| William Wilfred Campbell, comp. The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse. 1913. | | | | The Confused Dawn | | By William Douw Schuyler-Lighthall (1857–1954) |
| | YOUNG MAN WHAT are the Vision and the Cry | |
| That haunt the new Canadian soul? | |
| Dim grandeur spreads, we know not why, | |
| O’er mountain, forest, tree, and knoll, | |
| And murmurs indistinctly fly— | 5 |
| Some magic moment sure is nigh. | |
| O Seer, the curtain roll! | |
| |
SEER The Vision, mortal, it is this— | |
| Dead mountain, forest, knoll, and tree, | |
| Awaken all endued with bliss, | 10 |
| A native land—O think! to be | |
| Thy native land—and, ne’er amiss, | |
| Its smile shall like a lover’s kiss, | |
| From henceforth seem to thee. | |
| |
| The Cry thou couldst not understand, | 15 |
| Which runs through that new realm of light, | |
| From Breton’s to Vancouver’s strand, | |
| O’er many a lovely landscape bright, | |
| It is their waking utterance grand, | |
| The great refrain, ‘A Native Land!’ | 20 |
| Thine be the ear, the sight. | | | | |
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