Fleurs de lys and Other Poems | Page 2

Heavy with care;
Yet it shall never burden her down

Into despair.
We will watch over her with our love,
And our loyalty prove.
We will bear, each, his share
Of the worry,
grief, and pain
That may seek to mar her reign.
III.
Blow! ye silvery bugles, over the sunny land,
Our Queen has yielded
to love.
Ring out with merry clangor, O ye bells!
Ye mountains!
give the laughing bells reply.
_Hark! how the joyous tumult sinks and swells,
And beats against the
sky
In melody!
Mark how the billows of the mighty sea
Toss their
white arms in glee,
And race along the strand,
Joining their voices
with the symphony!
Our Queen has yielded to love.
Blow! silvery
bugles blow!
That all may know._
IV.
_Toll! toll! ye deep-mouthed bells,
Answer! each thundering gun.

Your cadence sadly tells
Of a great life-work done.
Death rules this
changing earth,
Through royal halls he stalks,
And with an awful
mirth
Man's noblest efforts mocks.
He stills the busy brain,
Tears
loving souls apart,
And leaves alone to reign_
_A Queen with empty heart.
Upon her lonely throne
She sits, and
ever weeps,
For him who, once her own,
Now wed to heaven sleeps.

Albert has fallen, conquered by Death's dart,
A shadow lies across
her anguished heart.
She dwells in loneliness that none can gauge;

In grief that only heaven can assuage.
She trembles and her soul
would fain depart,
And beats with tireless wings against its cage.
Oh! live for us, dear Queen,
Thou who for years hast been
Our
leader in all good,

Live! Live for us, O Queen!_

V.
_Ring! ye loud bells, in deep, triumphal tone,
And bind a zone

Around this earth of glorious melody,
Till land and sea
Awaken and,
rejoicing, answer ye.
Ah! noble Queen! who lookst around thee now

On this great nation.
Thy life, since first the circlet touched thy
brow,
Was consecration
Of self to us. Through half a century

From darkness into light we followed thee.
The poet, patriot, warrior,
statesman, sage
Have given thee service long,
Lending their fiery
youth and thoughtful age
To make thy sceptre strong,
And in the
never-ending march of man
To higher things, still England leads the
van._
VI.
In fifty years what change! The world is bound
In close communion,
and a sentence flies
O'er half the earth ere yet the voice's sound

Upon the calm air dies.
Behold at England's feet her offspring pour

Their bounteous store;
To her each yields
The first fruits of its
virgin fields;
Each country throws
Its hospitable portals open wide

To the great tide
That from the dense-thronged mother country
flows.
New homes arise
By rivers once unknown, among whose
reeds
The wild fowl fed, but now no longer dwells.
No more the
bison feeds
Upon the prairie, for the once drear plain
Laughs in the
sun and waves its golden grain.
By a slender chain
Ocean is linked
to ocean, and the hum
Of labor in the wilderness foretells
The
greatness of a nation yet to come.
In Southern seas
Another nation
grows by slow degrees,
In dreamy India, under tropic sun,
Two
hundred millions own an Empress' sway,
And day by day.
New
territories won
Shed lustre on our Queen's half century.
FLEURS DE LYS.
THE CAPTURED FLAG.

Loudly roared the English cannon, loudly thundered back our own,
Pouring down a hail of iron from their battlements of stone, Giving
Frontenac's proud message to the clustered British ships: "I will answer
your commander only by my cannons' lips."
Through the sulphurous
smoke below us, on the Admiral's ship of war, Faintly gleamed the
British ensign, as through cloudwrack gleams a star,
And above our
noble fortress, on Cape Diamond's rugged crest-- Like a crown upon a
monarch, like an eagle in its nest--
Streamed our silken flag
emblazoned with the royal fleur de lys, Flinging down a proud defiance
to the rulers of the sea.
As we saw it waving proudly, and beheld the
crest it bore,
Fiercely throbbed our hearts within us, and with bitter
words we swore, While the azure sky was reeling at the thunder of our
guns, We would strike that standard never, while Old France had
gallant sons.
Long and fiercely raged the struggle, oft our foes had sought to land,
But with shot and steel we met them, met and drove them from the
strand,
Though they owned them not defeated, and the stately Union
Jack, Streaming from the slender topmast, seemed to wave them
proudly back. Louder rose the din of combat, thicker rolled the battle
smoke, Through whose murky folds the crimson tongues of thundering
cannon broke,
And the ensign sank and floated in the smoke-clouds
on the breeze, As a wounded, fluttering sea-bird floats upon the stormy
seas. While we looked upon it sinking, rising through the sea of smoke,
Lo! it shook, and bending downwards, as a tree beneath a stroke, Hung
one moment o'er the river, then precipitously fell
Like proud Lucifer
descending from high heaven into hell.
As we saw it flutter
downwards, till it reached the eager wave, Not Cape Diamond's loudest
echo could have matched the cheer we gave; Yet the English, still
undaunted, sent an answering echo back: Though their flag had fallen
conquered, still their fury did not slack, And with louder