George Marsh

“My seams gape wide so I'm tossed asideTo rot on a lonely shore,While the leaves and mould like a shroud unfold, For the last of my trails are o'er,But I float in dreams on Northland streams That never again I'll see,As I lie on the marge of the old portage With grief for company.When the sunset gilds the timbered hills That guard Timagami,And the moon beams play on far James Bay By the brink of the frozen sea,In phantom guise my spirit flies As the dream blades dip and swingWhere the waters flow from the Long Ago In the spell of the beck'ning spring.Do the cow-moose call on the MontrealWhen the first frost bites the air,And the mists unfold from the red and gold That the autumn ridges wear?When the white falls roar as they did of yore On the Lady Evelyn,Do the square-tail leap from the black pool deep Where the pictured rocks begin?Oh! the fur fleet sings on Temiscaming As the ashen paddles bend,And the crews carouse at Rupert's House At the sullen winter's end;But my days are done where the lean wolves run, And I ripple no more the path,Where the grey geese race 'cross the red moon's face From the white winds Arctic wrath.Tho' the death-fraught way from the Saguenay To the storied Nipigon,Once knew me well, now a crumbling shell I watch as the years roll on,And in memory's haze I live the days That forever are gone from me,As I rot on the marge of the old portage With grief for company.”