John Campbell

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,
Or wanton with the wooing skies;

Nor, jealous, soar to keep the Day
From laughing in each rippling bay,
But floating on the flood they love,
Soft whispering, kiss her breast, and seek
No passions of the air above,
No fires that burn the thunder-peak.

Algoma o'er Ontario throws
Fair forest heights and mountain snows;
Strong Erie shakes the orchard plain
At great Niagara's defiles,
And river-gods o'er Lawrence reign,
But Love is king in Huron's isles.

A brother's eye had seen the grief
That Duart's lady bore;
His boat with sail half-raised flies down
The sound by green Lismore.
Ahaladah, Ahaladah!
Why speeds your boat so fast?
No scene of joy shall light your track
Adown the spray-strewn blast.

The very trees upon the isle
Rock to and fro, and wail;
The very birds cry sad and shrill,
Storm driven, where you sail;
O when for yon dim mainland shore
You launched your keel to start
You knew not of the load 'twill bear,
The heavier load your heart.

See what is that, which yonder gleams,
Where skarts alone make home;
Is that but one oft-breaking sea,
Some frequent fount of foam?
The morn is dark and indistinct,
Is all through drift and cloud;
Around the rock white waters ...

(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,
See winging past the wildfowl broods.

Blue channels seem its dented rocks,
So steeply smoothed, but crusted o'er
With rounded mosses, green and grey,
That oft a Southern coral mocks
Upon this Northern fir-clad shore,
'Neath tufted copse on cape and bay.
Here sunshine from serener skies
Than Europe's ocean-islands know
Ripens the berry for the bear,
And pierces where the beaver plies
His water-forestry, or slow
The moose seeks out a breezy lair.

The blaze scarce spangles bush or ferns,
But lights the white pine's velvet fringe
And its dark...

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,
Ear to earth, and dart on bow.

Vain their arrows' ringing hail
Fell on pointed helm and mail.

As he backward leaped, there flew
Moonlight down the sword he drew.


In his front the lonely man
Saw approach the hostile van:

Near him on the moor a tarn;
On a knoll a wattled barn.

Refuge bad, yet near its door
Sank the hot pursuit's uproar.

For, unsheathed his battle brand,
There they saw great Colin stand.

Dauntless cried he: "Here within
Rest I, then to Ederlinn!"

Yelled the circling hounds in ire,
Set the woven wall...

The Noon-Sun prayed a prairie rose
To blanch for him her blossom's hue,
But to the Plain all love she owes;
Beneath that mother's grass she grew.

And sheltered by her verdant blades,
Their tints of green she made her own;
But still the Sun sought out her shades
And said, "Be my white bride alone!"

Then, sorrowing for his grievous pain,
Her sister loved the amorous god,
And blushed, ashamed, as o'er the plain
His parting beams illumed the sod.

So one sweet rose yet wears the green,
And one in sunset's crimson glows;
Still one untouched by love is seen,
And one in conscious beauty blows.

[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,
Manitoba lay where the sunflowers blow,
And sang to the chime of the Red River's flow:
"I am child of the spirit whom all men own,
My prairie no longer is green and lone,
For the hosts of the settler have ringed me round,
And his bride am I with the harvest crowned."

On her steed at speed o'er her burning grass
We saw Assiniboia pass:
"The bison and antelope still are mine,
And the Indian wars on my boundary-line;
Where his knife is dyed I love to ride
By the cactus blooms or the marshes wide,
While the quivering columns of thunder fire
Give light to the darkened land's desire."

There's a warrior hunting o'er prairie and hill,
Who in sunshine or starlight is eager to kill,
Who ne'er sleeps by his fire on the wild river's shore,
Where the green cedars shake to the white rapids' roar.

Ever tireless and noiseless, he knows not repose,
Be the land filled with summer, or lifeless with snows;
But his strength gives him few he can count as his friends,
Man and beast fly before him wherever he wends,

For he chases alike every form that has breath,
And his darts must strike all,--for that hunter is Death!!
Lo! a skeleton armed, and his scalp-lock yet streams;
From this vision of fear of the Iroquois' dreams!

In the vapour and haze on the ocean,
Where the skies and the waters meet,
There's a form that drifts, phantom-like, onward
As it follows the grey clouds' feet.

O'er the sea come the winds and the billows,
And they howl to the rocks, and they cry,
They will bring them a wreck on the morrow,
Ere the joy of the tempest die.

The shade looming dark in the distance
Is naught but a galleon proud;
And the spray has long battered her turrets,
And loosened each yard and each shroud;

But not on the surf-beaten islands,
Nor yet upon Morven's land,
Does she drive, for her rudder, unshattered,
Is firm in the steersman's hand.

No mist wreath, no cloud, was the shadow
That moved on the height of the seas;
Like a castle how steep are her bulwa...

For a while the salt brine leaves me
O'er my terraced rocks to fall,
And my broad swift-gliding waters
Olden memories recall.

Ere the tallest pines were seedlings
With my life-stream these were blent;
As a father's words, like arrows
Straight to children's hearts are sent,

So my currents speeding downwards,
Ever passing, sing the same
Story of the days remembered,
When the stranger people came.

Men of mighty limbs and voices,
Bearing shining shields and knives,
Painted gleamed their hair like evening,
When the sun in ocean dives.

Blue their eyes and tall their stature,
Huge as Indian shadows seen
When the sun through mists of morning
Casts them o'er a clear lake's sheen.

From before the great Pale-faces
Fl...

Milicete Legend Of The OuangondÉ, Or River St. John.

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

So the sea-brought strangers, stronger
Than their Indian foes of old,
Conquered, till were heard no longer
War-songs through the forests rolled.

Yet the land's wild stream, begotten
Where its Red Sons fought and died,
With traditions unforgotten
Strives to stem Oblivion's tide;
Tells the mighty, who, like ocean,
Whelm the native stream, how they
First in far dim days' commotion,
Wrestling, fought for empire's sway.

Hear the sad cascade, ere ever
Sinks in rising tides its moan,
True may be the tale, though never
By the vict...

Away to the west! Westward ho! Westward ho!
Where over the prairies the summer winds blow!

Why known to so few were its rivers and plains,
Where rustle so tall in their ripeness the grains?
The bison and Red-men alone cared to roam
O'er realms that to millions must soon give a home;
The vast fertile levels Old Time loved to reap
The haymaker's song hath awakened from sleep.

Away to the West! Westward ho! Westward ho!
Why waited we fearing to plant and to sow?

Not ours was the waiting! By God was ordained
The hour when the ocean's grey steeds were up-reined,
And green marshes rose, and the bittern's abode
Became the Lone Land where the wild hunter strode,
And soils with grass harvests grew rich, and the clime
For us was prepared in the fulness of T...