John Graydon
John Graydon
Original Text
Wilson MacDonald, A Flagon of Beauty
(Toronto: Pine Tree, 1931): 49.
2His elm trees moving with a lovely grace
3As slow and stately as a minuet,
4His great lawns wearing shadows like black lace,
5Too lovely to forget.
6A beggar am I, or vagabond of verse,
7With neither script nor guinea in my purse,
8With neither land nor honor of men, and yet,
9Unknown to all the scullions of his race,
10I own John’s Graydon’s place.
11John Graydon bought with gold
12These ivied walls, magnificent and old,
13This roadway guarded by dark, granite towers,
14These moon-cooled urns that, uncomplaining, hold
15The ashes of dead flowers,
16And watch the dawn-like roses come and go,
17And these warm hawthorne hedges white as snow,
18These fountains, cool against the sunburnt hours,
19These beds, where blue forget-me-nots unfold,
20John Graydon bought with gold.
Notes
1] John Graydon (1836-1904) built houses in Streetsville, near Toronto, where MacDonald lived for a time, evidently in Graydon's own house at 157 Queen Street West, now Mississauga, dating from about 1890-95, and celebrated as a national heritage site. Back to Line
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire / Sharine Leung
RPO Edition
2011
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