The year's first, blushing roses,
Were decking the prairie's breast;
And the summer garb of beauty
Made fair the wild North-West.
It flashed in the sedgy hollows,
And smiled in the woodland dell;
It whispered in low, soft zephyrs
That breathed o'er the lake and fell.
How it glowed in the mystic star-shine
Of the clear blue Northern sky;
How it crmison'd and flushed in grandeur
In the sunset's sweet good-bye!
And gaudy birds from the South-land
Made brilliant the poplar grove,
And plaintiff calls came sounding,
From the haunts where the plovers rove.
With dream-notes in the gloaming
The wind-lutes swept the boughs,--
Sweet songs of the distant stretches,
Where the moose and bison browse.
And we lay in our camp, and listened,
And thought of the wilds untrod;
Of the misty, lonely future,
And the homes on the stranger sod.
And still o'er the wide, wide ocean,
Our eager thoughts would stray,
To the homes and scenes, to the loves and hopes
Of the youth-time, far away.
Then we slept, to dream of the morrow,
"'Twill be Sunday at home," we said;
"But our church must be the prairie,
With the blue sky overhead."
The Sabbath dawned in beauty,
With a calm whose breath of peace,
Made a solemn grand cathedral
Of the wild vast wilderness.
The woods were the soft-toned organs,
And the winds, thro' their alleys dim,
Now raised some high, glad anthem,
Now chanted some low, sweet hymn.
We came from our tents together,
And stood on the lone hill-side,
To join in the songs of Nature,
That Sabbath morning-tide.
"With one consent let all the earth,"
Swelled on' the sunny air.
And then, how each home-sick, heart went forth
In that strange hour of prayer!
And the text the preacher gave us
Was, "Rejoice in the Lord always,"
Alike in the summer sunshine,
And the gloom of winter days.
And the clouds of our gloom were banished
Like the mists from the morning air;
We had strength for the untried future
For God is everywhere.