The Guards Came Through, and Other Poems

by Arthur Conan Doyle

My life is gliding downwards; it speeds swifter to the day

When it shoots the last dark cañon to the Plains of Far-away,

But while its stream is running through the years that are to be,

The mighty voice of Canada will ever call to me.

I shall hear the roar of rivers where the rapids foam and tear,

I shall smell the virgin upland with its balsam-laden air,

And shall dream that I am riding down the winding woody vale

With the packer and the packhorse on the Athabasca Trail.

I have passed the warden cities at the Eastern water-gate