Canada Day is July 1 -- and we thank Juanita MacDonald for the following. Muriel M. Davidson [email protected] =============== CANADA by Nathaniel Benson I have seen her in the quiet of the evening in the fields, I have sensed her in the dusk-time that the star-decked prairie yields. She has poised on purple mountains when my lonely step drew near, And the North's green fires at midnight were her altar-lights austere. Her voice is in the thunder of the raptured Falls of Bow, In the memory of Daulac dying greatly long ago. Her song is in the music of awakened April rills, She whose spirit walked with Lampman on his silent wooded hills. In the ancient lonely churchyards of the pioneers asleep. She broods in voiceless twilight where eternal memories creep. Where the dark heroic headlands stand the wintry ocean's roar, She sits thinking of the seamen who will come to port no more. On the red earth of the vinelands, through the orchards in the spring She walks and feels in heart and hand her beauty's blossoming, - And again she wanders weeping beneath an alien sky Where her many sons are sleeping and her young lost legions lie. She is one with all our laughter, with our wonder and our pain, Living everywhere triumphant, in the heart and soul and brain. She our mother, we who bore her, she the daughter yet to be Who walks these mortal roads of death to immortality. Indivisible and lovely, she the maiden of our thought, Is an empress robed in beauty from our deepest dreaming wrought, She whose centuries are storied, whose young banners far outborne Are the heralds of a splendour in the ages yet unborn. ............................................................................ . It is one of my favourite poems, and published about 1929/30. Surely we too can think of our descendants as the 'splendour in the ages yet unborn.' We owe it to them to protect the HERITAGE THAT WILL BE THEIRS and their right to access it if they so choose one day in the future. Remember those 'in ages yet unborn' can not speak for themselves but we can do it for them. Juanita MacDonald --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.491 / Virus Database: 290 - Release Date: 6/18/03