Fleurs de lys and Other Poems | Page 2

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 voice their cannon to our cannonade replied, As their tattered ensign drifted slowly shoreward with the tide.
There was one who saw it floating, and within his heart of fire, Beating in a Frenchman's bosom, rose at once a fierce desire, That the riven flag thus resting on the broad St. Lawrence tide Should, for years to come, betoken how France humbled England's pride. As the stag leaps down the mountain, with the baying