"Oh! Mother the bells are ringing as never they rang before,
And banners aloft are flying, and open is every door,
While down in the streets are thousands of men I have never seen--
But friendly are all the faces--oh! Mother, what can it mean?"
"My little one," said the mother, "for many long, weary years--
Thro' days that the sunshine mocked at, and nights
that were wet with tears,
I have waited and watched in silence, too proud to speak, and now
The pulse of my heart is leaping, for the children have kept the vow.
"And there they are coming, coming, the brothers you never knew,
But, sightless, my ears would know them, so steady and firm and true
Is the tramp of men whose fathers trod where the wind blows free,
Over the heights of Queenston, and willows of Chateaugay.
"For whether it be a thousand, or whether a single man--
In the calm of peace, or battle, since ever the race began,
No human eye has seen it--'t is an undiscovered clime,
Where the feet of my children's fathers have not stepped
and beaten time.
"The enemy at my threshold had boasted and jeered and cried--
'The pledge of your offsprings' birthright your children
have swept aside--
They cumber the land of strangers, they dwell in the alien's tent
Till "home" is a word forgotten, and "love" but a bow unbent.
"'Planners and builders of cities (were ever such men as these?),
Counsellors, guides, and moulders of the strangers' destinies--
Conquerors, yet are they conquered, and this is the word and sign,
You boast of their wise seed-sowing, but the harvest they reap is mine.'
"Ah! little the stranger knew me--this mocking but friendly foe,
The youngest mother of nations! how could the stranger know
The faith of the old grey mother,--her sorrows and hopes and fears?
Let her speak when her sons are tested, like mine,
for a thousand years!
"Afar in the dim savanna when the dawn of the spring is near,
What is it wakes the wild goose, calling him loud and clear?
What is it brings him homeward, battered and tempest-torn?
Are they weaker than birds of passage, the children whom I have borne?
"Nay! the streets of the city tremble with the tread
that shakes the world,
When the sons of the blood foregather, and
the mother flag flies unfurled--
Brothers are welcoming brothers, and the voices that pierce the blue
Answer the enemy's taunting--and the children of York are true!
"Wanderers may be, traitors never! By the scroll
of their fathers' lives!
The faith of the land that bore them, and the honour of their wives!
We may lose them, our own strong children, blossom and root and stem--
But the cradle will be remembered, and home is aye home to them!"
