A Prodigal

Emily Pauline Johnson

My heart forgot its God for love of you,
And you forgot me, other loves to learn;
Now through a wilderness of thorn and rue
Back to my God I turn.

And just because my God forgets the past,
And in forgetting does not ask to know
Why I once left His arms for yours, at last
Back to my God I go.

From Flint and Feather: The Complete Poems of E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) (The Musson Book Co., Limited, 1917) by Emily Pauline Johnson. This poem is in the public domain.

At Crow's Nest Pass

At Crow’s Nest Pass the mountains rend
Themselves apart, the rivers wend
A lawless course about their feet,
And breaking into torrents beat
In useless fury where they blend
At Crow’s Nest Pass.

The nesting eagle, wise, discreet,
Wings up the gorge’s lone retreat
And makes some barren crag her friend
At Crow's Nest Pass.

Emily Pauline Johnson

1917

The City and the Sea

I

To none the city bends a servile knee;
Purse-proud and scornful, on her heights she stands,
And at her feet the great white moaning sea
Shoulders incessantly the grey-gold sands,—
One the Almighty’s a child since time began,
And one the might of Mammon, born of clods;
For all the city is the work of man,
But all the sea is God’s.

II

And she—between the ocean and the town—
Lies cursed of one and by the other blest:

Emily Pauline Johnson

1917

Good-Bye

Sounds of the seas grow fainter,
Sounds of the sands have sped;
The sweep of gales,
The far white sails,
Are silent, spent and dead.

Sounds of the days of summer
Murmur and die away,
And distance hides
The long, low tides,
As night shuts out the day.

Emily Pauline Johnson

1917

Poems

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A Prodigal

More by this poet

At Crow's Nest Pass

The City and the Sea

Good-Bye

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