OUR ISLAND STORY 151 And night displays his sable plume And drapes the landscape pale; Wandering through the pastures lone 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 in a poem written in at Christmas tide, 1876: * * No wavering course my fancies take; Swift o'er the wild '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! How bright the days, and when the day retires How bright the auroral colours, flashing fair, 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; Oft have I marked their jagged crests uprear In serried lines, dark on the wintry sky, Have watched the tender tintings on the snow Where the high drift its foamless wave deprest, Or marked the fleecy flakes descending slow Or whirling wildly o'er the river's breast. Now as the night here shrouds each gloomy pile, Far in the see the sun go down, 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 o'er the snow,