The River Saguenay.

Few poets yet in praise of thee
    Have tuned a passing lay,
Yet art thou rich in beauties stern,
    Thou dark browed Saguenay!

And those grand charms that surely form
    For earth her rarest crown
On thee, with strangely lavish hand,
    Have all been showered down.

Thine own wild flood, so deep, so dark;
    That holds the gaze enthralled
As if by some weird spell, at once
    Entranced yet not appalled;

Seeking in vain to pierce those depths,
    Where wave and rock have met,
Those depths which, by the hand of man,
    Have ne'er been fathomed yet.

And then thy shores - thy rock bound shores,
    Where giant cliffs arise,
Raising their untrod, unknown heights
    Defiant to the skies,

And casting from their steep, stern brows
    Shadows of deepest gloom
Athwart thy wave, till it doth seem
    A passage to a tomb.

Such art thou in thy solitude,
    Majestic Saguenay!
As lonely and as sternly rude
    As in time past away,

When the red man in his fragile bark
    Sped o'er thy glassy wave,
And found amid thy forests wild
    His cradle, home and grave.

All, all is changed - reigns in his stead
    Another race and name,
But, in thy lonely grandeur still,
    Proud River, thou'rt the same!