Arthur Guiterman.
The Spaniards were not the only people who searched in vain for fabulous cities. South of Cape Breton lay a country which the early French explorers named Norembega, and there was supposed to exist, somewhere within its boundaries, a magnificent city of the same name. Roberval and Jacques Cartier spent a number of years after 1541 seeking it, and in 1604 Champlain explored the Penobscot River, on whose banks it was supposed to be situated, but found no trace of it, nor any evidence of civilization except a cross, very old and mossy, in the woods.
NOREMBEGA
[c. 1543]
The winding way the serpent takes
The mystic water took,
From where, to count its beaded lakes,
The forest sped its brook.
A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore,
For sun or stars to fall,
While evermore, behind, before,
Closed in the forest wall.
The dim wood hiding underneath
Wan flowers without a name;
Life tangled with decay and death,
League after league the same.
Unbroken over swamp and hill
The rounding shadow lay,
Save where the river cut at will
A pathway to the day.
Beside that track of air and light,
Weak as a child unweaned,
At shut of day a Christian knight
Upon his henchman leaned.
The embers of the sunset's fires
Along the clouds burned down;
"I see," he said, "the domes and spires
Of Norembega town."