Canada and Other Poems | Page 7

full oft around,?Since last the merry Christmas, bells?Rang out their cheerful sound.?With cruel vigor he has held?His great, impartial sway,?And many thousands mown to earth,?Who saw last Christmas day.
For some have left this world for aye,?Who dwelt with us last year;?Glad voices heard amongst us then,?We never more shall hear.?But still we'll build our Christmas fires,?And sing our Christmas songs,?And for one day forget our griefs,?Our failures and our wrongs.
Then ring, ye joyful bells, ring out;?Ye crashing cymbals fall;?And for old Christmas, hale and stout,?Sound up, ye harps and all.?Let music's loud and sweetest strain?Beat from our hearts each ill;?Let thoughts of those assuage our pain,?Who are around us still.
Oh, winsome maid, oh, hearty youth,?I urge you on to glee,?For, in your innocence and truth,?You all are dear to me.?Nor youth, nor age should cherish gloom,?And voices oft should sing,?So give the gladsome voices room,?And let the joy-bells ring.

CANADA.
Come now, my Muse, do thou inspire my pen,?To sing, with worthy strain, my country's praise,?But not to hide the faults within my ken,?By tricks of art, or studied, verbal maze,?To play on him who reads with careless gaze,?To whom each thought upon a printed page.?Is gospel truth, nor e'er with wile betrays;?From this, oh, steer me clear, nor let the rage?Of prejudic'd and narrow minds, my thoughts engage.
Oh, Canada! the land where first I saw?The blue of heav'n, and bursting light of day,?Where breezes warm and mild, and breezes raw,?First o'er my boyhood's eager face did play,?As o'er the hills I stepp'd my joyful way.?Held by a loving hand, I went along?Thro' shelter'd wood, or by some shaded bay,?And ever, as I went, I sang a song,?With sylvan joy, amid a sylvan throng.
For birds and bees, and e'en the flowers, did sing?Their cheerful songs, with voices pure and sweet;?Their notes were silent, yet those notes did bring?A soothing balm, amid a calm retreat.?Protected from the sun's relentless heat.?Oh, wearied men, could ye but once divine?The healing pow'r of some lone country seat,?You would not strive to drown your care in wine,?Or vainly seek relief, in any lustful line.
But this is not a moralizing lay,?Of Canada I sing, and her alone,?Her varied progress, every passing day,?Her faults, for which, in time, she must atone,?By nature's law, in every clime and zone,?Then what are the peculiar, common claims,?Our country has with nations larger grown,?And the superior things she classes as her own.
First let us take her climate; who will not?Say she is favour'd there o'er other lands??The winter's cold, indeed, and summer's hot,?But in a robust health the native stands,?So keen to work with brain, or use his hands.?Where, let me ask, between the distant poles?Is there a clime so mod'rate in demands,?Where men are not compell'd to live like moles,?Nor drop with heat on burning, barren, sandy knolls.
A hardy, energetic, toilsome race,?Is raised within this favourable clime,?In physical and mental power apace?With those of any land, and any time,?Save in the golden age, that age of thought sublime;?But, what I mean is this: that her own men?Do act their parts, they reason or they rhyme?Within their bounds, with keen, far-reaching ken,?For those who late have left the axe to wield the pen.
Yes, left the axe, whose skilful, cleaving stroke?Hew'd out a home from 'mid the forest wild,?Where grew the maple and the lofty oak,?Where liv'd the dusky colour'd forest child,?So sternly fierce in war, in peace so mild;?Yes, here the settler met with Nature's force;?Quite unsubdued, she look'd around and smil'd,?And seem'd to view with scorn the white man's course?Of labour slow, but yet of wealth the only source.
But still the patient white man plodded on,?He swung his axe, and drove his horned team;?At times he felt despair, but soon 'twas gone,?And gladsome rays of hope would brightly gleam?To cheer his path, like light on darken'd stream.?Some saw their hopes fulfill'd, some sank to rest?Amid their toil, but, sinking, saw the beam?Of brighter days, to make their children blest.?And give a rich reward to ev'ry earnest guest.
These latter gaz'd on fertile fields, and saw,?The waving grain, where stood the forest tree,?Where prowl'd the bear; or wolf, with hungry maw,?Howl'd in the settlers' ears so dismally,?That children crouch'd near to their mother's knee.?They saw, instead of plain, bark-roof'd abode,?A mansion wide, the scene of youthful glee,?And happy Age, now resting on his road,?To pay the debt, his sinning kind so long hath ow'd.
The organ or piano sounds its tone,?Where late in darkness cried the whip-poor-will,?Or gloomy owl's to whoo! to whoo! alone,?Came from the glen, or darkly wooded hill,--?These sounds, untaught, and unimprov'd in skill.?All round, where'er they look, they see a change,?By rolling lake, by river, mount or rill;?Wherever feet may walk, or eyes may range,?There is a transformation pleasing, new and strange.
Schools, churches, built in costly, solid style,?Proclaim the fact that