An acrostic of Napoleon, by Emily Beavan: A participatory posting

This hand-written acrostic is found in Emily Beavan’s album. The images are supplied by her great-great-granddaughter, Lyn Nunn, of Brisbane, Australia.

Between Lyn and the members of the CEWW team, we have managed to transcribe a large portion of the poem, but not all and likely not accurately. We are open to suggestions… Eventually, in a community effort, we hope to decipher it completely. Suggestions can be contributed in the comments area. The image is fairly high resolution, so you can download it for closer viewing. It is conceivable, given the mark between “and” (or “with…? as in “without”?] and “a name” on the final line, that this poem remained unfinished.

An Acrostic

Nurs’d in the lap of war and strife
Amidst the camp he pass’d [?] his life
Proud France, from you the Hero came
O’er all the earth to praise a name
Like the fierce [?] eagle then[?] begun
Earth saw him soar to Victory’s sun
O’h [?] too as living [?] man of Fame,
Now …what’s [?] thy glory’s and— a name.

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An acrostic of Vancouver, by May P. Judge

Judge, May P. “Anagram of Vancouver.” Indian Time: The Smallest Indian Paper with the Biggest Punch. Fall [post-1951].

This journal is an interesting little article I discovered in the Mabel Payne fonds at the City of Vancouver Archives. It is a mimeographed journal of about 12 pages, with a construction paper cover on which is (poorly) copied a rather hideous drawing of Eloise Street, its editor. The immediate assumption that it was a local, relatively unimportant publication is belied by the listing of an American Editor—Howard L. La Hurreau (Shup-She)—which points to a broader distribution than its quality of production would suggest. May P. Judge, an active member of the Vancouver Poetry Society, has two poems in the journal, including this acrostic, which the journal incorrectly labels an “anagram.”

Anagram of Vancouver

Vast monument of solitude, the Sleeping Beauty lies
Athwart the blue-walled mountains, clad in snow-flecked forest gown;
No hand but Nature’s chiselled, shaped that mighty resting form,
Compiled of rugged precipice, ravine and forest knoll.
Out sea-ward, high above the wooded Capilano vale,
Unchallenged, twin peak sentinels, like British Lions couch.
Each dawn and evening light unfurls their loyal country’s flag—
Red sun, white snow, blue mountain walls, the colours of our Queen.

“Narcissus,” by Kate Colquhoun

Colquhoun, Kate. “Narcissus.” The Crucible (Autumn 1936): 10.

“The Wakeful Night,” by R. H. Grenville

Grenville, R. H. [Beatrice Rowley]. “The Wakeful Night.” Saturday Evening Post 221.(1948): 72. Readers’ Guide Retrospective 1890-1982 (H. W. Wilson). Web. 9 Aug. 2012.

It turns out that Wilson’s Readers’ Guide Retrospective has a large number of R. H. Grenville’s poems that were published in The Saturday Evening Post. This is one I particularly liked…

A poem by Anne Sutherland Brooks

The following poem was included in a letter from Anne Sutherland Brooks to Mr. G.H.U. Bayley, Chairman of the Ontario Heritage Foundation, dated 17 January 1987, in which she appealed to the Foundation to place an historic plaque on the home of Isabella Valancy Crawford. In the letter, Brooks informs Mr. Bayley that “it was my great-grandfather, Samuel Rowe, first settler of Paisley, Ontario, who brought Dr. Crawford F.R.C.S. [sic] to Canada that the wilderness moght [sic] have a doctor: later, the family moved to Peterborough and then to Toronto where, hear father dead (and several of his children) the young girl [Isabella Valancy Crawford] trudged from publisher to publisher to keep her mother and herself from starving.”

Brooks closes the letter with this poem in honour of Isabella Valancy Crawford:

Retreat, my own pragmatic world,
Clamorous, harsh and bright,
Show me the peace of the strewn room,
The candle in the night,
And the mind of the maid who labored there
To give me such delight.

“A Youth’s Prayer,” by Mary Susanne Edgar

Edgar, Mary S. “A Youth’s Prayer.” Masterpieces of Religious Verse. Ed. James Dalton Morrison. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948. 125-26.

“Golden Haze,” by May P. Judge

Judge, May P. “Golden Haze.” The Crucible (Autumn 1936): 11.

Here is another poem by Mary Edith “May” Perceval Judge, one of the founding members of the Vancouver Poetry Society in 1919. First published in the Province (Vancouver) newspaper in 1931, it was reprinted in The Crucible in 1936.

“Spring Fancy,” by Martha Ostenso

Ostenso, Martha.  “Spring Fancy.” Canadian Magazine 58 (1921-22) 495.