from John Charles Dent’s The Last Forty Years: Canada Since the Union of 1841
October 13th, 1859 *
One voice, one people, one in heart
……..And soul, and feeling, and desire !
……..Re-light the smouldering martial fire,
……..Sound the mute trumpet, strike the lyre,
……..The hero deed can not expire,
……………The dead still play their part.
Raise high the monumental stone !
……..A nation’s fealty is theirs,
……..And we are the rejoicing heirs,
……..The honored sons of sires whose cares
……..We take upon us unawares,
……………As freely as our own.
We boast not of the victory,
……..But render homage, deep and just,
……..To his — to their — immortal dust,
……..Who proved so worthy of their trust
……..No lofty pile nor sculptured bust
……………Can herald their degree.
No tongue need blazon forth their fame —
……..The cheers that stir the sacred hill
……..Are but mere promptings of the will
……..That conquered then, that conquers still ;
……..And generations yet shall thrill
……………At Brock’s remembered name.
Some souls are the Hesperides
……..Heaven sends to guard the golden age,
……..Illuming the historic page
……..With records of their pilgrimage ;
……..True Martyr, Hero, Poet, Sage :
……………And he was one of these.
Each in his lofty sphere sublime
……..Sits crowned above the common throng,
……..Wrestling with some Pythonic wrong,
……..In prayer, in thunder, thought, or song ;
……..Briareus-limbed, they sweep along,
……………The Typhons of the time.
* The day of the inauguration of the new Monument on Queenston Heights.
Source: Charles Sangster. Hesperus, and Other Poems and Lyrics. Montreal: John Lovell, 1860.
D.M.R. Bentley discusses this poem by Sangster in his essay (now archived on the WayBack Machine) Monumental Tensions: the Commemoration of British Political and Military Heroes in Canada from his Mnemographia Canadensis, volume 1: Muse and Recall
Interesting rhyme scheme and language that references the heroic nature of the battle.