It Is My House As Long
As I Choose To Remain In It, And You May Put Up With It The Best Way
You Can," And, Humming A Yankee Tune, He Departed.
I had borne patiently the odious, cribbed-up place during the
winter, but now the hot weather was coming, it seemed almost
insupportable, as we were obliged to have a fire in the close room,
in order to cook our provisions.
I consoled myself as well as I
could by roaming about the fields and woods, and making acquaintance
with every wild flower as it blossomed, and in writing long letters
to home friends, in which I abused one of the finest countries in
the world as the worst that God ever called out of chaos. I can
recall to memory, at this moment, the few lines of a poem which
commenced in this strain; nor am I sorry that the rest of it has
passed into oblivion: -
Oh! land of waters, how my spirit tires,
In the dark prison of thy boundless woods;
No rural charm poetic thought inspires,
No music murmurs in thy mighty floods;
Though vast the features that compose thy frame,
Turn where we will, the landscape's still the same.
The swampy margin of thy inland seas,
The eternal forest girdling either shore,
Its belt of dark pines sighing in the breeze,
And rugged fields, with rude huts dotted o'er,
Show cultivation unimproved by art,
That sheds a barren chillness on the heart.
How many home-sick emigrants, during their first winter in Canada,
will respond to this gloomy picture!
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