Born in Dublin, Ireland, she and her family emigrated to Canada in 1857 and lived in several communities in what is now Ontario, before settling in Peterborough.
In the 1870s she began a career writing poetry, novels and short stories for a variety of
Canadian newspapers and magazines. Although a prolific writer, only one book, the self-published Old Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie and Other Poems (1884), appeared in her lifetime.
"Let us to the work of this divinely dowered Isabella–this angelic mendicant, craving nothing of life but its finer gifts–this blessed gypsy of Canadian woods and streams. What a royal life she led! No pose to take, no reputation to sustain, no tendency to routine thinking or lassitude of the imaginative faculty to be struggled with . . . . . not a single syllable out-breathing the 'vulgar luxury of despair.' Happy, happy poet! She, like every other genius, found in the ecstasy of expression at the full height of her nature a compensation that turned all outward trials into details not worth speaking of . . . . . She is purely a genius, not a craftswoman, and a genius who has patience enough to be an artist. She has in abundant measure that power of youth which persists in poets of every age–that capacity of seeing things for the first time, and with the rose and pearl of dawn upon them. . . . ."
By" Isabella Valancy Crawford
To large and joyous strains, all thunder-winged
To beat along vast shores. Ay, let their notes
Wild into eagles soaring toward the sun,
And voiced like bugles bursting through the dawn
When armies leap to life! Give them such breasts
As hold immortal fires, and they shall fly,
Swept with our little sphere through all the change
That waits a whirling world.
Joy's an immortal;
She hath a fiery fibre in her flesh
That will not droop or die; so let her chant
The pæans of the dead, where holy Grief
Hath, trembling, thrust the feeble mist aside
That veils her dead, and in the wondrous clasp
Of re-possession ceases to be Grief.
Joy's ample voice shall still roll over all,
And chronicle the heroes to young hearts
Who knew them not.....
There's glory on the sword
That keeps its scabbard-sleep, unless the foe
Beat at the wall, then freely leaps to light
And thrusts to keep the sacred towers of Home
And the dear lines that map the nation out upon the world.
His Mother
IN the first dawn she lifted from her bed
The holy silver of her noble head,
And listened, listened, listened for his tread.
'Too soon, too soon!' she murmured, 'Yet I'll keep
My vigil longer– thou, O tender Sleep,
Art but the joy of those who wake and weep!
'Joy's self hath keen, wide eyes. O flesh of mine,
And mine own blood and bone, the very wine
Of my aged heart, I see thy dear eyes shine!
'I hear thy tread; thy light, loved footsteps run
Along the way, eager for that 'Well done!'
We'll weep and kiss to thee, my soldier son!
'Blest mother I– he lives! Yet had he died
Blest were I still, – I sent him on the tide
Of my full heart to save his nation's pride!'
'O God, if that I tremble so to-day,
Bowed with such blessings that I cannot pray
By speech– a mother prays, dear Lord, alway
'In some far fibre of her trembling mind!
I'll up– I thought I heard a bugle bind
Its silver with the silver of the wind.'
His Wife and Baby
IN the lone place of the leaves,
Where they touch the hanging eaves,
There sprang a spray of joyous song that sounded sweet and sturdy;
And the baby in the bed
Raised the shining of his head,
And pulled the mother's lids apart to wake and watch the birdie.
She kissed lip-dimples sweet,
The red soles of his feet,
The waving palms that patted hers as wind-blown blossoms wander;
He twined her tresses silk
Round his neck as white as milk–
'Now, baby, say what birdie sings upon his green spray yonder.'
'He sings a plenty things–
Just watch him wash his wings!
He says Papa will march to-day with drums home through the city.
Here, birdie, here's my cup.
You drink the milk all up;
I'll kiss you, birdie, now you're washed like baby clean and pretty.'
She rose, she sought the skies
With the twin joys of her eyes;
She sent the strong dove of her soul up through the dawning's glory;
She kissed upon her hand
The glowing golden band
That bound the fine scroll of her life and clasped her simple story.
