The Guards Came Through, and Other Poems

by Arthur Conan Doyle

Where the hero and the martyr laid the corner stone of State,

The habitant, coureur-des-bois, and hardy voyageur—

Where lives a breed more strong at need to venture or endure?

I have seen the gorge of Erie where the roaring waters run,

I have crossed the Inland Ocean, lying golden in the sun,

But the last and best and sweetest is the ride by hill and dale

With the packer and the packhorse on the Athabasca Trail.

I'll dream again of fields of grain that stretch from sky to sky

And the little prairie hamlets where the cars go roaring by,