Fleurs de lys and Other Poems | Page 6

that are going on here;

We've nothing but weddings and wooings
From dawn till the stars
reappear.
For the king, gracious monarch, a vessel
Has sent, bearing
widows and maids
Within our rough bosoms to nestle,
And make
us a home in the glades.
They are tall and short, ugly and pretty,
There are blondes and
brunettes by the score:
Some silent and dull, others witty,
And
made for mankind to adore.
Some round as an apple, some slender--

In fact--so he be not in haste--
Any man with a heart at all tender

Can pick out a wife to his taste.
Now, darling, don't pout and grow jealous,
I still am a bachelor free,

In spite of the governor's zealous
And extra-judicial decree,

Commanding all men to be married
In less than two weeks from this
date,
And promising all who have tarried
Shall feel the full strength
of his hate:
In spite of his maddening order,
That none in the country may trade

With the tribes on our side of the border,
Who is not a benedict
staid;
In spite of a clause, far the sorest,
That none past his
twentieth year,
And single, shall enter the forest
On any pretext
whatsoe'er.
Now, you know I was ever a rover,
Half stifled by cities or towns,



Of nature--and you--a warm lover,
Wooing both in despite of your
frowns,
So you well may imagine my sorrow
When fettered and
threatened like this--
Oh! Marie, dear, pack up to-morrow,
And
bring me back freedom and bliss.
If you do not, who knows but some morning
I'll waken and find a
decree
Has been passed, that, without any warning,
Has wedded
some woman to me?
Oh! Marie, chère Marie, have pity;
You only
my woes can assuage;
I'm confined, till I wed, to the city,
And feel
like a bird in a cage.
Then come, nor give heed to the billows
That tumble between you
and Jules.
I know a sweet spot where lithe willows
Bend over a
silvery pool,
And there we will dwell, dear, defying
Misfortune to
tear us apart.
My darling, come to me, I'm dying
To press you again
to my heart.
THE OAK.
Last of its race, beside our college
There stands an Oak Tree,
centuries old,
Which, could it voice its stores of knowledge,
Might
many a wondrous tale unfold.
It marked the birth of two fair towns,

And mourned the cruel fate of one,
Yet still withstands grim Winter's
frowns,
And glories in the Summer sun.
Jacques Cartier passed, its branches under,
Up yonder mount one
autumn day,
And viewed, with ever-growing wonder,
The scene
that spread beneath him lay.
He was the first from Europe's shore

To pass beneath the Oak Tree's shade,
The first whose vision
wandered o'er
Such boundless wealth of stream and glade.
Beneath his feet a little village
Lay, like a field-lark in her nest,

Amid the treasures of its tillage,
The maize in golden colors dressed.

Years passed; and when again there came
A stranger to that
peaceful spot,
Gone was the village and its name,
Save by a few

gray-heads, forgot.
But soon beneath the Oak, another,
And sturdier village took its place;

One that the gentle Virgin mother
Has kept from ruin by her grace.

She saved it from the dusky foes
Who thirsted for its heroes' blood,

And when December waters rose
About its walls she stilled the
flood.
What noble deeds and cruel, stranger
Than aught in fiction ere befell,

What weary years of war and danger
That village knew, the Oak
might tell.
Perchance, brave Dollard sat of yore
Beneath its very
shade, and planned
A deed should make for evermore
His name a
trumpet in the land.
Perchance, beneath its gloomy shadows
De Vaudreuil sat that bitter
day
When round about him, in the meadows
Encamped, the British
forces lay;
And as he wrote the fatal word
That gave an Empire to
the foe,
The Old Oak's noble heart was stirred
With an unutterable
woe.
The army of a hostile nation
Once since hath entered Ville Marie,

But we avenged that desecration
At Chrystler's farm and
Chateauguay--
Peace! peace! 'tis cowardly to flout
Our triumphs in
a cousin's face:
That page was long since blotted out
And
Friendship written in its place.
Beloved of Time, the Old Oak flourished
While at its foot its little
charge,
An eaglet by a lion nourished,
Grew mighty by the river
marge;
Till, where the deer were wont to roam,
There throbs to-day
a nation's heart,
Of wealth and luxury the home,
Of learning,
industry and art.
No longer now the church bells' ringing
Fills all the little town with
life,
Its loud-tongued, startling clangor bringing
Young men and
aged to the strife.
No longer through the midnight air
The savage

hordes their war-cries peal,
As rushing from their forest lair
They
meet the brave defenders' steel.
Long has the reign of war been ended
And Commerce crowned,
whose stately fleet
Brings ever treasures vast and splendid
To lay
them humbly at her feet.
And now her eager sons to-day
Have
crossed the wild, north-western plain,
And made two oceans own her
sway
Held captive by a slender chain.
What further Time may be preparing
For this fair town, the years will
tell,
But while her sons retain their daring,
Their zeal and honor, all
is well.
Still, as the seasons come and go,
Long may they spare the
Old Oak Tree
In age as erst in youth to throw
Protection over Ville