And ever in our ears the tide's tune rings;
The wave runs through our legends and our lore,
And permeates a thousand diverse things;
The memory of our race's Island home
Is charged with salt-sea spray and ocean foam.
THE PASSING OF SUMMER
"Summer is dead!"--it was the wind that spake
In the bronze mantle of the sombre pine--
"The sumach bush unfurls a scarlet sign;
The sere rush signals it in stream and lake;
Soundeth a requiem in gilded brake,
Where mateless birds a lonely fate repine;
The sky is veiled in tears; each gray confine
Bespeaks the shrunken branch the leaves forsake.
"I laugh with ruddy Autumn in the morn;
I sound his praises in the golden light;
But when high noon has passed and raven night
Comes rushing down, I wail with those forlorn:
The dying leaves, the lone flowers, pale and torn,
The multitudes confronting death or flight."
RICHARD HUNTINGTON
SUNRISE ON THE TUSKET
I
Still, in the light of morning gray,
That ushered in the summer day,
The fair Acadien hamlet lay
Its fringing hem of forest round,
Its verdured slopes with orchards crowned,
Lie steeped in silence most profound.
No zephyr's wing the leaf hath stirred,
No sound to break the calm is heard,
Save crickets' chirp or trill of bird.
The frequent fireflies' fitful gleam,
The star of morning's lucent beam,
Shine mirrored in the glassy stream,
In whose clear depths are pictured seen
The drooping boughs and foliage green
Of graceful trees that o'er it lean.
II
Glows in the kindling East a blush,
Morn's old and immemorial flush!
Afar, the distant Tusket's rush
Is heard, in muffled murmur deep,
As, past green isle and headland steep,
Its eddying waters seaward sweep.
Morn's steps advance, and lo, the West
Hath donned a new and gorgeous vest
Of purple and of amethyst.
Look East once more!--a sea of gold
Along the far horizon rolled--
The rising orb of day behold!
It gilds with flame St Michael's spire,
Whose panes, agleam with living fire,
Blaze like some sacrificial pyre.
It lights, as with celestial glow,
The slender crosslets ranged below,
Man's last, sad resting-place to show....
III
In yonder modest glebe-house near,
Unconscious of my presence here,
Sleeps one to friendship's heart most dear.
Unwakened by the orient beam,
Perchance in some ecstatic dream
He roams by Tiber's classic stream,
Or sees St Peter's mighty dome
Soar grandly o'er the pomp of Rome--
His own loved Church's pride and home.
Blest be his visions, wheresoe'er
His dream-enfranchised fancy veer--
The faithful priest, the friend sincere!
LOUISBURG
And this is Louisburg! whose moss-grown ruin
Stretches before me--one deserted waste!
Scarce can the eye, its eager search pursuing,
The outlines of her strong defences trace--
Relentless by the miner's blast effaced.
Yet was she once the brightest gem of all
The gorgeous brilliants that with splendor graced
The diadem of old monarchial Gaul,--
She who defiance frowned, and Britain foe did call.
The Dunkirk of this land!--how fallen since then!
The eye but wanders o'er a waste of stone,
Remains of dwellings once the abodes of men,
But now forlorn, deserted, silent, lone;
And rank and mantling grass hath overgrown
Her streets, her sepulchres, her ruined walls.
The voice of bygone ages hath a tone
Which lingers yet amid these prostrate halls,
As reverent 'mid their maze my pensive footstep falls.
Lo, yon green rampart! towering once in pride,
And bristling, too, with bayonets, that long
The prowess of the immortal Wolfe defied.--
Not to the peaceful Muse doth it belong
To weave with sturdy martial words her song,
Else might I speak of glacis and of fosse,
Of massy culvert, and of battery strong,
And blasted battlements o'ergrown with moss,
Around whose ruined base the angry billows toss.--
Eastward there stood upon the frowning steep--
And of its wreck some fragments still remain--
Their beacon light, the Pharos of the deep!...
JAMES COBOURG HODGINS
ONCE MORE
Once more the robin flutes in glee,
On heat returning.
The living juices in the trees
Are shooting in the early leaves,--
The blossoms break,
And lusty nature wide awake
Her pleasant task sits learning.
The fleecy clouds scud o'er the blue,
In sudden glory.
The woods are full of whistling birds,
And nature, in strange mystic words,
Relates once more,
In the same strains as oft before,
The one old golden story:
That he who lives close to her heart,
Nor spurns her warning,
Shall all life's cunning secrets learn:
The trill of birds, the tress of fern,
The roar of seas,
The music of the wind-swept trees,
The glory of the morning;
Shall learn the noiseless laws of life,
The truths of beauty,
And find that Nature's meanest guise
Is full of wonder and surprise;
That everything
Doth to the surface ever bring
The blessedness of duty.
A GREEK REVERIE
This is the purple sea of ancient song.
These are the groves to which bacchantes lured.
In these grim rocks bad spirits are immured,
Pent in by Heaven in token of some wrong.
Sure that was Pan who flashed by through the pine,
Followed by boys with passionate eyes, and men
Bedecked with roses! Fainter down the glen
Tramps the mad rabble, caught with song divine.
Now once again the Lord of life and day
Smites into splendor all the dull waste waves:
Straight Ulysses, his face, sleep-swollen, laves,
Rouses his heroes, and with scant delay
Prows are turned homeward. Hark the measured beat!
Another weary day and vacant sky and heat!
JOSEPH HOWE
THE FLAG OF OLD ENGLAND
A CENTENARY SONG OF THE LANDING OF CORNWALLIS AT HALIFAX
All hail to the day when the Britons came over,
And planted their standard, with sea-foam still wet!
Around and above us their spirits will hover,
Rejoicing to mark how we honor it yet.
Beneath it the emblems they cherished are waving,
The Rose of Old England the roadside perfumes;
The Shamrock and Thistle the north winds are braving,
Securely the Mayflower[A] blushes and blooms.
_Hail to the day when the Britons came over,
And planted their standard, with sea-foam still wet,
Around and above us their spirits will hover,
Rejoicing to mark how we honor it yet.
We'll honor it yet, we'll honor it yet,
The flag of Old England! we'll honor it yet._
In the temples they founded, their faith is maintained,
Every foot of the soil they bequeathed is still ours,
The graves where they moulder, no foe has profaned,
But we wreathe them with verdure, and strew them with flowers!
The blood of no brother, in civil strife poured,
In this hour of rejoicing encumbers our souls!
The frontier's the field for the patriot's sword,
And cursed be the weapon that faction controls!
Then hail to the day! 'tis with memories crowded,
Delightful to trace 'midst the mists of the past,
Like the features of Beauty, bewitchingly shrouded,
They shine through the shadows Time o'er them has cast.
As travellers track to its source in the mountains
The stream which, far swelling, expands o'er the plains,
Our hearts on this day fondly turn to the fountains
Whence flow the warm currents that bound in our veins.
And proudly we trace them! No warrior flying
From city assaulted, and fanes overthrown,
With the last of his race on the battlements dying,
And weary with wandering, founded our own.
From the Queen of the Islands, then famous in story,
A century since, our brave forefathers came,
And our kindred yet fill the wide world with her glory,
Enlarging her empire, and spreading her name.
Every flash of her genius our pathway enlightens,
Every field she explores we are beckoned to tread,
Each laurel she gathers our future day brightens--
We joy with her living, and mourn for her dead.
Then hail to the day when the Britons came over,
And planted their standard, with sea-foam still wet!
Above and around us their spirits shall hover,
Rejoicing to mark how we honor it yet.
[A] The Trailing Arbutus, the emblem of Nova Scotia.
THE DESERTED NEST
Deserted nest, that on the leafless tree
Waves to and fro with every dreary blast,
With none to shelter, none to care for thee,
Thy day of pride and cheerfulness is past.
Thy tiny walls are falling to decay,
Thy cell is tenantless and tuneless now,
The winter winds have rent the leaves away,
And left thee hanging on the naked bough.
But yet, deserted nest, there is a spell,
E'en in thy loneliness, to touch the heart,
For holy things within thee once did dwell,
The type of joys departed now thou art.
With what assiduous care thy framers wrought,
With what delight they viewed the structure rise,
And how, as each some tiny rafter brought,
Pleasure and hope would sparkle in their eyes.
Ah! who shall tell, when all the work was done,
The rapturous pleasure that their labors crowned,
The blissful moments Nature for them won,
And bade them celebrate with joyous sound.
A father's pride, a mother's anxious care,
Her fluttered spirits, and his gentlest tone,
All, all that wedded hearts so fondly share,
To thee, deserted nest, were surely known.
Then though thy walls be rent, and cold thy cell,
And thoughtless crowds may hourly pass thee by,
Where love and truth and tenderness did dwell,
There's still attraction for the poet's eye.
CHARLES EDWIN JAKEWAY
AN UNFINISHED PROPHECY
I
The twilight land toyed with the night
When from the hills with footsteps light
An Indian maiden passed adown
A rugged path o'er boulders brown
Unto the soft gray river sand.
The sweet balsamic breezes fanned
Her bronze-brown cheeks and blue-black hair
With loving wings, and lilies fair
Held up their golden cups to stay
The progress of her paddle's play,
As o'er the quivering ripplets she,
With airy grace and gestures free,
Pulled from the beach a bark canoe,
And threaded reedy mazes through
Toward the river's open breast,
That reached away into the west
Till it caressed the after-glow
Of sunset in the distance low.
II
The river's rippling monotone--
The low-voiced chants of zephyrs lone,
That swung like censers through the halls
By leafage arched, with leafage walls--
The lazy hum of insect song--
All seemed to woo the shades along
The golden rim of eventide,
As back and forth her paddle plied
Through solemn symphonies of gloom
Into the night-enshrouded tomb
Of recent day. The throbbing stars
Rose one by one above the bars
Of dark abysmal to the sea
Of heaven, and the mystery
Of Nature's silence robed her round
With garments threaded by the sound
Of marsh-bird's wail, or pine-wood's moan.
At length she turned, and towards the zone
Of blackness, girding round the stream
As Lethe coils around a dream,
She swerved the course of the canoe,
And through the grasses, damp with dew,
That held their arms down from the bank
To fondle with the rushes rank,
Propelled its prow against the sand,
And silently sprang to the land.
III
She pulled aside a maple screen
That curtained off a weird ravine,
And stepped toward a smouldering flame,
O'er which crouched low an ancient dame
Whose wrinkled face, as leather dry,
Seemed dead, except that either eye
Shone with a fierce, malignant glare,
Like that which lights the wild-cat's lair
When danger pries into its keep.
"Mother, I'm glad you're not asleep,"
The maiden said in awesome way.
"I've dared the dark which follows day,
And paddled up through shade and gloom,
And grim, fantastic shapes that loom
Like giant goblins round the road
That leads to your retired abode."
"You're welcome, child, but never dread
That you'll disturb my sleeping bed,"
The dame's harsh voice made answer soon,
"I do not sleep till night-tide's noon
Has gone to meet the dawning day.
All night my tireless fancies play
Unceasing gambols with the gnomes
That chase each other 'neath the domes
That roof the wild deer's headlong path
When flying from the hunter's wrath.
Why came you here? Do troubles chase
You from your pillowed resting-place?
Has love bestowed a heart on you,
And come you here to prove it true?"
"No heart has love bestowed on me,
But mine has gone, and I to thee
Come in the anguish of my grief
To seek for solace or relief.
'Tis said that you can lift the screen
That veils the destinies unseen....
Until this summer I was free
And happy as the warbling birds;
My thoughts ran on in merry words,
As runnels ripple o'er the rocks,
Or careless as my own dark locks,
Which flung their mane to capture gleams
That glanced from sun-bedizened streams.
I watched the braves return one day
From a victorious foray,
And noted, towering o'er the rest,
A chieftain from the outbound west
With eyes of fire and haughty frown.
I met him ere the sun went down
And saw his frown turn to a smile,
And in his eyes the fire the while
Was fanned to fascination sweet.
The Eagle Eye a lover meet
Would be--" "Hist, child, footsteps approach!
Hide till we see who doth encroach
Within the bounds of my domain.
To yonder bush, and there remain
Until I call you forth again."
IV
The ancient crone revived the blaze
Until its red, uncertain rays
Crept down the hillside dun, and died
Upon the river's misty tide.
Then by the lurid flickering gleams,
That seemed dissolving out of dreams
Among the leafy arcades far,
She caught the glitter of a star
That silver-like shot from its nest
Upon a young brave's stalwart breast,
As up the forest path he came,
Attracted by the pinewood flame.
"Why comest thou?" her voice rang keen
Through shrouded glade and dim ravine.
"I come to pray you'll weave a spell
Whereby the future to foretell.
A chieftain I, in battle skilled,
Full many a foeman I have killed;
I've scalped the locks from many a brow,
And never shirked a task till now.
Through ghostly fogs, o'er leaping brooks,
'Mid slumbering snakes in dusky nooks,
O'er sullen lairs and reedy shades,
O'er quivering brakes and venomed glades,
O'er gusty hills, sun-flushed and high,
That shook their locks against the sky,
O'er shady stretches long and lone,
O'er rocky ledge, through caverned stone,
Past morning's prime, past twilight gray,
I've tracked my foemen on their way
With heart relentless, and with hand
Ready to hurl the deadly brand
With naught of mercy nor of fear.
And yet to-night I'm standing here,
Afraid to face a maiden's eyes,
Afraid to reach to grasp the prize
My heart desires all else above,
Her precious treasury of love.
I've tried to break the bonds that roll
Their magic coils around my soul,
By daring danger on the lake
When storm-clouds o'er its bosom break--
By roaming over flood and fell--
By trying every potent spell
The old magician 'neath the hill
Could summon to assist my will--
By chasing gravelights over graves,
And rambling where the were-wolf raves
Out threats of torture and of rack
To hapless ones that cross its track.
I've run death's gauntlet, day by day,
Where hungry wild-cats screech for prey,
But everywhere the haunting face
Of Budding Rose in matchless grace
Swims 'fore my eyes. Pray, mother, tell,
Will she return my love? Dispel
My doubts at once and seal my fate!"
"Sit down behind that bush and wait,"
The dame replied, "until I call
The wood-sprites up within my thrall."
V
She lit a smoking pine-knot red,
And swayed it thrice around her head,
Then hurled it hissing in the marsh,
The while her voice on air-wings harsh
Passed through the thronging shadows dense,
Unto love's hearing strained and tense.
"I hear the voices of the trees
In answer to the asking breeze,
And this is what the voices say:
'True love will always have its way!'
Come forth, my children, to the light;
The answer to the breeze is right."
The maiden came with drooping head,
The brave with grave and measured tread,
And joined their hands above the blaze.
"For you, fond lovers, length of days
I prophesy, and happy times.
Your lives shall run like merry rhymes
Through many years of full content,
And when at last your course is spent,
Your children shall revere your name,
Your children's children--" Flashed a flame,
A lightning blast, athwart their eyes,
And death assailed them in the guise
Of Iroquois, the Hurons' dread--
And seeress, lovers, all were dead!
E. PAULINE JOHNSON
(TEKAHIOŃWAKE)
THE SONG MY PADDLE SINGS
West wind, blow from your prairie nest!
Blow from the mountains, blow from the west.
The sail is idle, the sailor too;
O! wind of the west, we wait for you.
Blow, blow!
I have wooed you so,
But never a favor you bestow.
You rock your cradle the hills between,
But scorn to notice my white lateen.
I stow the sail, unship the mast:
I wooed you long, but my wooing's past;
My paddle will lull you into rest.
O! drowsy wind of the drowsy west,
Sleep, sleep,
By your mountain steep,
Or down where the prairie grasses sweep!
Now fold in slumber your laggard wings,
For soft is the song my paddle sings.
August is laughing across the sky,
Laughing while paddle, canoe and I,
Drift, drift,
Where the hills uplift
On either side of the current swift.
The river rolls in its rocky bed;
My paddle is plying its way ahead;
Dip, dip,
While the waters flip
In foam as over their breast we slip.
And oh, the river runs swifter now;
The eddies circle about my bow.
Swirl, swirl!
How the ripples curl
In many a dangerous pool awhirl!
And forward far the rapids roar,
Fretting their margin for evermore.
Dash, dash,
With a mighty crash,
They seethe, and boil, and bound, and splash.
Be strong, O paddle! be brave, canoe!
The reckless waves you must plunge into.
Reel, reel,
On your trembling keel,
But never a fear my craft will feel.
We've raced the rapid, we're far ahead!
The river slips through its silent bed.
Sway, sway,
As the bubbles spray
And fall in tinkling tunes away.
And up on the hills against the sky,
A fir tree rocking its lullaby,
Swings, swings,
Its emerald wings,
Swelling the song that my paddle sings.
AT HUSKING TIME
At husking time the tassel fades
To brown above the yellow blades,
Whose rustling sheath enswathes the corn
That bursts its chrysalis in scorn
Longer to lie in prison shades.
Among the merry lads and maids
The creaking ox-cart slowly wades
'Twixt stalks and stubble, sacked and torn
At husking time.
The prying pilot crow persuades
The flock to join in thieving raids;
The sly raccoon with craft inborn
His portion steals; from plenty's horn
His pouch the saucy chipmunk lades
At husking time.
SHADOW RIVER
A stream of tender gladness,
Of filmy sun, and opal-tinted skies;
Of warm midsummer air that lightly lies
In mystic rings,
Where softly swings
The music of a thousand wings
That almost tone to sadness.
Midway 'twixt earth and heaven,
A bubble in the pearly air, I seem
To float upon the sapphire floor, a dream
Of clouds of snow,
Above, below,
Drift with my drifting, dim and slow,
As twilight drifts to even.
The little fern-leaf, bending
Upon the brink, its green reflection greets,
And kisses soft the shadow that it meets
With touch so fine,
The border line
The keenest vision can't define;
So perfect is the blending.
The far fir trees that cover
The brownish hills with needles green and gold,
The arching elms o'erhead, vinegrown and old,
Repictured are
Beneath me far,
Where not a ripple moves to mar
Shades underneath, or over.
Mine is the undertone;
The beauty, strength, and power of the land
Will never stir or bend at my command;
But all the shade
Is marred or made,
If I but dip my paddle blade;
And it is mine alone.
O! pathless world of seeming!
O! pathless life of mine whose deep ideal
Is more my own than ever was the real.
For others Fame
And Love's red flame,
And yellow gold: I only claim
The shadows and the dreaming.
BRIER
Because, dear Christ, your tender, wounded arm
Bends back the brier that edges life's long way,
That no hurt comes to heart, to soul no harm,
I do not feel the thorns so much to-day.
Because I never knew your care to tire,
Your hand to weary guiding me aright,
Because you walk before and crush the brier,
It does not pierce my feet so much to-night.
Because so often you have hearkened to
My selfish prayers, I ask but one thing now,
That these harsh hands of mine add not unto
The crown of thorns upon your bleeding brow.
PRAIRIE GREYHOUNDS
C. P. R. WESTBOUND--No. 1
I swing to the sunset land,
The world of prairie, the world of plain,
The world of promise, and hope, and gain,
The world of gold, and the world of grain,
And the world of the willing hand.
I carry the brave and bold,
The one who works for the nation's bread,
The one whose past is a thing that's dead,
The one who battles and beats ahead,
And the one who goes for gold.
I swing to the land to be:
I am the power that laid its floors,
I am the guide to its western stores,
I am the key to its golden doors,
That open alone to me.
C. P. R. EASTBOUND--No. 2
I swing to the land of morn,
The grey old East, with its grey old seas,
The land of leisure, the land of ease,
The land of flowers and fruits and trees,
And the place where we were born.
Freighted with wealth I come:
Food, and fortune, and fellow that went
Far out west on adventure bent,
With well-worn pick and a folded tent,
Is bringing his bullion home.
I never will be renowned
As my twin that swings to the western marts,
For I am she of the humbler parts;
But I am the joy of the waiting hearts,
For I am the homeward bound!
ROBERT KIRKLAND KERNIGHAN
THE SONG OF THE THAW
My sandalled feet are firm and fleet,
My chariot wheels are splendid;
I rush and run before the sun
With balmy breezes blended;
O'er forest dry, past mountains high,
O'er snowy valleys hollow,
I sweep along with muffled song
And robin red-breasts follow.
Before my blade the snow wreaths fade,
The frosty blast I cripple;
The frozen stream wakes from its dream,
And straight begins to ripple;
I hush the wail along my trail
Past hamlet, home and hollow,
While on I go with noiseless flow
And robin red-breasts follow.
And like a psalm, benign and calm,
I blight the brow of winter;
I snap the chains that hold the reins--
The fields of ice I splinter;
And like the tide I run and ride,
The bated winds I swallow;
Triumphant still past rock and rill,
And robin red-breasts follow.
A wing of light from night to night
My perfumed chariot passes,
And I can hear in meadows clear
The whispering of the grasses;
With joyous face I onward race
Past hopeless height and hollow,
While swift and strong with simple song
My robin red-breasts follow.
The north wind bleeds--the rustling reeds
The happy news is telling,
And I can hear in forests near
The juicy leaf-buds swelling;
I onward rush without the thrush,
The red bird or the swallow,
You needn't mind, for close behind
My robin red-breasts follow.
PEEPY IS NOT DEAD
"If Peepy had lived," the mother sighed,
"He'd be of age to-day."
She bowed her head as she softly cried--
The head that was turning gray.
Now, one would think that Peepy was dead,
Underneath the snow:
One would think that Peepy was dead
Since seventeen years ago.
'Tis true they hid poor Peepy away,
Down in the churchyard green,
And ever since that pitiful day
Peepy's never been seen.
No one has seen his curly head
Or heard his laughter flow;
But it doesn't follow that Peepy's been dead
Since seventeen years ago!
They laid his toddling feet to rest;
They folded his fingers small,
Around the lily upon his breast;
Then laid him away--that's all.
They curtained his vacant trundle bed
In his little room of woe;
They really thought that Peepy was dead
Seventeen years ago.
But it wasn't Peepy they put to stay
Under the churchyard sod--
He's young and gay and strong to-day
Up in the realms of God.
He walks in the light by the Saviour's side,
The Saviour that loved him so.
So it's folly to think that Peepy died
Seventeen years ago.
His form returned to its mother mould,
But his soul began to grow--
This is the story an angel told,
And I'm sure these things are so.
Creeds and churches bother my head,
But this one thing I know--
It isn't true that Peepy's been dead
Since seventeen years ago!
WILLIAM KIRBY
THE MARQUIS OF LORNE'S VISIT TO THE NORTH-WEST
What went ye to the wilderness to see?
A shaking reed? Men in king's houses dwelling?
A prophet? Yea, more than a prophet telling
Of lands new named for Christ--a gift in fee,
And heritage of millions yet to be.
Green prairies like an ocean swelling
From rise to set of sun--great rivers spelling
Their rugged names in Blackfoot and in Cree.
That went you forth to see, and saw it lie,
The glorious land reserved by God till now,
For England's help in need--to drive the plough,
A thousand miles on end--till in the sky
The snowy mountains, from the plains upborne,
Bear on the proudest peak the name of Lorne.
AT SPENCER GRANGE