CXCIX

QUEBEC

FIERCE on this bastion beats the noon-day sun;
The city sleeps beneath me, old and grey;
On convent roofs the quivering sunbeams play,
And batteries guarded by dismantled gun.
No breeze comes from the northern hills which run
Circling the blue mist of the summer's day;
No ripple stirs the great stream on its way
To those dim headlands where its rest is won.

What thunders shook these silent crags of yore! What smoke of battle rolled up plain and gorge While two worlds closed in strife for one brief

span!

What echoes still come ringing back once more! For on these heights of old God set His forge; His strokes wrought here the destinies of man. Frederick George Scott.

CC

IN MEMORIAM

GROWING to full manhood now,
With the care-lines on our brow,
We, the youngest of the nations,
With no childish lamentations,
Weep, as only strong men weep,
For the noble hearts that sleep,
Pillowed where they fought and bled,
The loved and lost, our glorious dead!

Toil and sorrow come with age,
Manhood's rightful heritage;

Toil our arms more strong shall render,
Sorrow make our heart more tender,
In the heartlessness of time;
Honour lays a wreath sublime—
Deathless glory-where they bled,
Our loved and lost, our glorious dead!

Wild the prairie grasses wave
O'er each hero's new-made grave;
Time shall write such wrinkles o'er us,
But the future spreads before us
Glorious in that sunset land-
Nerving every heart and hand,
Comes a brightness none can shed,
But the dead, the glorious dead!

Lay them where they fought and fell;
Every heart shall ring their knell,
For the lessons they have taught us,
For the glory they have brought us.
Tho' our hearts are sad and bowed,
Nobleness still makes us proud-
Proud of light their names will shed
In the roll-call of our dead!

Growing to full manhood now,
With the care-lines on our brow,
We, the youngest of the nations,
With no childish lamentations,
Weep, as only strong men weep,
For the noble hearts that sleep
Where the call of duty led,
Where the lonely prairies spread,
Where for us they fought and bled,
Our ever loved and glorious dead!

Frederick George Scott.

CCI

A WORD FROM CANADA

LEST it be said

One sits at ease

Westward, beyond the outer seas,
Who thanks me not that my decrees
Fall light as love, nor bends her knees
To make one prayer

That peace my latter days may find,—
Lest all these bitter things be said
And we be counted as one dead,
Alone and unaccredited

I give this message to the wind:

Secure in thy security,

Though children, not unwise are we;

And filled with unplumbed love for thee,-
Call thou but once, if thou wouldst see!
Where the grey bergs

Come down from Labrador, and where
The long Pacific rollers break

Against the pines, for thy word's sake
Each listeneth,-alive, awake,

And with thy strength made strong to dare.

And though our love is strong as spring,
Sweet is it, too,—as sweet a thing
As when the first swamp-robins sing
Unto the dawn their welcoming.
Yea, and more sweet

Than the clean savour of the reeds
Where yesterday the June floods were,-
Than perfumed piles of new cut fir
That greet the forest-worshipper

Who follows where the wood-road leads.

But unto thee are all unknown

These things by which the worth is shown Of our deep love; and, near thy throne, The glory thou hast made thine own

Hath made men blind

To all that lies not to their hand,

But what thy strength and theirs hath done:
As though they had beheld the sun

When the noon-hour and March are one
Wide glare across our white, white land.

For what reck they of Empire,-they,
Whose will two hemispheres obey?
Why shouldst thou not count us but clay
For them to fashion as they may
In London-town?

The dwellers in the wilderness

Rich tribute yield to thee their friend;
From the flood unto the world's end
Thy London ships ascend, descend,
Gleaning-and to thy feet regress.

Yea, surely they think not at all
Of us, nor note the outer wall
Around thy realm imperial

Our slow hands rear as the years fall;
Which shall withstand

The stress of time and night of doom;
For we, who build, build of our love,-
Not as they built, whose empires throve
And died, for what knew they thereof
In old Assyria, Egypt, Rome?

Therefore, in my dumb country's stead,
I come to thee, unheralded,

Praying that Time's peace may be shed
Upon thine high, anointed head,

-One with the wheat,

The mountain pine, the prairie trail,
The lakes, the thronging ships thereon,
The valley of the blue Saint John,
New France-her lilies,-not alone
Empress, I bid the, Hail!

Francis Sherman.

CCII

CANADA TO ENGLAND

SANG one of England in his island home:

'Her veins are million, but her heart is one;' And looked from out his wave-bound homeland isle To us who dwell beyond its western sun.

And we among the northland plains and lakes,
We youthful dwellers on a younger land,
Turn eastward to the wide Atlantic waste,

And feel the clasp of England's outstretched hand.
For we are they who wandered far from home
To swell the glory of an ancient name;
Who journeyed seaward on an exile long,

When fortune's twilight to our island came.

But every keel that cleaves the midway waste Binds with a silent thread our sea-cleft strands, Till ocean dwindles and the sea-waste shrinks, And England mingles with a hundred lands.

And weaving silently all far-off shores

A thousand singing wires stretch round the earth, Or sleep still vocal in their ocean depths,

Till all lands die to make one glorious birth.

So we remote compatriots reply,

And feel the world-task only half begun :

'We are the girders of the ageing earth,

Whose veins are million, but whose heart is one.'

Arthur Stringer.

CCIII

THE CANADIAN VOLUNTEERS

WIDE are the plains to the north and the westward; Drear are the skies to the west and the northLittle they cared, as they snatched up their rifles, And shoulder to shoulder marched gallantly forth.