Works

Ah! happy was I yesternight
I trod the paths of love
Within Elysian fields of bliss,
Enchanted bowers above.

A heavenly maiden by my side,
So wondrous fair that e'en...

The rain came suddenly, and to the shore
I paddled, and took refuge in the wood,
And, leaning on my paddle, there I stood
In mild contentment watching the downpour,
Feeling as oft I have felt heretofore,...

Adown the track that skirts the shallow stream
I wandered with blank mind; a bypath drew
My aimless steps aside, and, ere I knew,
The forest closed around me like a dream....

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,...

When my time comes to quit this pleasing scene,
And drop from out the busy life of men;
When I shall cease to be where I have been
So willingly, and ne'er may be again;
When my abandoned tabernacle's dust...

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,...

(From the prose of Parkman.)

I. THE WINTER.

September bade the sail of Pontgrav'
Godspeed, and smil'd upon the infant nation;
October deckt the shores and hills with "gay...

How can the man whose uneventful days,
Each like the other, are obscurely spent
Amid the mill's dead products, keep his gaze
Upon a lofty goal serenely bent?
Or he who sedulously tells and groups...

With beauty and grace that greet the eye,
How pleasing 'tis to trace,
Within, the beauty of holiness, -
That higher, heavenly grace!

The snow lies pure and peaceful on the ground,
Serenely smiles the azure sky o'erhead:
The Sabbath spirit dwells on all around,
And weekly toils and discords all are fled.
...

"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...

(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....

Now are the trees all ruefully bereft
Of their brave liveries of green and gold,
No shred of all their pleasant raiment left
To shield them from the wind and nipping cold....

A woman on an empire's throne
Has sat in queenly pride,
And swayed the sceptre of her power
O'er land and ocean wide:
A crown of gold adorned the head
That held a nation's fate,...

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 -...

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...

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...