They have hewn me to being, they have shaped with skilful hands,
And the chateau on the plateau o'er the river proudly stands,
Deemed a miracle of beauty, classic, stately, and refined,
Reared as fitting habitation for the leaders of mankind.
Though I stand a thing of grandeur, stone on stone majestic piled,
I am brooding on the open, I am dreaming of the wild.
They would tame me with their graces, they would lure me
with their songs,
From the olden memoried places where my stony heart belongs.
Though the wealthy loll within me and on luxury they feast,
Though they robe me and bedeck me with the weavings of the East,
Though my floors with rugs be matted, that their feet may
silent tread,
I am steel and stone and iron, and my soul is mountain-bred.
When the wind drives from the mountain far beyond the river shore,
All my being throbs in gladness to the music of its roar,
All the primal that's within me, all the hewn and chiselled stone,
Thrills in greeting to the booming of its mighty chested tone.
And I see the pine-tressed mountains where they taunt the raging gale,
As it roars adown the gulches to the cities of the vale,
And the bed within its shadows where for centuries I lay,
Beckons for the lost one, dwelling where the humans hold their sway.
When the night her mask of sable presses on the earth's warm face,
And when, satined and bejewelled, lovely women do me grace,
When the violins are throbbing out the passion of the dance,
Then I ponder on the future, and the destiny of chance.
I the chateau, I the splendid, shall I crumble and decay,
Lichened guard the shining river when the years have passed away,
Or a comforter still flourish, guarding humans from the blast,
When a century has rounded, when a hundred years have passed.
Time the jester, time the judger, time the measurer of things,
Time shall weigh the builders' cunning, as the earth to eastward swings;
They have hewn me to being, they have shaped with skilful hands,
And the chateau on the plateau o'er the river proudly stands.[*]
[*] This poem was written around the building of the Chateau Laurier, Ottawa. From the Chateau a fine view of the Laurentian Mountains can be had.