W. M. MacKeracher

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;
Or turn our eyes from gazing on the vales
Of lavish verdure and abundant fruit,
To those rough wastes where Nature ever fails,
And tillage spurns a profitless pursuit;

Let us recall that sentence from the hand
Of history's father, laying down his pen, -
Those words of Cyrus, which he made to stand
To all his work as moral and amen;
'Tis not the richest and most fertile land
That always bears the noblest breed of men.[1]


[1] "Although the work seems unfinished, it concludes with a sentence which cannot have been placed casually at the end, viz., that, as the great Cyrus was supposed to ha...

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 -
They please the man not as they pleased the boy;
And he returns to Nature, and requires
To warm his soul at her old altar fires,
To drink from her perpetual fount of joy.

It is that man and all the works of man
Prepare to pass away; he may depend
    On naught but what he found her stores among;
But she, she changes not, nor ever can;
He knows she will be faithful to the end,
    For ever beautiful, for ever young.

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;
But oi was born in Pontiac, besoide the Belle Rivière.
Oi spint my choildhood tamin' bears, and fellin' timber trays,
And catchin' salmon tin fate long - and doin' what oi plaze.
Oi got my iddication from the Riverind Father Blake;
He taught me Latin grammar, and he after taught me Grake,
Till oi could rade the classics in a distint sort of way -
'Twas the sadetoime of the harvist that oi'm rapin' ivery day.

My parients thought me monsthrous shmart - of thim 'twas awful koind,
And where oi'd go to college now was what perplixed their moind;
So they axed the Riverind Father Blake what varsity was bist

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

    Thy sparkling eyes of bright cerulean blue,
    Rich sapphire gems, flash with Arcadian artlessness,
    Impelling Cupid's arrows, passion-fraught,
    Discharged from bow of myrtle 'gainst my heart,
    Which throbs and flutters, quivering from the thrust.

    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.

    While the blasts from the cold frozen North
        Are biting right in to my soul -
    While the pitiless blasts from the bleak, barren shore
    Of the crystalline ocean incessantly roar,
        And the tempests that sweep from the pole.

    Oh! the gloom of the dark, dreary night,
        Concealing the star that I love!
    Oh! how bitter the anguish, bereft of its beam!
    While the beings around me are such that I seem
        In a dungeon of demons to move.

    Oh! when will the clouds clear away?
        And brighten the heaven abo...

    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;
    Deftly carved by cunning craft
    For her hold thy finished haft;
    And thy silken folds so soft,
    Where the gentle breezes waft
    Fragrance from the clustered vines,
    Where the sun so warmly shines,
    Where the skies of purest hue
    Bend above in deepest blue,
    There so soft and fine were wove,
    Woven only for my love.
    But it is not that thy haft
    Carved is by cunning craft
    Of a wood so rich and rare,
    That thy folds are soft and fair,
    Vying only with her hair;
    Not for this that I addres...

    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.
    And bards, who woo thee in the silent shade
        And dote upon thee under moonlit skies,
    And lovers, who behold thee new-array'd,
        As our first parents did in Paradise!

    These all have been thy priests.    In times remote,
        In Athens and the cool Thessalian dells,
    They sung thy liturgy with dulcet note,
        And quaff'd thy chalice from the sacred wells
    Of leafy Helicon.    Beneath the brows
        Of fam'd Olympus and among the isles
    Of the Aegean sea they paid their vows,
        And read thy lore in Nature's frowns and...

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
        With laughter to thy lays.

    And better still I loved thee,
        To riper boyhood grown;
    Because thou wert the pride of
        The land that's part my own.

    But with devotion deepened
        I greet thee now anew,
    Of love, because thou singest
        So simple, sweet, and true.

            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 breath of approaching peace,
    Which soothes the soul with a prospect blest
                    Of sweet release!

            May my life be such that so
            At its even this comfort I'll have!
    For sleep is the symbol of death, and thou
                    Art the sign of the grave.

"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,
Where no light has late been burning,
Where the students walk in darkness,
Walk on foot, perchance on shin-bones!"
"Lay aside your fruit, banana!
Quickly lay your fruit aside you,
For the eventime is coming,
When the stairs are wrapt in darkness;
And I've yet to waft me distant,
Many leagues o'er land and ocean,
To a famous school of learning,
In the land of the pale faces,
In the city of the mountain!"
Thus aloud cried Tomakewaw,
Chief of all the imps of darkness,
On an island in the ocean,
In the wide Pacific Ocean.
And the tall tree shook its...

    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:
    The rose that bloomed upon thy breast
        Blooms in my memory still.

    Still do I see thy sunny smile,
        In sportive dimples traced,
    Like truant beams of morning light
        By flitting fairies chased.

    Thy merry, maiden laughter still
        Is ringing in my ear,
    As silver streams in sylvan shades
        Make music sweet to hear.

    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
        Fly past on pinions of the wind;
    They fade like blooms upon the flowers,
        And leave a painful want behind.

    Thou art a road, though not of space,
        Which rich and poor alike must tread;
    Thy starting point we cannot trace,
        Thine end - the country of the dead.

    A pathway paved with want and woe,
        With pleasures painful, incomplete;
    Like stones upon the way below,
        Which wound the weary pilgrim's feet.

    Thou'rt hedged with visions of despair,
        With w...

    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;
    Here too was it where this heart,
    Previous proof to Cupid's dart,
    In thy presence trembled, fell;
    Fearful, fluttered 'neath thy spell;
    All so sudden, so complete,
    Chronicled in words 'twere meet
    Such as Cæsar's famous three,
    Which will well apply to me,
    If the classic clause become, -
    Veni, vidi, victus sum.

The tread of armèd 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,
They sailed beneath the "meteor flag," the emblem of our sires;
And for the glory that has been, the pride that yet may be,
We hail them in the sacred names of home and liberty,
And know that not on sea or land more dauntless hearts there are
Than the hearts of these bold seamen from the English men-of-war.

Trafalgar's fame-crowned hero stands, encarved in storied stone,
And from his place of honor looks in silence and alone:
But no, to-day his spirit lives, and walks the crowded way;
For us Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher and Howard live to-day;
For us from many a page of eld, 'mid war and tempest blast,

"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
Thy fame immortal and thy memory
An inspiration to make pulses leap
And resolution spring to mastery.
Thou need'st no gilded tablets on the walls
Of cities, no imposing sepulchre,
Imperishable Wolfe, whose name recalls
The flower of kings, who bore Excalibur.

The ultimate dispensers of renown,
The poets, shall accord thee honor fit,
And add fresh laurels ever to thy crown,
High-minded hero, who hadst rather writ
Those lines of one to every poet dear
Than take the fortress of a hemisphere.

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
And fish therein, and flying fowl in air,
And grass and herb and fair fruit-yielding tree,
And man, His own similitude to wear;

Whose works are old and yet for ever new,
Who all sustains with providential sway,
Whose Son, "My Father worketh hitherto
And I work," said, and ere He went away,
"Finished the work thou gavest me to do,"
And unto us, "Work ye while it is day."