Fleurs de lys and Other Poems | Page 5

the city,
In and out among hurrying wheels,
And whose
run in the suburbs reveals
Only scenes that are peaceful and pretty.
Raise to mine your intelligent face,
Open wide your great brown eyes
in wonder
While I tell how lived one of your race
Years ago in this
now busy place--
Ay, and ran at the heels of its founder.
Mistress Pilot, for that was her name,
And you could not have called
her a better,
Was a gallant and dutiful dame--
Since her breed is
forgotten by Fame,
For your sake I will call her a setter.
Pilot lived when Ville Marie was young,
And the needs of its people
were sorest;
When the rifle unceasing gave tongue,
And the savage
lay hidden among
The Cimmerian shades of the forest;
When the hearts of frail women were steeled
Not to weep for the
dead and the dying;
When by night the fierce battle-cry pealed
And
by day all who worked in the field
Kept their weapons in readiness
lying;
When full oft at the nunnery gate,
As the darkness fell over the
village,
Would a swart savage crouch and await,
With the patience
of devilish hate,
A chance to kill women, and pillage.
Every one had his duty to do,
And our Pilot had hers like another,

Which she did like a heroine true,
At the head of a juvenile crew
Of
the same stalwart stuff as their mother.
In a body these keen-scented spies
Used to roam through the forests

and meadows,
And protect Ville Marie from surprise,
Though its
foes clustered round it like flies
In a swamp, or like evening shadows.
Oftentimes in the heat of the day,
Oftentimes through the mists of the
morning,
Oftentimes to the sun's dying ray
There was heard her
reëchoing bay
Pealing forth its brave challenge and warning.
And so nobly she labored and well,
It was fancied--so runneth the
story--
She had come down from heaven to dwell
Upon earth, and
make war upon hell,
For the welfare of man and God's glory.
"When her day's work was over, what then?"
Well, my boy, she had
one of your habits;
She would roam through the forest again,
But
instead of bold hunting for men,
Would amuse herself hunting jack
rabbits.
THE SECRET OF THE SAGUENAY.
Like a fragment of torn sea-kale,
Or a wraith of mist in the gale,

There comes a mysterious tale
Out of the stormy past:
How a fleet,
with a living freight,
Once sailed through the rocky gate
Of this
river so desolate,
This chasm so black and vast.
'Twas Cartier, the sailor bold,
Whose credulous lips had told
How
glittering gems and gold
Were found in that lonely land
How out of
the priceless hoard
Within their rough bosoms stored,
These
towering mountains poured
Their treasures upon the strand.
Allured by the greed of gain,
Sieur Roberval turned again,
And
sailing across the main,
Passed up the St. Lawrence tide.
He sailed
by the frowning shape
Of Jacques Cartier's Devil's Cape,
Till the
Saguenay stood agape,
With hills upon either side.
Around him the sunbeams fell

On the gentle St. Lawrence swell,
As
though by some mystic spell
The water was turned to gold;
But as

he pursued, they fled,
Till his vessels at last were led
Where, cold
and sullen and dead,
The Saguenay River rolled.
Chill blew the wind in his face,
As, still on his treasure chase,
He
entered that gloomy place
Whose mountains in stony pride,
Still,
soulless, merciless, sheer,
Their adamant sides uprear,
Naked and
brown and drear,
High over the murky tide.
No longer the sun shone bright
On the sails that, full and white,

Like sea gulls winging their flight,
Dipped into the silent wave;
But
shadows fell thick around,
Till feeling and sight and sound
In their
awful gloom were drowned,
And sank in a depthless grave.
Far over the topmost height
Great eagles had wheeled in flight,
But,
wrapped in the gloom of night,
They ceased to circle and soar:

Grim silence reigned over all,
Save that from a rocky wall
A
murmuring waterfall
Leapt down to the river shore.
O merciless walls of stone!
What happened that night is known
By
you, and by you alone:
Though the eagles unceasing scream,
How
once through that midnight air,
For an instant a trumpet's blare,
And
the voices of men in prayer,
Arose from the murky stream.
JULES' LETTER.
MA CHÈRE,
Since the morning we parted
On the slippery docks of Rochelle,
I
have wandered, well nigh broken-hearted,
Through many a
tree-shadowed dell:
I've hunted the otter and beaver,
Have tracked
the brown bear and the deer,
And have lain almost dying with fever,

While not a companion was near.
I've toiled in the fierce heat of summer

Under skies like a great dome
of gold,
And have tramped, growing number and number,
In winter

through snowstorm and cold.
Yet the love in my heart was far hotter,

The fear of my soul far more chill,
As my thoughts crossed the
wild waste of water
To your little home on the hill.
But now Father Time in a measure
Has reconciled me to my fate,

For I know he will bring my dear treasure
Back into my arms soon or
late.
And, besides, every evening, when, weary,
I lie on my soft
couch of pine,
Sleep wafts me again to my dearie,
And your heart
once more beats against mine.
You never have heard of such doings
As those