Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812 Part 30

Our country insulted Demands quick redress.

To arms, Voltigeurs!

To the struggle we press.

From vict'ry to vict'ry, Brave, righteous, and just, Ours the mem'ries that cling to Our forefathers' dust.

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

Defend we our sweethearts, Our hearths and our halls!

Our dear native tongue, Our faith keep we free!

Defend we our life, For a people are we!

No rulers know we, save Our time-honoured laws!

And woe to the nation That sneers at our cause.

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

To our foes, the perfidious, Be war to the knife.

Intrepid, yet duteous, We leap to the strife.

More terrible shewing In danger's red hour; We know to avenge, And unbroken our power.

List the thunderous roar As the shot rushes by!

To our war-song heroic, The chorus of joy.

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

What! we become slaves To an alien foe?

We bear their vile trammels?

Our answer is, No!

a.s.sistance shall reach us From heaven's lucent arch: Come! seize we our muskets And "double-quick march!"

THE LEGEND OF THE EARTH.

FROM THE FRENCH OF JEAN RAMEAU.

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

When the Creator had laid out the deeps, The great illimitable fields of sad-eyed s.p.a.ce, A weighty bag upon His neck He threw, Whence issued sound confused of huddled stars;

And, plunging in the sack His mighty hand, He traversed all the ether's wondrous plain With slow and measured step, as doth a sower, Sowing the gloomy void with many suns.

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

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

He tossed them--tossed them--out of His whirling hand, Plenteous in every place, by full broad casts Measured to rhythmic beat; and golden stars Flew o'er the wide expanse like firefly swarms.

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

"Go, wave of fire, into a darksome night, And there make joy, and there the pleasant day!

And launch into the depths immeasurable Quick, quivering darts of glowing light and love!

"I will that all within your bounds shall s.h.i.+ne, Be glad, be prosperous, happy, blest, content, Shall sing for ever 'Glory be to Thee, Creator, Father, Sower, who with suns Hast filled infinity!'"

Thus He dismissed the stars, weighted with life, Careering round their calm Creator's feet As, in a desert place July has scorched, The grains of sand may cloud the traveller's steps.

And glittered all, and sang; and, hindered not, Upon their axes turned, constant and sure; Their million million voices, strong and deep, Bursting in great hosannas to the skies.

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

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

And wondering, knowing not what sphere unknown Revolved in crimson s.p.a.ce all incomplete, The great Creator, at a puff, spun off This tiny bit of sun far into s.p.a.ce;

Then, mounting high up to His scarlet throne, Beyond the mist of thickly scattered worlds, Like a great crowned king whose proud eye burns At hearing from afar His people's voice, He listens,

And He hears The mighty Alleluia of the stars, The choirs of glowing spheres in whirling flood Of song and high apotheosis, All surging to His feet in incense clouds.

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

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

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

And the cry said "Cursed! Cursed are we, the lost By misery led, a wretched pallid flock, Made for the light and tossed into the dark!

"We are the banished ones; the exile band; The only race whose eyes are filled with tears.

And if the waters of our seas be salt, 'Twas our forefathers tears that made them so.

"Be He Anathema, the Sower of Light!

Be He Anathema whom worlds adore!-- If to our native star He join us not Be He accursed, through all creation cursed, for aye!"

Then rose the G.o.d from His great scarlet throne, And gentle, moved, weeping as we, He stretched His two bright arms over the flat expanse, And in a voice of thunder launched reply:--

"Morsel of Sun, calling thyself the Earth:-- Chrysalides on her grey bounds supine:-- Humanity--sing! for I give you Death, The Comforter, he who shall lead you back Safe to your Star of Light,

And this is why--lofty, above mishap, The Poet, made for stars of molten gold, Spurns earth; his eyes; fixed on the glowing heavens, Toward which he soon shall take his freer flight.

THE EMIGRANT MOUNTAINEER.

FROM THE FRENCH OF CHATEAUBRIAND.