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OUR ISLAND STORY ’ 151’

And night displays hisvsable plume . .

And drapes the landscape pale; - i I Wandering through, the pastures lone i ' ' )‘ O’er ruined woods with solemn tone

The winds, like wildered spirits moan,

Despairing, sadly wail. ” '-

Even so there IS a longing for home and the climate of home ' in Prince Edward Island shown 1n a poem written in London at

Christmastide, 1876:

* * No wavering course my fancies take; Swift o’er’the wild Atlantic’s surging foam -WeStward' they speed where the dark billows break On ice-bound shores, the ice-bound shores of home. What though the groves are songless, though the fields Clad in black winter’s livery now are drest. Though sea and stream to his chill sceptre yield, And every gable bears~ his pendant crest,-—— - No. noisOme fogs pollute the lucid air! 1 How bright the days, and when the day retires How bright the auroral colours, flashing fair, i Suffuse the North. with palpitating- fires, To me the fir tree’s sombre shade is dear When pale, at eve, the snow-clad pastures lie; 0ft have I marked their jagged crests uprear In serried lines, dark on the wintry sky, . Have watched the tender tintings 0n the snow I ' ( Where the high drift its foamless wave deprest, ‘Or marked the fleecy flakes descending slow

. 1 Or whirling Wildly o’er the river’s breast. , .1 Now as the night here shrouds each gloomy pile, ‘ I. ' : Far 1n the West I see the sun go down, ' ' ~ " It Crimson the cliffs which guard my well— loved isle And gild the lowly spires of CharlottetoWn. I see the pines on Elliott’s'banks that grOw On the rough point each wind— torn spruce can spell, Mark where Strathalbyn darkens 0 er the snow,

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