This narrow stream, Unnursed by tree-held snow, Dwarfed by the fires, fifty years ago Would have raced by us foaming, Even in summer, through a world of green-- A lost green world of butterflies and fern, And soft anemones in spring; But now at every jagged, ugly turn Only a brush heap where the woods had been. The very soil is scorched-- Scorched the brown ferns Descended from the ones that long ago Were licked into a burning wind of flame. Poor, narrow little stream, Bereft of that green dream That holds the snow! ... There was a bit of rock a mile ago, The preface of the North!
A soft swamp road, For forty miles through bracken and through fern, Smooth as a snake, With turn on twisted turn-- Turns that meant few surprises; Yet, as it wrinkled on its way, The softly yielding earth that overlay its granite Seemed to say That once the lumber trails ran here, And once the voyageur Sang as he paddled down the foaming stream, And once the woodmen came, Great gangs of woodmen With the axe and spike, Who set up rude encampments. Then, to hoarse shouts and orders, To laughter and to oaths, To roaring fires at night and whiskey-haunted songs, The soft green forest fell. It died robustly as it lived, And had its will of singing and of strife, An ardent, powerful, various sort of life; A more heroic fate Than this of late-- A trail up to the playground of the North, A bracken-haunted, snaky road, A soft surprise to strangers, a delight.
Then the North took us, Forced us through rocky walls, Tore at our tires, Gave us no inch of earth Upon our steady climb. Yet even here, beside the cruel road, Were scraggy plots of farm, And wood-piles neatly stacked, And shacks, and gloomy faces. Then an acre of more fertile land, Pine trees and woods, And suddenly, like a blue cup held high, The lake Mazinawa ... All silence, silence, silence-- Dark colours filling the blue cup. And, like a purple stain against the sunset, The great rock of Mazinawa, Sacred to Indian tribes how long ago! A thousand years ago? Why should one care to know!
It looms up larger than I dreamed; Roadways of rock And canyons full of light; Niched balconies for pines bent all one way; Small birds in flight, Dashing against the dark Of that vast rocky flank, Whose sides of iron seams, Laid under golden lichen, Have been a place of dreams And of brute sacrifice. What if it has a power to draw us near As in the days of fear? When from the rocklands of the Georgian Bay Or through the bush roads whence we came to-day, But then on foot, soft-padding all the way, Or in the war canoes They crowded to this small blue lake of theirs And an old shrine ... What are we floating towards In this small, low canoe? A naked, ceremonial singing past Seems to reach out and whisper.