If you do not, who knows but some morning
I'll waken and find a decree
Has been passed, that, without any warning,
Has wedded some woman to me?
Oh! Marie, chère Marie, have pity;
You only my woes can assuage;
I'm confined, till I wed, to the city,
And feel like a bird in a cage.
Then come, nor give heed to the billows
That tumble between you and Jules.
I know a sweet spot where lithe willows
Bend over a silvery pool,
And there we will dwell, dear, defying
Misfortune to tear us apart.
My darling, come to me, I'm dying
To press you again to my heart.
THE OAK.
Last of its race, beside our college
There stands an Oak Tree, centuries old,
Which, could it voice its stores of knowledge,
Might many a wondrous tale unfold.
It marked the birth of two fair towns,
And mourned the cruel fate of one,
Yet still withstands grim Winter's frowns,
And glories in the Summer sun.
Jacques Cartier passed, its branches under,
Up yonder mount one autumn day,
And viewed, with ever-growing wonder,
The scene that spread beneath him lay.
He was the first from Europe's shore
To pass beneath the Oak Tree's shade,
The first whose vision wandered o'er
Such boundless wealth of stream and glade.
Beneath his feet a little village
Lay, like a field-lark in her nest,
Amid the treasures of its tillage,
The maize in golden colors dressed.
Years passed; and when again there came
A stranger to that peaceful spot,
Gone was the village and its name,
Save by a few gray-heads, forgot.
But soon beneath the Oak, another,
And sturdier village took its place;
One that the gentle Virgin mother
Has kept from ruin by her grace.
She saved it from the dusky foes
Who thirsted for its heroes' blood,
And when December waters rose
About its walls she stilled the flood.
What noble deeds and cruel, stranger
Than aught in fiction ere befell,
What weary years of war and danger
That village knew, the Oak might tell.
Perchance, brave Dollard sat of yore
Beneath its very shade, and planned
A deed should make for evermore
His name a trumpet in the land.
Perchance, beneath its gloomy shadows
De Vaudreuil sat that bitter day
When round about him, in the meadows
Encamped, the British forces lay;
And as he wrote the fatal word
That gave an Empire to the foe,
The Old Oak's noble heart was stirred
With an unutterable woe.
The army of a hostile nation
Once since hath entered Ville Marie,
But we avenged that desecration
At Chrystler's farm and Chateauguay—
Peace! peace! 'tis cowardly to flout
Our triumphs in a cousin's face:
That page was long since blotted out
And Friendship written in its place.