One sister spun the bobbin bright,
Her song a river through the years;
She drew the thread from memory deep,
From laughter, frost, and childhood tears.
One sister clacked the patient loom,
Her shuttle marking law and time;
She wove the breadth of field and town,
Of mountain, river, snow and clime.
One sister raised the careful shears,
And trimmed the sprouting weft and warp;
She shaped the tufts of living cloth,
The sky, the snow, the hearth, the carp.
The Dominion breathed through fur and wing,
Old spirits pacing every thread;
The moose, the beaver, geese in flight,
And bears where ancient forests spread.
Through winters silver, summers green,
And autumn's copper, fierce and bright,
The tapestry expanded still,
A breathing web of earth and light.
Then Time brought hands that scorned the root,
And voices careless of the past;
They took the threads but wove no more,
And wondered why the colours passed.
They fed the loom with foreign fire,
With furnaces black beneath the sun;
And eastern mills, like iron gods,
Consumed the work that had been spun.
The Moirae looked down in grief,
And heard the ancient fibres strain;
For what is lost from thread and loom
May not be gathered up again.
Then came a whisper from the West,
Across the sea and over foam:
“Come, Dominion, lay thy hand
Within the grasp of Europe's home.”
Ah, Europe! Ancient mother-land,
Whose wars once darkened field and throne;
Whose kings and creeds and warring crowns
Had taught the New World to stand alone.
Across the ocean came the cry,
From forests vast and waters wide:
“We crossed the sea to shape our fate,
Not seek another shore to guide.”
Yet now the old world's gates swing wide,
And treaties gleam like chains of gold;
The Dominion, weary of herself,
Is urged into the European fold.
“What harm,” they say, “could joining bring?
The seas are broad, the world is one;
Let ancient powers become our friends,
And let the borders come undone.”
But underneath the honeyed speech,
The old imperial shadows creep;
For every thread surrendered once
Is one the loom may cease to keep.
What strange enchantment clouds the mind,
That freedom won by ocean's breadth
Should now be bartered back again
For bureaucratic kisses unto death?
The Dominion was not born to be
A distant echo, pale and tame;
She crossed the storm to make her own
Her laws, her hearth, her sovereign name.
And should she bind her living thread
To Europe's vast and ancient frame,
Will she remain the cloth she wove,
Or merely bear another's name?
The Moirae watched the turning wheel,
The shuttle paused above the floor;
One sister wept, one sister prayed,
One sister whispered, “Nevermore.”
For nations too may lose themselves
Not only underneath the sword;
They may surrender thread by thread
While calling every loss a cord.
Thus must arise a sterner soul,
With clearer eye and steadier hand,
To guard the loom, preserve the thread,
And keep the future in the land.
For neither furnace, court nor crown,
Nor distant parliament overseas,
Should own the cloth the people made
Through winter storm and northern seas.
Let others weave their ancient cloth,
And praise the patterns of their age;
The Dominion has her own to tend,
Her own blank page, her own wide stage.
So turn the wheel and raise the loom,
Let every faithful shuttle fly;
For nations live while hands still weave,
And die when none will ask them why.
(By John Shenton)