathering wing and poise,
Thy plane transfigured, and thy motor-chant
Subduéd to a whisper -- then a silence, --
And thou...Read more of this...

Fleurette

 (The Wounded Canadian Speaks)

My leg? It's off at the knee.
Do I miss it? Well, some. You see
 I've had it since I was born;
 And lately a devilish corn.
(I rather chuckle with glee
 To think how I've fooled that corn.)

But I'll hobble around all right.
 It isn't that, it's my face.
Oh I know I'm a hideous sight,
 Hardly a...Read more of this...

With French to Kimberley

 The Boers were down on Kimberley with siege and Maxim gun; 
The Boers were down on Kimberley, their numbers ten to one! 
Faint were the hopes the British had to make the struggle good -- 
Defenceless in an open plain the Diamond City stood. 
They built them forts with bags of sand, they fought from roof and wall, 
They...Read more of this...

With French to Kimberley

 The Boers were down on Kimberley with siege and Maxim gun; 
The Boers were down on Kimberley, their numbers ten to one! 
Faint were the hopes the British had to make the struggle good -- 
Defenceless in an open plain the Diamond City stood. 
They built them forts with bags of sand, they fought from roof and wall, 
They...Read more of this...

The Iron Bridge

 I am standing on a disused iron bridge
that was erected in 1902,
according to the iron plaque bolted into a beam,
the year my mother turned one.
Imagine--a mother in her infancy,
and she was a Canadian infant at that,
one of the great infants of the province of Ontario.

But here I am leaning on the rusted railing
looking at the water below,
which is flat...Read more of this...

Jubal and Tubal Cain

 Canadian
Jubal sang of the Wrath of God
 And the curse of thistle and thorn--
But Tubal got him a pointed rod,
 And scrabbled the earth for corn.
 Old--old as that early mould,
 Young as the sprouting grain-- 
 Yearly green is the strife between
 Jubal and Tubal Cain!

Jubal sang of the new-found sea,
 And the love that its waves divide--
But...Read more of this...

Song of the Artesian Water

 Now the stock have started dying, for the Lord has sent a drought; 
But we're sick of prayers and Providence -- we're going to do without; 
With the derricks up above us and the solid earth below, 
We are waiting at the lever for the word to let her go. 
Sinking down, deeper down, 
Oh, we'll sink it deeper...Read more of this...

Into the Dusk-Charged Air

 Far from the Rappahannock, the silent
Danube moves along toward the sea.
The brown and green Nile rolls slowly
Like the Niagara's welling descent.
Tractors stood on the green banks of the Loire
Near where it joined the Cher.
The St. Lawrence prods among black stones
And mud. But the Arno is all stones.
Wind ruffles the Hudson's
Surface. The Irawaddy is overflowing.
But the yellowish, gray Tiber
Is contained...Read more of this...

Gin

 The first time I drank gin
I thought it must be hair tonic.
My brother swiped the bottle
from a guy whose father owned
a drug store that sold booze
in those ancient, honorable days
when we acknowledged the stuff
was a drug. Three of us passed
the bottle around, each tasting
with disbelief. People paid
for this? People had to have
it, the way we had to have
the women...Read more of this...

With French to Kimberley

 The Boers were down on Kimberley with siege and Maxim gun; 
The Boers were down on Kimberley, their numbers ten to one! 
Faint were the hopes the British had to make the struggle good -- 
Defenceless in an open plain the Diamond City stood. 
They built them forts with bags of sand, they fought from roof and wall, 
They...Read more of this...

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