Classic Poem

Here in the wild Canadian land
The Saguenay pours out its tide —
A dark, tumultuous, savage stream,
Whose boiling, raging currents glide
With matchless speed and sullen roar
Downward to ocean's rock-bound shore.

With eddying whirl, with sudden shoot
Its fathomless abysses sweep;
Now o'er a hidden shoal or bar,
Now o'er granitic ledges deep;
So, ever with a pallid haste
The seaboy speeds across its waste.

Dark tales, weird tales of wreck,
Of woful horrors, men relate,
Of its immeasurable depths,
Of great ships hurried to their fate,
Of dangerous rocks where, tempest-tost,
Brave men were in vast whirlpools lost!

So with stern awe the seamen pass
Within th' iron-bound headland's sweep
That guards the portals of the stream,
A granite gateway to the deep.
Across its tides are shimmering mists,
Huge, spectral phantoms, gray and grim,
That hang like shadows o'er the cliffs,
And over gulch and gorges swim.

Fierce, gushing winds expand their wings,
Cold as the blasts of Arctic shores;
They shake the solid granite walls,
And the lone pine that o'er them soars;
The place is like some funeral vault,
For all is barren, wild and bleak;
The inky waters duskier still
With shadows of the soaring peak.

On either hand two rugged capes —
Grim Trinity, Eternity —
In savage grandeur seem to frown
On sailing ship and weltering sea;
Little of verdurous life may cast
A smiling bloom across their side
Nor birch nor fir may drape the cliff,
Or cascade plunge its foamy tide,
For all is awful solitude
Boon Nature in her fiercest mood!