THE CANADIAN BOAT SONG

by an anonymous author.

Listen to me, as when ye heard our father

Sing long ago the song of other shores,

Listen to me, and then in chorus gather

All your deep voices as ye pull your oars :

Fair these broad meads — these hoary woods are grand,

Ah! we are exiles from our fathers' land.

From the lone cabin of the misty island

Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas.

Yet still the pulse is strong, the heart is Highland,

And we in dreams behold the Hebrides :

Fair these broad meads — these hoary woods are grand,

Ah ! we are exiles from our native land.

We ne'er shall tread the fancy-haunted valley.

Where 'tween the dark hills creeps the small clear stream,

In arms around the patriarch banner rally,

Nor see the moon on royal tombstones gleam :

Fair these broad meads — these hoary woods are grand,

Ah! we are exiles from our native land.

When the bold kindred, in the time long-vanish'd Conquered the soil and fortified the keep; — No seer foretold the children would be banished. That a degenerate Lord might boast his sheep Fair these broad meads — these hoary icoods are grand, Ah! lue are exiles from our native land.

Come foreign rage — let Discord burst in slaughter ! 0 then for clansmen true, and stern claymore The hearts that would have given their blood like water, Beat heavily beyond the Atlantic roar : Fair these broad meads — these hoary icoods are grand, Ah! we are exiles from our fathers' land. It is much to be regretted that in the great improvement in agriculture and the reconstruction of farm houses and buildings the land had not been divided instead of large farms into holdings of about SO acres according to quality just sufficient to keep a man and his family with a pair of horses fully employed.

The Times says « The poem in one form, or another or rather the second stanza is known all over the EngHsh-speaking world. It has been quoted in the writings of Stevenson, William Black, John Skellet, Miss Gordon Cumming, D-" Norman Macleod of Good Words and less known men including every variety of public speakers, such as lord Rosebery, and almost every writer and speaker quotes it differently.

DEJECTION

by Coleridge.

A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief.

Which finds no natural outlet, no relief

In word, or sigh, or tear.

0 Lady! in this wan and heartless mood, To other thoughts by yonder (dear thrush woo'd) In this long eve so balmy and serene, Have I been gazing, on the western sky

And its peculiar tint of yellow green

And still I gaze — and with how blank an eye!

And those thin clouds above in flakes and bars,

That give away their motion to the stars,

Those stars, that glide behind them or between,

Now sparkling, now bedimmed but always seen ;

Yon crescent moon, as fixed as if it grew

In its own cloudless, starless, lake of blue ;

I see them all, so exquisitely fair,

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are !

My genial spirits fail;

And what can these avail To lift the smothering weight from off my heart

It were a vain endeavour

Though I should gaze for ever On that green light that lingers in the West ; I may not hope from outward form to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.