John Campbell, Duke of Argyll (1845–1914)

MORNING, lighting all the prairies,

Once of old came, bright as now,

To the twin cliffs, sloping wooded

From the vast plain’s even brow:

When the sunken valley’s levels

With the winding willowed stream,

Cried, ‘Depart, night’s mists and shadows;

Open-flowered, we love to dream!’

Then in his canoe a stranger

Passing onward heard a cry;

Thought it called his name and answered,

But the voice would not reply;

Waited listening, while the glory

Rose to search each steep ravine,

Till the shadowed terraced ridges

Like the level vale were green.

Strange as when on Space the voices

Of the stars’ hosannahs fell,

To this wilderness of beauty

Seemed his call ‘Qu’Appelle? Qu’Appelle?’

For a day he tarried, hearkening,

Wondering, as he went his way,

Whose the voice that gladly called him

With the merry tones of day.

Was it God, who gave dumb Nature

Voice and words to shout to one

Who, a pioneer, came, sunlike,

Down the pathways of the sun?

Harbinger of thronging thousands,

Bringing plain, and vale, and wood,

Things the best and last created,

Human hearts and brotherhood!