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Is it Man alone who merits
Immortality or death?
Each created thing inherits
Equal air and common breath.

Souls pass onward: some are ranging
Happy hunting-grounds, and some...

Yon vale among the mountains,
So sheltered from the sea,
That lake which lies so lonely,
Shall tell their tale to thee.

Here stood a stately convent
Where now the waters sleep,...

Cherry bloom and green buds bursting
Fleck the azure skies;
In the spring wood, hungering, thirsting,
Faint an Indian lies.

To behold his guardian spirit
Fasts the dusky youth;...

With their deep voice, monotonous and slow,
The cannon's thunders roll along the sea;
But 'tis in reverence, and to work no woe
Those sounds here reach the shore and onward flee...

Among white peaks a rock, hewn altar-wise,
Marks the long frontier of our mighty lands.
Apart its dark tremendous sculpture stands,
Too steep for snow, and square against the skies....

[This Province was called after the Princess, one of whose Christian names is Alberta.]

In token of the love which thou hast shown
For this wide land of freedom, I have named...

Grey-cowled monk, whose faith so earnest
Guides these Indians' childlike hearts,
As their hands to toil thou turnest,
Teaching them the Builder's arts,
Speak thy thought! as now they gather...

[Note: The Gaelic spelt as by Dewar.]

Do reir beulaithris ann an linn Righ Artair bhi ann an Duneidean,
bha Triath urramach Eirinneach a chuir tigh d'dean air...

Here Rose and Magnolia
Our dearest enshrine,
The prayer of the south wind
Is thine and is mine,
For Child and for Mother
Here sweetly twice isled,
Brave Seamen are praying...

Not home to land and kindred wast thou brought,
Nor laid 'mid trampled dead of battle won,--
Nor after long life filled with duty done
Was thine such death as thou thyself had'st sought!...

[Taken from "Leabhar na Feinne," and a prose version written down from oral recitation by J. Dewar.]

OSSIAN.

This vale of Peace, this glen close by,
Where deer and elk would often cry,...

For strife against the ocean tribe
The Mohawks' war array
Comes floating down, where broad St. John
Reflects the dawning day.

A camp is seen, and victims fall,
And none are left to flee;...

Now of the hard strait of the Feinne this legend's verse shall tell:
When Fionn's men had fought and won, and all with them was well,
And victory on Erin's shores had given spoil which they...

Bright are the countless isles which crest
With waving woods wide Huron's breast,--
Her countless isles, that love too well
The crystal waters whence they rise,
Far from her azure depths to swell,...

(Keewatin.)

A land untamed, whose myriad isles
Are set in branching lakes that vein
Illimitable silent woods,
Voiceful in Fall, when their defiles,
Rich with the birch's golden rain,...

Colin, Chief of Diarmid's kin,
Strode alone to Ederlinn.

Night, and heath, and deep morass
Hear the chain-mailed warrior pass.

Ambushed lay the treacherous foe,...

[Manitoba, Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, Athabasca, Alberta, and British Columbia.]

At a feast in the east of our central plains,
Girt with the sheaths of the wheaten grains,...

Milicete Legend Of The Ouangond', Or River St. John.

Though the ebbing ocean listens
To Ugond''s throbbing roar,
Calm the conquering flood-tide glistens
Where the river raved before. [1]
...