Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses

Excerpt

CANADA, 1882.

"Are hearts here strong enough to found
  A glorious people's sway?"
Ask of our rivers as they bound
From hill to plain, or ocean-sound,
  If they are strong to-day?
If weakness in their floods be found,
  Then may ye answer "Nay!"

"Is union yours? may foeman's might
  Your love ne'er break or chain?"
Go see if o'er our land the flight
Of Spring be stayed by blast or blight;
  If Fall bring never grain;
If Summer suns deny their light,
  Then may our hope be vain!

"Yet far too cramped the narrow space
  Your country's rule can own?"
Ah! travel all its bounds and trace
Each Alp unto its fertile base,
  Our realm of forests lone,
Our world of prairie, like the face
  Of ocean, hardly known!

"Yet for the arts to find a shrine,
  Too rough, I ween, and rude?"
Yea, if you find no flower divine
With prairie grass or hardy pine.
  No lilies with the wood,
Or on the water-meadows' line
  No purple Iris' flood!

"You deem a nation here shall stand,
  United, great, and free?"
Yes, see how Liberty's own hand
With ours the continent hath spanned,
  Strong-arched, from sea to sea:
Our Canada's her chosen land,
  Her roof and crown to be!

QUEBEC.

O fortress city, bathed by streams
  Majestic as thy memories great,
  Where mountains, floods, and forests mate
The grandeur of the glorious dreams,
  Born of the hero hearts who died
  In founding here an Empire's pride;
Prosperity attend thy fate,
  And happiness in thee abide,
Pair Canada's strong tower and gate!

May Envy, that against thy might
  Dashed hostile hosts to surge and break,
  Bring Commerce, emulous to make
Thy people share her fruitful fight,
  In filling argosies with store
  Of grain and timber, and each ore,
And all a continent can shake
  Into thy lap, till more and more
Thy praise in distant worlds awake.

Who hath not known delight whose feet
  Have paced thy streets or terrace way;
  From rampart sod or bastion grey
Hath marked thy sea-like river greet.

  The bright and peopled banks which shine
  In front of the far mountain's line;
Thy glittering roofs below, the play
  Of currents where the ships entwine
Their spars, or laden pass away?

As we who joyously once rode
  Past guarded gates to trumpet sound,
  Along the devious ways that wound
O'er drawbridges, through moats, and showed
  The vast St. Lawrence flowing, belt
  The Orleans Isle, and sea-ward melt;
Then by old walls with cannon crowned,
  Down stair-like streets, to where we felt
  The salt winds blown o'er meadow ground.

Where flows the Charles past wharf and dock.
  And Learning from Laval looks down,
  And quiet convents grace the town.
There swift to meet the battle shock
  Montcalm rushed on; and eddying back,
  Red slaughter marked the bridge's track:
See now the shores with lumber brown,
  And girt with happy lands which lack
No loveliness of Summer's crown.

Quaint hamlet-alleys, border-filled
  With purple lilacs, poplars tall,
  Where flits the yellow bird, and fall
The deep eave shadows....