St. Andrew

Our ancient custom to renew,
We meet to honor St. Andrew,
He was of the Jewish nation,
A fisherman by occupation;
No warlike knight with lance and sword
But humbly following his Lord;
And Scotia she justly claims
Her soil contains his last remains,
In early times the Pilgrims drew
Into the shrine of St. Andrew,
For miracles it gained renown,
And thence sprang up St. Andrew’s town;
Now clansmen twine round maple leaf,
When rallying at the call of chief,
And time will come when we’ll be one,
And proud of name Canadian,
But Scotia must not be forgot
For sake of Chalmers, Burns and Scott,
But here upon Canadian soil
A man may own where he doth toil,
For here each may enjoy the charm
Of owning fine prairie farm.

Where this text comes from

First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L22.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “St. Andrew.” First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/st-andrew/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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