LEWISPORTE PILOT, FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 1963
The Coronation of Rowena Brown
By F. T. Fudge
Miss Nightingale with her little lamp
Among the dying men,
Grace Darling in the life boat
Victory on sea to win,
Joan of Arc chained to a post
Victim of hate and strife,
Kate Douglas with her naked arm
Bolted the last sure door of hope
To save the monarch's life.
Stand up, great ladies, and make your bow
And salute Rowena Brown
Who is coming now to join your band
And receive a hero's crown.
She is only thirteen years of age-
The youngest ever known
To climb the ladder of fame so high
Through victory, all her own!
It was not on a field of battle
Nor a wild and stormy sea-
No fire to consume the body
And set the spirit free.
Joan of Arc was chained to a post
To burn in an age of strife,
Kate Douglas bolted the door with her arm
To save her monarch's life.
But Rowena Brown, the Junior Queen-
Just a girl and nothing more
Will brighter shine in this dark age
Than those who have gone before.
A snow-storm and a driving gale
On a frozen sea without a trail
With never a friend or foe to meet
But with frozen hands and frozen feet.
I have travelled far in many lands
And studied long the things I've seen,
But nothing ever gripped my mind
Like the story of Rowena Brown,
the little Junior Queen.
I call her Queen-she was nothing less,
And all who read her story
Will cast their tributes at her feet
In appreciative glory.
I have been shipwrecked in the ocean
And adrift on a desolate strand;
I have lived with savages many years
Away in a foreign land.
But when I read of Rowena Brown-
Her courage and her daring,
My courage seemed to spread its wings,
My manhood disappearing.
Rowena planned a pleasent visit
With friends not far away,
But the drifting snow and the howling winds
Caused her to go astray.
The friends she sought, she could not find-
The snow had blotted out the trail,
So there she stood, a lone lost child
Trembling with cold in the blinding gale.
On a frozen sea in a frightening storm.
And darkness comming on-
A helpless, friendless little girl,
A theme for a poet's song.
Just there, my bravery and my courage
With savages and on land and sea
Did not seem worthy of the little red cap
That Rowena hung up in the tree.
Through a rift in the storm she thought she saw
A bottom-up boat on the shore
That might serve as a refuge from the storm
Since there was nothing more.
But on stepping ashore she slipped and fell
And was soaked to the waist with water;
But she rose in triumph above the shock, ,
Newfoundland's noble daughter.
Her Newfoundland courage did not fail
She climbed to the top of the mountain
And there she crouched between two rocks
Like a bird at a springing fountain.
She broke small branches from a tree
And spread them on the ground;
Then hung her red cap upon a tree
As a guide to where she might be found.
Men from all the surrounding place-
The ministers, policemen, the doctor and his wife
Poured out their best without reserve,
To save Rowena's life.
Blessed be God-they found her
And brought her safely home-
The inspiration of my thought,
The key-note of my poem.
Which now I gladly dedicate
To Rowena and her friends
Until we meet in a better world
Where joy supernal blends.
Across the sea Newfoundland friends
Will wish you happiness, health and fame,
And may God bless "THE PILOT" too
That brought to us your name.
Rev. Fred T. Fudge
300 McDougal St.
Fostoria, Ohio, U.S.A.
The song playing is I Fall to Pieces
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Graphics created by
Laurie Sirois.
Morning Laurie Designs
