178 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA 



A true life may be lived anywhere : 



O Love builds on the azure sea, 



And Love builds on the golden sand, 



And Love builds on the rose-winged cloud, 

 And sometimes Love builds on the land. 



O if Love builds on sparkling sea, 

 And if Love builds on golden strand, 



And if Love builds on rosy cloud, 

 To Love, these are the solid land. 



O Love will build his lily walls, 



And Love his pearly roof will rear, 

 On cloud or land, on mist or sea 



Love's solid land is everywhere!* 



j 



And yet those expert judges in the things of the heart, 

 the Poets, being witness the country is peculiarly the 

 home of the home. 



Happy the man whose life's full round 



Is passed within his farmstead's bound; 



Who in his elder years may view 



The self-same home that as a boy he knew. 



Fortune upon him has no hold 



With its alarms and tumults manifold; 



He does not flit on fickle wings 



Slaking his thirst at unfamiliar springs. 



Active still and stout of thew 



A hale old man, he lives three ages through. 



Others may seek the changes travel gives: 



They see more life, but he more truly lives, f 



And even the ascetic life when, under Bernard of 

 Clairvaux with his Rule of Charity, it abandoned cities 



* Isabella V. Crawford, " Malcolm's Katie." 

 t Claudian. Translated by George S. Bryan, " Poems of 

 Country Life." 



