Poetry Archives

Like a fragment of torn sea-kale,
Or a wraith of mist in the gale,
There comes a mysterious tale
  Out of the stormy past:
How a fleet, with a living freight,
Once sailed through the rocky gate
Of this river so desolate,
  This chasm so black and vast.

’Twas Cartier, the sailor bold,
Whose credulous lips had told
How glittering gems and gold
  Were found in that lonely land
How out of the priceless hoard
Within their rough bosoms stored,
These towering mountains poured
  Their treasures upon the strand.

Allured by the greed of gain,
Sieur Roberval turned again,
And sailing across the main,
  Passed up the St. Lawrence tide.
He sailed by the frowning shape
Of Jacques Cartier’s Devil’s Cape,
Till the Saguenay stood agape,
  With hills upon either side.

Around him the sunbeams fell
On the gentle St. Lawrence swell,
As though by some mystic spell
  The water was turned to gold;
But as he pursued, they fled,
Till his vessels at last were led
Where, cold and sullen and dead,
  The Saguenay River rolled.

Chill blew the wind in his face,
As, still on his treasure chase,
He entered that gloomy place
  Whose mountains in stony pride,
Still, soulless, merciless, sheer,
Their adamant sides uprear,
Naked and brown and drear,
  High over the murky tide.

No longer the sun shone bright
On the sails that, full and white,
Like sea gulls winging their flight,
  Dipped into the silent wave;
But shadows fell thick around,
Till feeling and sight and sound
In their awful gloom were drowned,
  And sank in a depthless grave.

Far over the topmost height
Great eagles had wheeled in flight,
But, wrapped in the gloom of night,
  They ceased to circle and soar:
Grim silence reigned over all,
Save that from a rocky wall
A murmuring waterfall
  Leapt down to the river shore.

O merciless walls of stone!
What happened that night is known
By you, and by you alone:
  Though the eagles unceasing scream,
How once through that midnight air,
For an instant a trumpet’s blare,
And the voices of men in prayer,
  Arose from the murky stream.