(Lines suggested in the camp of the Alpine Club of Canada,
Sherbrooke Lake, B. C., August, 1911.)
"I to the hills will lift mine eyes,"
Of old the Psalmist sung,
And we who clutch the worldly prize,
With Earth's distractions wrung,
Still turn our fevered fancy's gaze
Where snowy summits greet the day,
Where Nature guards her mysteries,
And Time becomes Eternity
Where, changeless in eternal change,
The Rockies clip the clouds,
And glacial lakes and granite range
Sleep, in their snowy shrouds;
Where silence hushes discontent,
And petty fears are lost in space,
The Builder of the firmament
Still meets His people, face to face!
O barren cares that bitter life,
O hopes unwisely dear,
O fruitless fallacy and strife,
O social, sham veneer!—
I to the hills will lift mine eyes,
Where mantling cloud or cornice clings,
To catch a glimpse of paradise,
And turn again—to little things!
They were running out the try-lines, they were staking out the grade;
Through the hills they had to measure, through the sloughs they had to wade;
They were piercing unknown regions, they were crossing nameless streams,
With the prairie for a pillow and the sky above their dreams,
They were mapping unborn cities in the age-long pregnant clay:
When they came upon a little mound across the right-of-way.