REVIEWS — -CANADIAN POETRY. 19 



tliough lacking tlie force and patlios of its passionate utterances. But, 

 while we may easily cull from it many graceful versifications of such 

 descriptions as the scenery naturally suggests, we have to search care- 

 fully through its hundred and ten stanzas to find any such as' might 

 be welcome to the jaded fancy of the old world because of their fresh- 

 ness of wild-wood imagery. Campbell has written, in the same stanza 

 his " Gertrude of Wyoming," and sketched very pretty Indian pasr 

 torals, such as delighted the London dravring-roems into the belief 

 that " the mute Oneyda," and the savage Outallissi were the perfect 

 embodyments of our American Aborigines. They do not, howeverj 

 awaken any very familiar associations for us to whom the scenery, and 

 even the Savage of the wild West, are not unfamiliar. But the poet of 

 "the St. Lawrence and the Saguenay," sees the river as it is, and not 

 as it was. To him, with all its beauty, it is only the great navigable 

 highway from Ontario to the Sea, with its daily steamers, its wooding 

 stations, its locks and canals. If the Indian lingers among its van- 

 ishing woods, it is as the old painted British Druid haunts Avebury or 

 Stonehenge. Here, for example, is the picturing of the thousand 

 Isles : — 



MaDj.a tale of legendary lore 



Is told of these romantic Isles. The feet 



Of the Red Man have pressed each wave-zoned shore, 



And many an eye of beauty oft did greet 



The paint«d warriors and their birchen fleet, 



As tiiey returned with trophies of the slain. 



That race has passed away ; their fair reti-eat 



In its primeval loneness smiles again, 



iSave where some vessel snaps the isle-inwoven chain: 



Save where the echo of the huntsmaa's gun 



Startles the wild duck from some shallow nook, 



Or the swift hounds' deep baying, as they run, 



Rouses the lounging student from his book ; 



Or where, assembled by some sedgy brook, 



A pie-nic party, resting in the shade. 



Spring pleasedly to their feet to catch a look 



At the strong steamer, through the watery glade, 



Ploughing, like a huge serpent from its ambuscade. 

 ♦ 

 Were we to transport the scene to the firth of Clyde, or any other' 

 islanded hom^e river, and change only a single term ; that of the Red 

 Man for the old Picf, or even the Red Gael, there is nothing in the 

 description that would betray its new-world parentage, At best it is- 

 no true Indian, but only the white man dressed in his attire j strip 



