Farewell to Winnipeg
I
Farewell to Winnipeg, the snow-bright city
Set in the prairie distance without bound
Profound and fathomless, encompassed round
By the wind-haunted country and wide winter.
Farewell to Winnipeg, the sun-bright city
Lapped in light summer leaves by turning waters,
Lost in a level land of endless acres,
Found in the endless memories of my heart.
As the pale face of some remembered darling
Calm under floods and bound about the brows
With dream-refracted light no daytime knows
Moves the mute soul to desperate hope and fearing,
So I remember you, the brightening city
Of snows and summer storms and shining days;
So shall my mind recall you in amazement,
Dazed with the past, its wonder and its pity.
While the clouds mass in storm, turn and repass,
What forms are these that hourly hover over,
Cover the city and again discover
Dim faces while the night winds westward press?
While the skies cloud, repass again and mass,
What forms, what faces, voices in the wind?
Crying from the farthest darkness of my mind
Even as the westward winds cry in the grass.
While the winds rise, while the clouds westward move,
What tumults mourn aloud, what portents form
In storm of memories and murmur of doom
In ireful skies where over the city heave,
Hover, form and reform the shock troops
And the armour of the storm. O city unsung,
They ring your triumph; with prophetic tongue
They tell your destiny and imminent doom.
II
City of portents and of silences,
Here in the heart of the world your word beats strong
With a tale of old unrest, a tale of wrong,
Portending change and strange injustices.
For this great vision haunts me early and late,
The fiery face of Riel turning again,
Reining his horse a moment, into the rain
Galloping. We with Wolseley cross the gate,
Now by the vortex of the searching snow
That shrinks the last leaf in its cataract,
By the edged deadly ice that burns like fact
Not to be argued with — now let us know
What was the meaning. Under the moving sky
Let us reply to Riel, he whose tongue
Asks (while the storm yet chants its threatening song),
Whose eye, inquiring, puts the insistent, Why?
What shall we answer, what shall ever be said
To him? the rebel, withstander of our ways
Not his, for we had come new tracks to blaze.
His neck is broken, his spoken defiance dead.
His was the heavy word that stopped Scott's mouth,
His the allies that slaughtered mother and child,
His the great heart that beat at last too wild;
He made the Ottawa a deepening gulf.
Alien to me his race and his religion —
Yet while the storm mounts, while clouds westward fly
Swift as the swift spirit of Shelley in the sky,
Still haunts that face the airy, fiery region.
He is with the defeated, with the dead;
He set his foot down on the surveyor's chain
Challenging empire, challenging law, in vain.
It is the others we honour, who succeed.
III
Soon our turn will come, when by northern ice
Over the wide white causeway their armour moves:
When the swift craft conspiracy so loves
Darts on us, when the guided missile flies
Soundless — when the ensuing roar
Falls on stopped ears, when our laborious walls
Rise like lightning in the summer squalls
And over our ruin the cold starlight pours.
Soon, soon, for the hurrying beat of the dove
Leaves, and not like Noah's to return.
Soon, for the augurs cry and the portents warn
And who shall meet strong hate with tender love?
No more shall distance sentinel us, no more
Come warning of a conqueror's far tread;
One step shall part the living from the dead,
Heard overhead or unheard the rotor's roar.
And when all hope dies in the hurricane,
The northern storm or hot blast from the south,
When the strong hand strikes freedom on the mouth
And a great age of darkness falls again,
Remember Riel in Regina falling forlorn,
Old faiths and empires gone down in the dark;
Foster within your breast the living spark
That here the flame of freedom spring reborn.
...
O much enduring unenduring city,
In the ring of time set like a faceted stone,
On whom the blinding drops of summer shone
Or the white fortune of the winter's entry —
Even of the unsung city let us tell
The story and her ancient tale of wrong,
Her strength and splendour when her heart beat strong,
For even as I in going bid farewell
To the place my heart remembers, now the storm
Presses about her, cloud battalions crowd
In portent over, wild winds shout aloud,
And mimic armies have begun to form.
Farewell to Winnipeg, the snow-bright city
Set in the prairie distance without bound
Profound and fathomless, encompassed round
By the wind-haunted country and wide winter.
Farewell to Winnipeg, the sun-bright city
Lapped in light summer leaves by turning waters,
Lost in a level land of endless acres,
Found in the endless memories of my heart.
As the pale face of some remembered darling
Calm under floods and bound about the brows
With dream-refracted light no daytime knows
Moves the mute soul to desperate hope and fearing,
So I remember you, the brightening city
Of snows and summer storms and shining days;
So shall my mind recall you in amazement,
Dazed with the past, its wonder and its pity.
While the clouds mass in storm, turn and repass,
What forms are these that hourly hover over,
Cover the city and again discover
Dim faces while the night winds westward press?
While the skies cloud, repass again and mass,
What forms, what faces, voices in the wind?
Crying from the farthest darkness of my mind
Even as the westward winds cry in the grass.
While the winds rise, while the clouds westward move,
What tumults mourn aloud, what portents form
In storm of memories and murmur of doom
In ireful skies where over the city heave,
Hover, form and reform the shock troops
And the armour of the storm. O city unsung,
They ring your triumph; with prophetic tongue
They tell your destiny and imminent doom.
II
City of portents and of silences,
Here in the heart of the world your word beats strong
With a tale of old unrest, a tale of wrong,
Portending change and strange injustices.
For this great vision haunts me early and late,
The fiery face of Riel turning again,
Reining his horse a moment, into the rain
Galloping. We with Wolseley cross the gate,
Now by the vortex of the searching snow
That shrinks the last leaf in its cataract,
By the edged deadly ice that burns like fact
Not to be argued with — now let us know
What was the meaning. Under the moving sky
Let us reply to Riel, he whose tongue
Asks (while the storm yet chants its threatening song),
Whose eye, inquiring, puts the insistent, Why?
What shall we answer, what shall ever be said
To him? the rebel, withstander of our ways
Not his, for we had come new tracks to blaze.
His neck is broken, his spoken defiance dead.
His was the heavy word that stopped Scott's mouth,
His the allies that slaughtered mother and child,
His the great heart that beat at last too wild;
He made the Ottawa a deepening gulf.
Alien to me his race and his religion —
Yet while the storm mounts, while clouds westward fly
Swift as the swift spirit of Shelley in the sky,
Still haunts that face the airy, fiery region.
He is with the defeated, with the dead;
He set his foot down on the surveyor's chain
Challenging empire, challenging law, in vain.
It is the others we honour, who succeed.
III
Soon our turn will come, when by northern ice
Over the wide white causeway their armour moves:
When the swift craft conspiracy so loves
Darts on us, when the guided missile flies
Soundless — when the ensuing roar
Falls on stopped ears, when our laborious walls
Rise like lightning in the summer squalls
And over our ruin the cold starlight pours.
Soon, soon, for the hurrying beat of the dove
Leaves, and not like Noah's to return.
Soon, for the augurs cry and the portents warn
And who shall meet strong hate with tender love?
No more shall distance sentinel us, no more
Come warning of a conqueror's far tread;
One step shall part the living from the dead,
Heard overhead or unheard the rotor's roar.
And when all hope dies in the hurricane,
The northern storm or hot blast from the south,
When the strong hand strikes freedom on the mouth
And a great age of darkness falls again,
Remember Riel in Regina falling forlorn,
Old faiths and empires gone down in the dark;
Foster within your breast the living spark
That here the flame of freedom spring reborn.
...
O much enduring unenduring city,
In the ring of time set like a faceted stone,
On whom the blinding drops of summer shone
Or the white fortune of the winter's entry —
Even of the unsung city let us tell
The story and her ancient tale of wrong,
Her strength and splendour when her heart beat strong,
For even as I in going bid farewell
To the place my heart remembers, now the storm
Presses about her, cloud battalions crowd
In portent over, wild winds shout aloud,
And mimic armies have begun to form.
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