FINALE

The cedar trees have sung their vesper hymn,
And now the music sleeps—­
Its benediction falling where the dim
Dusk of the forest creeps. 
Mute grows the great concerto—­and the light
Of day is darkening, Good-night, Good-night. 
But through the night time I shall hear within
The murmur of these trees,
The calling of your distant violin
Sobbing across the seas,
And waking wind, and star-reflected light
Shall voice my answering.  Good-night, Good-night.

THE TRAIL TO LILLOOET

Sob of fall, and song of forest, come you here on haunting quest,
Calling through the seas and silence, from God’s country of the west. 
Where the mountain pass is narrow, and the torrent white and strong,
Down its rocky-throated canyon, sings its golden-throated song.

You are singing there together through the God-begotten nights,
And the leaning stars are listening above the distant heights
That lift like points of opal in the crescent coronet
About whose golden setting sweeps the trail to Lillooet.

Trail that winds and trail that wanders, like a cobweb hanging high,
Just a hazy thread outlining mid-way of the stream and sky,
Where the Fraser River canyon yawns its pathway to the sea,
But half the world has shouldered up between its song and me.

Here, the placid English August, and the sea-encircled miles,
There—­God’s copper-coloured sunshine beating through the lonely aisles
Where the waterfalls and forest voice for ever their duet,
And call across the canyon on the trail to Lillooet.

CANADA

(ACROSTIC)

Crown of her, young Vancouver; crest of her, old Quebec;
Atlantic and far Pacific sweeping her, keel to deck. 
North of her, ice and arctics; southward a rival’s stealth;
Aloft, her Empire’s pennant; below, her nation’s wealth. 
Daughter of men and markets, bearing within her hold,
Appraised at highest value, cargoes of grain and gold.

THE LIFTING OF THE MIST

All the long day the vapours played
  At blindfold in the city streets,
Their elfin fingers caught and stayed
  The sunbeams, as they wound their sheets
Into a filmy barricade
  ’Twixt earth and where the sunlight beats.

A vagrant band of mischiefs these,
  With wings of grey and cobweb gown;
They live along the edge of seas,
  And creeping out on foot of down,
They chase and frolic, frisk and tease
  At blind-man’s buff with all the town.

And when at eventide the sun
  Breaks with a glory through their grey,
The vapour-fairies, one by one,
Outspread their wings and float away
In clouds of colouring, that run
  Wine-like along the rim of day.