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Frederick George Scott Quotes

1861–1944 Canada

Frederick George Scott CMG DSO FRSC (7 April 1861 – 19 January 1944) was for the first part of his life an Anglican priest and a Canadian poet to whom the Canadian literary establishment gave the epithet "Poet of the Laurentians". He was associated with Canada's Confederation Poets, and wrote 13 books of Christian and patriotic poetry, often using the natural world to convey deeper spiritual meaning.

Canada
Poets

Random Frederick George Scott quote

21 quotes

Purgatory for me will be five hundred years of catching trains and two thousand years of remembering names.

The immortal spirit hath no bars
To circumscribe its dwelling-place;
My soul hath pastured with the stars
Upon the meadow-lands of space.

It sleeps among the thousand hills
Where no man ever trod,
And only nature's music fills
The silences of God.

Right hath the sweeter grace,
But Wrong the prettier face.

So often have I met death face to face,
His eyes now wear the welcome of a friend's.

The pulse of our life is in tune with the rhythm of forces that beat
In the surf of the farthest star's sea, and are spent and regathered to spend.

O mighty Soul of England, rise in splendour
Out of the wrack and turmoil of the night,
And as of old, compassionate and tender,
Uphold the cause of justice and of right.

Sweet house of God, sweet earth, so full of pleasure,
I enter at thy gates in storm or calm;
And every sunbeam is a joy or pleasure,
And every cloud a solace and a balm.

Something in my inmost thinking
Tells me I am one with you,
For a subtle bond is linking
Nature's offspring through and through.

In lonely gorge and over hill and plain,
I sowed the giant forests of the world;
The great earth like a human heart in pain
Has quivered with the meteors I have hurled.

'Oh, curses on you hand and head,
Like the rains in this wild weather
The guilt of blood is swift and dread,
Your sister's face is cold and dead,
Ye may not part whom God would wed
And love hath knit together.'

"O mother, a strife like the black clouds'
And a peace that cometh after."
"Hush, child, for peace is the end of life,
And the heart of a maiden finds peace as a wife,
But the sky and the cliffs and the ocean are rife
With the storm and thunder's laughter."

The great world's heart is aching, aching fiercely in the night,
And God alone can heal it, and God alone give light;
And the men to bear that message, and to speak the living word,
Are you and I, my brothers, and the millions that have heard.

Oh, linger, little river!
Your banks are all so fair,
Each morning is a hymn of praise,
Each evening is a prayer.
All day the sunbeams glitter
On your shallows and your bars,
And at night the dear God stills you
With the music of the stars.

They saw the stars in heaven hung,
They saw the great Sea's birth,
They know the ancient pain that wrung
The entrails of the Earth.

'Is Sin, then, fair?'
Nay, love, come now,
Put back the hair
From his sunny brow;
See, here, blood-red
Across his head
A brand is set,
The word — 'Regret.'

I saw Time in his workshop carving faces;
Scattered around his tools lay, blunting griefs,
Sharp cares that cut out deeply in reliefs
Of light and shade: sorrows that smooth the traces
Of what were smiles.

Time (1886)

'How slayeth Sin?'
First, God is hid,
And the heart within
By its own self chid;
Then the maddened brain
Is scourged by pain
To sin as before
And more and more,
For evermore.

Give me splendour in my death —
Not this sickening dungeon breath,
Creeping down my blood like slime,
Till it wastes me in my prime.
Give me back for one blind hour,
Half my former rage and power,
And some giant crisis send,
Meet to prove a hero's end.

Growing to full manhood now,
With the care-lines on our brow,
We, the youngest of the nations,
With no childish lamentations,
Weep, as only strong men weep,
For the noble hearts that sleep,
Pillowed where they fought and bled,
The loved and lost, our glorious dead.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Frederick George Scott (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.