A CANADIAN BOAT-SONG.

WRITTEN ON THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE.

ET REMIGEM CANTUS HORTATUR.

Quintilian.

*

FAINTLY as tolls the evening chime,
Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time,

* I wrote these words to an air, which our boatmen sung to us very frequently. The wind was so unfavourable, that they were obliged to row all the way, and we were five days in descending the river from Kingston to Montreal, exposed to an intense sun during the day, and at night forced to take shelter from the dews in any miserable hut upon the banks that would receive us. But the magnificent scenery of the St. Lawrence repays all these diffi

culties.

Our Voyageurs had good voices, and sung perfectly in tune together. The original words of the air, to which I adapted these stanzas, appeared to be a long, incoherent story, of which I could understand but little, from the barbarous pronunciation of the Canadians. It begins,

Dans mon chemin j'ai rencontré
Deux cavaliers très-bien montés;

And the refrain to every verse was,

A l'ombre d'un bois je m'en vais jouer, A l'ombre d'un bois je m'en vais danser. I ventured to harmonize this air, and have published it. Without that charm, which association gives to every little memorial of scenes or feelings that are past, the melody may perhaps be thought common and trifling; but I remember when we have entered, at sunset, upon one of those beautiful lakes, into which the St. Lawrence so grandly and

1

Soon as the woods on shore look dim,
We'll sing at St. Ann's our parting hymn,*
Row brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the day light's past
Why should we yet our sail unfurl?
There is not a breath the blue wave to cur
But, when the wind blows off the shore,
Oh! sweetly we'll rest our weary oar.
Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the day-light's pas
Utawas' tide! this trembling moon,
Shall see us float over thy surges soon,
Saint of this green isle! hear our prayers,
Oh! grant us cool heavens and favouring ai
Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the day-light's pa

unexpectedly opens, I have heard this simple with a pleasure which the finest compositions of t first masters have never given me, and now, th is not a note of it, which does not recal to my me ory the dip of our oars in the St. Lawrence, flight of our boat down the rapids, and all these n and fanciful impressions to which my heart 1 alive, during the whole of this very interesting v), age.

The above stanzas are supposed to be sung those voyagers, who go to the Grande Portage the Utawas river. For an account of this won ful undertaking see Sir Alexander Mackenzie's G. eral History of the Fur Trade, prefixed to his J Lal.

"At the Rapids of St Ann they are oblige take out a part, if not the whole, of their lad It is from this spot the Canadians consider they t their departure, as it possesses the last church the island, which is dedicated to the tutelar si of voyagers." Mackenzie's General History of i Fur Trade

EPISTLE IX.

TO THE

LADY CHARLOTTE R-WD-N.

VOL. II.

21

TO THE

LADY CHARLOTTE R-WD—N.

FROM THE BANKS OF THE ST. LAWRENCE.

NoT many months have now been dream'd

away

Since yonder sun,(beneath whose evening ray We rest our boat among these Indian Isles,) Saw me, where mazy Trent screnely smiles Through many an oak, as sacred to the

groves,

Beneath whose shade the pious Persian roves,
And hears the soul of father or of chief,
Or loved mistress, sigh in every leaf!*
There listening, Lady! while thy lip hath sung
My own unpolish'd lays, how proud I've hung
On every mellow'd number! proud to feel
That notes like mine should have the fate to
steal,

As o'er thy hallowing lip they sigh'd along,
Such breath of passion and such soul of song.
Oh! I have wonder'd, like the peasant boy
Who sings at eve his sabbath strains of joy,
And when he hears the rude luxuriant note
Back to his ear on softening echoes float,

*Avendo essi per costume di avere in veneratione gli alberi grandi et antichi, quasi che siano spesso ricettaccoli di anime beate. Pietro della Valle, Part. Second. Lettera 16 da i giardini di Sciraz.