Classic Poem

(Salmo salar.)

By the wild Canadian shore,
By the sandy Labrador,
By the rocky Mingan Isles,
And where Anticosti smiles,
Numberless the salmon shoals
Gather where the salt tide rolls.

Rivers, streams of crystal clearness,
Pour through that far-reaching strand,
From thy river-mouth, St. Lawrence,
To the coast of Newfoundland,
Far as where the Belle-Isle strait
Opens to the seas its gate.

Cold, those rivers, as the fountains
From the wilderness that flow,
Cold as waters of the mountains
Gelid with the ice and snow.
There amid the salt abysses,
Or the river's spring fresh tide,
Gleaming, flashing, leaping, diving,
Shoals of lordly salmon glide.

Where the river of St. John
Mingles with the ocean surf,
Brown with weedy rocks and sand-drifts,
Green with bordering velvet turf,
There the angler with his tackle,
When the July suns ride high,
From the dawning to the sunset
Goes to angle with the fly.

Near thy alder-skirted border,
Where the Rattling Run doth twine,
He erects his hut of branches,
Branch of hemlock and of pine;
Floors it with the cedar saplings
Fragrant, soft as couch of kings;
There enjoys the forest pleasures
And the sleep that labor brings.

Morning with its dewy freshness,
With its rosy, smiling skies;
Calls him to the brimming river,
River of transparent crystal,
Where in ripple and in eddy,
Or in pool, to cast his flies.