Robert James Campbell Stead
Robert James Campbell Stead Poems
In the dingy dust of his deerskin tent sat the chief of a dying race,
And the lake that lapt at his wigwam door threw back a frowning face,
And a sightless squaw at the centre-pole crooned low in a hybrid speech,
When a man of God swept round the point and landed on the beach.
...
Little Tim Trotter was born in the West,
Where the prairie lies sunny and brown;
Never was, surely, so welcome a guest
In the stateliest halls of the town;
...
When Lord Landseeker came out West to have a look around,
And spend a little money if the right thing could be found,
He hadn't breathed the prairie air more than a day or two
Until he was the centre of a philanthropic crew
...
The City? Oh yes, the City
Is a good enough place for a while
It fawns on the clever and witty,
And welcomes the rich with a smile;
...
Knew you the men of the Old Guard ? Men of the camp and trail;
Guard of the van when Time began in the land of grass and gale,
Of a sky-wide land they seized command where the mightiest prevail.
...
The village lights grew dim behind, the snow lay vast and white,
And silent as an icy shroud spread out upon the night;
A wan moon struggled with the clouds, and through the misty haze
...
He is brand-new out from England, and he thinks he knows it all —
(There's a bloomin' bit o' goggle in his eye):
The 'colonial' that crosses him is going to get a fall —
...
Where the farthest foothills flatten to a circle-sweeping plain,
And the cattle lands surrender to the onward march of grain,
Where the prairies stretch unbroken to the comers of the sky,
...
Far away from the din of the city,
I dwell on the prairie alone,
With no one to praise or to pity,
...
(As related/or the benefit of the New Arrival.)
Yes, stranger, I hev trailed the West
Since I was a kid on a bob-tailed nag,
...
I had lain untrod for a million years from the line to the Arctic sea;
I had dreamed strange dreams of the vast unknown,
Of the lisping wind and the dancing zone
...
SERGEANT BLUE of the Mounted Police was a so-so kind of a guy ;
He swore a bit, and he lied a bit, and he boozed a bit on the sly;
But he held the post at Snake Creek Bend for country and home and God,
...
Well, no, I 'm not superstitious, — at least, I don't call it that, —
But when some one spins a creepy yarn I don't deny it flat,
For a man who spends a lifetime with the throttle in his hand
...
They were running out the try-lines, they were staking out the grade;
Through the hills they had to measure, through the sloughs they had to wade;
They were piercing unknown regions, they were crossing nameless streams,
...
Who owns the land ?
The Duke replied,
' I own the land. My fathers died
In winning it from foreign hands,
...
We have heard the night wind howling as we lay alone in bed ;
We have heard the grey goose honking as he journeyed overhead;
We have smelt the smoke-wraith flying in the hot October wind,
...
Feelin' kind of all run down ?
Mighty bad:
Sick and tired o' life in town ?
Don 't be sad :
...
Yes, I'm holdin' down the homestead here an' roughin' it a bit,
It seems the only kind o' life that I was built to fit,
For it's thirty years last summer since I staked my first preserve,
An' I reckon on the whole I've prospered more than I deserve;
...
Robert James Campbell Stead Biography
Robert James Campbell Stead (1880-1959), like many of his generation were multi-faceted characters. He begun his working life by starting a newspaper in his hometown of Cartwright, Manitoba, and was a published poet early in life but it is as a writer of novels he gained most fame. In later life he moved to Alberta where he became variously a journalist, a Car Salesman, a Civil Servant and publicist for the CPR, Robert J. C. Stead was born on 4th September 1880 in Middleville, Lanark County, Ontario. The family moved when he was young and they were homesteading in Cartwright, Manitoba by 1882 . This was to be the basis of the locations Plainsville and Alder Creek in much of his later fiction. Stead published his first book, “The Empire Builders and Other Poems” in 1908 This drew heavily on the styles of his two favourite writers at that time; Robert Service and Rudyard Kipling and was seen as an excessively patriotic book lauding Canada and Canadians. With the advent of the first World War his writing became even more fervant but his later novels showed a progressive shift from the gung-ho romantic to the more tolerant “prairie realism” for which he was to became famous. For a time Stead worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway in Calgary in the immigration department. His writing natural began to reflect the clean, healthy vigour of life in the open spaces. Spaces opened up by courtesy of the CPR of course! In 1919 he started work as a publicist for the government at the Department of Immigration and Colonization, moving to the Department of Mines and Resources in 1936 until his retirement in 1946.)
The Best Poem Of Robert James Campbell Stead
The Seer
In the dingy dust of his deerskin tent sat the chief of a dying race,
And the lake that lapt at his wigwam door threw back a frowning face,
And a sightless squaw at the centre-pole crooned low in a hybrid speech,
When a man of God swept round the point and landed on the beach.
The heavy eyes grew bright with fire, the lips shaped to a sneer—
'Welcome, my paleface brother, what good news brings you here ?
Are you come with the voice of healing, with the book of your blameless breed,
To soothe my soul with comfort while my body gnaws with need ?
Welcome, O paleface brother; come, what have you to fear ?
Mayhap the redskin chieftain can teach as well as hear;
And while we sing your sacred songs and breathe your mystic prayer,
Who knows what inspiration may come on the ev'ning air ? . . .
Listen; you are a scholar, schooled in the pale-face lore:
Tis said a dying saint may sometimes see the shining shore;
That closing eyes peer far beyond the realm of mortal sight,—
Who knows but that a dying race may read the road aright ?
A dying race! We know it; the land is ours no more,
No more we roam the prairies as in the days of yore;
The brave, free spirit that was ours is crushed and passed away,
And bodies without spirits are predestined to decay.
' No matter. In the summertime the flowers bloom in the grass,
The startled insects flood the fields and chirrup as you pass,
The birds sing in the bushes; but before the wintry blast
The flowers and the insects and the little birds are past.
'Yet once again the spring will come, the flowers will bloom again,
And insects chirrup blithely where the former ones are lain;
The white snows of the winter-time will vanish in the heat,
And outdoor life and colour will follow their defeat.
Can the paleface read the riddle? Has he eyes to see the signs ?
Or thinketh he that snow will lie forever on the pines ?
That housed-up life can triumph for the mastery of state,
Or cushioned chairs produce a race destined to dominate ?
Behold, the things your hands have done, the power your arts have won—
Behold, those things shall vanish as the snow before the sun;
The snow that smothered out the red—ah, hear it if you can—
Shall leave the earth as suddenly, and leave it brown and tan.
Hear ye a little lesson — surely ye know its worth —
Only an outdoor nation can be master of the earth;
Soon as ye seek your couches, soft with the spoils of trade —
See well to your outer trenches before the mines are laid!
' Hear ye a little lesson—can ye the truth divine ?
Milk ye may mix with water, and water will mix with wine;
Mix as ye may on your prairies, mix in your hope and toil,
But know in all your mixing that water won't mix with oil!'
In the dingy dusk of his deerskin tent sat the chief of a dying race,
And the glow of holy prophecy lit up his rugged face,
And the foremost light of the setting sun fell far on an eastern land, —
And who shall save the paleface if he will not understand?
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1/14/2026 3:37:47 PM # 1.0.0
