POWER

 

The wave plunges and the sea-birds cry;

Power is in the ocean and the sky.

The wind-driven tide

That would come whispering on still days

With a long ripple breaking in a sigh,

Now crashes down;

The wind-blown gulls

That stood in tranquil days

Like metal birds fixed on the lobster-floats,

Mirrored gray-silver in the glass tide,

Rush with the gale and, when they turn,

Struggle upright, tossed again back.

Heart that, once as still as they,

Idled with an unmeaning sigh,

Or gazed at bygone days in memory's glass,

Now with hard passion buffeted,

Beats up against the gale,

Or crashes on the shattered glass of memory,

And cries that there is power in destiny

As well as in the ocean and the sky.

~ Duncan Campbell Scott ~

April 1941

BIO: Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947) was a career civil servant with the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs. In 1913, he was appointed Deputy Superintendent and retired in 1932. He was a member of the Confederation Poets, a group comprised largely of Charles G.D. Roberts (1860-1943), Bliss Carman (1861-1929), and Archibald Lampman (1861-1899). The group focused primarily on nature and the Canadian wilderness. It was strongly influenced by English Victorian poetry and the Romantic School. Scott's travels across Canada while working for the Department of Indian Affairs, and his interactions with First People culture, inspired his poetical works.