Born: October 27, 1845, Zhoushan Island (south of Shanghai), Zhejiang, China.
Died: May 2, 1926, Hendon, Middlesex, England.
Canton’s childhood was spent mostly in Jamaica.
He studied for the priesthood at Douai and later in Paris, but eventually abandoned the priesthood to become a teacher and writer. He later left Roman Catholicism for Protestantism.
He worked as a journalist in London and Glasgow, where he became editor of the Glasgow Weekly Herald and later a leader-writer for the Glasgow Herald.
In 1891, Canton moved to London, where he worked for the publisher Isbister, later becoming editor of the Sunday Review and the Sunday Magazine. He also contributed articles and poems to Good Words.
In 1901, Canton’s daughter Winifred died at age 10. He resigned from Isbister and took up an offer to write the official history of the Bible Society, which he hoped would comfort him. The nine volume work took five years to complete.
After completing the history in 1910, Campbell devoted himself to children’s literature and historical works.
Around the globe one wave, from pole to pole,
Rolled on, and found no shore to break its roll.
One awful water mirrored everywhere
The silent, blue, illimitable air;
And glassed at one same hour the midnight moon,
Sunrise, and sunset, and the sun at noon.
Beneath the noontide sun ’twas still as death.
Within the dawn no living thing drew breath.
Beneath the cold white moon the cold blue wave
Sealed with an icy hush the old world’s grave.
But, hark! upon the sunset’s edge were heard,
Afar and faint, the cries of beast and bird.
Afar, between the sunset and the dark,
The lions had awakened in the Ark.
Across the great red splendor white wings flew,
Weary of wandering where no green leaf grew;
Weary of searching for that unfound shore
From which the raven had returned no more.
And as the white wings labored slowly back,
And down the huge orb sank, a speck of black
Stood fluttering in the circle of the sun—
While the long billows, passing one by one,
Lifted and lowered in the crimson blaze
A dead queen of the old and evil days.
One gold-clasped arm lay beautiful and bare;
The gold of power gleamed in her floating hair;
Her jewelled raiment in the glassy swell
Glittered; and ever as she rose and fell,
And o’er his reddened claws the ripple broke,
The raven fluttered with uneasy croak.
William Canton
A Lost Epic and Other Poems, 1887
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