26 REVIEWS — CANADIAN POETRY. 



The thici: notes drop, but do not die ; 

 For through the hush the soul keeps on 

 With a music of its own — 

 So runs the forest minstrelsy ! 

 One other sound there eoundeth only 

 Out of the distance dim and lonely; 

 Out of the pine-depths, murmuring ever, 

 Floweth the voice of the flowing river. 



And we too^ wend our way out of tliese pine-deptlis, following the 

 windings of the flowing river, until we at length emerge and — 

 what see we ? Not the rocky rapids of our Canadian Severn, or 

 the woody solitudes of Chief's Island, or the fringing "bush" 

 that still skirts the shores of Lake Simcoe, — but an ancient home : 



Beneath the shade 

 Of those old trees so bent and sere ; 

 And there, -with its stonework tracery, 

 The quaint old house, as old as they, 

 Still stood, and kept from year to year, 

 With storm and frost and slow decay, 

 A struggle for the mastery, 



"We are not then in Canada at all ? Unless we have slept a sounder 

 and longer nap than Rip Van Winkle : it v/ould seem not. While 

 we were imagining ourselves in the bush, and deceiving ourselves even to 

 the fancying these hares and tiny leverets, were some native variety that 

 haunted the Georgian Bay, we were all the time amid the glades and 

 the associations of Old Europe. We could even fancy ourselves once 

 more under " the huge, broad-breasted old oak tree," beneath which 

 we first made the acquaintance of " the lovely lady Christabel ;" for 

 the rythm, and even something of the mode of thought, recall to us 

 that most beautiful fragment of the dreamy Coleridge's muse.. But it 

 is Canadian poetry we are in search of, and we therefore leave the 

 " Song of Charity," and betake ourselves to the additional poems 

 which accompany it. And here, at length, is one of truly native name 

 and characteristics: "A Canadian Summer's Night." Now, at least, 

 we are not. deceived. We glide over the rippling waters of Lake 

 Couchiching, and list to its forest voices : 



Still callest thou — thou Whip-poor-will ! 

 When dipped the moon behind the hill, 

 I heard thee and I hear the still. 



But mingled with thy plaintive cry 

 A wilder sound comes ebbing by. 

 Out of the pine-woods, solemnly. 



