These were my budding fancy's mother-tongue:
But daisies, cowslips, dodder, primrose-hips,
All beasts or birds my little book has sung,
Sit like a borrowed speech on stammering lips.
And still I build fond dreams of happier days,
If hard-earned pence may bridge the ocean o'er;
That yet our boy may see my mother's face,
And gather shells beside Ontario's shore:
May yet behold Canadian woodlands dim,
And flowers and birds his father loved to see;