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 SONGS OF THE WILDERNESS: 
 
 BEING A 
 
 COLLECTION OF POEMS, 
 
 WRITTEN IN SOME DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE TERRITORY 
 
 OF THE Hudson's bay company, 
 
 AND IN THE WILDS OF CANADA, ON THE ROUTE TO THAT TERRITORY, 
 IN THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1844: 
 
 INTERSPERSED WITH SOME 
 
 ifUujftratibe Kote^* 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE J. MOUNTAIN, D.D. 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF MONTREAL. 
 
 PUBLISHED, (in THE EVENT OF ANY PROFITS ACCRUING,) FOR THE 
 
 BENEFIT OF BISHOP'S COLLEGE, AT LENNOXVILLE, 
 
 IN LOWER CANADA. 
 
 And this our life, exempt from public haunt, 
 Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks. 
 Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. 
 
 LONDON: 
 FRANCIS & JOHN RIVINGTON, 
 
 ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE. 
 
 1846. 
 
 
 

 96626 
 
 LONDON: 
 GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, 
 
 ST. John's square. 
 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The objects of the visit to Prince Rupert's 
 Land, which furnished occasion to these poems, 
 with some particulars of the journey, and some 
 descriptive sketches, as well as some details of 
 information respecting the country, the moral 
 and religious condition of its inhabitants, and 
 the Missions of the Church established for their 
 benefit, appear in three letters from the Author 
 to the Secretary of the Church Missionary 
 Society^ recently published by that body under 
 the title of a Journal \ of which they form a 
 
 ' Journal of the Bishop of Montreal, during a visit to the 
 Church Missionary Society's North-west America Mission 
 Hatchard, London. 
 
 a2 
 
IV 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 kind of abstract. If the poems should in any 
 quarter excite sufficient interest to prompt a 
 desire for information which can throw fuller 
 light upon the various scenes and incidents to 
 which they refer, those letters will precisely 
 form the proper accompaniment to the present 
 publication ; and there are few things in the 
 world which the Author of the poems can more 
 ardently desire, than to draw attention to the 
 statements contained in the letters, and to the 
 appeal to the religious sympathies of England, 
 with which the last of them is closed. 
 
 It was in furtherance of the objects of that 
 appeal, that the profits of the present publica- 
 tion, if any should accrue, were originally de- 
 signed to be applied. The Author had intended 
 that, in the event of their so far exceeding the 
 expectations which he could reasonably frame, 
 as to make them at all worth offering towards 
 a fund for the endowment of a Bishopric in the 
 

 PREFACE. V 
 
 Territory, they should be placed at the disposal 
 of the authorities who will be charged witli the 
 duty of forwarding this object ; the extreme 
 importance of which, sufficiently evident upon 
 the very face of the question, is a point urged 
 with some earnestness, upon special grounds, 
 in the journal already mentioned. And in the 
 more probable event of their failing to reach 
 the mark here contemplated, although they 
 should aiFord some surplus after the expenses 
 of publication, it had been his purpose to devote 
 them to a minor object, still within the same 
 territory. 
 
 The Church Missionary Society, however, 
 having seen good to follow up a suggestion 
 thrown out by himself, that the proceeds of his 
 Journal should go towards the flmd for esta- 
 blishing the Bishopric, and matters having been 
 put in due train, with promising appearances 
 of success, for effecting that object, he now feels 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Is 
 
 tliat having, already, to whatever feeble extent, 
 been permitted to become instrumental in pro- 
 moting it, both by his advocacy and by the 
 fruits of his authorship, he cannot resist the 
 pressing claims upon him which are nearer 
 home. The state of his own Diocese may be 
 known to those who are alive to the interests 
 of the Colonial Church, by means of the pub- 
 lications of the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel in Foreign Parts ' ; and he can 
 hardly believe that there is a single Colonial 
 Diocese in the empire, in which the need of 
 help is more severely felt. 
 
 The object, then, to which he now dedicates 
 the profits of this publication, is the College 
 newly opened under a charter obtained from 
 
 ^ He ventures to refer, in particular, to his own Journal, 
 published by the Society in 1844, with the heading, Church in 
 Canada, No. 2. Rivingtons, London. See, specially, pp. 54, 
 55, and 73—76. 
 
JEK 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Vll 
 
 tlie Provincial Legislature, by the name of 
 Bishop's College, at Lennoxville, in Lower 
 Canada, and mainly designed as a nursery for 
 clergymen in the diocese. A few words may 
 be here pennitted respecting the prospects and 
 the wants of this Institution. The Colleiie, 
 which is presided over by the Rev. Jasper 
 NicoUs, M.A., Michel Fellow of Queen's College, 
 Oxford, and the supreme control over wliich 
 is vested by the charter in the hands of the 
 Bishop, has been built chiefly by means of con- 
 tributions within the Diocese ; and has been 
 endowed, by friends of the Church in Canada, 
 with lands wliich, at some distant day, are 
 likely to be of considerable value. The Socie- 
 ties for the Propagation of the Gospel and for 
 Promoting Christian Knowledge (the former of 
 which allows £300 a-year for students in train- 
 ing for the holy ministry at the College, divided 
 at this moment into seven exhibitions,) have 
 each given £1000 towards the endowment ; 
 
Vlll 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 It 
 
 il 
 
 and a munificent donation to the Diocese from 
 a private individual in England, has been ap- 
 propriated to the same purpose of endowing 
 the College. Tlie clergyman upon the spot, 
 an indefatigable friend of the undertaking, has 
 made prospective arrangements to establish a 
 certain number of permanent divinity scholar- 
 ships. A good beginning has thus, by the 
 Divine blessing, been made, and abundant 
 credit is also due to those who have taken the 
 charge in hand. But the buildings are un- 
 finished ; the means of finishing them are 
 found to run short ; the object, eminently im- 
 portant in such an institution, of providing a 
 College chapel, which, with no other than 
 modest pretensions, shall yet familiarize to 
 the alumni of the College, a correct and 
 pleasing model of ecclesiastical architecture, 
 is not within the compass of any resources now 
 at command ; and, in order to eke out the sala- 
 ries of the Teachers, the gentleman who con- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IX 
 
 ducts the grammar -scliool, which forms a sub- 
 ordinate feature of the undertaking, and has 
 opened with the most promising appearances, 
 is also charged with a professorship in tlie Col- 
 lege, which cannot, under such an arrange- 
 ment, be rendered effective ; add to which, that 
 the hope of procuring a charter from the Crown 
 for the privilege of conferring degrees, is in- 
 definitely delayed from inability to provide for 
 the charges attending the execution of such an 
 instmment *. 
 
 ^ I do not feel satisfied to let this statement of the pro- 
 visions made in the Diocese for Theological education, go forth 
 to the world, without a passing tribute to a friend, although 
 he has ceased to be connected with them, the Rev. S. S. Wood, 
 M. A., of the University of Cambridge, Hector of Three Rivers. 
 It was in that place, under the direction of 4f. M. Wood, that 
 the aspirants to the ministry in the Diocese of Quebec pur- 
 sued their studies before the opening of the Collegiate Institu- 
 tion at Lennoxville ; and he will always be remembered by 
 them as an elegant scholar, a sound divine, and a fatherly 
 guide. The fruits of his care will, I trust, by the Divine 
 blessing, be seen, in conjunction with those proceeding from 
 the high advantages which, I am thankful to say, that the 
 College students are now enjoying. 
 
•^ 
 
 M 
 
 tl 
 
 I! I 
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 These particulars are stated, in the hope that 
 they may meet the eye of some of those liberal 
 English Christians who feel for the spiritual 
 wants of the colonies, and whom God has 
 blessed with the means of doing good ; and 
 that, whether in the shape of books for the 
 College library, or of pecuniary contributions, 
 such individuals may be moved to do =^ome- 
 thing better for the undertaking than the 
 cess of these poor efforts in poetry can pro- 
 mise *. 
 
 With reference to the calculations of this 
 
 ;>■. 
 
 * Donations of money or books for the College will be 
 thankfully received by the Rev. J. H. B. Mountain, Bli»4(«(f^ 
 ham, St. Neot's ; Rev. G. R. Mountain, Havant ; Rev. 
 H. Howarth, Rectory, St. George, Hanover-square ; Rev. 
 H. S. Slight-, G] i Lhi Chm i u jT College, Oxford ; T. H. Green, 
 Esq., Balliol College, Oxford. Subscriptions and Donations 
 may also be paid to Messrs. Coutts and Co., 69, Strand. 
 Although all the wants of the College are sufficiently press- 
 ing, that which is most immediately urgent, is the supply 
 of another Professor, to whom it is proposed to assign an 
 extremely moderate stipend ; but the means of making any 
 provision of the kind do not exist. 
 
i; c' 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 XI 
 
 
 success, I cannot avoid — (for however agreeably 
 it may throw a veil over the appearance of 
 egotistical obtrusiveness, I must discard the 
 inconvenient third person) — I cannot avoid feel- 
 ing very strongly that it is much more upon the 
 attraction which may possibly be found in the 
 nature of my journey, and the local peculiarity 
 of my subjects, — and, let me hope, upon the 
 religious interests with which they are asso- 
 ciated, — that I must rest my dependence, than 
 upon the power and charm of the poetry itself 
 I speak this in no affected humility ; although, 
 without affectation, I might well be allowed to 
 speak with diffidence respecting my hopes of an 
 experiment, hitherto untried on my own part, 
 before the public ; but I speak from the very 
 decided consciousness, that my poetry is not of 
 a school or a stamp to suit the prevailing taste 
 of the times. There are many things common, 
 of course, to the poetry of different periods, but 
 some special characteristics found in the poetry 
 
 i 
 
Il 
 
 Xll 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 I 
 I 
 
 M 
 
 I 
 
 of our own day (so far as I am acquainted with 
 it, in which point I must confess myself, from 
 the nature of my occupations and pursuits, 
 very greatly behind most persons who read at 
 all) are such as run counter, in many par- 
 ticulars, to my own tastes and to my own 
 predilections — perhaps I should say, my own 
 prejudices. To these, however, in poetry above 
 all things, I feel it to be impossible to do vio- 
 lence with any sort of happy effect. Neither in 
 the structure and cadence of verse, the observ- 
 ance of the rules of versification, or the discre- 
 tion taken to relax them, the taste exercised in 
 the choice of words and phrases, the imitation 
 in this point, if any where it occur, of our more 
 antiquated poets, the turn of thought, the fea- 
 tures of imagery, the tone and colouring of 
 meditative pictures, or the expansion, gene- 
 rally, of ideas conceived in the mind, can I 
 venture to think that I resemble those writers 
 who appear to render the spirit and fancy of 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Xlll 
 
 the age. I shall not undertake here to write a 
 dissertation upon the constituent properties of 
 poetrj, or the legitimate sources of that gratifi- 
 cation which it is fitted to afford through the 
 medium of the faculties bestowed upon man ; 
 much less shall I presume to indicate what 
 may possibly appear to my judgment to be 
 assignable to the list of fashionable faults in 
 some of our hodiernal publications of this 
 nature ; it is rather in the way of apology for 
 myself that I wish to speak, than in the 
 assumption of the task of critic — the apology 
 of one who has indeed written religious poetry 
 in later years, but whose habits of poetry were 
 formed only in youth, and moulded then, per- 
 haps, in an old-fashioned way. Apology, it 
 must be confessed, is, innate- sense, the vainest 
 thing in the world ; for the public are only 
 concerned with the actual quality of the 
 article which is offered to them, and not with 
 the circumstances by which that quality may 
 
t ,. 
 
 if 
 
 XIV 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 have been affected. But, in one point at least, 
 I wish to prepare my readers for what they 
 may expect from me. They will find nothing 
 of what I am tempted to call an ambitious dis- 
 play of mind and intellectuality '. I have seen 
 it pointed out in the remarks interspersed in 
 
 ^ The word itself is a sample of an ill-omened class of ad- 
 ditions to the language. We are fast gaining the new and 
 ostentatiously familiar use of such words as individiialUy, 
 finality f actuality^ &c. ; and the licence of coinage, which is 
 not quite mmpta pudenter in such as finality, conventionality, 
 objectivity, &c. &c. ; and as the first step to the adoption of 
 substantives of this category is often the formation of a new 
 adjective, we need not despair of soon seeing the language 
 enriched by the accession of such nouns as conversationality, 
 educationality, and others of affinity, in their formation, with 
 these, together with the farther improvement of their re- 
 spective x)lurals. Whatever I may venture to think of some 
 characteristics attaching to a portion of our modem poetry, I 
 should still esteem the authorship of the least to be com- 
 mended among these, far preferable to that of a great deal of 
 the prose of clever tourists and others, such as the critics of 
 second-rate periodicals extol as graphic and racy. If there 
 can be any thing really nauseating in mere literature, it does 
 appear to me, from the slight and occasional glances which I 
 get of them, to be found in these publications and these 
 criticisms. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XV 
 
 some collection of poetry for the use of schools, 
 as a detraction from the merit of Sir Walter 
 Scott's poetry, that he probably never wrote a 
 line (I do not remember the words, but they 
 were to the effect here stated) which was not 
 upon the first inspection fully intelligible. If 
 it be a recommendation of poetry to flatter the 
 reader by demands upon his sagacity, and his 
 powers of thought to penetrate the lurking 
 enigmas of the writer, I believe that he may 
 lay this book down ; for not only can I promise 
 him no such entertainment, but in some few 
 instances where I have thought a verse or two 
 to be obscure, I have, for that very reason, 
 altered them, and made them simple and per- 
 spicuous. Upon a similar principle, I have 
 afforded some explanations in my notes which 
 may appear in many eyes as quite beneath that 
 trouble. 
 
 Once more. I send forth these poems with 
 
 ; 
 
if 
 
 ^\ 
 
 5:' 
 
 i 
 
 XVI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 many things to be found in them me quoque 
 qui feci judice digna lini ; but these I must 
 leave to the chance of escape in some quarters, 
 and to the indulgence of those who may detect 
 them in others. My causej I hope, will stand 
 me in such stead as to enable me to shine with 
 a lustre not my own. And my present experi- 
 ment, if its result should be in any measure 
 encouraging, may prompt me, with the Divine 
 permission, to collect and arrange for publica- 
 tion some scattered pieces of poetry of older 
 dates, for the furtherance of other objects 
 within my diocese ^ 
 
 m 
 
 The history of the present volume is this. I 
 entered the Hudson's Bay territory without one 
 
 ^ The case of the Church of England in the diocese of 
 Quebec, is a case not only of difficulty and depression, but of 
 hardship. I might call it a long accumulation of hardships. 
 And at this moment, the destruction of two of our chapels in 
 Quebec, by the late awful conflagrations, has been added to 
 the catalogue of our wants and distresses. 
 
 i 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XVll 
 
 tliought of writing verses. But in travelling, 
 weeks after weeks, in a canoe through the wil- 
 derness, it is not easy to fill up the whole sum- 
 mer's day by reading, conversation, roughly 
 noting the incidents of the way, or simply 
 gazing about upon the scenery through which 
 you pass : and the perfect wildness of your life 
 for the time, together with the character of the 
 objects which surround you, cannot do other- 
 wise than suggest many contemplatioixs of a 
 poetic cast. While, then, / was thus musing, the 
 fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my 
 tongue in the accents which follow. With the 
 exception of five stanzas in the Lost Child, and 
 some verbal alterations here and there, much 
 too few and too slight to be worth mentioning, 
 the poems were all composed upon the journey; 
 now lounging in the canoe ; now lying awake, 
 for some short portion of the night, under my 
 tent ; now sitting upon a stone or a fallen tree, 
 while the people were carrying their loads 
 
 a 
 
*l 
 
 •I 
 
 M 
 
 In 
 
 XVIU 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 t 
 
 across a portage ; and first drawing, perhaps, 
 my veil round my neck, to protect my face and 
 ears from the mosquitoes, — in such a situation 
 specially apt to be annoying. The books which 
 I could carry, on account of the necessity of 
 bringing my baggage into a reduced compass, 
 were exceedingly few and very small ; and the 
 classical mottos, quotations, or allusions ', with 
 which I have left the volume garnished, are 
 mere common scraps of schoolboy, or, at best, 
 college recollections — (for many a long year 
 has passed by since I have, held familiar con- 
 verse with the authors from which they are 
 
 M 
 
 ' In the imitation, or rather translation, which will be 
 found in the eighth stanza of The Lost Child, of that beautiful 
 passage in the Georgiea which describes the wailing of the 
 nightingale, I had forgotten the context, and i!; will be seen 
 how much of the propriety of the original I have in con- 
 sequence lost ; for I cannot affirm for the poor Indians my 
 belief that their lamentations for their lost offspring were 
 uttered in Orphean strains ; and it can hardly be considered 
 as a compensation, that, as bereaved parents, their case was 
 nearer than that of Orpheus to the case of the nightingale. 
 
 
 i 
 
 "Vl. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XIX 
 
 ng, perhaps, 
 mj face and 
 1 a situation 
 books which 
 necessity of 
 ed compass, 
 11 ; and the 
 sions ', with 
 'nished, are 
 or, at best, 
 long year 
 bmiliar con- 
 ;h they are 
 
 which will be 
 ' that beautiful 
 wailing of the 
 it will be seen 
 [ have in Con- 
 or Indians my 
 offspring were 
 be considered 
 their case was 
 nightingale. 
 
 taken) — not always found, upon subsequent 
 examination of the passages where they occur, 
 to stand there in the happiest conjunction, with 
 reference to my own subjects. They must be 
 taken, in these instances, as adaptations, and 
 applied in their detached and naked force ; but 
 I have let them all stand, believing that they 
 may help to give some attraction to my book, 
 and liaving its attractiveness greatly at heart. 
 Upon this point I may be allowed, perhaps, to 
 quote from myself, in a little publication issued 
 at Quebec: — "I make no apology for having 
 interwoven any appropriate and perhaps suffi- 
 ciently obvious quotation, even from the lighter 
 class of poetry, which a memory not wholly 
 unretentive of some earlier acquirements may, 
 at the moment, have suggested, and which may 
 be fitted to enliven the attention of hearers or 
 of readers. On the contrary, I am not sorry 
 for an opportunity of pointing out how un- 
 founded is the prejudice which may possibly 
 
 a 
 
XX 
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 ♦ II 
 t 
 
 in some quarters exist against such a practice. 
 St. Paul quoted the heathen poets, and among 
 them a writer of comedy, to his purpose. (Acts 
 xvii. 28. 1 Cor. xv. 33. Tit. i. 1 2.) The ob- 
 jection, in fact, belongs to a class of prejudices 
 which, where they arc conscientiously enter- 
 tained, are entitled to be treated with con- 
 sideration, but which it is very undesirable to 
 cultivate. Hades and Tartarus are features in 
 the fabulous and monstrous mythology of the 
 heathen, but the names are transferred in the 
 New Testament to the awful realities of revela- 
 tion." 
 
 3 
 
 In the plan of the poems, a perfect sameness 
 will be found to prevail ; it being no other, in 
 every instance, than, having seized upon the 
 poetical idea presented by some passing object, 
 to follow it first in a merely poetical way, and 
 follow it on to that religious application which 
 must naturally suggest itself to every mind 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXI 
 
 I a practice, 
 and among 
 pose. (Acts 
 ) The ob- 
 i prejudices 
 usly entcr- 
 [ with con- 
 lesirable to 
 features in 
 logy of the 
 rred in the 
 s of revela- 
 
 jt sameness 
 
 other, in 
 
 1 upon the 
 sing object, 
 il way, and 
 btion which 
 ivery mind 
 
 impressed with the supreme importanco of re- 
 vealed truth. It would be great and most 
 groundless presumption to suppose that these 
 poems afford any remarkable exception to the 
 discouraging opinion upon the subject of sacred 
 poetry put forth by Dr. Johnson in his Life of 
 Watts ' ; but they, among others, may serve to 
 furnish an example how ordinary poetical feel- 
 ings and conceptions may be bent to a com- 
 pliance with the direction, that whatsoever we 
 do, we should do all to the glory of God. - 
 
 With reference, however, to that opinion, 
 generally, it is my own very decided convic- 
 tion, that subjects directly religious, and drawn 
 immediately from the Bible, are peculiarly sus- 
 ceptible of sublimity, pathos, and poetic interest 
 and effect, and that a tone of religious feeling 
 
 * " But his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatis- 
 factory. The paucity of its topics enforces perpetual repeti- 
 tion, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of 
 figurative diction. It is sufficient for Watts to have done 
 better than others what no man has done well." 
 
i 
 
 t 
 
 i I 
 
 ', I 
 
 :> Hi 
 
 S 
 
 xxu 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 
 ■5'f I 
 
 ^ 
 
 will shed a new fervour and light over all which 
 a poetic mind can prompt. 
 
 The first canto of Thr Lost Child will he 
 found to he a poem complete in itself ; and, in 
 any case, it would have been to very little pur- 
 pose to withhold the livraison till the other 
 cantos shall he written of which I have sketched 
 out the plan (although the second is designed 
 to have direct reference to the territory itself 
 and its native population) — for it is doubtful 
 whether that task will ever be accomplished — 
 probable that it will not. In the exercise of 
 my ordinary duties, which comprehend some 
 very serious additions to the charge of a diocese 
 in itself demanding the most constant, watchful, 
 and solicitous attention, my lot is not so cast as 
 to leave many moments for poetical recreation. 
 It is now upwards of a year since I returned 
 from the territory ; and far from having been 
 able to add to the one stanza of the second 
 canto, which I composed upon my journey, it 
 
PREFAOE. 
 
 XXlll 
 
 Dvcr all which 
 
 'Jhild will he 
 ;sclf; cand, in 
 Lii'y little pur- 
 ill the other 
 liavc sketched 
 id is designed 
 erritory itself 
 it is doubtful 
 complished — 
 le exercise of 
 rchend some 
 e of a diocese 
 |ant, watchful, 
 ot so cast as 
 al recreation, 
 e I returned 
 having been 
 the second 
 journey, it 
 
 is only, as I can truly say, by forced efforts 
 that I have been enabled to prepare tlio pre- 
 sent volume for the press. The length of this 
 Prefiice, (which, indeed, is too long, and too 
 full of the author,) and the descriptive details 
 into which I feel ashamed of having been, in a 
 manner, entrapped, in the notes subjoined to 
 some of the poems, may seem inconsistent with 
 such a statement. Witli reference, however, to 
 the former, the saying of an ancient author will 
 be remembered, respecting one of his letters, 
 that it was long, but that he had not had time 
 to make it shorter. For the poems themselves, 
 their author will bless God, if, independently 
 of the direct object connected with their pub- 
 lication, he can hope that they will, in any 
 instance, verify the auguries expressed in the 
 well-known but appropriate couplet of good old 
 Herbert — 
 
 A verse may find him who a sermon flies, 
 And turn deliglit into a sacrifice. 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 
 '!i 
 
 • 1 1 ' 
 
 m( 
 
 III 
 
 LIST OF PLATES. 
 
 Bishop's College, Lennoxville 
 
 Canoe 
 
 Indian Cradle 
 
 Indian Woman and Child 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
 . PAGE 29 
 
 . — 73 
 . — lOG 
 
 if I 
 
 ■•f 
 
 \i 
 
 II 
 
 .^ 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 iLr" It is recommended that the book should not be read 
 without attention to the following Errata, — some of Ihe errors 
 which, from its publication at a distance, have crept into its 
 leaves, being accidentally such as lo make the correction of 
 them absolutely essential to the sense or the good effect of the 
 passages where they occur. 
 
 Page ix of the Preface, in the Foot note, for J. M. Wood, 
 
 read Mr. Wood. 
 Page X Do. do., for Bloxham read Blonham and for Christ 
 
 Church, read Corpus Christi. 
 Page xiii Do., fifth line from the bottom, /or in our sense, read 
 
 in one sense. 
 
 M 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
 . PAGE 29 
 
 . - T'i 
 . — IOC 
 
 I 
 
 Page 8, Notes on Lake of the dead, in the Foot note, for Dog 
 Lakes, 7'ead Dog Lake. 
 
 Page 13, fourth line, /or Fragrant the columbine, read Fre- 
 quent the columbine. 
 
 Page 18, third line, /or Sweet children, read Swart children. 
 
 Page 31, first line 6th Stanza, /or newly froze, read newly 
 loose. 
 
 Page 48, twelfth line, /or from Europe read for Europe. 
 
 skimmering 
 
 light, read 
 
 Page 97, fourth line of sonnet, for 
 
 shimmering* light. 
 Page IOC, end of seventh line, /or strong, read stray. 
 Page 111, sixth line, for ! heavenly lore, read Or heavenly 
 
 lore. 
 Page 119, fourth line, for With laughter forced, read Loud in 
 
 forced laugh. 
 Page 132, in the foot note, for Grange, German, g-rang-e, read 
 
 Grange G. [Gallice] strange. 
 Page 143, second line, /or gentle features, read gentler features ; 
 
 and last line but two, for some bent create, read some 
 
 vent create. 
 The two concluding Stanzas of the Lost Child in the MS. 
 have, by some accident, been omitted in printing the book. 
 They arc here 'upplied. 
 
 LV. 
 
 'Tis true thou hast a towering hope within, 
 
 Thou art a gifted creature of thy God : 
 
 But ah ! this withering principle of Sin 
 
 Shev.rs but the more and brings the heavier rod. 
 
 Soon will thy little pilgrimage be trod 
 
 Soon thy mixed history have its earthly close ; 
 
 Thy wondrous body sleep beneath tiie sod, 
 
 Thy wondrous soul — has that no wants and those 
 
 Such wants as wondrous means to meet must interpose 1 
 
 * A word which I do not find in the dictionaries, but which is 
 used by Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 m 
 
^aSB*^" 
 
 ^R 
 
 1 f 
 
 i 1 
 
 LVI. 
 
 Behold them ready — see tiie table spread 
 The servants senl to bid each honored guest : 
 What if the proud disdain their Master's bread. 
 With interests busy, with engagements pressed I 
 Call in the halt, the blind, the poor distressed : 
 They come, but room ren)ains — scour, then, for more 
 Hedge and highway — it is the Lord's behest : 
 That host shall not a friendless feast deplore 
 That God can outcasts lost, to hope and Heaven restore. 
 See Luke xiv., 16, &c. 
 
 The following corrections in punctuation, k.c,, will also be 
 found materially to help the sense. 
 
 P. 34, 3d line, /or embrace j read embrace, 
 Do., 2d line of stanza xv, for prostrate lie read prostrate lie : 
 
 P. 41, last line but two, /or In want — who shiver, read In want 
 who shiver. 
 
 P. 43, 4lh line, /or travelling beast, read travelling beast, — 
 
 P. 74, last line but one (in the foot note,) for engraving, which 
 gives, read engraving which gives, &c. N.B. The two 
 engravings of the Indian cradle ought to have been 
 placed in conjunction with this Sonnet No. III., and the 
 engraving which gives a front view is mentioned in the 
 note as distinguished from the other engraving which 
 gives a side view. 
 
 P. 123, for Wailing worse changes yet. But where is she, read 
 Waiting worse changes yet — but where is she. 
 
 P. 134, 2d linp, /or domestic life read domestic life ! and first 
 line of Stanza XLI., for One farther step, behold read 
 One farther step — behold 
 
 P. 136, last line bwt one for temper fine, read temper fine : 
 
 P. 137, last line but two, for power unconscious; how began, 
 read power unconscious, how began 
 
 P. 143, For child of dust, with pride elate, read child of dust 
 with pride elate : 
 
 In the Engraving of the Canoe, the number of Canoe-men, 
 instead of twelve as there exhibited, ought to have been repre- 
 sented M fourteen, as described in the poem. 
 
 I 
 
 u 
 
x'yff 
 
 J, 
 
 ^B 
 
 3r more 
 
 en restore. 
 
 kc, will also be 
 
 zad prostrate lie : 
 I'er, read In want 
 
 lling beast, — 
 engraving, which 
 N.B. The two 
 ht to iiave been 
 No. III., and the. 
 mentioned in the 
 '■ngraving which 
 
 here is she, read 
 is she. 
 
 c hfe ! and first 
 tep, behold read 
 
 temper fine : 
 us; how began, 
 
 id child of dust 
 
 ' of Canoe-men, 
 liave been repre- 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i; The Lake of the Dead 1 
 
 The Rose of the Wilderness 11 
 
 The Toils of the Voyageur 29 
 
 k The Rainbow at the Kakab^ka Falls 59 
 
 S>onnet0. 
 
 I. On the arts of the Waterfowl to defend their 
 
 young 69 
 
 II. The Indian's Grave 71 
 
 III. To an Infant left hanging on a fence .... 73 
 
 IV. A day on Rainy Lake River 75 
 
 V. Evening of the same day at Rainy Lake Fort . . 77 
 
 VI. On seeing a Wolf 79 
 
 VII. On a Saint's-day 81 
 
 VIII. Thunder Bay 82 
 
 IX. A Birth-day reflection 84 
 
 • 
 
, 
 
 
 i ¥ 
 
 XXviii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 X. Sunday morning on Lake Superior 86 
 
 XI. Evening of the same day on the shore of Lake 
 
 Superior 93 
 
 XIL An incident in ascending French River .... 95 
 
 XIII. On the loss of a Pencil in French River ... 96 
 
 XIV. The Fire-fly 97 
 
 XV. Mosquitoes 99 
 
 XVI. The Lumberers 101 
 
 The Lost Child : a Poem. Canto 1 105 
 
 
 j^HS' 
 
 ' ii^^j 1 
 
 ' 1 
 
 & k ii 
 
 ,■* 
 
He Uac tjes Moxt». 
 
 Res obscura quidem est ignobilitate virorum 
 
 vidi prsesens stagnumque lacumque. 
 
 Ov. Met. 
 
 Lake of the dead, I find not why 
 ' This name is thine, from tale or song : 
 Living are none who meet the eye 
 Morn after morn, these wilds along. 
 
 It may be, in an earlier day 
 
 Some Indian strife disturbed the scene ; 
 I And man's red blood, of man the prey, 
 
 Mix'd with thine azure waves serene. 
 
 I It may be that with maddening yells 
 
 These wood-clad shores and isles have rung, 
 
 B 
 
 I 
 
 
 , I 
 
I 
 
 ii 
 
 M/) 
 
 I 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 n; 
 
 ■J 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 2 LE LAC DBS MORTS. 
 
 And chiefs whose name no legend tells \ 
 Dead in thy rocky depths were flung. 
 
 Perchance more late some hardy crew, 
 
 Charged with the northern hunter's spoils, 
 
 Freight to far cities yearly due. 
 
 Closed in thy breast their earthly toils. 
 
 Oft did their bell-toned chorus sound 
 In strains received from Norman sires : 
 
 Oft did the forests glare around 
 In witness of their nightly fires. 
 
 Through many a whirling flood they sent 
 Fearless and prompt their bark-built boat ; 
 
 Anon their single canvass bent 
 Glad idly in free space to float. 
 
 . . . . illachrymabiles 
 Urgentur ignotique, longd 
 Nocte carent quia vate sacro. 
 
LE LAC DES MORTS. 
 
 3lls \ 
 
 ing. 
 
 iW, 
 
 r'a spoils, 
 toils. 
 
 Too venturous once — if thence tliv name 
 Fair Lake — and have such chances been ? 
 
 — Ah ! let each lowly cross proclaim 
 Along this lengthening journey seen. 
 
 sires : 
 
 [Lake of the dead — thy shores beside 
 In evening gloom now gathering fast, 
 
 |No shadowy forms or phantoms glide, 
 No shrieks unearthly swell the blast : 
 
 M 
 
 sent 
 lilt boat ; 
 
 fet if beneath thy lonely waves 
 The bones of sinful man be spread, 
 
 hou, like old Ocean's hidden caves, 
 Shalt yield thy long-forgotten dead. 
 
 Proud piles where ancient monarchs sleep, 
 
 Rude graves, rich tombs with sculpture choice, 
 
 The battle-field, the stream, the deep, 
 Tc stir their dead^ shall hear a voice. 
 
 b2 
 
f '■" ••■ 
 
 :,gffir,-aiff-''as 
 
 I* 
 
 II 
 
 XE LAO DBS MORTS. 
 
 Arise !— the trumpet rends the air — 
 The books are spread, prepared the throne 
 
 The Angel lifts his hand to swear 
 That time shall be no longer known. 
 
 Forth from their holds the myriads come 
 Nation on nation, tribe on tribe : 
 
 To tell them or to take their sum 
 who could find an earthly scribe ? 
 
 Lake of tl ^ dead — There is a lake 
 Where men in second death, expire : 
 
 No hope they own, no respite take ; 
 It is, great God ! a lake of fire. 
 
 It 1 
 
 Sin, envenomed curse of sin, 
 Fast cleaving to our helpless race. 
 
 Flight from that curse what hope to win ? 
 What means a holy God to face ? 
 
 Ill 
 
I: 1 
 
 LE LAC DES MORTS. 
 
 there are means — eternal love 
 Has found a ransom for the lost ; 
 
 He who in glory sits above 
 Himself has paid the Lloody cost. 
 
 Look to your victim and revive ; 
 Look to your Lord and hear Him tell, 
 
 1 who was dead am now alive ; 
 
 I hold the keys of death and hell. 
 
 On Him, on Him your hope be cast ; 
 
 On Him, the heart-struck sinner's friend ; 
 On Him, the first, on Him the last, 
 
 Him the beginning. Him the end ! 
 
 See Rev. xx. 13. 1 Cor. xv. 52. Rev. xx. 12. Matt. xxv. 
 31, 32. Rev. x. 6. Isa. xxxiii. 18. Rev. xx. 15 ; xxi. 8. 
 Rev. i. 18 ; xxii. 13. 
 
 i'J 
 
 I- ; , 
 
 I 
 
 < • 
 
 •fffi 
 
 r 
 
ff 
 
 » * ■ 
 
 lit! 
 
 i I, 
 
 isr 1 e 
 
 ON 
 
 THE LAKE OF THE DEAD. 
 
 ni 
 
 }, 
 
 The strictures of Dr. Johnson upon one of the 
 Epitaphs of Pope, on account «>/ its defect of 
 information, left to he gained from other 
 sources, — the poet "whose verses wander over 
 the earth, and leave their subject behind them," 
 being forced, like an unskilful painter, to make 
 his purpose known by adventitious help,— may- 
 be extended to poems of other kinds : but the 
 author of this volume believes that his subjects 
 are usually intelligible without any supple- 
 
NOTES ON THE LAKE OF THE DEAD. 
 
 ^D. 
 
 mcntary explanation. A few particulars of in- 
 formation, however, may here and there be 
 stated, which may seem to add something to 
 their interest, and which are not found, so far 
 as his recollection serves him, in the journal 
 mentioned in the Preface. He speaks from re- 
 collection only, the original letters which form 
 the journal having been sent oif, as fast as they 
 were written, to England. 
 
 L one of the 
 ts defect of 
 from other 
 vander over 
 bind them,'' 
 er, to make 
 help, — may 
 is: but the 
 his subjects 
 ,ny supple- 
 
 9 
 
 The Lake of the Dead is not laid down, or 
 not under that name, in any of the maps Avhich 
 I have seen ; nor mentioned, so far as I am 
 aware, in any book. Maps and books, indeed, 
 will readily be understood to pass without 
 notice a multitude of lesser lakes, forming part 
 of the extended chain of waters through which 
 the route of the traveller is carried, and which 
 exhibit every variety, from Lakes Superior, 
 Huron, and Winnipeg, which may be called 
 fresh-water inland seas, down to the clear pond 
 
 
S:. 
 
 ' ; i 
 
 8 NOTES ON 
 
 embosomed in wooded hills which hears the 
 name of Cold Lake ', — or, among rivers, from 
 the magnificent Ottawa to obscure and skulk- 
 ing streams, where you seem to be stealing 
 your way along, as if to hide from pursuit, 
 which barely afford passage for the canoe. The 
 more experienced voyageurs have names for 
 them all, although it does not invariably 
 happen that they are agreed which is which. 
 The Lake of the Dead, however, was not the 
 subject of any such difference among our 
 people. It is a fine sheet of water studded 
 with islets, and, according to the account of 
 our guide, about a dozen miles in length, by 
 
 2 The Lake of the Dead, however, appears to be nearly 
 of the same chiss with others which are found upon the maps, 
 such as Dog Lake^, Lake of the Thousand Islands, Ridge, 
 Sturgeon, and Cross Lakes, the hitter of which are in its 
 own neighbourhood. I find tliat in my homeward journal, 
 I have suggested a doubt whether this Lake is not to be 
 identified with that which is la'd down in Arrowsraith's maps 
 as Ridge Lake, but I cannot perfectly reconcile this conjec- 
 ture with other portions of the notes of my route. 
 
 u 
 
THE LAKE OF THE DEAD. 
 
 
 
 perhaps rather more than half as many in 
 breadth. A spot is pointed out in the portage 
 at one of its extremities, in a thick wood, com- 
 j)Osed, in part, of straiglit and noble pines, 
 where a man is said to have been killed by the 
 fall of a tree ; but the name of the lake, 
 though ambiguous in point of number, in Eng- 
 lish, cannot, in the original French, be traced 
 to this circumstance, since in this language it 
 is in the plural (for which reason I have lieaded 
 the stanzas with the French title). The 
 portage is also called the PoHage des Morts, 
 but, with little doubt, after the Lake. 
 
 V 
 
 ! 
 
 We passed many whole days on the journey 
 without getting a glimpse even of a solitary 
 savage gliding by in his little canoe, or of a 
 straggling half-naked family peeping out of the 
 opening of the conical tent of bark-covered 
 poles, among the trees ; l)ut in this part of the 
 
.-1 f 
 
 ■Ji 
 
 10 
 
 NOTES ON THE LAKE OF THE DEAD. 
 
 route we were five days and a half without 
 encountering a single human being. 
 
 Respecting the quondam brigades of canoes 
 which passed by this route laden with peltries, 
 and the song of the voyageurs, I may refer to 
 The toils of the Voyageur in this volume ; and 
 respecting the crosses erected to mark the 
 graves of persons drowned on the way, to the 
 journal above noticed. 
 
 
 
lil 
 
 {Gathered in crossing a portage on the Rirer IFiwwfper/.) 
 
 Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
 And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 
 My Father made them all. 
 
 What doest thou here, fair rose, on rocky shore 
 Opening thy pure and scented breast to blush 
 
 In these rude wilds, where, with eternal roar, 
 Of thundering Winnipeg the waters rush ? 
 
 Were, at this spot, his foam and fury less, 
 
 Could travellers (few, in sooth, and far between) 
 
 Still in his stream their onward journey press, 
 No hand had found thee and no eye had seen. 
 
 
u 
 
 m 
 
 iii 
 
 12 
 
 THE ROSE 
 
 Nor thou alone — on many a tufted ledge, 
 
 Gay floweret, shrub or tree with blossom 
 white. 
 
 Stud the dark woods or fringe the water's edge, 
 Greeting the curious eye with gladsome sight. 
 
 Not here of softer climes the gorgeous boast. 
 Forests with broad festoons luxuriant hung, 
 
 In Yucatan or Guatimala's coast. 
 
 Or brilliant flowers on earth profusely flung : 
 
 Yet such as Nature to a northern land, 
 
 (Screened by its site from many a splendid 
 harm,) 
 More modest gives, and with more measuring 
 hand, 
 ' These are not wanting nor without their charm. 
 
 Earliest the tryllium, and the bloody plant 
 Which seems to wound the gathering hand, are 
 seen ; 
 
OF THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 13 
 
 Pink kalmia gems the swamp ; on rocky slant 
 Thick harebells blow ; meek violet decks the green. 
 
 The Virgin's slipper now is made our prize ; 
 
 fea^a«L the columbine with drooping head ; 
 Iris ; lobelia ; bindweed's tenderest dyes, 
 
 « 
 
 Pale pendent lily, or erect and red. 
 
 The Queen of Lilies too, whose crown of gold, 
 Fragrant in milk-white cup imbedded deep, 
 
 More curious shows than Solomon's of old. 
 On reedy waters slow delights to sleep. 
 
 These but a part — for sundry more than these. 
 E'en in these wilds, a passing pluck invite : 
 
 Nor will I labour here, of blossom'd trees 
 Or lowlier shrubs, a student's list to write. 
 
 jirr 
 
 ■<: 
 
 ■■JM 
 
 ■,ji! 
 
 ^( 
 
 \. \ 
 
 ( 
 
 i 
 
 Yet thee I name, first blown and farthest found. 
 Slim mespilus, — thee, rowan, sweet to view ; 
 
 Cherry of spicy scent and bosom round. 
 With grape-like clusters graced in season due. 
 
 '< W' • I 
 
if' 
 
 !;! 
 
 \ 
 
 i 
 
 ;/i 
 
 I i 
 
 n 
 
 \ 
 
 14 
 
 THE ROSE 
 
 Remnants of Paradise — and thou, fair rose, 
 Loveliest of all, albeit a simple flower. 
 
 Thrown freely here, — how trebly prized by those 
 Who in you find a Father's gracious power ! 
 
 It shames me not — I choose a common theme ; 
 
 I weave it in no mystic web refined ; 
 My willing thoughts I yield to Nature's stream ; 
 
 I mingle in the feelings of mankind. 
 
 Call them not mean nor trite, these obvious 
 things : 
 
 Say whence it is that, in the lengthened course 
 Of ages, lay like lay re-echoed rings. 
 
 Save that its charm has inexhausted force. 
 
 The cliangeful seasons bring their train of 
 thought ; 
 
 The bloom of spring ; the harvest's golden glow; 
 The fading year with pensive musings fraught ; 
 
 With fancies dim, rude storm or driving snow. 
 
OF THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 15 
 
 Lo ! where the sun in glory sinks — or where 
 
 The clear cold moon flings on some silent lake, 
 Or through deep-shadowing pines, her streamers 
 fair — 
 Such scenes, such pictures, what can trivial * 
 make? 
 
 1: 
 
 I 
 
 A . :|J 
 
 Stray through the peaceful fields ; roam on and tread 
 The heath, the mountain-wilds, the rocks : stand 
 still, 
 And gaze upon the deep * ; lift up your head, 
 Trace the starr'd vault of night and take your 
 fill: 
 
 ! 
 
 r( 
 
 * This word and the word present in the end of a line four 
 stanzas further on, are intended to be accepted in their 
 proper and original force ; the former being equivalent to 
 that which describes a common roadside object, and the 
 latter to one of our modern uses of the same word present in 
 its reduplicated form, represent. See the Mask of Comus, 
 &c. &c. 
 
 ^ The contemplation of the deep appears among the ancients 
 to have had its peculiar but still various attractions in very 
 different moods of the human mmd ; for example, in the dark 
 
 i! 
 
 ' ( 
 
16 
 
 THE ROSE 
 
 you will feel what men have felt before ; 
 
 The chords are touch'd, which, in the human 
 breast, 
 Responsive note still render o'er and o'er ; 
 
 Nor be they there fastidiously repressed. 
 
 Let them lead on to God — by number, Ho 
 By weight, by measure all things formed at first ; 
 
 By Him the day returns, by Him the sea 
 Flows and flows back, the flowers and foliage 
 ' burst. 
 
 Rose of the wilderness — an emblem choice 
 Be thou, the Rose of Sharon to present : 
 
 and revengeful broodings of bitter disappointment, in the 
 Homeric description of Achilles : 
 
 AaKpv(raQ erapiov d<j>ap s^iTo voff^e XiaaOelg, 
 Oil/* 1^' aXbg TroXirjg, opoujv irrt oiyoTra ttovtov' 
 
 and the romantic sort of abandonment to tenderness of passion 
 which is pictured by Theocritus : 
 
 'A\X' virb Tq. irkrpq, rq.h' ^(xofxai dyKae ix<iiv tv 
 ^vvvofia fxdX! kaopiJVf rdv ^iKeXctv ig dXa, 
 
OF THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 17 
 
 could ^liis desert as the rose rejoice, 
 Spread sacred bloom, and breathe immortal 
 scent ! 
 
 could the broken tribes, in spots apart 
 
 Of these far woods who plant their shifting home, 
 
 The Shepherd of their souls receive in heart, 
 Own his blest voice, and owning cease to roam ! 
 
 And God be thank'd ! the process is begun ; 
 
 Wide in the soil the seeds of blessing lurk ; 
 Wide will the leavening efficacy run 
 
 Through the crude mass, and do it's destined work. 
 
 See on the margin of the ruddy stream ^ 
 
 (So named) where meads in boundless level 
 spread, 
 Men of mix'd race — (who thence of good would 
 dream ?) 
 The stock once spiTing from many a lawless bed : 
 
 ^ The seat of the Red River Settlement. 
 
 C 
 
 
 r li.: 
 
 \ ( 
 
 i li' 
 i 111 
 
 'i, 
 
 I' 
 
 
18 
 
 THE ROSE 
 
 1 
 
 j 
 t 
 
 I I 
 
 I ,'■ 
 
 w 
 
 \ 
 
 See now with these in every social tie 
 
 And Christian bond, — oh, sight to glad the mind ! 
 
 art 
 Swtit children of the woods with lustrous eye 
 
 And old Europa's paler sons combined. 
 
 (Ireek, Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, 
 Unknown in Christ — himself is all in all ! ' 
 
 Come on, blest hour, when by a sure decree 
 Falls the last fragment of dividing wall. 
 
 faithful labour of a little band \ 
 
 In all these happier fruits how prime your 
 share ! 
 High-favour'd Zion of our parent land 
 
 Still stretch, and wider still, thy fostering care. 
 
 Thy workmen here for shame have little cause : 
 Powerful through faith and prevalent in love, 
 
 7 The Missionaries of the Church Missionary Society in the 
 Territory. 
 
 ill 
 
OF THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 19 
 
 Doubly they give the roving Indian laws, 
 Guide him for earth, and mould him for above. 
 
 They train his docile child with wise control ; 
 
 The arts of life they teach with patient toil ; 
 And, emblem of their labours for his soul, 
 
 Prompt him to build, to graze, to till the soil. 
 
 I ^ . 
 
 Strong be the structure which their pains upraise, 
 Believers built on Christ the corner-stone ! 
 
 Full be their folds, to God's eternal praise. 
 
 Rich be the harvest which their hands have 
 sown ! 
 
 Yes, stedfast brethren, he whose feeble pen 
 Has traced these lines, to others now ^ returns 
 
 Bound to himself by closer claim, and men 
 Not few, whose zeal his fervent tribute earns \ 
 
 « These lines were finished at the Red River Settlement. 
 * The Clergy of the Church of England in Lower Canathi 
 chiefly Missionaries of the Incorporated Society for the Pro- 
 
 C2 
 
i< 
 
 IH H: 
 
 I 
 
 'I 
 
 20 
 
 THE ROSE OF THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 There lies his constant task ; — yourselves, per- 
 chance, 
 
 He sees below no more ; yet oft to you, 
 Oft to your charge well-pleased will memory glance, 
 
 And all be yours his humble prayer can do 
 
 pagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, tlie early nurse, and the 
 bountiful, persevering protectress of the Colonial Churches. Some 
 account of their labours and privations may be found in my 
 journals of 1840 and 1843, published by the Society, and sold 
 by Rivingtons, Hatchard, and Burns, particularly in pp. 13,23, 
 47, and 76, of the latter. . , 
 
 See Job xxviii. 25. Isa. xl. 12. 26. Wisd. xi. 20. Isa. xxv. 1. 
 Cant. ii. 1. 1 Pet. ii. 26. John x. 4. Matt. xiii. 33. Col. iii. 11. 
 Eph. ii. 14. 2 Tim. ii. 15. Eph. ii. 20, and 1 Pet. ii. 5. John 
 iv. 35, and Matt. ix. 38. 
 
Notes 
 
 ON 
 
 THE ROSE OF THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 The plants of larger and smaller growth, which 
 are mentioned by name in the preceding poem, 
 are all found in one portion or other of the 
 route to the Red River, commencing from the 
 banks of the St. Lawrence, and almost all of 
 them are very widely diffused over that extent 
 of country. The tryllium (in some of its varie- 
 ties) and the sanguinaria appear in profusion 
 about Quebec, in the former part of May, while 
 the woods, in that locality, are still leafless, 
 
 t 
 
 1! 
 
 i ! 
 
 
 ( 
 
 'i 
 
 V Li 
 
 m 
 
ill 
 
 22 
 
 NOTES ON 
 
 and there is scarcely an api)roacli to verdure in 
 the fields. The harebell, an exceedingly com- 
 mon plant, ornaments the rocks in abundance 
 and remarkable luxuriance in many parts of 
 the route. I measured the stalk of one of these 
 flowers, protruding itself through a cluster of 
 other plants, which was, within half an inch, as 
 long as the stick of an ordinaiy umbrella ; and 
 they have sometimes six or eight bells on one 
 stalk. The Lady's slipper, both of the purplish 
 and the more ordinarv kind, is found in the 
 woods in Canada, but it is not a very common 
 plant. The English name must originally, I 
 apprehend, have been Our Ladys slipper, (as, 
 
 by a not very dissimilar process of formation, 
 we have the term Lady Day,) for the French 
 call the flower le sabot de la Sainte Vierge ; and 
 the translation is by no means happy ; for the 
 blossom, which has but a disputable resem- 
 blance to a slipper, and especially to that of a 
 lady, very closely resembles in form the wooden 
 
 vhl 
 
THE ROSE OF THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 23 
 
 sabot worn often by the peasantry in muckl}' 
 roads, and derived from tlicir progenitors in 
 FrancA. Tlie wild coluvihine, wliicli is spread 
 over all tlie North American continent, lias a 
 red and yellow blossom. The Iris is of the 
 common kind The bright scarlet lobelia is 
 found, but found rarely, near Quebec, and I 
 met with specimens between the Ottawa and 
 Lake Huron. The convolvulus is of the most 
 delicate pink and white, in alternate bars. A 
 pale lily of a kind of straw-colour, with pendant 
 blossoms hanging here and there from the 
 plant in a cui*ve, is found in the meadows of 
 the Quebec District, and, no doubt, higher up 
 the country. The erect and red lily, which I 
 have also mentioned, blows alone at the top of 
 a single stem, and I have heard it called the 
 trumpet lily. It is frequently seen upon the 
 islets in the Lake of the Woods, and for a long 
 way before reaching and after leaving that 
 Lake. The glorious white water-lily, of which 
 
 ^: 
 
 
 m 
 
 ) 
 
 I: ' I 
 I 
 
 i ! 
 
 1 
 
f 
 
 o^ 
 
 2^ 
 
 NOTES ON 
 
 5J 
 
 we found many specimens about the size of a 
 small peony, grows often in close conjunction, 
 though not in intermixture, with the common 
 yellow flower of the same kind. I might pos- 
 sibly have been tempted to qualify in some 
 measure the language of the fourth and fifth 
 stanzas, if I had witnessed, when I wrote them, 
 the extraordinary abundance of the yellow 
 Lady's slipper, {cypripediuniflavescens,) mingled 
 with other flowers of some show, in the prairie 
 near the Lower Fort at the Red River, and 
 more particularly the profusion of wild roses 
 and white water-lilies, which I saw on my re- 
 turn. The roses, upon our upward route, were 
 barely beginning to show themselves, and the 
 water-lilies had not appeared at all. But there 
 is one particular spot, which we passed in 
 coming down in the first week in August, 
 where the combination of these two flowers 
 produced almost the effect of a fairy scene. 
 It is situated in immediate contiguity to the 
 
THE ROSE OF THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 25 
 
 height of land which divides the waters falling 
 into the Ottawa from those falling into Lake 
 Nipissin, and thence, by French River, into 
 Lake Huron. We were pursuing our way upon 
 a little sluggish stream, not wider than a large 
 ditch ; the guide had put out all our other 
 men, except one, to proceed on foot, in order 
 to lessen the draught of water : my chaplain 
 remained with me in the canoe, and we could 
 speedily have filled it, while we went along, 
 with the roses and water-lilies which we 
 gathered on both sides, as we sat ; the former 
 not only fringing the water, but, actually, as 
 well as the latter, growing in it. There was 
 also growing plentifully in the water, a large 
 kind of blue orchis. On our left hand, the 
 thick shrubs and bushes which delight in 
 proximity to the water, softened down, with 
 their full and rounded foliage, into one dense 
 mass of verdure, formed, in a manner, the bank 
 of the stream, receding, in a slope, to a rising 
 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 
 i 
 
 ):■ 
 
 1 1 ( 
 
 1 
 
 
 i 
 
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 •<'! 
 
 n 
 
 ■a-i 
 
r- 1 ■"B.^piH" ^ ■■ 
 
 26 
 
 NOTES ON 
 
 i fjl 
 
 b 
 
 ground, which was covered by a growth of 
 larch-trees — this soft mass of bushes was 
 gemmed all over with roses, producing an 
 effect which no art could ever m*^ l:ch. From 
 the right margin, after a small space of level 
 swamp, the ground swells into a moderate and 
 broken eminence, scattered over with large 
 pines, and covered with heather-like shrubs. 
 The stream was mean enough, and the whole 
 landscape was of a somewhat confined cha- 
 racter ; but the scene, in a bright and beautiful 
 day, was really enchanting, and the lavish de- 
 coration of the wilderness, a refreshment in 
 itself to the spirit of man, was like the loveli- 
 ness of all that mercy which sweetens the trou- 
 bled pilgrimage of life. 
 
 I 
 
 n 
 
 The mespilus is called by the French Cana- 
 dians, who eat the berry, it is needless to say 
 very incorrectly, the poirier sauvage. It is ex- 
 ceedingly common in Canada. The rowan, or 
 
 M« 
 
 I" s 
 
I> S ' ^ 
 
 THE ROSE OF THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 27 
 
 iiiountain-ash, is among the prime ornaments 
 of the Canadian forest ; elegant in form, beau- 
 tiful in its delicate leaves and branches, very 
 liandsome in flower, and quite brilliant in its 
 profuse flat clusters of scarlet berries, which 
 long continue to enliven even the months of 
 winter. The choke-cherry is also very orna- 
 mental, particularly when it grows as a large 
 shrub, in which case it often assumes, when it 
 lias free scope, a very ample and rounded form. 
 Its droppii'ji' Ivsters of flowers, when they have 
 passed into i.ait, give the name to the plant, 
 among the 'French, of cerise a grappes. 
 
 I should have been glad, for the sake of 
 many of my hoped-for readers, to have given 
 the botanic names and scientific classification 
 of some dried flowers which I gathered on the 
 route ; but my part here is 
 
 quod non didici, sane nescire fateri. 
 
 ' ! 
 
 f 
 
 P 
 
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'Tf^^ 
 
 In 
 
 r itt i' 
 
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 aammifrjLjmi..'- '■ 
 
 
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 a^if- 
 
 '.MU: 
 
 
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 ■'ii:A'!X::^:\ ■' 
 
 
 'ii^i^Wt 
 
 
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 ■■■■,.'■•■{>*■ 
 
 V/i^,;;-' 
 
 
 
 ■■' "' !f>J.\ 
 
 ::\:. r.i.,s/^i.:vK\£;'^j!,i.'jk'!-'<>.ih' ■.!'»■ 
 
 
 
 
'I'h 
 
 
 I 
 
 \ I 
 
 I, 
 
 Cj^e ^oilg oC tje Fogafleur, 
 
 
 Tu nive Lucana dormis ocreatus, at apriim 
 Coenem ego ; tu pisces hibemo ex sequore verris. 
 
 M 
 
 Take physic, pomp, 
 Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, 
 That thou mayest shake the superflux to them. 
 And show the heavens more just. 
 
 :i ' 
 
 I. 
 
 What song is this wliicli on the water rings, 
 Rousing the lonely post ? — it's flag ascends : 
 
 Forth from the sharp stockade the movement 
 brings 
 Its guardian blithe, with motley train of friends. 
 
 5c^ IUAc^u.L 'St^^^ ' 
 
 w 
 
 1 I 
 
 %\\ 
 
 
 i-W! 
 
 ' I 
 
 « i 
 
 ; *i 
 
 m h! 
 
 m 
 
30 
 
 THE TOILS 
 
 H 
 
 f ■'B I; 
 
 If 
 
 • * 
 
 tm 
 
 •1 
 
 '■' j ■ 
 
 1 
 
 ' J. 
 
 
 
 II. 
 
 See that light skiff of bark whose paddles red 
 Flash with each wave they break, beneath the 
 sun ; 
 Six are on either side ; one at the head 
 Wields the stout guide ; the practised steersman 
 one. 
 
 III. 
 
 Laborious crew ! long ere that sun arose, 
 Lingering in heaven through June's extended 
 day, 
 
 Their toils began ; nor will they find their close, 
 Signal of nature, with his setting ray. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Up at the twilight call, they strike the tent 
 Of those they serve, the long canoe they load ; 
 
 To urge it now each vigorous arm is bent 
 With strokes accordant, on it's destined road. 
 
■<■ 
 
 OF THE VOYAGEUR. 
 
 31 
 
 V. 
 
 But who, not witness, can the toils divine 
 That wait them here? the straining nerve to 
 force, 
 By pole, by paddle, lifting hand, or line. 
 
 Full up reluctant streams, their conquering 
 course ? 
 
 '''• 7 
 
 Chill streams from winter's chain but newivfeaec, 
 When issues through the wilds the foremost band, 
 
 Yet plunging there, (so men grow hard by use,) 
 Patient they tug, or wait the word and stand. 
 
 VII. 
 
 First ranged in one, the force will yet divide ; 
 
 Once of that lake the passage they achieve 
 In vastness spread, of western world the pride, 
 
 Two lesser skiffs the parted load receive. 
 
 n ' 
 
 
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 : 
 
 m 
 
 1. , 
 
 u 
 
.32 
 
 THE TOILS 
 
 VIII. 
 
 And now, whore narrow'd banks their way embrace, 
 Swept through when floods of Spring impetuous 
 broke, 
 
 Pines press on pines, till, in some tangling place. 
 Huge carcases and bare the passage choke : 
 
 rx. 
 
 Not so their ready energy will fail. 
 
 They grapple with the foe : now out, now in, 
 With lever heave, with sounding axe assail. 
 
 Or shove by strength, and soon fair egress win. 
 
 Nl 
 
 X. 
 
 Ei i 
 
 The scene is changed — on broad expanse they steer, 
 Wing'd with white sail ', or down swift current 
 
 glide 
 
 Soon will the rumbling fall salute their ear — 
 Lo ! its white crest or spiral smoke descried ! 
 
 ^ cJ XevKOTrrepe Kpijaia iropOfxli. — Eurip. Hippol. 
 
 1 i 
 
OF THE VOYAGEUR. 
 
 ns 
 
 XI. 
 
 Proud barriers of the stream ! — all else is free. 
 
 The thicket-men may pierce, may climb the rock. 
 Wade through the swamp, — of lowlier falls, we see, 
 
 Stout hearts and skilful hands will risk the 
 shock : 
 
 4 <i» 
 
 XII. 
 
 Stand here — sweep round — for thoroughfare is 
 none : 
 Little it needs that, as in lordly grounds 
 Or crowded mart, the traced refusal run — 
 From Him who made the wilds this warning 
 sounds. 
 
 ' I 
 
 XIII. 
 
 'Tis here, or when continuous stream they lack, 
 Fresh toils are for the busy crew prepared : 
 
 Prompt they unload, and quick by every back 
 Burthen on burthen, heap on heap is shared. 
 
 1! 
 
 .) 
 
 ni 
 
'^IftStttii^Migrn: 
 
 34 
 
 THE TOILS 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Borne on their shoulders that which bore them all, 
 Poles, paddles, tent-staves: round their naked 
 heads 
 
 Broad thongs embrace^ehind them, tapering small, 
 Equipments, clothes, utensils, food, and beds. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Barefoot through mire, o'errocks, theirway they trace 
 O'er trunks from angry winds which prostrate lie ; 
 
 Oft under burning sun ; yet, as in race, 
 Back for repeated load their footsteps fly. 
 
 1 ■§ ^ 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Scarce are they launched, the self-same toils return, 
 Falls following falls ^ — but now the day is past ; 
 
 Some chosen spot the leaders sage discern, 
 Where wearied bones may respite have at last. 
 
 2 This is most remarkably the case in parts of the River Win- 
 nipeg. 
 
OF THE VOYAOEUR. 
 
 35 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Yet stay — for work remains — part now uplift 
 The traveller's lodge who sheltered couch re- 
 quires ; 
 
 Part drag, from distance, firewood, fallen, or drift, 
 Or standing hew ; part light the separate fires ; 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Part dress the separate meals ; a skilful few 
 The wounds survey of their inverted boat. 
 
 Each resinous seam with burning brand renew, 
 So all may on the morrow safely float. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 At length, in single blanket rolFd, they liCj 
 
 Mother of all ! upon thy bosom bare : 
 What if in torrents burst this ominous sky ? — 
 Creep, rogues, beneath your boat, and shiver 
 there, 
 
 d2 
 
 'ai 
 
"^i*»a,f^rt»a»i!WMI*lW!*i-:» 
 
 I" I 
 
 36 
 
 THE TOILS 
 
 ,' 
 
 
 XX. 
 
 All ! speak not thus, ye who, by Heaven's high will, 
 In arms of affluence and refinement nursed, 
 
 Are of one mould with them, one nature still, — 
 One blood, one stock, one sinful stock at first : 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Ye to whose weight these men, if shallow spot 
 Forbid close access to the full canoe, 
 
 Lend their free backs unask'd, and grudge it not, 
 Forsooth, to save from wet your daintier shoe ^ 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Yes — they are free, those backs — foul slavery's yoke, 
 Praise be to God ! those shoulders have not 
 known ; 
 
 Their task is seasoned still with song or joke, 
 And careless — ah! too careless — hearts they own. 
 
 •' In an interesting communication from the Bishop of New 
 
■•'■^ " ••mjrsvT? 
 
 V 
 
 OF THE VOYAGEUR. 
 
 37 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Whatever they are, some kindness is their due ; 
 
 Some courtesy the claim of all mankind ; 
 Some thankfulness a debt for service true : 
 
 God holds abhorr'd the high disdainful mind. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " Twas not that men should minister to me ; 
 
 I came to minister," the Saviour cries : 
 The Son of Man to set the prisoners free — 
 
 To ransom souls a willing victim dies. 
 
 Zealand, published in one of the late Quarterly Papers of the 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, there is rather an 
 amusing account of a dutiful wife among the native converts, 
 who, being herself unincumbered with any chaimure at all, per- 
 formed the office here described for her husband, he having been 
 newly equipped, from head to foot, in European cpstume. 
 
 i 
 
 W 
 
 I I 
 
 '; 
 
 ;- Ml 
 
 m 
 
■ ' ■ . ' ' i m * 
 
 38 
 
 THE TOILS 
 
 ki 
 
 m 
 
 XXV 
 
 Poor for our sakes, that we might rich be made, 
 In guise of service, fashioned as a man, 
 
 Humbled in heart. He to the death obey'd — 
 what a death ! — to work the wondrous plan. 
 
 XXVI, 
 
 Learn, then, at least, like Him to condescend 
 To men of lowly place : in season meet, 
 
 To do kind office for an humbler friend, 
 
 As schooVd by One who wash'd His followers' 
 feet. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Tis not all dignities to render cheap 
 
 I seek, — all grades to place on equal ground ; 
 
 All fences of the social scheme to sweep 
 
 From earth ; all ranks and orders to confound 
 
OF THE VOYAGEUR. 
 
 89 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 oil ! no — I seek not this — for happier !arid 
 
 Far, in my thoughts, is that where high and low 
 
 In mutual love yet measured distance stand, 
 Than where, all mix'd, the shapeless masses 
 grow. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Fear to whom fear, to whom is honour due 
 Still honour yield — the fabric nicely ranged 
 
 In parts proportional, of seemly view, 
 Were ill for looser edifice exchanjred. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 From steps subordinate, from fix'd respects 
 More care of courtesy and order springs : 
 
 Men slide unconscious down to coarse neglects 
 Wlio scoff at form or state, and jeer at kings. 
 
 I * 
 
 ■J 
 
 ( ! 
 
 •. J 
 
 
;' I 
 
 ■umiam^-^'.- 
 
 40 
 
 THE TOILS 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Watch it, my friends, — (for I with you have friends 
 By worthier claim than earth's distinctions form, 
 
 Bound to my heart, and men whose contact mends 
 Each mind on which they stamp their impress 
 warm,) 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Cokimbia's children, prize, if so you will, 
 Your social plan, as ours to us is dear : 
 
 Yet think at least that incidental 111 
 
 May cleave to good, and guard your country, 
 here. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 I speak not, chosen friends, for such as you — 
 But licence may of freedom choke the breath ; 
 
 Man needs restraint ; that each should rashly do 
 In his own eyes what seemeth good, is death. 
 
 .1! 
 
OF THE VOYAGEUR. 
 
 41 
 
 XXXIV, 
 
 More closely to thy mark, my song, return : 
 The summer toils are sharp, but ended soon 
 
 Of those I sung but now, and haply earn 
 
 For them, for wives, for children, many a boon 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 And freemen they — but think of those who bow 
 Beneath their burthens forced; beneath the 
 lash 
 
 Toil worse than beasts (oh ! blush, Columbia, now, 
 And haste the stigma from thy stars to dash). 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Or think of those — they teem in many a soil 
 In want1«fwho shiver, in affliction pine ; 
 
 Who at th* unhealthy loom incessant toil, 
 
 Or delve, with darker souls, in darksome mine. 
 
•II 
 
 11 
 
 :i 
 
 i 
 
 :f 
 
 ( 
 
 42 
 
 THE TOILS 
 
 xxxvir. 
 
 Ill was it done, and long reproach shall lie, 
 England ! against thy legislative halls. 
 
 Thou shouldst those children to thy Church 
 deny, 
 That she might nurse them in her sacred walls ! 
 
 ':'i 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 family of man ! how large the mass 
 
 Of suifering bodies, minds with misery drunk ; 
 
 Creatures whose squalid forms we loath to pass ; 
 Beings crushed flat by power, in baseness sunk ! 
 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Think, ye who daily feed on sumptuous fare, 
 Array 'd in garments choice and finely spun. 
 
 With all your polish'd arts, your dainties rare, 
 Your labour'd comforts, — you and they are one. 
 
OF THE VOYAGEUR. 
 
 43 
 
 XL. 
 
 " From thine own flesh/' beware thou, " hide thee 
 
 not : " 
 Tremble to spurn, or pass them, like the Priest, 
 
 Unheeded in their ills — they may not rot, 
 
 Laid at your gate, nor need your travelling 
 
 beast^ - 
 
 XLI. 
 
 They are not far — men thirst and hunger still ; 
 
 Strangers are houseless, sick on pallets grieve ; 
 Prisoners are sad, and nakedness is chill — 
 
 The world will find you subjects to relieve. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 One price was paid for all — and if, below. 
 
 In peniiiy some, and some in plenty live. 
 Swell none with pride, but this just lesson know, 
 
 GrOD GIVES TO YOU THAT YOU FOR HiM MAY GIVE. 
 
 '^' ;] 
 
b-^-r!^^. 
 
 -iiSi&tiBWSK'- 
 
 44 
 
 THE TOILS 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Wait but the doom — that day will level all : 
 Quickly He comes whose eye impartial looks 
 
 On every heart ; the dead, both great and small, 
 Abide their sentence from the written books. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Like to my subject have I made my song, 
 
 Careless its windings following where they led ; 
 
 Wliat tones might to th' incipient strain belong, 
 Not nicely kept — but on its close we tread. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 E'en so life's pilgrimage itself is pass'd, 
 Now smooth, now rough, now languishing, now 
 brisk. 
 
 Now barr'd, now opening fair ; it ends at last 
 History of hope and dread, of change and risk. 
 
OF THE VOYAGEUR. 
 
 45 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Ruler of this rolling world ! in all 
 Its devious wilderness our way protect ; 
 
 Still let our errors for thy mercy call, 
 
 Still every move we make thy ji^race direct ! 
 
 See Matt. xx. 28. 2 Cor. viii. 9. Phil. ii. 8. Rom. xii. Hi. 
 John xiii. 10. Rom. xiii. 7. Judges xvii. 6. Isa. li. 21. Luke 
 xvi. 19, et seq. Isa. Iviii. 7. Luke x. 31. 34. Matt. xxv. 
 35, 36. Rev. xii. 20. 1 Cor. vi. 20. 
 
 ,r !•■' 
 
 til 
 
 
 I 
 
 'ir 
 
 
i 1 
 
 I'i' 
 
 ■ ^ 
 
 1 
 
 
 1 
 
 n 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
Note jf 
 
 TO 
 
 THE TOILS OF THE VOYAGEUR. 
 
 The Voyageurs are a class of men who have 
 been described by different travellers ; and 
 some notice of them, with special mention of 
 our own crew, will be found in the journal to 
 which I have more than once had occasion 
 already to refer. They have formed a pic- 
 turesque feature, (although not one upon which 
 the mind can properly permit itself to dwell 
 with any remarkable complacency,) in the 
 population of Canada, — a feature which pos- 
 
 ( . 
 
4.8 
 
 NOTES ON 
 
 sibly at no very distant time will be obli- 
 terated. Under the domination of France, tbc 
 furs constituted the staple commodity of the 
 North American possessions, and tlie loss of 
 the country is noticed by Madame de Pompa- 
 dour in tliesc words : xiinsi ces Jiers insulaires 
 86 sont empar4s de Nos manciions, et toutes les 
 neiges dii Canada : grand bien leur /assent ! 
 The fur-trade was still carried on throuo'h 
 Canada by the B:'tish ; the great depot of tlio 
 canoes being at Lachine, and the shipments 
 wwa^Europe being made at Montreal, till the 
 junction of the North-West Company, esta- 
 blished in that city, with the ancient English 
 corporation of the Hudson's Bay Company, in 
 which it merged. The peltries are now sent 
 direct from Hudson's Bay, and the furs from 
 the regions thf^nce named, which we use in 
 Canada, come to us from England. The older 
 voyageurs look back, as veteran warriors to the 
 days of departed glory, upon the times when 
 
THE TOILS OF THE VOYAGEUR. 
 
 49 
 
 from thirty to forty canoes went uj) annually, 
 in brigades, to Prince Rupert's Land, and re- 
 turned with their cargo of furs. The canoes 
 are now scarcely employed by the Company for 
 any other purpose, besides that of the annual 
 official visit of the Governor to the territory, 
 than to maintain this line of communication, 
 and to carry up the persons engaged, from year 
 to year, in different capacities, together with 
 some few supplies. Even a couple or so of 
 canoes in company, are still dignified among 
 the voyageurs by the name of the brigade. 
 
 The honours of the Voyageur having de- 
 clined, he has almost discarded some distinc- 
 tions of costume which marked him to the eye, 
 and of which, among the Canadian Indians 
 themselves, who are thus employed, little more 
 than the traces can be said to linger. I think 
 also, that even within my OAvn memory, his 
 very song has lost something of its wonted 
 
 E 
 
 !l! 
 
 il 
 
 ) 
 
 & I 
 
 i n 
 
50 
 
 NOTES ON 
 
 1 
 
 '^' 
 
 5 1 
 
 'I ' 
 1' ' 
 
 h 
 
 ' /'I V 
 
 '1 ; 
 
 i • 
 
 spirit and power, and, if the tonn can be ap- 
 plied, execution. Yet the same old Norman 
 airs, in the same characteristic tones, are still 
 sung, and still serve conspicuously to brace up 
 again the vigour of the arm, whether in the 
 demand for augmented effort, or in tlic languor 
 creeping on from fatigue : above all, the song 
 is raised with animation on approaching or 
 leaving any post, just as the drivers of hired or 
 public conveyances receive an impulse, soon felt 
 in the vehicle, from the desire to produce oifect 
 in a tov.ii. Those who have heard favourable 
 specimens of Voyageur-singing, will, I think, 
 recognize the aptitude of the epithet bell-toned, 
 v/hich I liavc applied to it in die tirst poem of 
 this volume ; and the effect, altogether, uniting 
 with the i-ushing aound of the paddles, and con- 
 spiring with the character of the craft, and the 
 nature of the surrounding scene, has not a little 
 of poetiy and romance about it. From the 
 indistinct manner in winch the songs are sung, 
 
THE TOILS OF THE VOYAGEUR. 
 
 51 
 
 and the somewhat slouching pronunciation of 
 many of the words, it is not always easy to 
 catch their precise import. Some of them are 
 not unlike our own nursery rhymes. I did not 
 make it my business to procure any of them 
 entire, but I have retained the following- 
 scraps : — 
 
 Le ills du roi s'en va chassant 
 Avec son beau fusil d'argent 
 
 Visa le noir, tua le blanc, &c. &c. 
 
 And in the same way there is often interposed, 
 perhaps between each line, some nonsensical 
 refrain : e. g. En roulant ma boule. Others are 
 such songs as men, in the perversion of their 
 talents, have in all ages composed, as if their 
 fellow-mortals were by nature too dull in the 
 pursuit of carnal and voluptuous enjoyment, for 
 the purpose of stimulating the love of pleasure, 
 and imparting new zest to convivial indulgence. 
 The refrain of one of the songs is this : 
 
 E 2 
 
 i 
 
 n 
 
 1 I 
 
 J 
 
 HH 
 
 
52 
 
 NOTES ON 
 
 I 
 
 Le bon vin m' endort 
 Et I'Amour me rdveille. 
 
 i 
 
 H-. 
 
 Tlicy arc sung, however, apparently more as 
 vehicles for the air than any thing else ; and 
 the men often catch them up from the deader, 
 slurring tlie words together, as mere sounds 
 without meaning. Any thing profane or licen- 
 tious, would, of course, have been summarily 
 stopped ; but as there was no call for such an 
 exercise of authority as this, it would have 
 been beginning at the wrong end to attempt 
 the spiritual improvement of the voyageur by 
 putting any check upon his music. 
 
 ? I 
 
 Tlie arrival of a canoe with travellers is a 
 great event at one of the widely-severed posts, 
 and a rare interruption of the monotony of ex- 
 istence which there prevails. The factor, or 
 trader in charge, often a most respectable per- 
 son, has, at the ordinary posts, no companion 
 
r 
 
 THE TOILS OF THE VOyAGEUR 
 
 53 
 
 whatever of his own stamp ; the small esta- 
 blishment consisting of menials, labourers, and 
 work-people employed in different ways, who 
 are Indians, half-breeds, Canadians, or Eu- 
 ropeans, just as it may happen, with every 
 shade and gradation of distinctive complexion 
 and costume. There are also at certain seasons 
 a number of the wild Indians as hangers-on 
 about the place. 
 
 The Guide is a person who, although not 
 independently of the will of the traveller, is 
 charged with the whole conduct of the journey. 
 Whoever has had the good fortune to be served 
 in this capacity by the Iroquois, Jacques Kari- 
 wagairon *, of Kaughnawaugha, who was picked 
 for me in pursuance of the kind directions 
 
 * So spelt in tlie list of the crew in English, which was 
 given to my chaplain : but there is an unrestrained latitude 
 in the spelling of Indian names by Europeans, and naturally 
 a great difference between English and French spelling. 
 Different ears catch the very same sounds in a different way. 
 
54 
 
 NOTES ON 
 
 given by Sir George Simpson, will remember 
 an original to match the picture of the stout 
 guide, and will acknowledge his other and com- 
 plete qualifications for the task. 
 
 Among the expedients to which our people 
 had recourse, as desciibed in the ninth stanza, 
 to pass through obstructed places in the lesser 
 rivers, one which is not there mentioned, is to 
 jump out and stand upon the tmnks of trees, 
 keeping them down so that the canoe can pass 
 over them. 
 
 It is an idea which I have found by no 
 means uncommon, that the canoes having no 
 keel, it is not the practice to sail in them. 
 But they not only sail, but sail near the wind. 
 I shall not soon forget the sail which wc had, 
 then in our two canoes, up the Lake of the 
 Woods, when, after fighting; our way through 
 the beds of tall reeds at its entrance, we sprang 
 
 M 
 
 I 
 
n 
 
 THE TOILS OF THE VOYAGEUR. 
 
 55 
 
 'V 
 
 on, as it wore, like greyhounds slipped from the 
 leash, and bounded through the splashing waves, 
 which reflected the bright heavens over our 
 heads,— each crew eyeing the other at some 
 distance, — inclosed in the silent solitude of the 
 forests, and rapidly nearing a low white sandy 
 islet directly ahead, garnished picturesquely 
 with a few small pines and shrubby trees. 
 (Stanza x.) 
 
 A little above the Terre jaune fall (a beau- 
 tiful spot, where the traveller should mount the 
 eminence adjoining, and indulge himself with 
 the view up and down the river), in the nar- 
 rowest part of the River Winnipeg, the guide 
 having put his men ashore to drag the canoe 
 by the towing-line, against the rapids, they had 
 to scramble up a rock rising so perpendicularly 
 from the water, that the first man, struggling 
 till he reached a root, and pushed up from 
 below by the others, contrived to gain the sum- 
 
 iH 
 
 V 
 
 
 - %. 
 
56 
 
 NOTES ON 
 
 mit, and they then helped each other from 
 above in succession. Two others reached a 
 narrow ledge or shelf, about half-way up, where 
 they lay flat down upon their stomachs, and 
 worked themselves along in that position. 
 (Stanza xi.) 
 
 # 11 
 
 Whoever has witnessed the shooting of some 
 rapids (which the French call sauter), such as 
 can be just ventured upon with safety for the 
 pui-pose, and especially if he has, by consent 
 of the guide, made the experiment of remain- 
 ing in the canoe when the baggage and the 
 greater part of the crew are sent by land to 
 meet it, will comprehend that they may be 
 allowed the name of lowlier falls. Pensez-vous 
 sauter J Jacques ? Jacques, allez-vous sauter^ were 
 questions often addressed to our guide by the 
 less experienced men. They were all aware 
 that Jacques knew perfectly what he was 
 about. (Stanza xi.) 
 
 I) 
 
THE TOILS OF THE VOYAGED B, 
 
 57 
 
 The canoe-men are very often bare-footed, 
 and almost invariably so on their return, when 
 the weather is hotter, except perhaps where 
 their treading is particularly calculated to 
 wound their feet. (Stanza xv.) 
 
 Any serious repair of the canoe (since the 
 work can be done only by daylight) creates a 
 considerable delay. We lost nearly a whole day 
 at one end of Cross Lake, and half a day upon 
 the Ottawa, in this manner, upon our return. 
 In the former instance, the damaged canoe was 
 new-bottomed with bark, and the interior 
 bands or flat hoops of cedar were all replaced. 
 But an examination, and some slight renewal 
 of the gum, generally takes place at the close 
 of every day. (Stanza xviii.) 
 
 I 
 
 .Ml 
 
 I 1 
 
 ! ! 
 
 With reference to the close of Stanza xxxv. 
 it is well known, that in the American national 
 
 i ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
58 NOTES ON THE TOILS OF THE VOYAGEUR. 
 
 colours, each State is represented by a star, and 
 also that a certain number of the States are 
 distinguished in popular phraseology as the 
 Slave States. 
 
 / 
 
©n tfte l^ainioto at tje l^attatefea dFalliei, near 
 tje JEountam^jpottage, Itamenijstiquoia Hiber. 
 
 Dumb thunder shakes the wilds — a rising smoke, 
 A hastening stream the curious search provoke : 
 Lo ! Kakabeka's yawning chasm is seen 
 Scoop'd in rude form, the rifted rocks between : 
 Smooth to the verge flows ample river deep, 
 There driven at once to make the awful leap: 
 Shot raging down, its torrents, huge and full. 
 Each other cross : soon all, as whitest wool, 
 Is lost in depths of boiling froth below : 
 Upwards dense mists and circling vapours go 
 In showers again to fall : his glory bright 
 The sun sheds full on these ; with pure delight 
 
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60 
 
 ON THE RAINBOW 
 
 IP 
 
 The beauteous bow we view of mingling dyes ; 
 Across th' abyss in utmost depth it lies, 
 Fluctuates and struggles in the very foam, 
 Mounts the wild rock, climbs past the wood, 
 
 the dome 
 Stretches to reach, in which it had its home : 
 And there, emblem sweet and picture true 
 Of heavenly faith ! is lost to human view. 
 
 Shine out, Sun of righteousness, shine out 
 On humble souls, who strive in depths of 
 
 doubt. 
 Broken in penitence and toss'd with fears ; 
 Beam, in thy brightness, on their falling tears ! 
 Bid all the blended hues of faith, and love, 
 And holy joy, and hope which looks above, 
 Tlirough varied scenes their track continuous 
 
 stamp ; 
 Draw loveliness and glow from clouds and damp ; 
 Surmount each rugged place, and find at last 
 Mingling in native heaven, all troubles passed. 
 
AT THE KAKABEKA FALLS. 
 
 61 
 
 Promise and pledge of God, the bow is shown 
 Wlion sliowers and sunsliine meet, and then alone; 
 So on the soul if grace and mercy shine, 
 Must sorrowing heart with heavenly ray combin(» ; 
 Promise and pledge of better things are seal'd 
 In Christ, than in the rainbow are reveard ; 
 Sure mercies sworn by God, but hid to those 
 Whose soul no want and no compunction knows : 
 Blessed are they that mourn ! to them belongs 
 Joy on their he£,ds, with everlasting songs. 
 
 See Isa. Iv. .3. Heb. vi. 17. Matt. v. 4. Isa. xxv. 10. 
 
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 ON 
 
 THE KAKABEKA RAINBOW. 
 
 Whatever may be the merits or demerits of 
 these lines in other respects, I venture to say- 
 that the description of the falls and rainbow, 
 as viewed about five o'clock on a bright after- 
 noon in the end of July, is closely accurate and 
 faithful. The cataract, always excepting Nia- 
 gara, which stands alone and supreme, is by 
 far the grandest and most striking which I 
 have ever seen. 
 
 im 
 
 1*1 
 
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 64 
 
 NOTE ON 
 
 ii 
 
 I' . i 
 
 The summit of the fall exhibits, in a remark- 
 able manner, what is observable in many of the 
 streams of Canada, where they break over 
 stones or rocks, that appearance which is de- 
 scribed in an exquisite simile by the hand of 
 Scott — a master-hand, indeed, in portraying, 
 with effect in every touch, at once the poetry 
 and the vivid reality of the face of nature : 
 
 Each wave was crested with tawny foam, 
 Like the rnane of a chesnut steed. 
 
 I should guess the fall to be not less than two 
 hundred feet high. The gentleman who tra- 
 velled with me as my chaplain, first called my 
 attention to a tremulousness in the whole 
 atmosphere as we approached the fall, to which 
 allusion is made in the first line. 
 
 fV 
 
 The line from Homer which has been adopted 
 as the motto for these verses, must be regarded 
 as affording a remarkable example of the tra- 
 ditionary relics of Divine truth among the 
 
 1^ 
 
THE KAKABEKA RAINBOW. 
 
 65 
 
 remark- 
 y of the 
 ak over 
 h is de- 
 hand of 
 •traying, 
 B poetry 
 ire: 
 
 than two 
 ^ho tra- 
 bUed my 
 e whole 
 to which 
 
 adopted 
 'egarded 
 the tra- 
 ong the 
 
 lieathen, conveyed, in this instance, almost in 
 the very words of Scripture, I do set my bow in 
 the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a cove- 
 nant between me and all the earth. Tipag, 
 indeed, is distinguished from ar\fitlov, the word 
 used in this verse by the Septuagint (cor- 
 respondently to which, with closer exactness 
 than in the use of the word token, signum, and 
 signe, are found in the Latin and French Bibles, 
 and sign in the Bishops' and Douay English 
 Bibles). — See Schleusner and Parkhurst. The 
 former, however, gives one authority, although 
 not that which he prefers, which so states the 
 distinction as to make ripag a atjfietov exhibited 
 in the heavens, and which, therefore, identifies 
 the force of the Scriptural and the Homeric 
 expressions here in question. Homer, indeed, 
 does not expressly call the rainbow the sign of 
 a covenant, nor, on the other hand, is it neces- 
 sary to regard the phenomenon appointed for 
 
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 66 NOTE ON THE KAKABEKA RAINBOW. 
 
 the sign of the covenant as a sign in the sense 
 of something preternatural. 
 
 Ogilby, Pope, and Cowper, all render repag 
 by the word sign; and I see it mentioned in 
 the notes of Pope's translation, that Madame 
 Dacier points out the similarity between the 
 passage in Genesis and the line here under 
 notice. 
 
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le sense 
 
 bonnets?. 
 
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 <©n otgerbing tfie manteubteia of t|)e ^Materfotol 
 for tje escape of t^eir pouno. 
 
 Th' instinctive charge of young through every race 
 
 Of living things, how beautiful to see, 
 How wonderful to watch ! — ^how well we trace 
 
 In all that range the ample woods, or flee 
 To rocky den, or build on airy tree. 
 
 And soar in open firmament above. 
 Or up the sedgy waters flutter :^ree *, — 
 
 Wisdom and plan, omnipotence and love ! 
 
 ' This may remind some readers of the subjoined lines from 
 Lucretius, which the author, some considerable time after the 
 composition of this sonnet, lit upon accidentally, in looliing for 
 something else. They refer, however, not to the love of young, 
 
•'J« 
 
 
 il§ f 
 
 70 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 
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 I sing no eagle proud, no tender dove; 
 
 Poor waterfowl ! not less thy care is seen, 
 Artful in safer nook thy brood to shove, 
 
 And court pursuit thyself, their heads to screen. 
 Weak man ! such sight the heaven-taught lesson 
 
 brings. 
 To seek the shelter of Eternal Wings. 
 
 Sec Deut. xxxii. 11. Ps. xci. 4, et passim. Luke xiii. 34. 
 
 but to the impulse owned by all living creatures to provide them- 
 selves with mates. 
 
 Denique per maria et monteis iluviosque rapaceis 
 Frondiferasque domos avium, camposque virenteis 
 Omnibus incutiens blandum per pectora amorem, &c. 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 71 
 
 II. 
 
 ovide them- 
 
 Bright arc the heavens, the narrow bay serene ; 
 
 No sound is heard within the sheltered place, 
 Save some sweet whisper of the pines *, — nor seen 
 
 Of restless man or of his works a trace : 
 I stray, through bushes low, a little space : 
 
 Unlook'd for sight their parted leaves disclose : 
 Restless no more, lo ! one of Indian race — 
 
 His bones beneath that roof of bark repose. 
 
 Poor savage ! in such bark through deepening 
 snows, 
 Once didst thou dwell — in this through rivers 
 move ; 
 
 2 'A5v Ti rb tpiOvpifffia xal a ir'iTvg, atVoXc, rtivOf 
 "A TTOTi rdig Traydiai jueXtV^crai. 
 
 Theocr. 
 
 If 
 
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72 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 
 N ^1 
 
 J -^ ; t' 
 
 Frail house, fraii skiiF, frail man ! Of him who 
 knows 
 His Master's will, not thine the doom shall prove: 
 What will be yours, ye powerful, wealthy, wise, 
 By whom the heathen unregarded dies ? 
 
 See Luke xii. 47- 
 
)f him wlio 
 
 shall prov(^ 
 hy, wise, 
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 SONNETS. 
 
 73 
 
 III. 
 
 
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 t 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 i : 
 
 '' \ 
 
 '\\ 
 
 Eo a (Kjiilti fjunfl in m IMan Oltatile', 
 
 ON THE CHURCH-YARD FENCE AT ONE OF THE RED 
 RIVER CHURCHES, WHILE THE MOTHER WAS CON- 
 FIRMED. 
 
 . . XdpvaKi Iv SaiSaXiq, . . 
 
 • • • • 
 
 * ■ 
 
 (ceXofiat, tv^i Ppe(poQ. 
 
 SiMONlDES. 
 
 Swathed in that frame-work quaint, contented rest 
 Ev'n on the rail, my child, as thou art hung : 
 
 Soon to thy mother's heart shalt thou be press'd, 
 Soon on her back in old dependence slung : 
 
 ^ Popularly, but not very properly, so called. It is not a rock- 
 iag receptacle, but simply a kind of ornamented bag, into which 
 the child is put, up to the neck, lacing in front, and attached to 
 thin flat boards behind, which rest upon the shoulders of the 
 mother, the child's face being outward. The annexed engravings 
 from the drawings of a valued friend, taken from a specimen 
 
 i 
 
 ii 
 
 U 
 
 .''■; 
 
 ■ m- 
 
 I 
 
 rif 
 
74 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 ?i i 
 
 On Nile's proud stream, in lodgment worse was 
 flung, 
 
 And harder severance from maternal arms, 
 He from Egyptian breasts who pity wrung, 
 
 Reserved avenger of his people's harms : 
 As his, thy sister stands to watch alarms : 
 
 Contented rest — One who in manger lay. 
 Than thou or Amram's son had holier charms : 
 
 To Him, poor Indian, thou hast found the way: 
 Thy mother goes, within His house of prayer, 
 Blest rite with hundreds of her race to share. 
 
 ;i 
 
 which I brought from the Red River, among the presents there 
 made to me, will give a better idea of it than the description. 
 The lacing, however, is not left open before, as represented in 
 the engraving^ which gives a front view, the bag being closed, in 
 the case of the living subject, up to the throat. 
 
 ff i 
 
 ;t ei 
 
 t0. ' f . 't m m u imi 
 
vorse was 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 75 
 
 IV. 
 
 i^amp Ealte i^ibet. 
 
 {Riviere du Lac de la Pluie.) 
 
 Si enim, mi Domine, pro hoc corpore ignobili et corruptibili, 
 tarn magna et innumera beneficia prsestas a coelo et ab aere, a 
 terrd et mari, a luce et tenebris, a calore et umbra, rore et imbre, 
 ventis et pluviis, volucribus et piscibus, bestiis et arboribus, et 
 multiplicitate herbarum et germinum terree, et cunctarum cre- 
 aturarum tuarum ministerio nobis successive per sua tempora 
 ministrantium, ut alleves fastidium nostrum, qualia quaeso et 
 quam magna et innumerabilia erunt ilia bona qxue preeparasti 
 diligentibus te in illd coelesti patria ubi te videbimus facie ad 
 faciem. 
 
 S. AUGUSTINI SOLILOQ. 
 
 non si male nunc, et olim 
 
 Sic erit. 
 
 Well hast thou earn'd the title, goodly stream, 
 Thou borrowest from thy parent Lake of Rain, 
 
 If we this livelong day must sample deem, 
 Still mark'd by ceaseless torrents pour'd amain. 
 
 i i'i 
 
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 : ! 
 
 I 
 
 
 
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 i'M 
 
 1 .; 
 
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) : , 
 
 76 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 ■tf 
 
 Though " all appliances and means'' are vain 
 
 To screen us now, and wide the welkin lowers, 
 Murmur we not * — it will be fair again — 
 
 The God gives sunshine too, who gives the 
 showers : 
 Nor is this rain the least of Nature's powers, 
 Whence He our hearts with food and gladness 
 fills, 
 And grain and herbage, trees, and fruits, and 
 flowers. 
 Subserve our pleasures or relieve our ills. 
 Lord, on our souls rain righteousness enlarged ! 
 Return not void, ye showers with blessing charged ! 
 
 See Acts xiv. 17. Hos. x. 12. Isa. Iv. 10, 11. 
 
 * St. Bernard, in his meditations, enumerates among the sins 
 of which he has to repent, his discontents upon the subject of the 
 weather : Cum a'tr pluvia vel nimiofrigore aut colore turbatus fuit, 
 contra Deum inique munnuravi. 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 77 
 
 i^aing Halte JFott. 
 
 SAME DAY AT NIGHT. CONFIRMATION OF ONE 
 FEMALE AT THE FORT. 
 
 Non semper imbres nubibus hispidos 
 Manant in agros — 
 
 I SUNG the rain, and said it would be fair : 
 
 Lo ! while the sun, though still with visage 
 veird, 
 Descends apace, the clouds their volleys spare ; 
 
 The wood-built fort is seen, the smoke is hail'd 
 Portending good : with dripping garments trailed, 
 
 A sheltering roof we find, a hearth-fire bright ; 
 And now, with sober evening cup regaled \ 
 
 Own how well-timed our harbour for the night : 
 
 the cups 
 
 That cheer but not inebriate. 
 
 COWPER. 
 
 lij'-i 
 
" If 
 
 78 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 r ' , 
 
 But chiefly that we bring the holy rite 
 To thee, meek sister in the faith, and add 
 
 Thy name to theirs, who, for the Christian fight, 
 Seal'd late their earlier vows, — our heart is glad. 
 
 Alone thou mad'st thy vow — with thee in prayer 
 Twice two or three were join'd, and Christ was 
 there. 
 
 See Matt, xviii. 19, 20. 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 79 
 
 VI. 
 
 (©n jEieeing a Wiolf come troton tj&roufifi ti)e 
 5lS!acioti0 to tje toater*^ el»ge. 
 
 Say did the scent of flesh thy feet allure, 
 
 Gaunt wolf? — go back, no prey for thee is hero: 
 Track through the woods, thy craving want to cure, 
 
 Poor harmless hares, or chase the statelier deer : 
 Ev'n wert thou close, this crew would little fear : 
 
 Rather would'st thou fear us. No cause have we, 
 As Horace sung of yore, in danger near 
 
 From Sabine wolf, to marvel we are free. 
 But must they, those poor brutes, thy victims be ? 
 
 Ah ! through creation's length and breadth, the 
 curse 
 Flows like the general flood ; and birds, we see, 
 
 Most blithe and sweet, with grubs their nest- 
 lings nurse : 
 
 ; f. 
 
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 1 
 
 i 
 
 
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 1 
 
 
 
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 1 
 
 i 
 
 If 
 
 80 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 And man is wolf to man. Dawn, happier day ; 
 Oh! quickly dawn, when wolf with lamb shall 
 play. 
 
 See Isa. xi. 6, and Ixv. 25. 
 
 I see it mentioned in the ruugh notes of my journal, that this 
 wolf first drew our attention by the utterance of something 
 between a bark and a howl. 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 81 
 
 VII. 
 
 <©n a S>aittt*0 Bag, 
 
 Yes, holy martyr of thy Lord, and true, — 
 
 The Church, to Him who bids her people pray, 
 And Him alone, yet in her service due. 
 
 And offering pure, remembers thee this day : 
 And I, in these vast solitudes away 
 
 From all observance, will not thee forget. 
 that my cup to drink, my life to pay, 
 
 (If needful so,) as thine this heart Avere set ! 
 That wish, at least, it owns ; and we are met 
 
 So far : but hope from living guides I gain, 
 By many a step, to mount the ladder yet. 
 
 Ah ! one most dear across th' Atlantic main, 
 Remember'd on this day which gave thee birth, 
 All but Jhyself believe thee saint on earth, 
 
 h 
 
 See Matt. xx. 22. 
 
 6 
 
 rl 
 
82 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Return to Cftuntiet iSag. 
 
 {Bale dea Tonneres.) 
 
 ) ■ 
 
 Twice, Bay of Thunder, thee I visit now ; 
 
 Noiseless the heavens, the while, and fair are 
 found. 
 Thine aspect is not fierce ; yet towering brow 
 
 Of rock and wood-clad steep thy bosom bound ; 
 Heaved in unwonted form lie islets round. 
 
 Loosed through this door upon the mighty lake. 
 Once more we feel within Canadian ground 
 
 Rupertia's wilds farewell ! — the leave we take 
 Is link'd with thoughts which oft will blandly 
 wake: 
 
 Much comfort have we had with brethren true, 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 83 
 
 Much with their flocks ; nor can we cease to make, 
 
 Kind lords of traffic, mention meet of you. 
 What debts, as guest, on service of my Lord, 
 From tlience to Gaspe's Gulph could I record ! 
 
 i >i 
 
 I *v** 
 
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 ii 
 
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84 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Utpotc commemoi'ans sceleruiu comnuHsa meorum •. 
 
 Medit. St. Bernard. 
 
 r ' 
 
 While prosperous here on inland waters wide, 
 Far, far, but yet with homeward face I float, 
 
 Some friends whose hearts no distance can divide, 
 Ev'n now, perchance, my natal day may note : 
 
 •t 
 
 
 6 Some of the Meditations of St. Bernard are interspersed 
 with hexameter, or hexameter and pentameter lines, or occa- 
 sionally with Leonine verses. They are, as I presume, quota- 
 tions, but I do not profess to know from whence they are taken. 
 The expression of sentiment in the line here quoted, may seem 
 to some readers very strong ; but if it was not too strong for 
 St. Bernard, the Author does not feel it to be too strong for him- 
 self ; nor, indeed, can it be considered stronger than the language 
 of our confessions in the Liturgy, especially in the Coramunioii- 
 office, which every devout Christian worshipper, viewing himself 
 and his own doings as before God, sincerely and feelingly applies 
 to his own case. 
 
« « M^w»»i * ■ « im o » rSir» »•».••• •^^ 
 
 a«&.«M' 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 
 eorum •• 
 IT. Bernard. 
 
 rs wide, 
 e I float, 
 ; can divide, 
 may note : 
 
 re interspersed 
 lines, or occa- 
 
 tresume, quota- 
 they are taken. 
 
 oted, may seem 
 too strong for 
 strong for hiin- 
 ,n the language 
 lie Coramunioii- 
 iewing himself 
 "eelingly applies 
 
 ! never or from them or mo remote, 
 
 Bless them, my God ; but sliould tlieir partial 
 thought 
 Mislead this foolish heart, my antidote 
 
 Thyself shalt be, to judge it as I ought. 
 yes ; I sec myself a thing of nought, 
 
 View'd in those eyes which cannot sin endure ; 
 By sufferance spared, by blood of sprinkling bought, 
 
 Sinning in youth, in holy things impure. 
 years ill filVd ! — yet, to redeem the time. 
 Thy grace bestow, and bid me upward climb ! 
 
 See Habak. i. 13. Heb. xii. 24. Ps. xxv. 7. Exod. xxviii. 38. 
 Eph. V. IC. 
 
 m 
 
. V, .^■.--.•:?se----!si-^ttT*»^-T^'»''H-^;- 
 
 86 
 
 SONNETS 
 
 X. 
 
 Sunliaj) iEotnittfl on Eaifee Supetior. 
 
 When 1 remember these things, I pour out my soul in me ; 
 
 for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the 
 
 house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude 
 
 that kept holy-day. 
 
 Psalm xlii. 4. 
 
 How amiable are thy tabernacles, Lord of hosts ! 
 My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth, for the courts of the Lord. 
 
 Psalm Ixxxiv. 1, 2. 
 
 Meagre observance that we make, and lame, 
 
 With tasks inverted, of Jehovah's day ! 
 We at whose hands our fellow-men should claim 
 
 The Sabbath's work, are mutes to them ; and 
 they 
 Wlio else should rest, — (alas ! to praise or pray, 
 
 Our help their diiferent faith forbids to ask !) — 
 Since this our long-drawn journey cannot stay, 
 
 Still ply, as through the week, their wonted task: 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 87 
 
 We may not kneel ; with books in hand we bask 
 
 Beneath the sun, and roll on surges rude, 
 Culling the leaves ; nor can the sadness mask 
 "Which will, ill-timed, on thankful thoughts in- 
 trude : 
 Yet bless us, Lord, and bless the distant Word 
 Preached to our flocks, and be those suppliants 
 heard ! 
 
 fi 
 
 I 
 
 
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 V 
 
 ^ ' 'I 
 
 -Jjl 
 
m 
 
 I'* 
 
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Note 
 
 ON 
 
 SONNET X. 
 
 ^f 
 
 We did not lie by on Sundays, except when it 
 occurred, upon three occasions, that we fell in 
 with one of the posts, and even then we made 
 advantage of some part of the day to prosecute 
 our voyage. This arrangement, which was not 
 without its pain to my feelings, was considered 
 to be a work of necessity ; for, independently of 
 my having particular reasons for not prolong- 
 ing my absence from the diocese, it had been 
 so strongly represented to me that I must not 
 
 
 m 
 
 11 
 
90 
 
 NOTE ON 
 
 ,1 • 
 
 t\ 
 
 ■ } 
 
 attempt to cross Lake Superior on my return, 
 after August, on account of the commencement 
 of the windy season ^ about the close of that 
 month, as to induce me, conceiving that I had 
 not a day to lose, to alter some public appoint- 
 ments of duty at Quebec, in order to set out a 
 week earlier than the time which I had ori- 
 ginally fixed. On Lake Superior itself, it is 
 specially necessary, at all seasons, not to lose 
 any favourable weather for proceeding, — the 
 liability of detention, in the case of travellers 
 by canoe, being very great. With, perhaps, 
 this exception, I could undertake the journey, 
 if I had to repeat it, without infringing on the 
 repose of the Sabbath. 
 
 |[ 
 
 The canoe-men, who were all Romanists, 
 were given to understand that they had the 
 
 ^ A young gentleman, who left Quebec after my return, to 
 proceed, in the Company's service, to the territory, was tico 
 months in reaching Fort William, about half the journey to 
 the Red River. 
 
r ?,) ' - ' !i ' <t^.'n;»f.i'*" ' T ' T i" ""' ■'■'., " !' i". 'V ' ..Hi<, >i w; i ^-" I I " ■ i ' . i m i ii nii 
 
 SONNET X. 
 
 91 
 
 option of attending our services, when the cir- 
 cumstances under which we performed them 
 left it practicable ; but there was only one 
 among them who ever availed himself of this 
 invitation. He did so at one of the posts. 
 Had they wished it, the service would have 
 been performed to them in French. 
 
 ^i 
 
 1' 
 
 V f 
 
 I* ! 
 
 ,1. 
 
( 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 93 
 
 XL 
 
 ISbening of tje same Sutttiag on tije Siiotes of 
 
 Halte Stipertor* 
 
 The Tabernacle of Witness. 
 
 The Sabbath sinks beneath the shades of night ; 
 
 Yet, ere it pass, within our canvass screen 
 Once more we turn to Heaven, with ampler rite, 
 
 This waste and howling wilderness the scene. 
 liow unlike our mouldy temple mean, 
 
 Where three are met to lift their hearts and 
 hands. 
 On blankets spread for beds, with chest between, 
 
 On which their single candle flickering stands. 
 how unlike the place where Israel's bands 
 
 By thousands pour'd, in wilderness of yore ! 
 
 1 
 
 «■ 
 
94 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 1 
 
 The curtain'd shrine, unknown in other lands, 
 
 The golden light, the ark which witness bore ! 
 Yet more our grace, if Christ, our ark, imparts 
 In sobered truth some witness to our hearts. 
 
 ;mj 
 
 See Numb. xvii. 7, &c. Acts vii. 44. Deut. xxxii. 10. Rom. 
 viii. 16. 1 John v. IQ. 
 
 . ■■ ; 
 
n 
 
 SONNE73. 
 
 95 
 
 xii. 10. Rom. 
 
 XII. 
 an incitrent in ascentJing ^rencj Hiber. 
 
 GrLEAMiNG through clouds, the low and western sun 
 
 Of river-side lights up the rocky face ; 
 See there, as by magician's lantern, run 
 
 Canoe, men, paddles, all, in mimic race ; 
 Instant our men accept the challenged chace ; 
 
 "With shout, with bended back, with splashing 
 hand, 
 Urge their light vessel to redoubled pace. 
 
 And keep the equal strife, till where the land 
 Recedes, their rival drops. The rugged band, 
 
 Perchance, may picture in their harmless sport 
 Full many a scene where loftier figures stand 
 
 In scheming world, gay circle, princely court. 
 Men, to a proverb, shadows vain pursue. 
 For nothing strive, and false confound with tioie. 
 
 V'» 
 
 I 
 
 (.; 
 

 ' < 
 
 96 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 I'/,' 
 
 XIII. 
 
 'y 
 
 4 
 
 <©n loisimfl a ^mtil in Jpxtntf^ l^ibet. 
 
 {Riviere des Franfais.) 
 
 Ah ! river named of France, let reason judge, 
 
 My silver-mounted implemimt to thee, 
 If I am greatly blameable to grudge, 
 
 Seized, swallowed, as by ocean, plunderer free ; 
 My only pencil left, — unhappy me ! 
 
 Far off, like misailventure chanced before. 
 And then I lost a gift of love ; but see 
 
 Wliat thou hast done by robbing me once more. 
 Unfurnished — but my trifling now is o'er — 
 
 I think of her whose hand the token gave, 
 When last I left my native Albion's shore, 
 
 In happiest hope since yielded to the grave. 
 Full many a hundred lines her gift has traced ; 
 Not all, I dare to hope, are wholly waste. 
 
 h-li 
 
 H' 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 n 
 
 XIV 
 ^0 tfte dFite-flg. 
 
 'I 
 
 Paulum sepuitee distat inertise 
 Celata virtus. 
 
 e once more. 
 
 Fire-fly, thou art a pretty, pleasing thing : 
 In evening's dusk, we catch, and thickening 
 night. 
 
 Now here, now there, by closed or opening wing, 
 In grass and bushes wild, thy s|:immering light : 
 
 A 
 
 It meets, it shuns, it meets again the sight ; 
 
 And this we note, with emblematic aim. 
 In stillness thou art dark, in motion bright. 
 
 We, men and Christians, are not we the same ? 
 Ev'n pagan poet knew that virtue's name 
 
 But ill to hidden excellence applies ; 
 
 H 
 
 »' 
 
 I.. 
 
 11. 
 
98 
 
 SONNETH. 
 
 Akin to buried sloth, in fault and shame, 
 
 Talent or energy whi(5h dormant lies. 
 Let us — O wc have hijjfher, holier mark !- 
 Beware the light within us be not dark. 
 
 See Matt. vi. 23. 
 
 ■ 
 
 I'f 
 
 1 ,; 
 
 ' 1 
 
 
 J 
 
 
 ■' » 
 
 
 
 ^1 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 ii9 
 
 
 XV. 
 Jf^flo0quitoe0. 
 
 Amonq the plaf>ucs on oartli wliicli God has sent 
 Of lighter torment, is the pUigue of flies: 
 
 Not as of Egypt once the punishment ", 
 Yet such, sometimes, as feehle patience tries. 
 
 ' We do not read, however, that in this plague, which, li':c 
 the othere, (see Bryant's Egyptian Plagues,) had its pointed 
 meaning, independently of its simple effect as a judgment, the 
 sting of the insects formed an addition to it. 
 
 The three kinds of stinging insects which we enc9untered are 
 called by the French Canadians maramjouins, mmfimiif and brit- 
 lots ; the first, and not the motquim, being our mosquitoes. The 
 two latter are extremely small black flies, one of them almowt 
 imperceptible, which draw the blood. We frequently had our 
 tent prepared for us by the agitation, in all parts of it, of a 
 pmoking brand, before going to bed. 
 
 It is but a few years since a fief or other property was adver- 
 tized for sale in the Canadian papers, under the very uninviting 
 title of La Marangouiniere. 
 
 My moral is, I hope, less ei[uiv()cal than that which concludes 
 
 h2 
 
 M 
 
 ^ I- 
 
 n 
 
'II r ■ 
 
 I' I 
 
 100 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 Where wild America in vastness lies, 
 
 Three diverse hordes the swamps and woods 
 infest. 
 Banded or singly these make man their prize : 
 
 Quick by their subtle dart is blood express'd 
 Or tumour raised. By tiny foe distressed, 
 
 Travellers in forest rude, with veil are fain 
 To arm the face : men there whose dwellings rest 
 
 Crouch in thick smoke ; like help their cattle 
 gain ^ 
 O wise in trials great, in troubles small. 
 Who know to find mementos of the fall ! 
 
 Gay's fable of the man and the flea ; the insect bemg there made 
 to declare, m repression of human arrogance and self-elation, 
 " that men were made for fleas to eat." 
 
 ^ I have been assured, that the cattle, in situations where this 
 protection is provided for them, come lowing to the house to 
 have the fire renewed, if it happens to fail. It is necessary, 
 sometimes, that they should stand in a thick smoke to be milked. 
 
 i 'M 
 
 ii 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 101 
 
 and woods 
 
 ' prize : 
 xpress'd 
 
 re fain 
 ellings rest 
 tlieir cattle 
 
 XVI. 
 
 On finding the traces of the lumber-men at the portage of Le 
 Paresseux, above the little cave called La Porte d'Enfer, in the 
 Petite Riviere fallmg into the main branch of the Mattawan. 
 
 1, 
 
 1! 
 
 ^ing there made 
 tnd self-elation, 
 
 Mens where this 
 lo the house to 
 It is necessarj, 
 le to be milked. 
 
 And have you penetrated up to this, 
 
 Ye enterprising souls, for lucre's sake ! 
 These wilds not wild enough your feet to miss ! 
 
 These solitudes your echoing axe must wake ! 
 Lo ! now the leap your plunder cannot take 
 
 Of these white falls ; and, choking all the place, 
 The square-hewn masts a heaped confusion make. 
 
 So severed, so disordered, oft the race 
 Following the lumberer's task ; and we may trace, 
 
 Alas ! their picture in this tumbled wood, 
 
 
 
102 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 I w 
 
 f- 1 
 
 Strowii all irregular upon the face 
 
 Of human life, and mark'd by little good. 
 Yet good will come : they pierce the desert's heart, 
 And fill of pioneers the useful part. 
 
 Rh 
 
 ii ■*• 
 
 t i 
 
 t 
 
 S- i, J 
 
.■v^- 
 
 ! good, 
 esert's heart, 
 
 ^f)t Hosit Cftilir t 
 
 A POEM. 
 
 CANTO I. 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 'I 
 
 U ' 
 i 
 
 Til 
 
il! 
 
 ff ■*« s! 
 
 "S ; f 
 
CANTO I. 
 
 I. 
 
 Of all that men with zeal and ardour chace, 
 Pour'd here and there on life's promiscuous 
 ground, 
 Some points are won by smooth and easy race, 
 Some hedged by hindrance hard and sore are 
 found. 
 With wish'd success not every wight is crown'd. 
 
 Sagacious minds their means will nicely choose: 
 What ill their powers can master will go round ; 
 What force can fairly do will not refuse, 
 Not spend their strength in vain, nor meet 
 advantage lose. 
 
 t 
 
 C5e Host arf)ilt»» 
 
 I Ml 
 
106 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 r « 
 
 i :x 
 
 II 
 
 So in his simple toils the Indian guide 
 Through western wilds who shapes the tra- 
 veller s way ; 
 
 In downward rapids, where he can, to slide 
 His swift canoe, right glad in heart and gay, 
 
 Will meet them upward too without dismay ; 
 Yet, if occasion minister, will shun : 
 
 Now off, throug l unsuspected passage ^tvtmg ; 
 Now up dividing hranch obliquely iiin. 
 That so more smoothly may, and soon, his 
 course be done. 
 
 IIL 
 
 Down Winnipeg's full flood, with labour small, 
 Onward you sweep, and speed that cannot 
 slack ; 
 
 (S^ave many a bar, I trow, from thundering fall,) 
 Far other task awaits your journey back : 
 
i 
 
 s the tra- 
 
 jlide 
 md gay, 
 smay ; 
 
 strf«f 
 
 in, 
 
 soon, his 
 
 small, 
 lat cannot 
 
 |ring fall,) 
 )ack : 
 
 a 
 
 t: ■<'':. 7 ■?'>;,,. ':d 
 
 1 \r'['._U 
 
 !■: 
 
 ''■\{ .1 .'.'..if 
 
 .— ^ *k- . . 
 

 I S' . f : 
 
 iti 
 
 ' ; if .< 
 
 ' 'I 
 
 f, 
 
 I^ 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 107 
 
 Alike, if so you may, decline attack 
 Of fall or swelling flood, and wiser find 
 
 Far here or there a space, some devious track : 
 Lo ! at this reedy spot, the woods behind, 
 A narrower, weaker stream is known to skulk 
 and wind. 
 
 P \A 
 
 ] I 
 
 IV. 
 
 Pursue the thread, — a pleasing rural calm 
 
 Hangs o'er the scene, as when from, busy strife, 
 Grrandeur, and worldly glare, men find it balm 
 
 To steal to humbler and sequestered life. 
 All yet is wild : be sure no gardener's knife 
 
 Has trimm'd these shrubs ; no sheep have 
 cropp'd the grass : 
 No cottage smoke will rise, — no spinning wife 
 
 Peep forth ; with milk-pail charged no village 
 lass: 
 
 In stillness all the way and solitude you pass. 
 
 I 
 
 if 
 
 m 
 
 I. M 
 
108 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 V. 
 
 And yet, though all be wild, we seem to meet 
 Here wandering on, a wildness more subdued ; 
 
 And, in the features of the far retreat, 
 Tho' all be waste, a gentler solitude : 
 
 Some rocks there are and falls, but not so rude : 
 The pause relieves your mind when off you look 
 
 From objects huge and vastness still renew'd. 
 On landscape more confined and quiet nook, 
 On willowy streamlet soft, or clear fast-flowing 
 brook. 
 
 VI. 
 
 One spot we reach, — a space by broken hills 
 Shut in, — from whence, with interrupted course. 
 
 O'erhung by boughs, in rushing whiten'd rills. 
 Winds forth the stream, not without murmur 
 hoarse. 
 
 ' t 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 109 
 
 The forest footpath here we seek perforce ; 
 But first of flattened rocks a thrcsliold view. 
 
 With clefts, we almost think they had their source 
 In human art, in such proportion due 
 Their narrow'd walls are cut, so parallel and 
 true. 
 
 i ii 
 
 VIL 
 
 Loitering, I mused awhile, (since transport hero 
 Of vessel with her load demands a space,) 
 
 For when the name had struck my heedful car, 
 JStamp'd on these rocks which shrubs and wild- 
 flowers grace, 
 
 Its rude tradition I had striven to trace: 
 They have a tale that in still deeper cleft 
 
 (Since clefts abound within the dangerous place) 
 A child who fell, long vainly sought, was left 
 By wandering parents wailed, all hopelessly 
 bereft. 
 
 
no 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 «i 
 
 VIII. 
 
 So Hylas, Hylas ', rang througli every glade ; 
 
 Hylas, tlic lost of foolish fable old : 
 So pours at eve beneath the poplar shade 
 
 Sad iiightingale her sorrows uncontroll'd : 
 Her unfledged young, by clown to pity cold 
 
 Torn from her breast, with plaint prolong'd she 
 weeps ^ 
 111-omen'd all the place the Indians hc'ld, 
 
 And live remembrance still the story keeps : 
 
 No native passing through, or sojourns there, oi' 
 sleeps. 
 
 ^ His adjungit, Hylan nautte quo tonte relictuin 
 Claradssent : ut littus, Ilyla, Hyla, oraue sonaret. 
 
 2 Qualis populea moerens Philomela sub umbra 
 Araissos queritur foetus, quos durus arator 
 Observans nido implumes, detraxit ; at ilia 
 Flet noctem, raraoque sedeus miserabile carmen 
 Integrate et moestis late loca questibus implet. 
 
 J.. . . , 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 Ill 
 
 w 
 
 ;la(lc ; 
 
 cold 
 •olon^^'d sli»' 
 
 .Id, 
 
 y keepsi : 
 ns there, or 
 
 IX. 
 
 Hence the Lost Child is title of the spot, 
 
 (So tells of voyajneurs a toil-worn man 
 Who Arctic scenes has view'd ',) and well I wot 
 
 To found on this of Icngthen'd lay the plan, 
 And lead to lofty thoughts what thus began : — 
 
 0^ heavenly lore, may much incongruous seem 
 To those who would the task severely scan ; 
 
 And fond conceit such project they may deem ; 
 
 Yet so my thoughts were drawn, and I pursue 
 my theme. 
 
 I 
 
 luni 
 maret. 
 
 X. 
 
 Forgive the mean attempt, and bless it too ; 
 And ! if aught of slender gift, and weak, 
 
 kra 
 
 Irmeu 
 let. 
 
 ' Antoine St. Denis, one of my steersmen, who had accom- 
 panied Captain Franklin to the Arctic regions in 1825. He is 
 also my authority for what is said in the last line of the preceding 
 stanza. Jamais je ri'ai connu azicun sauvage qui ait Toufu camper 
 dans I'endroit. The place, in itself, is very favourable for such a 
 purpose. 
 
 
112 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 i 
 
 t 
 
 h\ 
 
 If I 
 
 :! 41 
 
 IV ! 
 
 m' 
 
 Thy wisdom has bestow 'd, — whatever I do, 
 
 My God, thy glory let me only seek : 
 High truths more trifling theme was made to 
 speak. 
 The sofa, erst by one of honour'd name : 
 Him, in warm love, in faith subdued and meek. 
 Fain would I follow, — strains like his to frame 
 My hand more rude forbears, and simple skill, 
 to claim. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Lost child of Adam ! — ah ! lost child of God, 
 From Him, the Father of the skies, astray ; 
 
 Fall'n under sin, and with thy kindred sod 
 Ordain'd, when thou hast done thy little day 
 
 Again to mix ; and then the gulph assay, 
 
 All unexplored beyond — mark'd from thy birtli 
 
 By weakness, want, and error — growing grey 
 In lusts, and strifes, and slavish cares of earth, 
 Who shall thy helper be, vain thing, what art 
 thou worth ? 
 
 ' » . I 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 113 
 
 0, 
 
 , made to 
 
 le: 
 
 A meek, 
 J to frame 
 implc skill, 
 
 D of God, 
 astray ; 
 
 sod 
 
 ittle day 
 
 ^ay, 
 
 thy birth 
 
 Lg grey 
 les of eartli, 
 
 iQ', wliat art 
 
 XII. 
 
 There in the pit thou liest ; thou canst not climb, 
 
 Nor from thy base confinement seek to rise, 
 Sunk, as of yore, by dark fraternal crime, 
 
 The patriarch's child who bless'd his father's 
 eyes; 
 Yet he, to passing Midianites a prize. 
 
 Falls now, for weight of silver duly told : 
 And see, of Egypt's lordly men and wise 
 
 First is he ranked, a slave but lately sold ; 
 
 Once more a father's arms that best-loved son 
 enfold. 
 
 XIIL 
 
 For thee, what hand is for thy rescue ^tretch'd ; 
 
 What price to gain thy service will be paid ? 
 Whence of a father's love shall hope be fetch'd, 
 
 Or high deliverance in thy prospect laid ? 
 
 XIII. Job V. 1. Ps. Ixxxix. 6. 
 
 ; ;. M 
 
 If 
 
 M 
 
 m 
 
 b 
 
 4 
 
Hi 
 
 114 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 11 1 
 
 Call, if to answer thee can one be stay'd ; 
 
 Turn to the saints, if they can succour yield ; 
 Sons of the mighty, can you lend your aid ? 
 
 Angels of heaven, by you can this be heal'd ? 
 
 Ah ! no —we search in vain creation's bound- 
 less field. 
 
 If' 
 
 ! ' 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Creation fails : but who from Edom now 
 With garments dyed from Bozrah hither spec d... 
 
 Travelling in strength which bids resistance bow 
 Say who — for clad He comes in glorious weeds. 
 
 'Tis I, — in righteousness whose language pleads, 
 Mighty to save, and single Saviour known. 
 
 Ask not from whence his garment freshly bleeds, 
 As who the purple wine-press treads ; alone 
 He fights, nor help from man his high achieve- 
 ments own. 
 
 XIV. Isa.lxiii. 1-3. 
 
 i i 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 115 
 
 'm 
 
 XV. 
 
 In vain her warlike towers shall Bozrah boast ; 
 
 Edom in vain her flaunting banners rear ; 
 With sure defeat th' Avenger sweeps the host ; 
 
 Israel of God, thy foes are pictured here ! 
 It comes — of his redeemed the glorious vear — 
 
 Not surer once the doom'd destruction fell 
 On Zion's self, for which He pour'd the tear, 
 
 Than still from foe to foe his conquests swell, 
 
 Till trampled lie for aye the powers of death 
 and hell. 
 
 Ml 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Yet with mad scorn He struggled here below ; 
 
 With rending pang and foul dishonour fought ; 
 Such cup He drank — for God had wilFd it so — 
 
 And victory by his own dear blood was bought : 
 
 XV. Isa. Ixlii. 4. 6. 
 
 XVI. Mark xiv. 36. Acts iii. 15. Heb. il. 14. Luke xix. 10. 
 •John xi. 52. 
 
 i2 
 
I ■' ^ 
 
 116 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 lil 
 
 Like Joseph, too, (as holy seer had taught,) 
 For Him was counted down the silver cost : 
 
 Him Death embraced who life for sinners wrought, 
 The pit, WHO came to seek and save the lost, 
 God's children gathering back in varied wan- 
 derings toss'd. 
 
 U§ 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Well may you wonder, mortals, at the work 
 Jehovah works ; but wondering, beware 
 
 No disbelief or thought disdainful lurk 
 
 Within your breasts — to perish else prepare : 
 
 What God has done shall man to question dare ? 
 With cavils greet, and reasonings falsely wise ? 
 
 Will you, like hapless falconer, gaze in air, 
 
 Scanning the way which some loose fancy flies. 
 Beneath your heedless feet while yawning 
 danger lies ? 
 
 hi- 
 
 m 
 
 XVII. Acts xiii, 41. I Tim. vi. 20. 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 117 
 
 3r cost : 
 jrs wrought, 
 
 1 THE LOST, 
 
 varied wan- 
 
 I work 
 beware 
 
 prepare : 
 ion dare ? 
 Eilsely wise ? 
 1 air, 
 fancy flies, 
 lie yawning 
 
 XVIIL 
 
 We do not bid you shut fair Reason's eye ; 
 
 We do not seek to keep your senses blind ; 
 We do not say you must not calmly try 
 
 If things be so — no, such is not our mind. 
 Your heaven-born souls in fetters base to bind ; 
 
 But search, when searching, deeply as you need ; 
 First of those souls the wants insatiate find. 
 
 Insatiate else, and thence be shaped your creed, 
 
 That Gospel words are truth, and Christ is joy 
 indeed. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 This wonder spurn'd, will then your wonder cease ? 
 
 Your doubting speculations disappear ? 
 No clouds on your horizon now increase ? 
 
 Is Providence all plain, all mystery clear ? 
 
 f 
 
 N 
 
 ' ,1 
 
 m 
 
 XVIII. Acts xvii. 11. 
 
 r- 
 
 • '^ I. 
 
 1'^ J 
 
'■J : 
 
 lis 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 ■■'f 
 
 War, slavery, dearth and plague, lust, rage and fear, 
 Evil in moral shape or natural found, 
 
 Whence did they come ? why is it sufFer'd here ; 
 'Mid loveliest scenes foul mischief should abound. 
 This glorious world we tread be felt a cursed 
 ground ? 
 
 Hmi 
 
 I ; 5f 
 
 XX. 
 
 think of all the human hearts that grieve 
 With festering wrongs ; count all the bitter sighs, 
 
 Outlets of woe, which human bosoms heave ; 
 Hear all the shrieks which pierce the pitying 
 skies ; 
 
 Mark what fierce pleasure glares in fiendish eyes ; 
 The eyes of man made for affections kind, 
 
 With cutting stripes his fellow to chastise ; 
 See Him in tortures skilFd, intent in mind 
 Fresh writhings to procure, new sense of pain 
 to find \ 
 
 * Examples will occur but too readily to the mind of every 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 119 
 
 XXL 
 
 Stand where the world may some wide prospect 
 stretch, 
 And muse upon the scenes enacted there : 
 In yon thron^'d town how many a batter'd wretch 
 
 idi 
 
 j^forced/^by nrfs coarse efforts fair, 
 Toils, spider-like, her victims to ensnare ; 
 
 Herself, to sell where'er the hire is paid, 
 Strolls through promiscuous streets with blazoned 
 air: 
 Ah ! she the victim once — some simple maid — 
 Loved, flattered, won, despised, to want and 
 shame betray 'd. 
 
 f 
 
 II 
 
 ii' 
 
 le mind of every 
 
 reader, supplied both by general and ecclesiastical history ; but 
 there is one in the latter, mentioned by Bingham in the fifth 
 book of his Antiquities of the Christian Church, which is pecu- 
 liarly in point. Speaking of the exemption of Presbyters as well 
 as Bishops, by a special privilege granted in the Theodosian code, 
 from examination, as witnesses in court, by scourging or torture, 
 he refers to Synesius, vaho mentions several new sorts of torture which 
 AndronicuSf the tyrannical prefect of Ptolemais, invented, beyond 
 what the law directed. 
 
:M u 
 
 tin 
 
 ii 
 
 120 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 XXIL 
 
 So some dishonoured fall : pronounce the doom ; 
 
 Punish the crime ; throw first the stone, who- 
 e'er 
 Is spotless found. What, all make vacant room ? 
 
 Left is the solitary convict here ? 
 Ye favoured souls, are not your bosoms clear, 
 
 Whom smooth proprieties, encircling, chain ? 
 Sleek citizen, starch Pharisee severe, 
 
 Follower of harmless sport, of decent gain. 
 
 Refuse ye, one by one, Grod's challenge to sus- 
 tain ? . 
 
 'i i 
 
 k ■' 
 
 lUis} 
 
 XXIIL 
 
 Sail on, contented crowd, — on let them sail : 
 For heaven full sure they steer: unblemished 
 fame 
 
 Is theirs, right worthy men, how should they fail ? 
 Yet is there not a test for virtue's claim ' ? 
 
 XXII. Johiiviii. 4— 11. 
 
 ' There is nothing good without the chiefest good ; for where 
 
 M i 
 
 i i 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 121 
 
 ill 
 
 Live they to Qod ? love they his glorious name ? 
 
 Or greet Him rather with evasive shifts, 
 And suiferance cold — nay, with fastidious shan? ? 
 While all the largeness of his daily gifts 
 
 The more their pamper'd hearts in wantonness 
 uplifts. 
 
 lood ; for where 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 motley world ! death joins the dance of pride ' 
 Unseen, and shakes, unheard, his ghastly hones : 
 
 the laiowledge of the eternal and unchangeable truth is wanting, 
 there is but false virtue even in the best manners. 
 
 S. Aug. apud Beveridge, Art. 13. 
 
 XXIV. Gen. iv. 10. 
 
 ^ This will be perceived to be an allusion to the Dance of Death 
 (otherwise called the Dance ofMacaheVf from the name of an old 
 Grerman author, who wrote a poem with the same title, and in 
 illustration of the same subject), which was formerly painted 
 upon the walls of convents, and other buildings, and is known to 
 have employed the pencil of Holbem and the graving-tool of 
 Hollar. It consisted of a long train or procession of persons of 
 all ranks, from the Pope and Emperor downwards, each indi- 
 vidual having a grotesque figure of Death, in some antic attitude, 
 for a partner. It was common, at one time, in England, in dif- 
 ferent parts of which some relics of it are, or were till lately, to 
 be seen. 
 
 ^^\ 
 
 ' * : 
 
 4 
 
 m 
 
' I 
 
 122 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 • ^ I 
 
 '' 
 
 Requiem with revel blends ; by dungeon's side 
 
 Tall palace towers : here burst distressful groans 
 From lazar-walls, there trill theatric tones, 
 
 Fashion and beggary, pomp and famine meet ; 
 Crime in all shapes the mingling tumult owns ; 
 Foul oaths, insane debauch, trade's endless 
 
 cheat, 
 And blood's accusing cry which tells a brother's 
 feat. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Is here no c.ill for help, no sign of harm ? 
 
 No staring proof of man's disorder'd state ? 
 Can waken'd conscience look without alarm 
 
 On dim eternity, or find in fate 
 Or reeling chance, as some perversely prate, 
 
 Comfort at last ? or is it thus you hope 
 To stay the soul in nature's stern debate ; 
 
 With those rough billows give her strength to 
 cope 
 
 Which close upon us oncOj and never, never ope ? 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 123 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Where is slic now ? — the parted corpse you see : 
 what a change ! — all senseless, stiff, and cold, 
 
 "Out 
 
 Waiting worse changes yet UJit^^^ whore is she 
 
 Who prompted late the moving, pliant mould ? 
 So mad you cannot be, so blindly bold. 
 
 To deem that, hence when she has taken wing 
 Her being all is closed, her history told, 
 
 Mere evanescent froth, evaporate thing ! 
 
 Ah! no — in death she lives, and thence of 
 death the sting. 
 
 XXVIL 
 
 Sin is the sting : if those be found below 
 Who have not sinn'd, all happy speed be theirs ! 
 
 XXVI. Wisdom ii. 3. 1 Cor. xv. 56. 
 
 * The following distich, describing these changes, is found in 
 the Meditations of St. Bernard : — 
 
 Post hominem, vermis ; post vermem, foetor et horror : 
 Sic in non hominem vertitur omnis homo. 
 
 XXVII. 1 Cor. XV. 45. 22. 2 Cor. v. 14. Heb. ii. 9. 
 
 \ t 
 
'W^ 
 
 
 124 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 How they arc here we might desire to know ; 
 
 We only say they arc not Adam's heirs ; 
 Blessing to them no second Adam bears ; 
 
 They may dispense with Christ ; but you who 
 own 
 That you have sinn'd, that sin with judgment 
 pairs, 
 Say, in your souls will no relief be known 
 That One has died for all, and can for all 
 atone ? 
 
 xxviil 
 
 God is a holy God. The fairest star 
 Which shines, the moon which hangs in heaven 
 serene, 
 Fall from their pureness and perfection far 
 
 Viewed in those eyes — and how shall man be 
 clean ? 
 In old mythology the pictures seen. 
 Stern Nemesis pursuing deeds ill done ; 
 
 XXVIII. Job XXV. 4, 5. Gen. xli. 26. 32. 
 

 low ; 
 
 8; 
 
 you 
 
 who 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 125 
 
 Minos with colleagues dark, — what do they mean? 
 Fierce Furies driving Clytemnestra's sou ? 
 Still guilty nature speaks ; the doubled dream 
 
 IS one . 
 
 judgment 
 
 own 
 
 m for all 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Man seeks in vain by tUnd device t> sooth 
 The worm within, wh;ch restless nature feels : 
 
 See myriads crushed, beli< ving ro to s^ ootL. 
 Their after-state, by eastern idol' vneels. 
 
 Ah ! where his rites in part tJ-e Christian steals 
 From pagan source ", with spotted faith obscure, 
 
 
 in heaven 
 
 far 
 
 11 man be 
 
 5 This will be understood simply as a licence taken to adapt 
 the words to the case, and will not be supposed to convey the 
 idea that these distorted ethnical conceptions were actual inspira- 
 tions from above. 
 
 * It would be by no mp'' •■ without benefit, if men, in this 
 reading age, were to make themselves more acquainted with the 
 prodigious extent to whif^li Christian Rome has borrowed from 
 Pagan Rome the cerp^ onies of worship, and the religious ob- 
 servances and practices of her people. Middleton's Letter from 
 Rome is weR known. Many striking details of this nature, ap- 
 
 ui: 
 
126 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 See many a conscience sore which mammon heals ; 
 Ills of departed souls which priests can cure ; 
 Feign'd fires which offer'd mass can make the 
 less endure. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Carrying while here, and calculating too 
 In fruits beyond, the consciousness of sin, 
 
 »pn 
 
 pear, among more modern works, in Blunt's Vestiges of Ancient 
 Manners in Italy. 
 
 It has been pointed out by different writers, that the doctrine 
 of a Purgatory is at least held in common with the heathen 
 mythologists, whose views upon the subject are exhibited in a 
 familiar passage of Virgil : — 
 
 Ergo exercentur poenis, veterumque malorum 
 Supplicia expendunt. Alice panduntur inanes 
 Suspensse ad ventos : aliis sub gurgite vasto 
 Infectutn eluitur sceliiSf aut exuritur igni. 
 Quisque suos patimur Manes : exinde per amplum 
 Mittimur Elysium, et pauci Iseta arva tenemus : 
 Donee longa dies perfecto temporis orbe 
 (hncretam exemit labem, purumque reliquit 
 iEtherium sensum, atque aurai simplicis iguem. 
 XXX. Heb. ix. 22. 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 127 
 
 Still something strange man deems there is to do 
 Or suffer, ere repose his soul can win : 
 
 Gifts he will fetch and strain'd inventions spin ; 
 Lash, starve himself, or lay hrute victims low : 
 
 Yet did dumb sacrifice from God begin, 
 Ordain'd the truth eternal to foreshow, 
 That sin unwash'd by blood remission cannot 
 know. 
 
 
 tiges of Ancient 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 victim first and last — spotless Lamb, 
 Ere yet in space the globe's foundations lay, 
 
 Slain in th' omniscient mind of God, I AM, 
 With whom a thousand years are as a day : 
 
 once ordain'd, and, once for all, to pay — 
 (Unlike the sacrifice which priests repeat) — 
 
 XXXI. 1 Pet. i. 19. Rev. xiii. 8. Exod. iii. 14. John viii. 68. 
 2Pet. iii. 8. Heb. vii. 27 ; ix. 25— 28 ; x. 1, 2. 12. 14. IJohn 
 ii. 2. Jolin xix. 30. I cannot avoid thinking, that there is some- 
 thing very marked, and not without a prospective meaning, in 
 the iteration and reiteration of the Apostolic statements in the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, to which the references are here given. 
 
 ii 
 
 7 11 
 
128 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 Of all the world to take the sins away, 
 Offering sufficient, satisfaction meet ', 
 The work was finished then — receive us at thy 
 feet. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Ood's attributes intact, inviolate, each 
 
 Must stand, in this essentially the same, 
 Far as his mercy and compassion reach. 
 
 Not less his purity and justice claim. 
 Infinite all ; on none can shade of blame. 
 
 On none can breath of imperfection pass : 
 Sins which with men may wear some easy name 
 
 Taint the whole soul — make breach with God 
 — alas ! 
 
 With blinded eyes we judge, and feel with 
 hearts of brass. 
 
 ' Prayer of Consecration in the Communion office. 
 
 K ) 
 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 129 
 
 US 
 
 at thy 
 
 Etme, 
 
 ne, 
 pass : 
 asy name 
 with God 
 
 feel with 
 
 office. 
 
 XXXIIL 
 
 To sin her wages Truth stands pledged to give, 
 
 If justice yield her claim, God's rule must cease; 
 Love interposes — let the sinner live — 
 
 God's full prerogatives shall not decrease ; 
 Mercy with truth shall meet, with justice peace. 
 
 On me be all the debt these prisoners owe ; 
 Mine be the task these culprits to release ; 
 
 My throne I leave, my glory I forego ; 
 
 In me behold, as man, the family below. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Forgiveness from offence, from want relief 
 Of bounteous hand, from suifering, pity flows ; 
 
 The fleld of generous sympathies, to grief, 
 To ills on ills, its whole existence owes ; 
 
 None can he own who sees no human woes ; 
 Great from permitted evil hence the gain : 
 
 i all 
 
 I i 
 
 XXXIII. Rom. vi. 23. Ts. Ixxxv. 10. 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 So, in their heavenly exercise, repose 
 On guilt, on helplessness, on loss and pain, 
 God's attributes of grace in all their radiant 
 train. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 rl 
 
 And has not He, if evidence you ask. 
 
 Piled proof on proof, his structure to secure ? 
 
 Ply o'er the page of prophecy your task, 
 Mark of the Nazarene the portrait sure : 
 
 See peel'd and scattered Israel still endure ; 
 See them, of truths they gladly would eiface 
 
 The guardians made, to stamp the writing pure ; 
 Follow the fate of kingdom, people, place, 
 And patient, side by side, with doom predicted 
 trace. 
 
 XXXV. Isa. xviii. 2. The word peeled here signifies pilliujed. 
 See the notes at the end of the book. 
 
 ! I 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 131 
 
 L pain, 
 
 eir radiant 
 
 ) secure ? 
 
 k, 
 
 iure : 
 
 lure; 
 
 Id efface 
 
 ting pure ; 
 
 place, 
 
 im predicted 
 
 ignifies pilhiged. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Search, sift the tale, how wondrous works of old 
 
 "Were wrought by hands of feeble men, and few ; 
 How these in maintenance of facts were bold 
 To die, — of facts whicli proved their system 
 true : 
 See from what source its small beginnings drew 
 The spreading stream which yet will flood the 
 world ; , 
 
 From seed of martyr-blood how Churches grew ; 
 How hosts unarmed the battle backward hurl'd ; 
 The cross alone they bore for banner, wide un- 
 furl'd. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Survey the fruits : if men who bear her name 
 To holy faith have done dishonour strange 
 
 
 XXXVI. Isa. xi. 9. Hab. ii. 14. 
 
 XXXVII. Matt. xiii. 30. 
 
 k2 
 
I m 
 
 \. ' ' 
 
 Vi 
 
 \i ' 
 
 '' \ 
 
 132 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 ^ f 
 
 By manners vile, by persecution's flame, 
 By rite adulterous or unlicensed change, 
 
 These only show the shocks which still derange, 
 From early harm, the vast and swift machine : 
 
 Till once the wheat is gathered for the grange " 
 In close commixture will the tares be seen : 
 God's book foreshows the ills and paints each 
 brood unclean. 
 
 fl 
 
 XXXVIIL 
 
 Survey the fruits — it is not thus throughout - 
 Happy and holy fruits may well be view'd 
 
 ' * ( 
 
 iH 
 
 XXXVIIL 2 Cor. x. 5. 
 
 ^ It is perhaps hardly necessary, in order to justify here the 
 use of the word grange^ to point out its original correspondence 
 with the modern sense of the same word in French. It is given 
 as follows by the old lexicographer Minshew : — " Grange, Qw- 
 PHB^ grange ; Italian, grangie ; ex Lat. grana, orum, quod ibi jrana 
 
 reponantur a house or building not only wher.e ome is 
 
 laid up, as barnes be, but also where there be stabks for horses, 
 stalles for oxen and other cattell, sties for hogges, and other 
 things neccssarie for husbandrie." 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 133 
 
 derange, 
 machine : 
 grange "* 
 ! seen : 
 >aints each 
 
 ^'hout — 
 iew'd : 
 
 ustify here the 
 orrespondence 
 1. It is given 
 
 Grange, Q,m- 
 1 quod ibi jrana 
 
 vher.e cjnie in 
 llf;s for horses, 
 tes, and other 
 
 hence alone might vanish every doubt, 
 Each high imagination fall subdued. 
 
 In Christian lands are thousands unrenewed 
 In vigorous faith and holiness of heart : 
 
 But has no greater blessing there accmed 
 In social system, manners, useful art. 
 Than monstrous Pagan creed or Moslem lies 
 impart ? 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Look closer yet : full many a mark well known 
 
 I pass, as help for orphan, sick, or blind ; 
 As mitigated war ; as general tone 
 
 Of soften'd thoughts, whose first pure source 
 we find 
 In Christian Faith — (and choose of happiest kind 
 
 Paynim or Turk, yet, bold for her behoof. 
 We say that Christians farthest fall'n behind 
 Their standard high, compared will help our 
 
 proof) — 
 But leave this voider gaze : lift we the Christian 
 roof 
 
 ^ 
 
"'Hit 
 
 [ill 
 
 in * 
 
 "if 
 
 r: 
 
 ^ 
 
 /fi 
 
 'tM 
 
 '■ ( 
 
 i 
 
 . 
 
 I ' 
 1 I 
 
 (! ' ! i 
 
 134 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 XL. 
 
 beautiful the tint which Faith will shed 
 On all the landscape of domestic life ( 
 
 Subdue the wayward child, the hoary head 
 A crown of glory make ; the gentle wife 
 
 In rudest trials guide ; unholy strife 
 Or chilling scorn exchange for love and peace ; 
 
 Ills which in smooth or coarser form are rife, 
 Hard selfishness or petulant caprice. 
 With gradual hand weed out, and mischief bid 
 to cease. 
 
 XLL 
 
 One farther step^behold that headlong youth 
 
 Glorying in sin, to profligacy sold : 
 He turns — he melts — he clasps eternal truth : 
 
 will he now that prize exchange for gold ? 
 Or mark some pilgrim meek, who, once enrolled. 
 
 With heart retentive of baptismal seal, 
 
 XL. Prov. xvi. 13. 
 
 XLI. Matt. xi. 25. 
 
 ). 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 135 
 
 Of weakness ware, keeps close witliin the fold : 
 Think you from him you shall his treasure 
 
 steal ? 
 Ah, no! 'tis his, to babes what wisdom can 
 
 reveal ! 
 
 i 
 
 XLIL 
 
 I speak not here of heaven-sent sudden throes, 
 
 Infusions palpable to sense allied, 
 Too freely mix'd and minister'd by those 
 
 Who think no stimulant is ill applied : 
 No ; broad indeed the borders which divide 
 
 Things gross by animal perception leam'd 
 From that blest Spirit whose aerial tide 
 
 Sweeps through the soul untrack'd and un- 
 discern'd, 
 
 But stirs a movement there, and leaves the 
 creature turn'd. 
 
 
 XLIL John iii. 8. 
 
136 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 ir 
 
 XLin. 
 
 Ho, tlicn, whom sense of many sins has taught 
 
 To love a Saviour by the world despised, 
 Feels that no baseless shadow he has caught, 
 
 Followed no fable cunningly devised : 
 In whom he has believed, and whom has prized 
 
 He knows ; and bears the witness in his breast. 
 Glad news embraced, his heart evangelized, 
 
 Loaded, he finds relief, and weary, rest ; 
 
 A witness to the world, his faith in life ex- 
 press'd. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Ask him — from heaven he wants no other sign ; 
 
 Prove him — with all the rubs of carnal will 
 His soul preserves ethereal temper fine; 
 
 With all the rem.nants of infection ^ still, 
 
 XLIII. Luke vii. 47. 2 Pet. i. 16. 2 Tim. i. 12. 1 John 
 V. 10. 
 
 XLIV. 2 John 4. 3 John 4. Heb. ii. 3. 
 ^ Ninth Article of Religion. 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 137 
 
 To walk in truth, ho has a heavenly skill. 
 And thus, if proof on proof your faith protect 
 
 In reason's eye — if all your heart it fill, 
 Once yielded up — escape can you expect, 
 Wlio such salvation high shall greet with vile 
 neglect ? 
 
 XLV. 
 
 And yet all this is strange, exceeding strange, — 
 
 Ay, is it not ? — if through th' extended plan, 
 I ask again, of works divine you range, 
 
 Where is the speck not wonderful to man ? 
 Yourself consider ; tell me, if you can, 
 
 How mind on matter acts, and both conspire ; 
 How works the power unconscious -f how began. 
 
 Which still, as hand unseen that draws the 
 wire, 
 
 The form corporeal prompts to do the soul's 
 desire ? 
 

 138 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 -< > 
 
 i I 
 
 XLVL 
 
 Ev'n while you read these lines, to follow seek 
 
 Each process, ere the mind their meaning catch ; 
 These strokes, in varied combination, speak 
 Thoughts which a glance will instantaneous 
 snatch ; 
 Yet, stroke by stroke, they are contrived to match 
 Sounds which combined make words, — those 
 sounds combined 
 Striking the outward ear, a door unlatch, 
 And pass mysterious meaning to the mind. 
 Receptacle of all, which knows their worth to 
 find. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Step after step, — the speaking organs first 
 Moved diverse, thus or thus, in countless ways, 
 
 XLVII. 1 Cor. xiv. 10. 
 
 'L : :- 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 139 
 
 All on tlic air with calculation burst ; 
 
 Each separate jar a separate force conveys ; 
 Each jar, the hearing organ owns, obeys ; 
 
 But now the eye usurps the task to teach ; 
 Concerted signs of sound the liand portrays ; 
 
 The wondrous web of sight these pictures reach ; 
 
 Through this fresh channel flows the stream of 
 thought and speech. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 m 
 
 Of all this series in its complex parts, 
 Corporeal engine, mechanism of tho\ight, 
 
 Memory at hand to prompt the mental arts, 
 By which the message of the sense is caught ; 
 
 Of all the harmonies so nicely wrought, 
 Nature of light and properties of air, 
 
 With moving or recipient organ brought, 
 To meet in action, by creating care, 
 Say if of all thy soul, in reading, was aware. 
 
140 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 I 1 
 
 i ) 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 Ere fellow-mind which here embodied stands 
 
 Could pass, as by an easy leap, to yours. 
 Say if you were observant, while your hands 
 
 Turn'd leaf by leaf, of what that skill procures 
 Which work'd at first, and working yet endures. 
 
 In balance all creation knows to keep, 
 Each change, each alternation still ensures. 
 
 Rolls the high heavens, and bids the insect 
 creep \ 
 
 For jvrasp of human thought too high, too wide, 
 too deep. 
 
 XLIX. John V. 17. 
 
 * This expression is borrowed from an author but little entitled 
 to our respect and approbation, being no other than J. J. Rous- 
 seau, one of -vhose works I turned over more than a quarter of a 
 century ago, and I have carried ever since in my memory the 
 following beautiful words which it contains : Providence Hernelle! 
 qui fais ramper Vimecte et rouler les cieux, 
 
 A similar passage has been pointed out to me, while engaged 
 ill preparing my MS. for the press, in a very different kind of 
 production (the Christian Year) : — 
 
 Thus sunbeams pour alike their glorious tide 
 To light up worlds and wake an insect's mirth. 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 141 
 
 % 
 
 ids 
 
 1 
 
 ids 
 
 rocures 
 
 idures, 
 
 3S, 
 
 le insect 
 too wide, 
 
 ittle entitled 
 J. J. Rous- 
 luarter of a 
 lemory the 
 ice tternelle ! 
 
 lile engaged 
 int kind of 
 
 L. 
 
 Yourself a wonder to yourself, — the world, 
 
 One depth of wonders which you cannot sound, 
 
 Far from your foolish heart the thought be liurFd, 
 That for your Maker you should match be 
 found : 
 
 To God belong the things in secret bound — 
 The things reveard to you. With rash conceit 
 
 Will you explore beyond your narrow round ? 
 Dreaming of plan more probable and meet. 
 Suffer surprise of death, and lose your last 
 retreat ? 
 
 LL 
 
 Much you have learnt and in your memory 
 stored ; 
 Much thought, observed ; but docs your mind 
 recall 
 
 ^i 1 
 
 L. Deut. xxix. 29. 
 
 LI. VVisd. i.\. 13—16 
 
142 
 
 THE LO.^T CHILD. 
 
 How larger far a field lies unexplored ', 
 
 How large is that man cannot know at all ? 
 Corruption's heir, the body, since the fall. 
 
 Clogs and sinks down the many-musing mind. 
 To guess at things on earth our skill is small ; 
 
 The things hot ^re us hardly do we find ; 
 
 But, oh ! the things of heaven what mortal has 
 divined ? 
 
 1 . i 
 
 LII. 
 
 Some lapses of the saints your mind perplex, — 
 Think vou that these are sanctions to be frail ? 
 
 "Wliat learns the seaman from recorded wrecks ? 
 Is it within the self-same track to sail ? 
 
 Scenes of a younger world in darkness veil 
 
 Your views of God ; whence but from holy 
 page 
 
 If 
 
 * Si vous ci"oyez savoir beaucoup de choaes et y etre asscz 
 
 habile, songez que vous en ignorez infiniment plus que vous n'en 
 
 aavez. 
 
 Thomas a Kempks. 
 
.all? 
 
 I, 
 
 g mind. 
 
 mall ; 
 
 1; 
 
 Lortal has 
 
 jIcx, — 
 be frail ? 
 wrecks ? 
 ? 
 
 cil 
 rom lioly 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 us 
 
 Were thoughts imbibed which taught you so to 
 
 hail 
 The gentle^features of its mcllow'd age i 
 Did Gospel love begin from earthly scrib(^ or 
 
 sage ? 
 
 LIII. 
 
 Turn not its sacred edo-e aofainst itself: 
 
 Ah ! see some cliild of dust i with pride elate: 
 
 He skims the contents of the learned shelf ; 
 Follows or frames some sounding theory great. 
 
 And looks with philosophic smile sedate, 
 
 All condescending, on the Christian's creed : 
 
 V 
 Since men for homage must some Jient create ; 
 
 Unware, the while, of all lus proper need ; 
 
 Poor, wretched, naked, blind, and impotent 
 
 indeed ! 
 
 y etre assez 
 ue V0U8 n'eii 
 
 Llll. Rev. iii. i7. 
 
 1 A Kempis. 
 
iti 
 
 1 
 
 " ? 
 
 
 1;^ 
 
 ; 
 
 li. 
 
 144 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Thing form'd, wilt thou the hand that form'd 
 thee judge ? 
 
 Vile clay, wilt thou above the potter speak ? 
 Ejihemeral worm, wilt thou thy patience grudge 
 
 To hear of help which needs thy nature weak ? 
 Forsooth, unfit for thee a temper meek. 
 
 For thou hast towering objects to be won : 
 Soar, then, and frame for thine adventurous freak 
 
 Thy waxen wings ; go near the glorious sun : 
 
 Alas ! they melt, they fail, they sink, — thou art 
 undone. 
 
 LIV. Rom. ix. 20, 21. Isa. Ixiv. «. 
 F<7r ///«> to^'C ^tf »i</«*^'^*'"C'i^^'*'-2.d.v Ctnl/iCu/ /.f 
 
at form'd 
 
 speak ? 
 5 grudge 
 re weak ? 
 
 Notes 
 
 TO 
 
 THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 won : 
 
 rous freak 
 (US sun : 
 — thou art 
 
 
 The spot which is called L'Enfant Perdu is 
 one through which \/e passed, in a detour 
 made in the ascent of the river Winnipeg, for 
 the purpose of escaping some of the portages. 
 This detour lies between the Cap Lake (Lac 
 du Bonnet) and the Barriere Portage, (at which 
 place we encamped for the night upon a most 
 diminutive islet of rock, between two roanng 
 falls.) — Stanzas ii. and iii. 
 
 -About a day's journey beyond this place of 
 
J 46 
 
 NOTES TO 
 
 1 ) 
 
 .\ 
 
 our encampment, as we approached the post at 
 the Rat (Musk-rat) portage, we availed our- 
 selves of the help of a poor Indian woman to 
 find " the unsuspected passage," particularly in 
 my view in stanza ii., an obscure access through 
 the bushes, of which our guide himself had only 
 an imperfect recollection, to stiller waters, our 
 recourse to which enabled us to avoid some 
 portion of the rapids called Les Dalles. This 
 poor creature, with her four children, accom- 
 panied us the greater part of tlie day, in her 
 little canoe, to pick up such scraps of food as 
 our people gave them for assisting to carry the 
 baggage across the portages. 
 
 h 
 
 The expressions which occur in the seventh 
 line of stanza v. would convey a false picture, 
 if they were to suggest the idea of sublime 
 mountain scenery. In this the whole journey 
 is deficient. With the two exceptions, first, of 
 the rock-crested heights which partly enclose 
 
 t) 
 
 \ \ 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 147 
 
 Thunder Bay and those connected with tlieni, 
 which suddenly lift their narrow ridgy hacks 
 above the woods, a short way up the Kame- 
 nistiquoia, or Fort William River ; and, secondly, 
 of the bold and striking bluffs, called Les Ecores, 
 towards the other extremity of the lake, there 
 are no heights which can be said to be of an 
 imposing altitude ; and these arc more so from 
 their abruptness than from tlieir pretensions 
 in the general scale of mountainous elevation. 
 The ideas of vastness and hugeness, therefore, 
 are rather to be referred to the prodigious 
 expanse of the greater lakes ; to the majestic 
 rivers, as the Ottawa and Winnipeg, pouring 
 their waters through the dcptlis of interminable 
 forests, and ever and anon broken into foaming 
 rapids or cataracts ; and to the rude piles and 
 masses of rock which in many i)laces form the 
 banks of the rivers or sliores of the lakes, or of 
 which the multitudinous islets are composed ; 
 to all which might be added the boundless level 
 
 l2 
 
148 
 
 NOTES TO 
 
 5 I ''■ 
 
 stretch of the prairies, of which some sample 
 begins to be seen at the Red River. Wo had 
 recently turned our backs upon Lake Winnipeg, 
 which is three hundred miles in length, and 
 liad been ascending the main branch of the 
 river of the same name, when we turned into 
 the little stream which leads to L' Enfant 
 Ferdu. 
 
 ' i. 
 
 If I might be permitted to hope that the 
 perusal of this poem would, by the blessing of 
 God, suggest to any misguided or bewildered 
 soul, a serious and devout inquiry into the 
 claims of Divine truth, and a desire to be 
 directed to any of the best human helps (I 
 would name those of a sufficiently popular 
 kind) in the points on which I have touched in 
 stanzas xxxv. and xxxvi., I would venture, 
 though not in every single instance, from my 
 own familiar recollection of their contents, to 
 recommend, among others, Bishop Newton 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 149 
 
 sample 
 Vc had 
 nnipeg, 
 th, and 
 of the 
 ed into 
 'Enfant 
 
 hat the 
 (ssing of 
 vildered 
 nto the 
 2 to be 
 elps (I 
 popular 
 iched in 
 venture, 
 rom my 
 ents, to 
 Newton 
 
 and Fabcr on the Prophecies ; Keith's Evi- 
 dence of Prophecy ; Paley's Evidences, and 
 Horse Paulina) ; Douglas's Criterion of True 
 and False Miracles ; and Campbell on Miracles. 
 The remarkable misrepresentations of Gibbon, 
 in his indication of the causes for the rapid 
 extension of Christianity, have been exposed 
 by Kett in a manner which can hardly fail to 
 produce its effect. 
 
 In the study of works upon prophecy, a rea- 
 sonable mind will be perfectly prepared to 
 encounter some mistaken applications, and 
 many differences, here and there, of inter- 
 pretation. These are incident to the nature 
 of the subject. But the portion of prophecy 
 fulfilled already, and in process of fulfilment, 
 in a manner which I believe that no unpre- 
 judiced person, who makes himself master of 
 the subject, can possibly doubt, constitutes 
 alone an irresistible evidence, and enables us 
 
\ 
 
 H. 
 
 It 
 
 'f 
 
 'l« 
 
 ■*H 
 
 iji 
 
 i 
 
 a I 
 
 H 
 
 4 
 
 II 
 
 J'!'! 
 
 ill! 
 
 ir>o 
 
 NOTT^r- TO 
 
 fully to understand and appreciate the saying 
 of the Apostle, that '' we have also a more sure 
 word of })ropheci/, whereunto ye do well that ye 
 take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark 
 place." 
 
 With reference to what is said in stanzas 
 XXXVIII. and xxxix., I cannot avoid pointing 
 out the strange, and what I should call extra- 
 vagant, conclusions of a writer having a name 
 among poets which mine can little expect to 
 ^pttioach, La Martine, in his Souvenirs pendant un 
 Voyage en Orient. He is so carried away by 
 whatever strikes his imagination through the 
 senses, as to seem often quite in raptures with 
 the Turks, and in one place he actually says, 
 " I love this people, for they are the people 
 of prayer." Yet, in other parts of his work, he 
 records horrors and atrocities perpetrated by 
 certain emirs and other worthies, without vio- 
 lating the public sentiment of the country, to 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 151 
 
 saying 
 '6 sure 
 hat ye 
 i dark 
 
 which the very worst and most degraded state 
 of Christian society can exhibit no parallel. 
 
 itanzas 
 )inting 
 cxtra- 
 i, name 
 3ect to 
 lant un 
 vay by 
 oh the 
 s with 
 y says, 
 people 
 ork, he 
 ted by 
 mt vio- 
 itry, to 
 
 STANZA XXXV. (fifth line.) 
 
 The word peeled here sip^nifies pillaged, and 
 should properly be written pilled, being formed 
 from the French verb piller, and being distin- 
 guished by lexicographers from peel, to decorti- 
 cate, which is from the French peler, — and this, 
 with its kindred words in that language, from 
 the Latin pellis, which again is stated to be 
 from the Greek tpeXXog, tlius bringing us back, 
 as in a circle, to the idea of the bark of a tree. 
 To skin, therefore, or to remove the coating of 
 hair or fur, would seem to be the proximate 
 force of the latter (peel). From the affinity of 
 the sense of pilled, or pillaged, with that of 
 peeled, or decorticated, appearing in the literal 
 compared with the metaphorical sense of the 
 word strip, as well as from the confusion in old 
 
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 23 WEST MAIN STREET 
 
 WEBSTER, N.Y. 14S80 
 
 (716) •73-4503 
 
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152 
 
 NOTES TO 
 
 
 
 'i 
 
 I 
 
 Waiters between the orthography of the two, — 
 peel being, as here in the text from Isaiah, 
 written for pill, (which Dr. Johnson censures as 
 incorrect,) and both words being spelt alike jpiU 
 in Minshew's Guide into the Tongues (1634), 
 where no such word as peel is found, — it might 
 appear as if the two verbs, if not one and the 
 same, were at least cognate words. But pilus 
 and pilare afford the root of pilleVj pill, and 
 pillage, as well as of the verb pollj and the 
 nouns poll and poUer ; and pilus is referred for 
 its origin to ttIXoc. 
 
 The evidences of an unsettled orthography 
 appear in the spelling of these words in our 
 authorized translation. (Cf. Gen. xxx. 37, 38. 
 Isa. xviii. 2. Ezek. xxix. 18. and Tobit xi. 13.) 
 Were it not for the occurrence of the word 
 peeled, in our modern sense, in the text of 
 Ezekiel, the spelling of the two words here 
 in question would seem to have been pre- 
 
 i 
 
 '!'■ 
 
THE LOST CHILD. 
 
 153 
 
 cisely reversed since the date of the transla- 
 tion. 
 
 In the Bishops' Bible (black-letter edit. 1583) 
 the word is pilled, as in the later translation, 
 in Genesis and Tobit, instead of peeled, as we 
 should now write it. In the two other pas- 
 sages the original word is differently rendered. 
 
 For a very learned explanation of the chapter 
 of Isaiah in which the word occurs, which has 
 given occasion for this note, see the Notes of 
 Bp. Horsley, Biblical Criticism, vol. ii. p. 140. 
 London, 1820. 
 
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