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“In an instant, she frightens me in

“With some phantom of prudence or terror, For fear I should stray into sin,

Or, what is still worse, into error !
So, instead of displaying my graces
Through look, and through words, and through

mein,
I am shut up in corners and places,

Where truly I blush to be seen!” Upon hearing this piteous confession,

My Soul, looking tenderly at her,
Declar'd, as for grace and discretion,

He did not know much of the matter;
But, to-morrow, sweet Spirit!” he said,

“Be at home after midnight, and then I will come when your lady's in bed,

And we'll talk o'er the subject again.” So she whisper'd a word in his ear,

I suppose to her door to direct him, And—just after midnight, my dear,

Your polite little soul may expect him

Soon as the woods on shore look dim,
We'll sing at St. Ann's our parting hymn,'
Row brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the day-light 's past !
Why should we yet our sail unfurl?
There is not a breath the blue wave to curl!
But, when the wind blows off the shore,
Oh! sweetly we'll rest our weary oar.
Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the day-light 's past !
Utawas' tide! this trembling moon,
Shall see us float over thy surges soon:
Saint of this green isle! hear our prayers,
Oh! grant us cool heavens and favouring airs.
Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the day-light's past !

EPISTLE IX.

TO THE LADY CHARLOTTE R—WD-N.

FROM THE BANKS OF THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE. TO MRS.

Not many months have now been dream'd away To see thee every day that came,

Since yonder sun, (beneath whose evening ray And find thee every day the same,

We rest our boat among these Indian Isles,) In pleasure's smile or sorrow's tear

Saw me, where mazy Trent serenely smiles The same benign, consoling dear!

Through many an oak, as sacred as the groves, To meet thee early, leave thee late,

Beneath whose shade the pious Persian roves, Has been so long, my bliss, my fate,

And hears the soul of father or of chief,
That life, without this cheering ray,

Or loved mistress, sigh in every leaf!2
Which came, like sunshine, every day,
And all my pain, my sorrow chas'd,

shelter from the dews in any miserable hut upon the banks Is now a lone and loveless waste.

that would receive us. But the magnificent scenery of the Where are the chords she used to touch ? St. Lawrence repays all these difficulties.

Our Voyageurs had good voices, and sung perfectly in Where are the songs she lov'd so much?

tune together. The original words of the air, to which I The songs are hush'd, the chords are still,

adapted these stanzas, appeared to be a long, incoherent And so, perhaps, will every thrill

story, of which I could understand but little, from the barba Of friendship soon be lull’d to rest,

rous pronunciation of the Canadians. It begins, Which late I wak'd in Anna's breast!

Dans mon chemin j'ai rencontré

Deux cavaliers très-bien montés ;
Yet no—the simple notes I play'd,
On memory's tablet soon may fade ;

And the refrain to every verse was,
The songs, which Anna lov'd to hear,

A l'ombre d'un bois je m'en vais jouer, May all be lost on Anna's ear;

A l'ombre d'un bois je m'en vais danser. But friendship's sweet and fairy strain

I ventured to harmonize this air, and have published it. Shall ever in her heart remain :

Without that charm, which association gives to every little

memorial of scenes or feelings that are past, the melody may Nor memory lose nor time impair

perhaps be thought common and trifling; but I remember The sympathies which tremble there!

when we had entered, at sunset, upon one of those beautiful lakes, into which the St. Lawrence so grandly and unexpectedly opens, I have heard this simple air with a pleasure which the finest compositions of the first masters have never

given me; and now, there is not a note of it, which does not A CANADIAN BOAT-SONG.

recal to my memory the dip of our oars in the St. Lawrence,

the flight of our boat down the rapids, and all those new WRITTEN ON THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE. and fanciful impressions to which my heart was alive, dur

ing the whole of this very interesting voyage. Et remigem cantus hortatur.

The above stanzas are supposed to be sung by those Quintilian.

voyageurs, who go to the Grande Portage by the Utawas river. For an account of this wonderful undertaking, see

Sir Alexander Mackenzie's General History of the Fur Fantly as tolls the evening chime

Trade, prefixed to his Journal. Our voices keep tune, and our oars keep time:

1“ At the Rapids of St. Ann they are obliged to take out a part, if not the whole, of their lading. It is from this spot

the Canadians consider they take their departure, as it 1 I wrote these words to an air, which our boatmen sung possesses the last church on the island, which is dedicated to us very frequently. The wind' was so unfavourable, that to the tutelar saint of voyagers.”-Mackenzie's General they were obliged to row all the way, and we were five days History of the Fur Trade. in descending the river from Kingston to Montreal, exposed 2“ Avendo essi per costume di avere in veneratione gli to an intense sun during the day, and at night forced to take l alberi grandi ed antichi, quasi che siano spesso ricettacooli

2

There listening, Lady! while thy lip hath sung

From the clime of sacred doves,' My own unpolish'd lays, how proud I've hung

Where the blessed Indian roves, On every mellow'd number! proud to feel

Through the air on wing, as white That notes like mine should have the fate to steal,

As the spirit-stones of light, As o'er thy hallowing lip they sigh'd along,

Which the eye of morning counts Such breath of passion and such soul of song.

On the A pallachian mounts ! Oh! I have wonder'd, like the peasant boy

Hither oft my flight I take Who sings at eve his sabbath strains of joy,

Over Huron's lucid lake, And when he hears the rude, luxuriant note

Where the wave, as clear as dew, Back to his ear on softening echoes float,

Sleeps beneath the light canoe, Believes it still some answering spirit's tone,

Which, reflected, floating there,
And thinks it all too sweet to be his own!

Looks as if it hung in air !3
I dream'd not then that, ere the rolling year
Had fill'd its circle, I should wander here

Then, when I have stray'd awhile

Through the Manataulin isle,4
In musing awe; should tread this wondrous world,

Breathing all its holy bloom,
See all its store of inland waters hurl'd
In one vast volume down Niagara's steep,'

Swift upon the purple plume
Or calm behold them, in transparent sleep,

Of my Wakon-bird I fly

Where beneath a burning sky, Where the blue hills of old Toronto shed

O'er the bed of Erie's lake, Their evening shadows o'er Ontario's bed!

Slumbers many a water snake, Should trace the grand Cadaraqui, and glide

Basking in the web of leaves,
Down the white Rapids of his lordly tide

Which the weeping lily weaves !
Through massy woods, through islets flowering fair,
Through shades of bloom, where the first sinful pair, Then I chase the flow'ret-king
For consolation might have weeping trod,

Through his bloomy wild of spring;
When banish'd from the garden of their God!

See him now, while diamond hues Oh, Lady! these are miracles, which man,

Soft his neck and wings suffuse, Cag'd in the bounds of Europe's pigmy plan,

In the leafy chalice sink, Can scarcely dream of; which his eye must see,

Thirsting for his balmy drink; To know how beautiful this world can be !

Now behold him all on fire,

Lovely in his looks of ire, But soft!-the tinges of the west decline,

Breaking every infant stem, And night falls dewy o'er these banks of pine.

Scattering every velvet gem, Among the reeds, in which our idle boat

Where his little tyrant lip Is rock'd to rest, the wind's complaining note

Had not found enough to sip! Dies, like a half-breath'd whispering of flutes;

Then my playful hand I steep
Along the wave the gleaming porpoise shoots,

Where the gold-thread' loves to creep,
And I can trace him, like a watery star,2
Down the steep current, till he fades afar
Amid the foaming breakers' silvery light,

1 The departed spirit goes into the Country of Souls,

where, according to some, it is transformed inio a dove.' Where yon rough rapids sparkle through the night! Charlevoir, upon the Traditions and the Religion of the Here, as along this shadowy bank I stray,

Savages of Canada. See the curious Fable of the AmeriAnd the smooth glass-snake,' gliding o'er my way,

can Orpheus in Lafitau, tom. i. p. 402.

2“The mountains appear to be sprinkled with white stones, Shows the dim moonlight through his scaly form, which glistened in the sun, and were called by the Indians Fancy, with all the scene's enchantment warm,

manetoe aseniah, or spirit-stones."- Mackenzie's Journal.

3 I was thinking here of what Carver says so beautifully Hears in the murmur of the nightly breeze,

in his description of one of these lakes: “When it was calm Some Indian Spirit warble words like these :- and the sun shone bright, I could sit in my canoe, where the

depth was upwards of six fathoms, and plainly see huge piles of stone at the botton, of different shapes, some of

which appeared as if they had been hewn; the water was at di anime beate.”—Pietro della Valle, Part. Second. Lettera this time as pure and transparent as air, and my canoe 16 da i giardini di Sciraz.

seemed as if it hung suspended in that element. It was im1 When I arrived at Chippewa, within three miles of the possible to look attentively through this limpid medium, at Falls, it was too late to think of visiting them that evening, the rocks below, without finding, before many minutes were and I lay awake all night with the sound of the cataract in elapsed, your head swim and your eyes no longer able to my ears. The day following I consider as a kind of era in behold the dazzling scene." my life, and the first glimpse which I caught of those won- 4 Après avoir traversé plusieurs isles peu considérables, derful Falls gave me a feeling which nothing in this world nous en trouvâmes le quatrième jour une fameuse, nommée can ever excite again.

l'isle de Manitoualin.-Voyages du Baron de Lahontan, To Colonel Brock, of the 49th, who commanded at the tom. i. lett. 15. Manataulin signifies a place of Spirits, and Fort, I am particularly indebted for his kindness to me dur- this Island in Lake Huron is held sacred by the Indians. ing the fortnight. I remained at Niagara. Among many 5" The Wakon-bird, which probably is of the same pleasant days which I passed with him and his brother-offi- species with the bird of paradise, receives its name from the cers, that of our visit to the Tuscarora Indians was not the ideas the Indians have of its superior excellence; the Waleast interesting. They received us in all their ancient cos- kon-bird being, in their language, the Bird of the Great tume; the young men exhibited, for our amusement, in the Spirit.”—Morse. race, the bat-game, etc. while the old and the women sat 6 The islands of Lake Erie are surrounded to a considerin groups under the surrounding trees, and the picture alto-able distance by a large pond-lily, whose leaves spread gether was as beautiful as it was new to me.

thickly over the surface of the lake, and form a kind of bed 2 Anburey in his travels, has noticed this shooting illumi- for the water-snakes in summer. nation which porpoises diffuse at night thrcugh the St. Law- 7 " The gold-thread is of the vine kind, and grows in rence.-Vol. 1. p. 29.

swamps. The roots spread themselves just under the sur3 The glass-snake is brittle and transparent.

face of the morasses, and are easily drawn out by handfuls

;

Cull from thence a tangled wreath,

And, with his wings of living light unfurl'd,
Words of magic round it breathe,

Coasted the dim shores of another world!
And the sunny chaplet spread

Yet oh! believe me, in this blooming maze
O'er the sleeping fly-bird's head,'

Of lovely nature, where the fancy strays
Till with dreams of honey blest,

From charm to charm, where every flow'ret's hue
Haunted in his downy nest

Hath something strange and every leaf is new!
By the garden's fairest spells,

I never feel a bliss so pure and still,
Dewy buds and fragrant bells,

So heavenly calm, as when a stream or hill,
Fancy all his soul embowers

Or veteran oak, like those remember'd well,
In the fly-bird's heaven of flowers !

Or breeze, or echo, or some wild-flower's smell,
Oft when hoar and silvery flakes

(For, who can say what small and fairy ties
Melt along the ruffled lakes ;

The memory flings o'er pleasure, as it flies !)
When the gray moose sheds his horns,

Reminds my heart of many a sylvan dream
When the track, at evening, warns

I once indulg'd by Trent's inspiring stream;
Weary hunters of the way

Of all my sunny morns and moonlight nights
To the wigwam's cheering ray,

On Donnington's green lawns and breezy heights !
Then, aloft through freezing air,

Whether I trace the tranquil moments o'er
With the snow-bird? soft and fair

When I have seen thee cull the blooms of lore,
As the fleece that Heaven flings

With him, the polish'd warrior, by thy side,
O'er his little pearly wings,

A sister's idol and a nation's pride!
Light above the rocks I play,

When thou hast read of heroes, trophied high,
Where Niagara's starry spray,

In ancient fame, and I have seen thine eye
Frozen on the cliff, appears

Turn to the living hero, while it read,
Like a giant's starting tears !

For pure and brightening comments on the dead!
There, amid the island-sedge,

Or whether memory to my mind recalls
Just upon the cataract's edge,

The festal grandeur of those lordly halls,
Where the foot of living man

When guests have met around the sparkling board,
Never trod since time began,

And welcome warm’d the cup that luxury pour'd; Lone I sit, at close of day,

When the bright future Star of England's Throne, While, beneath the golden ray,

With magic smile, hath o'er the banquet shone,
Icy columns gleam below,

Winning respect, nor claiming what he won,
Feather'd round with falling snow,

But tempering greatness, like an evening sun
And an arch of glory springs,

Whose light the eye can tranquilly admire,
Brilliant as the chain of rings

Glorious but mild, all softness yet all fire !
Round the neck of virgins hung-

Whatever hue my recollections take,
Virgins, who have wander'd young

Even the regret, the very pain they wake
O'er the waters of the west

Is dear and exquisite !—but oh! no more-
To the land where spirits rest!

Lady! adieu-my heart has linger'd o'er
Thus have I charm’d, with visionary lay,

These vanish'd times, till all that round me lies, The lonely moments of the night away ;

Stream, banks, and bowers, have faded on my eyes.
And now, fresh day-light o'er the water beams !
Once more embark'd upon the glittering streams,
Our boat flies light along the leafy shore,

IMPROMPTU,
Shooting the falls, without a dip of oar
Or breath of zephyr, like the mystic bark

AFTER A VISIT TO MRS.

, OF MONTREAL. The poet saw, in dreams divinely dark, Borne, without sails, along the dusky flood, 'Twas but for a moment-and yet in that time While on its deck a pilot angel stood,

She crowded the impressions of many an hour : Her

eye had a glow, like the sun of her clime,

Which wak'd every feeling at once into flower, They resemble a large entangled skein of silk, and are of a bright yellow."'-- Morse.

Oh! could we have stol'n but one rapturous day, i L'oiseau mouche, gros comme un hanneton, est de toutes couleurs, vives et changeantes : il tire sa subsistence des

To renew such impressions again and again, fleurs coinme les abeilles ; son nid est fait d'un coton très- The things we could look, and imagine, and say, fin suspendu à une branche d'arbre.-Voyagés aux Indes Would be worth all the life we had wasted till then ! Occidentales, par M. Bossu. Second Part, lett. xx.

2 Emberiza hyemalis.-See Imlay's Kentucky, page 280.

3 Lafitau wishes to believe, for the sake of his Theory, What we had not the leisure or language to speak, that there was an order of vestals established among the We should find some more exquisite mode of reIroquois Indians ; but I am afraid that Jacques Carthier,

vealing, upon whose authority he supports himself, meant any thing but vestal institutions by the cabanes publiques” which he And, between us, should feel just as much in a week, met with at Montreal.—See Lafitau, Mæurs des Sauvages As others would take a millennium in feeling ! Americains, etc. tom. i. p. 173.

4 Vedi che sdegna gli argomenti umani;
Si che remo non vuol, nè altro velo,

Trattando 'l aere con 'leterne penne;
Che l' ale sue tra liti si lontani.

Che non si mutan, come mortal pelo.
Vedi come 'l ha dritte verso 'l cielo

Dante, Purgator. Cant. ii
T

3

stream

Well-peace to the land! may the people, at length, WRITTEN

Know that freedom is bliss, but that honour is ON PASSING DEADMAN'S ISLAND,' IN

strength; THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE,

That though man have the wings of the fetterless LATE IN THE EVENING, SEPTEMBER, 1804.

wind,

Of the wantonest air that the north can unbind, SEE you, beneath yon cloud so dark,

Yet if health do not sweeten the blast with her bloom, Fast gliding along, a gloomy bark !

Nor virtue's aroma its pathway perfume, Her sails are full, though the wind is still,

Unblest is the freedom and dreary the flight, And there blows not a breath her sails to fill !

That but wanders to ruin and wantons to blight! Oh! what doth that vessel of darkness bear? The silent calm of the grave is there,

Farewell to the few I have left with regret, Save now and again a death-knell rung,

May they sometimes recall, what I cannot forget, And the flap of the sails with night-fog hung !

That communion of heart and that parley of soul,

Which has lengthen'd our nights and illumin'd our There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore

bowl, Of cold and pitiless Labrador;

When they've ask'd me the manners, the mind, or Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,

the mein Full many a mariner's bones are tost !

Of some bard I had known, or some chief I had seen, Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck

Whose glory, though distant, they long had ador'd, And the dim blue fire, that lights her deck,

Whose name often hallow'd the juice of their board!

And still as, with sympathy humble but true, Doth play on as pale and livid a crew,

I told them each luminous trait that I knew, As ever yet drank the church-yard dew!

They have listen’d, and sigh'd that the powerful To Deadman's Isle, in the eye of the blast, To Deadman's Isle she speeds her fast;

Of America's empire should pass, like a dream, By skeleton shapes her sails are furl'd,

Without leaving one fragment of genius to say And the hand that steers is not of this world! How sublime was the tide which had vanish'd away!

Farewell to the few—though we never may meet Oh! hurry thee on-oh! hurry thee on Thou terrible bark! ere the night be gone,

On this planet again, it is soothing and sweet

To think that, whenever my song or my name Nor let morning look on so foul a sight

Shall recur to their ear, they'll recall me the same As would blanch for ever her rosy light!

I have been to them now, young, unthoughtful, and

blest,

Ere hope had deceiv'd me or sorrow deprest!
TO THE BOSTON FRIGATE,?

But, Douglas! while thus I endear to my mind ON LEAVING HALIFAX FOR ENGLAND, Oct. 1804. The elect of the land we shall soon leave behind, ΝΟΣΤΟΥ ΠΡΟΦΑΣΙΣ ΓΛΥΚΕΡΟΥ.-Pindar. Pyth. 4. I can read in the weather-wise glance of thine eye,

As it follows the rack flitting over the sky, With triumph, this morning, oh, Boston! I hail That the faint coming breeze will be fair for our flight, The stir of thy deck and the spread of thy sail, And shall steal us away, ere the falling of night. For they tell me I soon shall be wasted in thee, Dear Douglas! thou knowest, with thee by my side, To the flourishing isle of the brave and the free, With thy friendship to soothe me, thy courage to And that chill Nova-Scotia's unpromising strand

guide, Is the last I shall tread of American land.

There is not a bleak isle in those summerless seas,

Where the day comes in darkness, or shines but to 1 This is one of the Magdalen Islands, and, singularly

freeze, enough, is the property of Sir

Isaac Coffin. The above Not a tract of the line, not a barbarous shore, lines were suggested by a superstition very common among sailors, who call this ghost-ship, I think, " the Flying Dutch- That I could not with patience, with pleasure explore.

Oh! think then how happy I follow thee now, We were thirteen days on our passage from Quebec to Halifax, and I had been so spoiled by the very splendid hos- When Hope smooths the billowy path of our prow, pitality, with which my friends of the Phaeton and Boston And each prosperous sigh of the west-springing wind had treated me, that I was but ill prepared to encounter the Takes me nearer the home where my heart is enmiseries of a Canadian ship. The weather, however, was pleasant, and the scenery along the river delightful. Our

shrin'd; passage through the Gut of Canso, with a bright sky and a Where the smile of a father shall meet me again, fair wind, was particularly striking and romantic.

2 Commanded by Captain J. E. Douglas, with whom I And the tears of a mother turn bliss into pain; returned to England, and to whom I am indebted for many, Where the kind voice of sisters shall steal to my many kindnesses. In truth, I should but offend the delicacy

heart, of my friend Douglas, and, at the same time, do injustice to And ask it, in sighs, how we ever could part! my own feelings of gratitude, did I attempt to say how much I owe him.

But see !—the bent top-sails are ready to swell3 Sir John Wentworth, the Governor of Nova-Scotia, To the boat-I am with thee-Columbia, farewell! very kindly allowed me to accompany him on his visit to the College, which they have lately established at Windsor, about forty miles from Halifax, and I was indeed most plea- ling onwards, we should find the soil and the scenery imsanily surprised by the beauty and fertility of the country prove, and it gave me much pleasure to know that the worwhich opened upon us after the bleak and rocky wilderness thy Governor

has by no means such an "inamabile regnum" by which Halifax is surrounded. I was told that, in travel-l as I was, at first sight, inclined to believe.

man.

TO
NEVER mind how the pedagogue proses,

You want not antiquity's stamp,
The lip that 's so scented by roses,

Oh! never must smell of the lamp. Old Cloe, whose withering kisses

Have long set the loves at defiance,
Now done with the science of blisses,

May fly to the blisses of science !
Young Sappho, for want of employments,

Alone o'er her Ovid may melt,
Condemn'd but to read of enjoyments,

Which wiser Corinna had felt. But for you to be buried in books

Oh, Fanny! they're pitiful sages, Who could not in one of your looks

Read more than in millions of pages ! Astronomy finds in your eye

Better light than she studies above, And music must borrow your sigh

As the melody dearest to love. In Ethics—'tis you that can check,

In a minute, their doubts and their quarrels; Oh! show but that mole on your neck,

And 'twill soon put an end to their morals. Your Arithmetic only can trip

When to kiss and to count you endeavour; But eloquence glows on your lip

When you swear that you'll love me for ever Thus you see what a brilliant alliance

Of arts is assembled in you-
A course of more exquisite science

Man never need wish to go through!
And, oh-if a fellow like me

May confer a diploma of hearts, With my lip thus I seal your degree,

My divine little Mistress of Arts !

TO LADY HON AN OLD RING FOUND AT TUNBRIDGE-WELLS.

Tunbridge-Wells, August, 1805. WHEN Grammont grac'd these happy springs

And Tunbridge saw, upon her Pantiles, The merriest wight of all the kings

That ever rul'd these gay, gallant isles ;
Like us, by day, they rode, they walk'd,

At eve, they did as we may do,
And Grammont just like Spencer talk'd

And lovely Stewart smil'd like you !
The only different trait is this,

That woman then, if man beset her, Was rather given to saying “yes,

Because, as yet, she knew no better! Each night they held a coterie,

Where, every fear to slumber charm'd, Lovers were all they ought to be,

And husbands not the least alarm'd! They call'd up all their school-day pranks,

Nor thought it much their sense beneath To play at riddles, quips, and cranks,

And lords show'd wit, and ladies teeth. As—“Why are husbands like the Mint ?"

Because, forsooth, a husband's duty Is just to set the name and print

That give a currency to beauty. Why is a garden's wilder'd maze

Like a young widow, fresh and fair ?" Because it wants some hand to raise

The weeds, which “have no business there !" And thus they miss'd and thus they hit,

And now they struck and now they parried, And some lay-in of full-grown wit,

While others of a pun miscarried. 'Twas one of those facetious nights

That Grammont gave this forfeit ring, For breaking grave conundrum rites,

Or punning ill, or-some such thing; From whence it can be fairly trac'd

Through many a branch and many a bough, From twig to twig, until it grac'd

The snowy hand that wears it now. All this I'll prove, and then—to you

Oh, Tunbridge ! and your springs ironical, I swear by H-thc-te's eye of blue

To dedicate the important chronicle. Long may your ancient inmates give

Their mantles to your modern lodgers, And Charles' loves in H-the-te live,

And Charles' bards revive in Rogers ! Let no pedantic fools be there,

For ever be those fops abolish'd, With heads as wooden as thy ware,

And, Heaven knows! not half so polish'd. But still receive the mild, the gay,

The few, who know the rare delight Of reading Grammont every day,

And acting Grammont every night!

66

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1 I promised that I would give the remainder of this Poem, but, as my critics do not seem to relish the sublime learning which it contains, they shall have no more of its With a view, however, to the edification of these gentlemen, I have prevailed on an industrious friend of mine, who has read a great number of unnecessary books, to illumi. nate the extract with a little of his precious erudition,

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