In each amber wave that welleth
From its home beneath the sea;
In the moss upon the granite,
In each calm, secluded bay,
With the zephyr trains that fan it
With their sweet breath all the day.
On the waters, on the shore,
Beauty dwelleth evermore.
Faulty as Sangster’s first poems are in versification and derivative in diction, we must mark his lyrical interludes, as in the foregoing example, as expressing a new note, the Canadian note in Canadian poetry. It is, however, a nature note, not or hardly the national note—clear and confident and strong. In Sangster’s second volume, Hesperus and Other Poems, published just seven years before Confederation, we hear the Canadian national note loudly vocal and inspiring. We catch it unmistakably in Sangster’s Brock—a really noble hymn to the memory of a national hero, who had ‘saved Canada’ for the Canadians, but a hymn that much more expresses the deeply felt unity of the Canadian people:—
One voice, one people, one in heart