The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book Part 19

Oft, in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken!

Thus, in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me.

When I remember all The friends, so linked together, I've seen around me fall, Like leaves in wintry weather; I feel like one, Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed!

Thus, in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me.

Moore

THE HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA'S HALLS

The harp that once through Tara's halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls As if that soul were fled.

So sleeps the pride of former days, So glory's thrill is o'er, And hearts that once beat high for praise, Now feel that pulse no more.

No more to chiefs and ladies bright The harp of Tara swells; The chord alone, that breaks at night, Its tale of ruin tells.

Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes, The only throb she gives, Is when some heart indignant breaks, To show that still she lives.

Moore

HUDSON STRAIT

Hudson Strait opens from the Atlantic between Resolution Island on the north and the b.u.t.ton Islands on the south. From point to point, this end of the strait is forty-five miles wide. At the other end, the west side, between Digges' Island and Nottingham Island, is a distance of thirty-five miles. From east to west, the straits are four hundred and fifty miles long--wider at the east where the south side is known as Ungava Bay, contracting at the west, to the Upper Narrows. The south side of the strait is Labrador; the north, Baffin's Land. Both sides are lofty, rocky, cavernous sh.o.r.es lashed by a tide that rises in places as high as thirty-five feet and runs in calm weather ten miles an hour.

Pink granite islands dot the north sh.o.r.e in groups that afford harbourage, but all sh.o.r.es present an adamant front, edges sharp as a knife or else rounded hard to have withstood and cut the tremendous ice jam of a floating world suddenly contracted to forty miles, which Davis Strait pours down at the east end and Fox Channel at the west.

Seven hundred feet is considered a good-sized hill; one thousand feet, a mountain. Both the north and the south sides of the straits rise two thousand feet in places. Through these rock walls ice has poured and torn and ripped a way since the ice age preceding history, cutting a great channel to the Atlantic. Here, the iron walls suddenly break to secluded silent valleys, moss-padded, snow-edged, lonely as the day Earth first saw light. Down these valleys pour the clear streams of the eternal snows, burnished as silver against the green, setting the silence echoing with the tinkle of cataracts over some rock wall, or filling the air with the voice of many waters at noontide thaw. One old navigator--Coates--describes the beat of the angry tide at the rock base and the silver voice of the mountain brooks, like the treble and ba.s.s of some great cathedral organ sounding its diapason to the glory of G.o.d in this peopleless wilderness.

Perhaps the kyacks of some solitary Eskimo, lashed abreast twos and threes to prevent capsizing, may shoot out from some of these bog-covered valleys like sea-birds; but it is only when the Eskimos happen to be hunting here, or the ships of the whalers and fur traders are pa.s.sing up and down--that there is any sign of human habitation on the straits.

Walrus wallow on the pink granite islands in huge herds. Polar bears flounder from icepan to icepan. The arctic hare, white as snow but for the great bulging black eye, bounds over the boulders. Snow buntings, whistling swans, snow geese, ducks in myriads--flacker and clacker and hold solemn conclave on the adjoining rocks, as though this were their realm from the beginning and for all time.

Of a tremendous depth are the waters of the straits. Not for nothing has the ice world been grinding through this narrow channel for billions of years. No fear of shoals to the mariner. Fear is of another sort. When the ice is running in a whirlpool and the incoming tide meets the ice jam and the waters mount thirty-five feet high and a wind roars between the high sh.o.r.es like a bellows--then it is that the straits roll and pitch and funnel their waters into black troughs where the ships go down. "Undertow," the old Hudson's Bay captains called the suck of the tide against the ice wall; and that black hole, where the lumpy billows seemed to part like a pa.s.sage between wall of ice and wall of water, was what the mariners feared. The other great danger was just a plain crush, getting nipped between two icepans rearing and plunging like fighting stallions, with the ice blocks going off like pistol shots or smashed gla.s.s. No child's play is such navigating either for the old sailing vessels of the fur traders or the modern ice-breakers propelled by steam! Yet, the old sailing vessels and the whaling fleets have navigated these straits for two hundred years.

Agnes C. Laut: "The Conquest of the Great Northwest."

Good name in man and woman, Is the immediate jewel of their souls: Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed.

Shakespeare

SCOTS WHA HAE

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led; Welcome to your gory bed, Or to victorie.

Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front o' battle lour: See approach proud Edward's power-- Chains and slaverie!

Wha will be a traitor knave?

Wha can fill a coward's grave?

Wha sae base as be a slave?

Let him turn and flee!

Wha for Scotland's King and law Freedom's sword will strongly draw, Free-man stand, or free-man fa', Let him follow me!

By Oppression's woes and pains!

By your sons in servile chains, We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free!

Lay the proud usurpers low!

Tyrants fall in every foe!

Liberty's in every blow!

Let us do, or die!

Burns

ST. AMBROSE CREW WIN THEIR FIRST RACE

(The chief characters in this sketch are Miller, the tyrannical little c.o.c.kswain of the crew; old Jervis, the captain; Tom Brown, number two, who is rowing his first race; Hardy, a friend of Tom's and one of the best oarsmen in the college--also Jack, the college dog. Though there are several crews in the race the real struggle is between the boats from St. Ambrose and Exeter Colleges. If St. Ambrose can drive the nose of its boat against the Exeter boat--"b.u.mp it"--it wins.)

Hark!--the first gun. The report sent Tom's heart into his mouth again.

Several of the boats pushed off at once into the stream; and the crowds of men on the bank began to be agitated, as it were, by the shadow of the coming excitement. The St. Ambrose fingered their oars, put a last dash of grease on their rowlocks, and settled their feet against the stretchers.

"Shall we push her off?" asked Bow.

"No; I can give you another minute," said Miller, who was sitting, watch in hand, in the stern; "only be smart when I give the word."

The captain turned on his seat, and looked up the boat. His face was quiet, but full of confidence, which seemed to pa.s.s from him into the crew. Tom felt calmer and stronger, as he met his eye. "Now mind, boys, don't quicken," he said, cheerily; "four short strokes to get way on her, and then, steady. Here, pa.s.s up the lemon."

And he took a sliced lemon out of his pocket, put a small piece in his own mouth, and then handed it to Blake, who followed his example, and pa.s.sed it on. Each man took a piece; and just as Bow had secured the end, Miller called out,--

"Now, jackets off, and get her head out steadily."

The jackets were thrown on sh.o.r.e, and gathered up by the boatman in attendance. The crew poised their oars, Number Two pushing out her head, and the captain doing the same for the stern. Miller took the starting-rope in his hand.

"How the wind catches her stern," he said; "here, pay out the rope one of you. No, not you--some fellow with a strong hand. Yes, you'll do," he went on, as Hardy stepped down the bank and took hold of the rope; "let me have it foot by foot as I want it. Not too quick; make the most of it--that'll do. Two and Three, just dip your oars in to give her way."

The rope paid out steadily, and the boat settled to her place. But now the wind rose again, and the stern drifted in towards the bank.

"You _must_ back her a bit, Miller, and keep her a little further out or our oars on stroke side will catch the bank."