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Pine,
Rose and Fleur de Lis
by
Susie Frances Harrison
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THE
FRIEND
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WAS
it at a dinner, glum,
Was it at a kettledrum?
Was it at the rink, the play,
Where was it, O friend, I pray—
First we talked of schemes like these,
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Longed
to taste the eastern breeze,
Longed to go away together
In a flash of summer weather,
Where the Gallic pulses beat
Quickly in the quiet street;
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Where
a quainter life prevails,
And no modern strife assails;
Where few others seldom go,
Where the red-doored houses low
Stand behind the stately row
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Of leafy
poplars, where they show
Famous hollyhocks and vines,
Where they make their own sweet wines,
Chat and weave and spin and knit
All the day—O picture it!
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Where
there flames the marigold
Side by side with sunflowers bold,
And the Norman asters hold
Colloquy with columbine,
Aquilegia—spurred and fine,
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Canadensis—yellow-red,
Stem erect and drooping head—
Where the gabled houses meet
Almost o’er the grass-grown street,
Where the maidens kneel and pray
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At the
Cross beside the way,
While their mothers rake the hay.
That is—so my friends all say—
How they live at Côte Beaupré,
That is where we two shall go,
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Hear
them talk or watch them sew,
Help them, shall we—once to sing
Gai le rosier—that pretty thing—
Pimpanipole and Claire Fontaine,
And many another haunting strain?
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How
they’ll laugh and how they’ll stare,
When they hear us hum the air
Of St. Malo and Guignolée.
V’la bon vent and P’tit
Bonnet!
Well, well, well, I see it all;
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Presbytère
and poplars tall,
Wayside Cross and lichen’d wall,
Dark-eyed gamin brown and fat,
Cheerful curé fond of chat,
Sparkling spires among the hills,
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Water
falls and roadside rills,
Blueberries in birch canoes
Brought by boys in wooden shoes,
Cones of berries red and sweet
Brought by girls in bare brown feet,
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And
behind it all, the pride
Of the lofty Laurentide
Mountain range so misty blue,
All the glorious, peerless view
Of the river flowing down
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Past
Cape Diamond’s jewell’d crown;
Past each sleepy little town
White against the hillside brown,
Past Ste. Anne’s where you may see
Relics of a fealty
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Long
since dead in wiser places,
Plann’d by cautious, colder races;
Past the Isle of Bacchus, where
All the past is in the air,
And in song and shoe we deem
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| La
belle France to be supreme.
Past Tourmente we then shall float
In our yellow open boat,
All along the spar-bright shore
Lightly land and swift explore,
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While
the garnet-threaded cliff
Hangs above our yellow skiff,
And the eyeless fossils wait
Friendly hammer in their slate.
Eurypterus remipes—he
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Is the
one we long to see.
But I fear he did not grow
Quite so very far below.
Simple types, content us then;
Fossils fit to match the men;
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We decline
our souls to vex
With a type at all complex;
Graptolites will do for us,
Asaphus platycephalus,
Or Trinocleus concentricus.
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As to
flora—why, they say,
Nowhere are the woods so gay
As around fair Murray Bay.
Beds of Cornus red as wax,
Blossoms blue as azure flax,
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Yards
and yards of rosy bells,
Sweet Linnæa—deck the dells,
Carpet all the forest floor,
And the terraced land is crown’d,
Every hill and every mound,
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With
a grass as purely green
As in England e’er was seen.
All the country round about
Set with streams of perch and trout,
Crystal clear as streams should be
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In this
land so fair and free.
’Tis no dream, no fallacy.
He, my brother, Crémazie,
Saw it all as we shall see,
That is, if you go with me.
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This
dear landscape meant for him
More than grey cathedral dim,
Steeped in incense, sweet with chime
In the mellow evening time;
More than ancient parapet,
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Storied
mosque and minaret,
Much, much more than palace halls
Crumbling under Moorish walls.
What to him were Cadiz, Venice,
Pisa, Paris, Florence, Rome,
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All
the world beyond the foam?
These he measured without menace
At their value, then his heart
Without seeming, without art,
Craved for Canada, for home.
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When the sunrise wakes the pines,
When the saffron glory shines
On the stirring of the loon,
On the sleepy, pallid moon,
When the wood awakes to shiver
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In the
cool breath of the river,
Flowing, blowing, flowing down
Past Cape Diamond’s jewell’d crown,
And the spray that wets the lips,
As we float among the ships,
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Holds
a precious grain of salt—
Gracious gift and darling fault—
Then the sternest must confess
To the perfect loveliness
Of this province old and quaint,
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Sans
utilitarian taint.
And when sunset spreads its fires
Over all the slender spires,
When the long Laurentians blue
(O the glorious peerless view!)
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Take
the amethystine hue
Of a summer evening sky,
Late in June or through July,
Or perhaps in late September,
You will all your life remember,
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Spells
of Nature’s magic weaving,
Almost past our mild believing,
While the vesper bells resound,
Dear to people darkly bound,
(So say those who strain and strive
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These
same happy ones to drive
Far from ancient goal and gyve),
And the crimson vapours fly,
Leaving orange ones on high.
Last, the amber pales to green,
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And
o’er all the charmed scene
Deep the veil of dusk is drawn.
* * * * * *
Thus the beauty of the dawn,
Thus the beauty of the night,
Shall encompass with delight
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You
and me as close we sit
In our boat—O, picture it!
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