The creep in moccasined silence,
The old log-trail to the stream,
The sudden rap of a rifle,
The fall of a startled moose,
The day-long wait-and at evening
The songs in the old caboose,
The glint of snow through the shadows,
The echo of sharpened steel,
The crack of the falling timbers,
The poplar's earthward reel,
The ring of sleighs on the home-trail,
The glimmer of lights afar,
The glow of the shanty firelight,
The gleam of the evening star,
The wail of wolves in the darkness,
The children's song in the light,
The large sweet grip of the daytime,
The awe of the great deep night.
But how shall letters and paper
Bring aught of its life to you,
The fruitless toil of the many,
The scant success of the few,
The hopes and fears of the prairie,
Its word to the sons of men—
Nay, how should a volume hold it,
Inscribed with a human pen?
The White-throated Sparrow
ROM the leafy maple ridges,
From the thickets of the cedar,
From the alders by the river,
From the bending willow branches,
From the hollows and the hillsides,
Through the lone Canadian forest,
Comes the melancholy music,
Oft repeated-never changing-
"All is vanity-vanity-vanity.'
When the farmer ploughs his furrow,
Sowing seed with hope of harvest,
In the orchard white with blossom,
In the early field of clover,
Comes the little brown-clad singer,
Flitting in and out of bushes,
Hiding well behind the fences,
Piping forth his song of sadness—
"Poor hu-manity-manity-manity.”
Sir James D. Edgar.
FAR in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone at my side; When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast, And, sick of the Present, I cling to the Past; When the eye is suffused with regretful tears, From the fond recollections of former years; And shadows of things that have long since fled, Flit over the brain like the ghosts of the dead:
Bright visions of glory-that vanished too soon;
Daydreams-that departed ere manhood's noon;
Attachments-by fate or by falsehood reft;
Companions of early days-lost or left;
And my native land-whose magical name
Thrills to the heart like electric flame;
The home of my childhood, the haunts of my prime;
All the passions and scenes of that rapturous time,
When the feelings were young and the world was new,
Like the fresh bowers of Eden unfolding to view;
All-all now forsaken-forgotten-foregone!
And I-a lone exile, remembered by none-
My high aims abandoned—my good deeds undone—
Aweary of all that is under the sun-
With that sadness of heart which no stranger may scan, I fly to the Desert, afar from man.
Afar in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone at my side;
O'er the brown Karroo, where the bleating cry
Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively,
And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh
Is heard by the fountain at twilight grey;
Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane,
With wild hoof scorning the desolate plain;
And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste
Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste,
Hieing away to the home of her rest,
Where she and her mate have scooped their nest,
Far hid from the pitiless plunderer's view
In the pathless depths of the parched Karroo.
Afar in the Desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side;
Away, away, in the Wilderness vast
Where the white man's foot hath never passed,
And the quivered Coránna or Bechuan
Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan:
A region of emptiness, howling and drear,
Which man hath abandoned from famine or fear;
Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
With the twilight bat from the yawning stone;
Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,
Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot;
And the bitter melon, for food and drink,
Is the pilgrim's fare by the salt lake's brink:
A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides;
Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount,
Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount
Appears to refresh the aching eye;
But the barren earth, and the burning sky,
And the blank horizon, round and round
Spread, void of living sight or sound.
And here, while the night winds round me sigh,
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,
As I sit apart by the desert stone,
Like Elijah at Horeb's cave alone,
"A still small voice" comes through the wild (Like a father consoling his fretful child), Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear,Saying-MAN IS DISTANT, BUT GOD IS NEAR.
HEY are rhymes rudely strung with intent less
Of sound than of words,
In lands where bright blossoms are scentless,
And songless bright birds;
Where, with fire and fierce drought on her tresses,
Insatiable Summer oppresses
Sere woodlands and sad wildernesses,
And faint flocks and herds.
Where in dreariest days, when all dews end,
And all winds are warm,
Wild Winter's large flood-gates are loosen'd,
And floods, freed by storm,
From broken up fountain heads, dash on
Dry deserts with long pent up passion-
Here rhyme was first framed without fashion,
Song shaped without form.
Whence gather'd?—The locust's glad chirrup
May furnish a stave;
The ring of a rowel and stirrup,
The wash of a wave;
The chaunt of the marsh frog in rushes,
That chimes through the pauses and hushes
Of nightfall, the torrent that gushes,
The tempests that rave.
In the deep'ning of dawn, when it dapples
The dusk of the sky,
With streaks like the redd'ning of apples,
The ripening of rye;
|