Works

I am arrayed in light and shade,
A free-born spirit of air;
A fanciful theme like a twilight dream,
Or a maiden young and fair.

And now I float like a phantom boat
With a vague and varying hue,...

Though like Ulysses, fam'd of old,
I travell'd, or the wandering Jew,
No nobler sight could I behold
Than one which daily meets my view,
This mighty stream, my country's pride,...

(December 9th, 1908.)

"There was a man sent from God, whose name was John."

Three hundred years have left their telltale rings
Upon the tree of Time since he appeared -...

O m'sieu, doan you hask me ma story, doan hask me how dis was happenn;
Dat's one beeg black hole on ma life, w'ere I doan want to look on some more.......

When we who dwell within this province old,
Cloven in twain by the great river's tide,
Gird at inhospitable winter's cold,
And rue the downfall of fair summer's pride;...

Man's works grow stale to man: the years destroy
The charm they once possessed; the city tires;
The terraces, the domes, the dazzling spires
Are in the main but an attractive toy -...

My name is Tim O'Gallagher, - there's Oirish in that same;
My parients from the Imerald Oisle beyant the ocean came;
My father came from Donegal, my mother came from Clare;...

Fair one! embodiment of Loveliness!
Angelic beauty beams upon thy countenance,
And from its image of Lucretian purity
Thine inborn virtue shines divinely forth.
...

Thou art the belonging blest
Of the maid I love the best:
Gardened in some tropic grove,
Nurtured by the powers above,
Was thy wood so rich and rare
For her hand so small and fair;...

Dreary and dismal and dark
Is the night of life to me,
With nothing but clouds in the heaven above,
Cruelly hiding the star that I love,
Whose radiance was rapture to see.
...

Beauty, beloved of all gentle hearts
And pure, and cherished of the gifted tribe
Whose skill to canvas and even stone imparts
Such things as words are powerless to describe....

Suggested on returning home for my holidays by an old portrait of the poet, which hangs in my room.

Old friend! - I always loved thee;
In childhood's early days,
Delighted I would listen...

"Give me of your fruit, banana!
Of your yellow fruit, banana!
Growing on the tropic islands,
Fertile islands in the ocean;
I a little trick will play me,
Play it on the darkened staircase,...

When the toils of the day are done,
When its trials and cares are o'er;
When the forces of mind and body are run,
And the heart is sore;

How welcome to me is thy rest -...

The playful way thy wanton hair
Was tossing in the wind;
Thy girlish, vain vexation
Is treasured in my mind.

Held in my heart each sacred spot,
O'er which we roamed at will:...

Vain transient World, what charms are thine?
And what do mortals in thee see,
That they should worship at thy shrine,
And sacrifice their all to thee?

Thy brightest gifts, thy happiest hours...

to -----.

Hither led by fancy's hand,
Once again I seem to stand
In that hall in which this eye,
Blind before to beauty's ray,
Lighted up in ecstasy
Instantly it gazed on thee;...

The tread of arm'd mariners is in our streets to-day,
An Empire's pulse is beating in the march of this array.
From western woods, and Celtic hills, and homely Saxon shires,...

"I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec to-morrow." - Wolfe, on hearing Gray's "Elegy" read the night before the capture of Quebec.

Thou need'st no marble monuments to keep...

Not to the Arch-Idler be the honor given
Of first inventing work, but to his Lord,
Who made the light, the firmament of heaven,
And sun and moon and planets in accord,
The land and cattle on it, and the sea...