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Frederick George Scott

Canadian poet, chaplain and military man (1861-1944)

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. In his fifties, Scott became a chaplain in the Canadian Expeditionary Force sent to France during the First World War. Despite his insistence on remaining close to the front line to give assistance to the wounded, he survived many close calls until he was seriously wounded only weeks before the Armistice. He was subsequently decorated for bravery under fire. His memoir, The Great War As I Saw It, was favourably received by both critics and the Canadian public. The book was still in print a century after publication. Scott remained a British imperialist his entire life, and wrote many hymns eulogizing his country's roles in the Boer Wars and World War I.

Quotes

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  • 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.
  • 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.
  • '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.'
  • '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.
  • '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.'
  • So often have I met death face to face,
    His eyes now wear the welcome of a friend's.
    • "Dion", in My Lattice, and Other Poems (Toronto, 1894), p. 63
  • Clay was I; the potter Thou
    With Thy thumb-nail smooth'dst my brow,
    Rolltdst the spittle-moistened sands
    Into limbs between Thy hands.
    [...]
    Strong Thou mad'st me, till at length
    All my weakness was my strength;
    Tortured am I, blind and wrecked,
    For a faulty architect.
    • "Samson", sts. 9, 12, in My Lattice and Other Poems (Toronto, 1894), p. 4
    • Cf. Judges 16; and John Milton, Samson Agonistes. Author's note, in Collected Poems (Vancouver: Clarke and Stuart, 1934), p. 178: "Written at Drummondville. The inner meaning is revolt against the law of heredity. The poem was written at one setting."
  • 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.
    • "Samson", sts. 20, 21
  • Right hath the sweeter grace,
    But Wrong the prettier face.
    • "The Two Mistresses", st. 1, in My Lattice and Other Poems (Toronto, 1894), p. 88
  • 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.
    • "In the Woods", st. 4, in My Lattice and Other Poems (Toronto, 1894), p. 89
  • It sleeps among the thousand hills
      Where no man ever trod,
    And only nature's music fills
      The silences of God.
  • 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.
    • "A Dream of the Prehistoric", st. 11, in The Unnamed Lake and Other Poems (Toronto, 1897), p. 14
  • The immortal spirit hath no bars
      To circumscribe its dwelling-place;
    My soul hath pastured with the stars
      Upon the meadow-lands of space.
    • "Eothen", in The Canadian Magazine, vol. 11 (May–October 1898), p. 164
  • 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.
    • "The Burden of Time", st. 7, in The Canadian Magazine, vol. 13 (May–October 1899), p. 327
    • Author's note, in Collected Poems (Vancouver: Clarke and Stuart, 1934), p. 176: "Written in my garden in Quebec. Time is the greatest force in the universe, and to it all others are subservient."
  • One doom waits all — art, speech, law, gods, and men,
      Forests and mountains, stars and shining sun, —
    The hand that made them shall unmake again,
      I curse them and they wither one by one.
    Waste altars, tombs, dead cities where men trod,
      Shall roll through space upon the darkened globe,
    Till I myself be overthrown, and God
      Cast off creation like an outworn robe.
    • "The Burden of Time", sts. 13, 14
  • 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.
  • Something in my inmost thinking
      Tells me I am one with you,
    For a subtle bond is linking
      Nature's offspring through and through.
  • 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.
  • Ah God, what thunders shook these crags of yore,
      What smoke of battle rolled about this place,
        What strife of worlds in pregnant agony!
    Now all is hushed, yet here, in dreams, once more
      We catch the echoes, ringing back from space,
        Of God’s strokes forging human history.
  • Purgatory for me will be five hundred years of catching trains and two thousand years of remembering names.
  • 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.
    • "Our Duty" (May 1909), st. 1, in Poems (London and Toronto, 1910), p. 206
  • Like some grey warder who, with mien sedate
      And smile of welcome, greets the throngs who pour
      Between the portals of a wide-thrown door,
    Quebec stands guardian at our water gate,
    And watches from her battlemented state
      The great ships passing with their living store
      Of human myriads coming to our shore,
    Expectant, joyous, resolute, elate.
  • 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.
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