But farther, farther yet, a still more distant echo—a suggestion scarcely real—floats also to us. The whole river, in its length and breadth, from Soulanges and the Lake of Two Mountains, and the tributary Ottawa, to Quebec and Kamouraska and the shores of the Gulf beyond, all is alive with plaintive sweetness, echoing from spirit to spirit, (for it is a fiction that music is a thing of lips and ears), old accents of Normandy, Champagne, and Angoulême.
The brimming François strikes up by natural suggestion of his dipping oars;
A la claire fontaine
M'en allant promener.
I.
Beside the crystal fountain
Turning for ease to stray,
So fair I found the waters
My limbs in them I lay.
Long is it I have loved thee,
Thee shall I love alway,
My dearest.
Long is it I have loved thee,
Thee shall I love alway.
So fair I found the waters,
My limbs in them I lay:
Beneath an oak tree resting,
I heard a roundelay.
Long is it, &c.
III
Beneath an oak tree resting,
I heard a roundelay,
The nightingale was singing
On the oak tree's topmost spray.
Long is it, &c.