Works

These summer landscapes clump, and copse, and croft -
Woodland and meadowland here hung aloft,
Gay with limp grass and leafery new and soft,

Seem caught from the immediate season's yield...

The glory has passed from the goldenrod's plume,
The purple-hued asters still linger in bloom
The birch is bright yellow, the sumachs are red,
The maples like torches aflame overhead.
...

I.

There's auld Rob Morris that wons in yon glen,
He's the king o' guid fellows and wale of auld men;
He has gowd in his coffers, he has owsen and kine,
And ae bonnie lassie, his darling and mine....

Love left one day his leafy bower,
And roamed in sportive vein,
Where Vanity had built a tower,
For Fashion's sparkling train.
The mistress to see he requested,
Of one who attended the door:...

That morn our hearts were like artesian wells,
Both deep and calm, and brimming with pure love.
And in each one, like to an April day,
Truth smiled and wept, while Courage wound his horn,...

SCENE.--The Fountain in the Garden of the Luxembourg. It is surrounded by Promenaders.

MONSIEUR JOLICOEUR.
A LADY (unknown).


M. JOLICOEUR.
'Tis she, no doubt. Brunette,--and tall:...

While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse
The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse,
While you glorify the bully and take the spieler's part,...

The plane leaves
fall black and wet
on the lawn;

The cloud sheaves
in heaven's fields set
droop and are drawn

in falling seeds of rain;
the seed of heaven
on my face
...

That I were Keats! And with a golden pen
Could for all time preserve these golden days
In rich and glowing verse, for poorer men,
Who felt their wonder, but could only gaze...

"What, are you lost, my pretty little lady?
This is no place for such sweet things as you.
Our bodies, rank with sweat, will make you sicken,
And, you'll observe, our lives are rank lives too."
...

To Ranelagh, once in my life,
By good-natur'd force I was driv'n;
The nations had ceas'd their long strife,
And PEACE [1] beam'd her radiance from Heav'n.
What wonders-were there to be found...

Next morning in the Park I took a stroll.
A walk upon Mount Royal is a thing,
Glorious at any time, but most of all
At early morning in the opening spring,...

Once more Orion and the sister Seven
Look on thee from the skies that hailed thy birth, -
How shall we welcome thee, whose home was heaven,
From thy celestial wanderings back to earth?
...

The son of him with whom we strove for power'
Whose will is lord thro' all his world-domain'
Who made the serf a man, and burst his chain'
Has given our prince his own imperial Flower,
Alexandrovna....

If one could have a hundred years to live,
After the settlement of youth's unrest,
A hundred years of vigorous life to give
To the pursuit of what he counted best,...

Time sets his footprints on our little Earth,
And, walk he ne'er so softly, some sweet thing
Falls 'neath each foot-fall, crush'd amid its mirth,
Tracking the course of Life's short wandering,...

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed....

This world is but the shadow
Of the world that is to be,
A ripple on the surface
Of a deep, unfathomed sea.
God's plans are always perfect,
But long ages intervene
From the planning of the temple...

Where to-day would a dainty buyer
Imbibe your scented juice,
Pale ruin with a heart of fire;
Drain your succulence with her lips,
Grown sapless from much use...
Make minister of her desire...

The old gate clicks, and down the walk,
Between clove-pink and hollyhock,
Still young of face though gray of lock,
Among her garden's flowers she goes
At evening's close,
Deep in her hair a yellow rose....