It's a fairly well-known fact that Max Braithwaite's books Never Sleep Three in a Bed and The Night We Stole the Mountie's Car were a large part of the inspiration for Wind at My Back. But did you know that these weren't the first of Braithwaite's novels to be adapted to the screen?

Today's poem of the day comes from Canadian poet Jane Urquhart. Though she has since moved to southern Ontario, Urquhart was born in Little Longlac, a small mining town in Northern Ontario.

Woman's faith, and woman's trust -
Write the characters in the dust;
Stamp them on the running stream,
Print them on the moon's pale beam,

"Give me my bow," said Robin Hood,
"An arrow give to me;
And where 't is shot mark thou that spot,
For there my grave shall be."

Be still as you are beautiful
Be silent as the rose;
Through miles of starlit countryside
Unspoken worship flows

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

The Soul selects her own Society --
Then -- shuts the Door --
To her divine Majority --
Present no more --

Look how the same possibilities
unfold in their opposite demeanors,
as though one saw different ages
passing through two identical rooms.

At least I've learned this much:
Life doesn't have to be
all poetry and roses. Life

My mother, who hates thunder storms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:

A neighbourhood.
At dusk.
Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.

Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,

Because of the light of the moon,
Silver is found on the moor;
And because of the light of the sun,
There is gold on the walls of the poor.

Not too long ago, we revealed the sources of inspiration that led to the production of the award-winning series, Wind at My Back.  One of these sources was the memoirs of Canadian writer Max Braithwaite, who wrote about his time growing up in a Canadian family during the first quarter of the 20th century.

Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed,
Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read.
Then you shall discover, that your name was printed down
By the English printers, long before, in London town.

Up in the attic on row on row,
In dusty frames, with stubborn eyes,
My thin ancestors slowly fade
Under the flat Ohio skies.

YOU who celebrate bygones!
Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races—the life that has
exhibited itself;

Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree --
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.

I wonder how many people in this city
live in furnished rooms.
Late at night when i look out at the buildings

Yesterday we wrote about the Irish poet, Francis Ledwidge, who was killed during World War I.  His patron, whose battalion he joined, was Lord Dunsany – also a poet and fantasy writer.  The picture above is an illustration from one of his fantasy novels, A Dreamer's Tales, which was considered a big influence on J.R.R.Tolkien.  Here is one of Dunsany's poems, Art and Life.

She’ll meet with the gate thrown wide,
The sunset red upon her grace,
Loud will her heart be in her side
And white the excitement on her face.

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

It was formerly believed, on a sea-battered shore
though the storm at home blasted,
that in the distant west there still lay lands,
where calm and sun never ended,

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

Griffin calls to come and kiss him goodnight
I yell ok. Finish something I'm doing,
then something else, walk slowly round
the corner to my son's room.

For the sky, blue.  But the six-year-
old searching his crayon-box, finds
no blue to match that sky

I want you to know
one thing.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

Poor restless dove, I pity thee;
And when I hear thy plaintive moan,
I mourn for thy captivity,
And in thy woes forget mine own.

Wind at My Back fans have often wondered what first inspired Kevin Sullivan to dream up the award-winning series.  The answer is a combination of inspirational and historic resources – namely, the history of his own relatives that lived during the Great Depression, in addition to literature that reflected this time period.  One primary example is author Max Braithwaite’s first of three autobiographical novels, Never Sleep Three in a Bed.

Going to Mass last Sunday my true love passed me by,
I knew her mind was altered by the rolling of her eye;
And when I stood in God’s dark light my tongue could word no prayer
Knowing my saint had fled and left her reliquary bare.

Oh my luve is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
Oh my luve is like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

“I shall be careful to say nothing at all
About myself or what I know of him
Or the vaguest thought I have—no matter how dim,
Tonight of it so happen that he call.”

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.

Trees in the old days used to stand
And shape a shady lane
Where lovers wandered hand in hand
Who came from Carentan.

Sometimes when the boy was troubled he would go
To a little cave of stone above the brook
And build a fire just big enough to glow
Upon the ledge outside, then sit and look.

Today is the birthday of John Masefield – the United Kingdom’s official Poet Laureate from 1930 until his death in 1967.  Here is one of the English poet’s most famous poems, followed by an explanation of what the unique honour of being a Poet Laureate actually means.

I tell her she is lovely, and she laughs,
Shy laughter altogether lovely too,
Knowing, perhaps, that it was true before,
And, when she laughs, that it is still more true.

Once or twice this side of death
Things can make one hold his breath.

From my boyhood I remember
A crystal moment of September.

It should not be the case the poetry and music are mutually exclusive.  Some of the most moving pieces of music contain lyrics that read as a poem.  One example is the famous Beatles song, “She’s Leaving Home”, which was included in the poetry book compiled by Richard Peck, called Sounds & Silences.

A thought went up my mind to-day
That I have had before,
But did not finish,--some way back,
I could not fix the year,

When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

A friend of mine is a high school teacher and today, for the countless time, she was asked by one of her students whether they had missed anything by not coming to class the day before.  One of her colleagues who overheard this conversation, directed her to the following poem, which any teacher out there will undoubtedly appreciate.

Today marks the 151st anniversary of the birth of one of the most famous playwrights in the history of children’s literature – J.M. Barrie.  The Scottish novelist, who is fondly remembered for creating the characters Peter Pan, Wendy and the Lost Boys, is one of those authors whose breadth of imagination is shared by only a view and envied by many.

In 1842, when she was just 11 years old, English poet Christina Rossetti wrote the following poem for her mother:

To My Mother

To-day’s your natal day,
Sweet flowers I bring;
Mother, accept, I pray,
My offering.

If it is your birthday today, April 27, be happy to learn that you share it with Mary Wollstonecraft – an instrumental figure in the changing state of women’s rights.

When the hills in the distance are misty
With hazes of shimmering blue,
When the birds sing with rapture at dawning
And the pastures are silver with dew,

As famous author J.D. Salinger wrote in his short story "Seymour – An Introduction”, the focus of the relationship between an author and their readers always seems to be one-sided.  We, as readers, know a great deal more about an author than they know about their general reader.  But there is an understandable fascination that readers have for the real life of the author in whose work they invest so many hours.  A writer’s religious belief is no exception.  Here is a look at the way Lucy Maud Montgomery incorporated elements of religion into her prose.

Hub and Fat Bailey, as well as their other friends in New Bedford, are often getting into mischief.  Their curiosity never ceases.  Here's a look at the innocent and inquisitive aspect of childhood that famous author Lucy Maud Montgomery decided to put into verse.  Having had two boys of her own, and spending most of her career writing from the perspective of children, she was a great authority on the subject.

While Kevin Sullivan’s other series Anne of Green Gables and Road to Avonlea were based on classic novels, fans of Wind at my Back may wonder what inspired Kevin to create a series set in the depression era.

All the breath and the bloom of the
Year in the bag of one bee:
All the wonder and wealth of the mine in
The heart of one gem: