The River Saguenay.

Few poets yet in praise of thee         Have tuned a passing lay,     Yet art thou rich in beauties stern,         Thou dark browed Saguenay!     And those grand charms that surely form         For earth her rarest crown     On thee, with strangely lavish hand,         Have all been showered down.     Thine own wild flood, so deep, so dark;         That holds the gaze enthralled     As if by some weird spell, at once         Entranced yet not appalled;     Seeking in vain to pierce those depths,         Where wave and rock have met,     Those depths which, by the hand of man,         Have ne'er been fathomed yet.     And then thy shores - thy rock bound shores,         Where giant cliffs arise,     Raising their untrod, unknown heights         Defiant to the skies,     And casting from their steep, stern brows         Shadows of deepest gloom     Athwart thy wave, till it doth seem         A passage to a tomb.     Such art thou in thy solitude,         Majestic Saguenay!     As lonely and as sternly rude         As in time past away,     When the red man in his fragile bark         Sped o'er thy glassy wave,     And found amid thy forests wild         His cradle, home and grave.     All, all is changed - reigns in his stead         Another race and name,     But, in thy lonely grandeur still,         Proud River, thou'rt the same!