The Old Canoe
My seams gape wide so I'm tossed aside
To rot on the lonely shore
While the leaves and mould like a shroud enfold,
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 moonbeams play on far James Bay
By the brink of the frozen sea,
In phantom guise my spirit flies
As the dream blades dip and swing,
Where the waters flow from the long ago
In the spell of the beck'ning spring.
Do the cow-moose call on the Montreal
When 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 pools deep
Where the painted rocks begin?
Oh! The fur-fleets sign on Timiskaming
As the ashen paddles bend,
And the crews carouse at Rupert 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 gray geese race 'cross the red moon's face
From the white wind's arctic wrath.
Tho' the death fraught way from the Saguenay
To the storied Nipigon.
Once knew me well, now a crumbling shell
I watch the years roll on,
While 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.
- George Marsh
