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Labor and the Angel

Chapter 40: THE CANADIAN’S HOME-SONG.
By Duncan Campbell Scott
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Poetry

About This Book

A collection of lyrical and narrative poems that intertwine rural and natural imagery with meditations on work, love, and moral responsibility. Poems depict harvests, seasonal change, and small lives—often pairing intimate domestic scenes with broader social observation—while recurring angelic and spiritual motifs frame labor as both suffering and sacred duty. Several sequences offer seasonal songs and short dramatic narratives; others turn to elegiac or reflective moods, addressing poverty, endurance, consolation, and the consolatory powers of love and service. The tone ranges from vivid sensory description to moral and communal critique, united by plain diction and musical cadence.

THE CANADIAN’S HOME-SONG.

There is rain upon the window,
There is wind upon the tree;
The rain is slowly sobbing,
The wind is blowing free:
It bears my weary heart
To my own country.
I hear the white-throat calling,
Hid in the hazel ring;
Deep in the misty hollows
I hear the sparrows sing;
I see the bloodroot starting,
All silvered with the spring.
I skirt the buried reed-beds,
In the starry solitude;
My snowshoes creak and whisper,
I have my ready blood.
I hear the lynx-cub yelling
In the gaunt and shaggy wood.
I hear the wolf-tongued rapid
Howl in the rocky break,
Beyond the pines at the portage
I hear the trapper wake
His En roulant ma boulé,
From the clear gloom of the lake.
Oh! take me back to the homestead,
To the great rooms warm and low,
Where the frost creeps on the casement,
When the year comes in with snow.
Give me, give me the old folk
Of the dear long ago.
Oh, land of the dusky balsam,
And the darling maple-tree,
Where the cedar buds and berries,
And the pine grows strong and free!
My heart is weary and weary
For my own country.