Where, ankle deep, bright streamlets slide
Above the fretted sand,
Our frail canoes, like shadows, glide
Swift through the silent land;
Nor should, broad-shouldered, in some tide
Rocks rise on every hand,
Our path will we confess denied,
Nor cowardly seek the strand.
The foam may leap like frightened cloud
That hears the tempest scream,
The waves may fold their whitened shroud
Where ghastly ledges gleam;
With muscles strained and backs well bowed
And poles that breaking seem,
We shoot the sault, whose torrent proud
Itself our lord did deem.
The broad traverse is cold and deep,
And treacherous smiles it hath,
And with its sickle of death doth reap,
With woe for aftermath;
But though the wind-vext waves may leap,
Like cougars, in our path,
Still forward on our way we keep,
Nor heed their futile wrath.
Where glitter trackless wastes of snow
Beneath the northern light,
On netted shoes we noiseless go,
Nor heed though keen winds bite.
The shaggy bears our prowess know,
The white fox fears our might,
And wolves, when warm our camp fires glow,
With angry snarls take flight.
Where forest fastnesses extend,
Ne’er trod by man before,
Where cries of loon and wild duck blend
With some dark torrent’s roar,
And timid deer, unawed, descend
Along the lake’s still shore,
We blaze the trees and onward wend
To ravish nature’s store.
Leve, leve and couche, at morn and eve
These calls the echoes wake.
We rise and forward fare, nor grieve
Though long portage we make,
Until the sky the sun gleams leave
And shadows cowl the lake;
And then we rest and fancies weave
For wife or sweetheart’s sake.
DEDICATORY ODE.
(Read at the unveiling of the Monument erected in the Parliament Grounds at Ottawa to the Memory of the Rt. Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald.)
Here, in the solemn shadow of these walls,
Wherein his voice long held the land in sway;
Here, where the cadence of the distant falls
Seems a lament for grandeur passed away,
We, who have reaped where he had sown, now bring
To him this thanksgiving,
This tribute to the unforgotten great,
That, for all time, men may revere his name,
And children learn the secret of true fame,
True greatness emulate.