 filled with gloom, and gentle hearts with fear,
    When no tidings came from Cartier at the closing of the year.

    But the Earth is as the Future, it hath its hidden side;
    And the captain of St. Malo was rejoicing, in his pride,
    In the forests of the North;--while his townsmen mourned his loss,
    He was rearing on Mount Royal the _fleur-de-lis_ and cross;
    And when two months were over, and added to the year,
    St. Malo hailed him home again, cheer answering to cheer.

    He told them of a region, hard, iron-bound, and cold,
    Nor seas of pearl abounded, nor mines of shining gold:
    Where the Wind from Thule freezes the word upon the lip,
    And the ice in spring comes sailing athwart the early ship;
    He told them of the frozen scene until they thrilled with fear,
    And piled fresh fuel on the hearth to make him better cheer.

    But when he changed the strain--he told how soon are cast
    In early spring the fetters that hold the waters fast;
    How the winter causeway, broken, is drifted out to sea,
    And the rills and rivers sing with pride the anthem of the free;
    How the magic wand of summer clad the landscape to his eyes,
    Like the dry bones of the just, when they wake in Paradise.

    He told them of the Algonquin braves--the hunters of the wild,
    Of how the Indian mother in the forest rocks her child;
    Of how, poor souls! they fancy, in every living thing
    A spirit good or evil, that claims their worshipping;
    Of how they brought their sick and maimed for him to breathe upon,
    And of the wonders wrought for them through the Gospel of St. John.

    He told them of the river whose mighty current gave
    Its freshness for a hundred leagues to Ocean’s briny wave;
    He told them of the glorious scene presented to his sight,
    What time he reared the cross and crown on Hochelaga’s height,
    And of the fortress cliff that keeps of Canada the key;
    And they welcomed back Jacques Cartier from his perils o’er the sea.
         --THOMAS D’A