Canada

Emily Pauline Johnson, who also published under her paternal grandfather’s Mohawk name Tekahionwake (“double wampum”), was born on March 10, 1861, on the Six Nations Reserve, Canada West. She was the fourth and youngest child born to George Henry Martin Johnson (Onwanonsyshon), a Mohawk who was both a hereditary and elected chief of the Six Nations. Johnson’s father was fluent in six Indigenous languages, which allowed him to work as a translator. Johnson’s mother, Emily Susanna Howells, was an English-born Canadian from Bristol. Johnson’s father died in 1884.

About Emily Pauline Johnson

A Prodigal

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.

Emily Pauline Johnson

1917

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

Poems

Canada

More by this poet

A Prodigal

At Crow's Nest Pass

The City and the Sea

Poems

Page submenu block

Canada

More by this poet

A Prodigal

At Crow's Nest Pass

The City and the Sea

Newsletter Sign Up