| William Wilfred Campbell, comp. The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse. 1913. | | | | Jasper’s Song | | By Marjorie L. C. Pickthall (1883–1922) |
| | | WHO goes down through the slim green sallows, | |
| Soon, so soon? | |
| Dawn is hard on the heels of the moon, | |
| And never a lily the day-star knows | |
| Is white, so white as the one who goes | 5 |
| Armed and shod, when the hyacinths darken. | |
| Then hark, O harken! | |
| And rouse the moths from the deep rose-mallows, | |
| Call the wild hares down from the fallows, | |
| Gather the silk of the young sea-poppies, | 10 |
| The bloom of the thistle, the bells of the foam; | |
| Bind them all with a brown owl’s feather, | |
| Snare the winds in a golden tether, | |
| Chase the clouds from the gipsy’s weather, and follow, O follow the white spring home. | |
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| Who goes past with the wind that chilled us, | 15 |
| Late, so late? | |
| Fortune leans on the farmer’s gate, | |
| Watching the round sun low in the south, | |
| With a plume in his cap and a rose at his mouth. | |
| But O, for the folk who were free and merry | 20 |
| There’s never so much as a red rose-berry. | |
| But old earth’s warm as the wind that filled us, | |
| And the fox and the little grey mouse shall build us | |
| Walls of the sweet green gloom of the cedar, | |
| A roof of bracken, a curtain of whin; | 25 |
| One more rouse ere the bowl reposes | |
| Low in the dust of our lost red roses, | |
| One more song ere the cold night closes, and welcome, O welcome the dark death in! | | | | |
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