Greenock - Port of Departure

In my last post I mentioned the Scottish Diaspora, those Scots who travelled far and wide across the world in search of new lives.  Many of them would have sailed in the thousands of ships which left the port of Greenock each year taking folk away to all corners of the globe.  I came across this poem recently -

Wilfred Campbell (1860-1918) was a Canadian poet, and lived in Ontario.  You can read about him here.

I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't heard of him before.  But these few verses from his poem The World-Mother (Scotland) appealed to me (if we ignore the fact that for each of the Scotsmen who moved away, there were an equal number of Scotswomen with them who contributed just as much!).  Of course his poetry is of its time and appears very old fashioned and romanticising to us today.  But in this year of Homecoming Scotland I thought that the last line was quite apt.

The Greenockian