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| O CHILD of Nations, giant-limbed, | |
| Who stand’st among the nations now, | |
| Unheeded, unadored, unhymned, | |
| With unanointed brow: | |
| |
| How long the ignoble sloth, how long | 5 |
| The trust in greatness not thine own? | |
| Surely the lion’s brood is strong | |
| To front the world alone! | |
| |
| How long the indolence, ere thou dare | |
| Achieve thy destiny, seize thy fame; | 10 |
| Ere our proud eyes behold thee bear | |
| A nation’s franchise, nation’s name? | |
| |
| The Saxon force, the Celtic fire, | |
| These are thy manhood’s heritage! | |
| Why rest with babes and slaves? Seek higher | 15 |
| The place of race and age. | |
| |
| I see to every wind unfurled | |
| The flag that bears the Maple-Wreath; | |
| Thy swift keels furrow round the world | |
| Its blood-red folds beneath; | 20 |
| |
| Thy swift keels cleave the furthest seas; | |
| Thy white sails swell with alien gales; | |
| To stream on each remotest breeze | |
| The black smoke of thy pipes exhales. | |
| |
| O Falterer, let thy past convince | 25 |
| Thy future: all the growth, the gain, | |
| The fame since Cartier knew thee, since | |
| Thy shores beheld Champlain! | |
| |
| Montcalm and Wolfe! Wolfe and Montcalm! | |
| Quebec, thy storied citadel | 30 |
| Attest in burning song and psalm | |
| How here thy heroes fell! | |
| |
| O Thou that bor’st the battle’s brunt | |
| At Queenston, and at Lundy’s Lane: | |
| On whose scant ranks but iron front | 35 |
| The battle broke in vain! | |
| |
| Whose was the danger, whose the day, | |
| From whose triumphant throats the cheers, | |
| At Chrysler’s Farm, at Chateauguay, | |
| Storming like clarion-bursts our ears? | 40 |
| |
| On soft Pacific slopes,—beside | |
| Strange floods that northward rave and fall,— | |
| Where chafes Acadia’s chainless tide,— | |
| Thy sons await thy call. | |
| |
| They wait; but some in exile, some | 45 |
| With strangers housed, in stranger lands; | |
| And some Canadian lips are dumb | |
| Beneath Egyptian sands. | |
| |
| O mystic Nile! Thy secret yields | |
| Before us; thy most ancient dreams | 50 |
| Are mixed with far Canadian fields | |
| And murmur of Canadian streams. | |
| |
| But thou, my Country, dream not thou! | |
| Wake, and behold how night is done,— | |
| How on thy breast, and o’er thy brow, | 55 |
| Bursts the uprising sun! | |
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