O YE who tread with heedless feet
     This dust once laid with heroes’ blood,
A moment turn your backward glance
     To years of dread inquietude:
When wars disturbed our peaceful fields;

     When mothers drew a sobbing breath;
When the great river’s hilly marge
     Resounded with a cry of death.

Then, full of fire, the heroes sprang
     To save our heritage and laws.

They conquered! ’twas a holiday.
     Alas, the last in such a cause!
Bloody and shamed, the flag of France
     Perforce recrossed the widening seas;
The sad Canadian mourned his hopes,

     And cherished bitter memories.

But noble he despite his woe!
     Before his lords he proudly bends,
Like some tall oak that storms may shake,
     And bow, but never, never rend.

And oft he dreams a happy dream,
     And sees a flag, with lilies sown,
Come back whence comes the rising sun,
     To float o’er landscapes all his own. [page 159]

Oh when the south wind on its wings

     Bears to his ear strange sounds afar,
To him they seem the solemn chant
     Of triumph after clam’rous war.
Those echoes weird of gallant strife
     E’en stir the coffined warrior-dead,

As stirs a nation’s inmost heart
     At some proud pageant nobly led.

O France, once more ’neath Western skies,
     We see thy standards proudly wave!
And Mexico’s high ramparts fall

     Before thy squadrons, true and brave.
Peace shalt thou to the land restore;
     For fetters shalt give back the crown;
And with thy shining sword shalt hurl
     The base usurper from the throne.

Hear ye, how in their ancient urns
     The ashes of our heroes wake?
Thus greet they ye, fair sons of morn,
     For this their solemn silence break.
They greet ye, whose renown hath reached

     Past star on star to highest heaven!
Ye on whose brow their halo sits,
     To ye their altar shall be given!

Arise, immortal phalanxes,
     Who fell upon a glorious day!

Your century of mourning weeds
     Posterity would take away.
Arise and see! our woods and fields
     No longer nourish enemies!
Whom once ye fought are brothers now,

     One law around us throws its ties. [page 160]

And who shall dare our homesteads touch,
     That for our heritage ye gave:—
And who shall drive us from the shores
     To which your blood the verdure gave?—

E’en they shall find the oppressed will rise
     More powerful for the foe withstood;
And ever for such heinous crime
     Shall pay the forfeit with their blood.

Ye, our defenders in the past,

     Your names are still a household word!
In childhood’s ear old age recounts
     The toils your hardy youth endured.
And on the field of victory
     Hath gratitude your memory graved!

In during brass your story lives
     A glory to the centuries saved! [page 161]

THE SONG OF THE CANADIAN VOLTIGEURS.

——

FROM THE FRENCH OF P. LE MAY.

——

OUR country insulted
Demands quick redress.
To arms, Voltigeurs!
To the struggle we press.
From vict’ry to vict’ry,

Brave, righteous, and just,
Ours the mem’ries that cling to
Our forefathers’ dust.

Defend we our farm-lands,
Our half-crumbled walls!

Defend we our sweethearts,
Our hearths and our halls!
Our dear native tongue,
Our faith keep we free!
Defend we our life,

For a people are we!

No rulers know we, save
Our time-honoured laws!
And woe to the nation
That sneers at our cause.

Our fields and our furrows,
Our woods and our streams,
Should their columns invade,
Shall entomb their vain dreams!

To our foes, the perfidious,

Be war to the knife.
Intrepid, yet duteous,
We leap to the strife. [page 162]
More terrible shewing
In danger’s red hour;

We know to avenge,
And unbroken our power.

List the thunderous roar
As the shot rushes by!
To our war-song heroic,

The chorus of joy.
At the ring of the musket
To the battle we fly;
Come! come to the field,
See us conquer or die.

What! we become slaves
To an alien foe?
We bear their vile trammels?
Our answer is, No!
Assistance shall reach us

From heaven’s lucent arch:
Come! seize we our muskets
And “double-quick march!” [page 163]

THE LEGEND OF THE EARTH.

——

FROM THE FRENCH OF JEAN RAMEAU.

——

[The Prize Poem in the Christmas (1885) Number of the Paris Figaro, translated for the Week.]

WHEN the Creator had laid out the deeps,
The great illimitable fields of sad-eyed space,
A weighty bag upon His neck He threw,
Whence issued sound confused of huddled stars;

And, plunging in the sack His mighty hand,

He traversed all the ether’s wondrous plain
With slow and measured step, as doth a sower,
Sowing the gloomy void with many suns.

He tossed them—tossed them—some in fantastic groups,
And some in luminous; some terrible.

And ’neath the Sower’s steps, whose grain was stars,
The furrows of the sky, ecstatic, smoked.

He tossed them—tossed them—out of His whirling hand,
Plenteous in every place, by full broad casts
Measured to rhythmic beat; and golden stars

Flew o’er the wide expanse like firefly swarms.

“Away! away!” cried He of worlds the Sower:
“Away, ye stars! spring in the wastes of heaven;
Broider its purple fields with your fair gems;
Tuneful, elated, gladsome, take your course.

“Go, wave of fire, into a darksome night,
And there make joy, and there the pleasant day!
And launch into the depths immeasurable
Quick, quivering darts of glowing light and love! [page 164]
 
“I will that all within your bounds shall shine,

Be glad, be prosperous, happy, blest, content,
Shall sing for ever ‘Glory be to Thee,
Creator, Father, Sower, who with suns
                                                Hast filled infinity!’”

Thus He dismissed the stars, weighted with life,
Careering round their calm Creator’s feet

As, in a desert place July has scorched,
The grains of sand may cloud the traveller’s steps.

And glittered all, and sang; and, hindered not,
Upon their axes turned, constant and sure;
Their million million voices, strong and deep,

Bursting in great hosannas to the skies.

And all was happiness and right, beauty and strength;
And every star heard all her radiant sons
With songs of love ensphere her mother-breast;
And all blessed Life. And blessed the Highest Heaven.

          ·          ·          ·          ·          ·          ·

Now, when His bag of stars he had deplete,
When all the dark with orbs of fire was strown,
The Sower found at bottom, ’twixt two folds,
A little bit of shining sun, chipped off.

And wondering, knowing not what sphere unknown

Revolved in crimson space all incomplete,
The great Creator, at a puff, spun off
This tiny bit of sun far into space;

Then, mounting high up to His scarlet throne,
Beyond the mist of thickly scattered worlds,

Like a great crownèd king whose proud eye burns
At hearing from afar His people’s voice,
                                                                    He listens, [page 165]
And He hears
            The mighty Alleluia of the stars,
The choirs of glowing spheres in whirling flood
Of song and high apotheosis,

All surging to His feet in incense clouds.

He sees eternity with rapture thrilled;
He sees in one prolonged diapason
The organ of the universe, vehement, roll
For ever songs of praise to Him, the Sower.

But suddenly He pales. From starry seas
A smothered cry mounts to the upper skies;
It rises, swells, grows strong; prevailing o’er
All the ovation of the joyful spheres.

From that dim atom of the chippèd orb

It comes; from wretches left forsaken, sad,
Who weep the Mother-star, incessant sought
And never found from that gray point of sky.

And the cry said “Cursed! Cursed are we, the lost
By misery led, a wretched pallid flock,

Made for the light and tossed into the dark!

“We are the banished ones; the exile band;
The only race whose eyes are filled with tears.
And if the waters of our seas be salt,
’Twas our forefathers’ tears that made them so.

“Be He Anathema, the Sower of Light!
Be He Anathema, whom worlds adore!—
If to our native star He join us not
Be He accursed, through all creation cursed, for aye!”

Then rose the God from His great scarlet throne,

And gentle, moved, weeping as we, He stretched
His two bright arms over the flat expanse,
And in a voice of thunder launched reply:— [page 166]

“Morsel of Sun, calling thyself the Earth:—
Chrysalides on her grey bounds supine:—

Humanity—sing! for I give you Death,
The Comforter, he who shall lead you back
            Safe to your Star Light.

         ·          ·          ·          ·          ·          ·

And this is why—lofty, above mishap,
The Poet, made for stars of molten gold,

Spurns earth; his eyes fixed on the glowing heavens,
Toward which he soon shall take his freer flight. [page 167]

THE EMIGRANT MOUNTAINEER.

——

FROM THE FRENCH OF CHATEAUBRIAND.

——

How doth fond memory oft return
To that fair spot where I was born!
My sister, those were happy days
            In lovely France.
O, country mine, my latest gaze

            Shall turn to France!

Remember’st thou with what fond pride,
Our lowly cottage hearth beside,
She clasped us to her gladsome breast—
            Our dearest mother;

While on her hair so white, we pressed
            Kisses, together?

My sister, canst thou not recall
Doré, that bathed the castle wall,
And that old Moorish tower, war-worn

            And grey,
From whence the gong struck out each morn
            The break of day.

The tranquil lake doth mem’ry bring,
Where swallows poised on lightest wing;

The breeze by which the supple reed
            Was bent,—
The setting sun whose glory filled
            The firmament? [page 168]

Rememberest thou that tender wife,

Dearest companion of my life?
While gathering wild flowers in the grove
            So sweet,
Heart clung to heart, and Helen’s love
            Flew mine to meet.

O give my Helen back to me,
My mountain, and my old oak tree!
Memory and pain, where’er I rove,
            Entwine,
Dear country, with my heart’s deep love

            Around thy shrine. [page 169]

FROM “LIGHTS AND SHADES.”

——

FROM THE FRENCH OF VICTOR HUGO.

——

WHEN on the cliff, or in the wood
     I muse the summer evening by,
And realize the woes of life,
     I contemplate Eternity.

And through my shadow-chequered lot

     GOD meets my earnest, gazing eye;
As through the dusk of tangled boughs
     We catch bright glimpses of the sky.

Yes, when at last Death claims her own,
     The spirit bursts the bonds of sense,

And—like a nestling—in the tomb
     Finds pinions that shall bear her thence. [page 170]

VILLANELLE TO ROSETTE.

——

FROM THE FRENCH OF PHILIPPE DEPORTES, SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

——

IN my absence, though so short,
You, Rosette, had changed your mind:
Learning your inconstancy,
I, another mistress find.
Never more shall charms so free

Gain ascendancy o’er me.
            We shall see, oh light Rosette,
            Which of us will first regret.

While with tears I pine away,
Cursing separation drear;

You, who love by force of wont,
Took another for your dear.
Never vane all lightly hung,
To the wind more swiftly swung.
            We shall see, oh vain Rosette,

            Which of us will first regret.

Where are all those sacred vows,—
All those tears at parting wept?
Can it be those mournful plaints
Came from heart so lightly kept?

Heavens, that you so false could be!
Who shall trust you, cursed is he.
            We shall see, oh false Rosette,
            Which of us will first regret. [page 171]

He who to my place has climbed,

Ne’er can love you more than I;
And in beauty, love, and faith,
You’re surpassed I own with joy.
Guard your new love lest he range,
Mine, the darling, knows not change.

            Thus we put to proof, Rosette,
            Which of us will first regret. [page 172]