Works

(Title of a French-Canadian song.)

O Canada, my country and my love,
Held in my heart all other lands above;
To thee to whom my homage should belong
I pay the cheerful tribute of my song,...

Oh! the sickening sensation!
Oh! the burning agitation
In my soul!
Oh! the awful desolation
Of my soul!
And my breast is sore with sighing.
Comfort to myself denying...

Thee best of leaves I love,
In forest or in grove,
O Maple Leaf;
O thou which art the sign
Of this dear land of mine,
What loveliness is thine,
O Maple Leaf!
...

"Who first invented work?" asks Elia, he
Whose life to an ungenial task was wed,
And answers, "Satan"; but it could not be -
On idleness his foul ambition fed;
By idleness the heavenly domiciles...

Heaven bless this new abode; defend its doors
Against the entry of malignant sprites -
Gaunt Poverty, pale Sickness, Care that blights;
And o'er its thresholds, like the enchanted shores...

Father! How precious is that name to me!
Name rendered sacred e'en by earthly ties,
How full of vaster meaning when applied
To Him high-dwelling in the heavenly home!...

Far stretched the landscape, fair, without a flaw,
Down to one silver sheet, some stream or cloud,
Through glamorous mists. Midway, an engine ploughed
Across the scene. In meditative awe...

Paestum, your temples and your streets
Have been restored to view;
Your fadeless Grecian beauty greets
The eyes of men anew.

But where are all your roses now -
Those wonderful delights...

How often, Lord, when 'tis Thy will
To use the chastening rod,
My soul, possessed of passions ill,
Rebels against its God!
Denies that Justice reigns in heaven,
Doth His decrees pervade;...

If gently falls the small, soft, lazy rain,
To indoor industries he shrewdly steals;
And in the barn from some neglected grain
The choking chaff the clattering fanner reels;...

Give me a cottage embower'd in trees,
Far from the press and the din of the town;
There let me loiter and live at my ease,
Happier far than the King with his crown.
...

Mourn, mourn, ye spirits of the brave, for glories passed away;
Mourn that the sceptre of your king should own a stranger's sway;
Mourn that the crown, which graced his brow by sovereign right divine,...

The tree, with its leaves in luxuriance shading
My path in the tune-yielding time of the year,
Now sighs in its dirge, while its foliage, fading,
Descends to its sepulchre withered and sere.
...

An April day, when skies are blue,
And earth rejoices to renew
Her vernal youth by lawn and lea,
And sap mounts upward in the tree,
And ruddy buds come bursting through;

When violets of tender hue...

(Translated from Homer.)

And when th'opposing ranks in conflict closed,
Shield rang on shield and rattled lance on lance,
And clashed the might of brazen mail'd men....

Where are those days, O Caledon,
So glorious and bright,
In which thy star resplendent shone
With passing lustrous light?
Alas! alas! those happier days
Are shrouded in the past,...

Parted cruelly from thee,
What, Oh! what is life to me?

'Tis the morn without the lark;
It is wine without its spark.

Christmas time without its glee;
Music without harmony.
...

Now is the Sun, erst spendthrift of his rays
And lavish of his largesses of light,
Become a miser in his latter days,
An avaricious dotard, alter'd quite.
Is he the same that all the summer long...

When conquering Summer stalks the street,
His eyes are eyes of fire,
The pavement burns beneath his feet,
Men droop before his ire;
But yonder, out upon the land,
His manners are not these:...

(From the French of Isidore Bedard.)

O soil Canadian, cherished earth,
The brave, the noble, peopled thee;
They left the country of their birth,
And sought a land of liberty....