epub:type="z3998:poem bodymatter z3998:non-fiction">
If pleasant night you wish to spend,
Go and invite your lady friend;
Oddfellow’s concert is the place
Where happiness beams in each face.
When you resolve to call her wife,
And to enjoy the rest of life,
All furniture you may require
You can get cheap from McIntyre.
Thomas Campbell
Preface
As musings on Banks of Canadian Thames doth not necessarily consist of meditations in verse, but the monotony of the cogitations may be relieved by a soliloquy in prose, and as Campbell manifested a deep interest in American subjects, we will give the following anecdote related by that genial American Author Washington Irvine, to Sir Walter Scott. Irvine, while in Britian, visited Campbell, but found him absent and he expressed a regret to Campbells wife that her husband did not write more. She said that he was timid and he felt Byron and Scott o’ershadow him with their great poems. Sir Walter replied, “I myself produce pebbles, Scottish pebbles, but Campbell is the creator of Diamonds of the first water.” Byron also expressed himself in a similar strain as follows:—
“Arise, O Campbell, give thy talents scope;
Who dares aspire if thou has ceased to hope.”
Campbell wrote thus of America in the beginning of the century, and by comparing the facts as he describes them it shows the wonderous strides which the United States, especially, have taken on the Banks of Lake Erie, as Lake Ontario seems to be favorite location for Canadian cities.
On Erie’s banks were tigers steal along,
And the dread Indian chaunts his dismal song.
Where human fiends their midnight errand walk;
And bathe in brains the murderous tomahawk.
The poet then predicts that cities will there arise, but more wonderfully quick they have arisen then poets pen ever imagined.
The poet also imagines the time will come when the fleecy flocks will be straying o’er the thymey pastures and the shepherds dancing at early morn and dewy eve, but alas, these predictions have never been verified, for the lands on Erie’s shores are too valuable for sheep walks, and it is no Arcadian bower where the romance of the dreamy imaginations of the ancient philosophers are being enacted, but a vigorous, intelligent, and industrious population have arisen, who have built villages, towns and cities along its shores. But the foundation of the whole prosperity is the intelligent, well directed industry of the farming population.
Thomas Campbell
Their industry is not in vain,
For they have bounteous crops of grain,
And you behold on every field
Of grass and roots, abundant yield;
But after all the greatest charm
Is the snug home upon the farm.
And stone walls now keep cattle warm,
The cold blast now doth them no harm.
Poetry
Poetry to us is given,
As stars beautify the Heaven,
Or, as the sunbeams when they gleam,
Sparkling so bright upon the stream,
And the poetry of motion
Is ship sailing o’er the ocean;
Or, when the bird doth graceful fly,
Seeming to float upon the sky,
For poetry is the pure cream,
And essence of the common theme.
Poetic thoughts the mind doth fill,
When on broad plain to view a hill,
On barren heath how it doth cheer,
To see in distance herd of deer,
And poetry breathes in each flower,
Nourished by the gentle shower,
In song of birds upon the trees,
And humming of busy bees,
’Tis solace for the ills of life,
A soothing of the jars and strife,
For poets feel ’tis a duty
To sing of both worth and beauty.
When Wonham got orders
To advance to the borders,
His boys they were ready
And fell in quite steady.
They first marched to Woodstock,
To prepare for war’s shock,
And soon camped at Windsor,
Facing American shore.
Opening Ode
Delivered at an Odd Fellows’ Concert.
Some have formed strange conceptions about the mysteries of our order. They believe that enshrouded ’mong the deep and mysterious surroundings of our dark recesses and caves we have chained “Gorgans and Hydras, and Chimeras dire,” and that in our mazes and labyrinths,
A horrid goat we have to ride,
With long horns and shaggy hide,
And that the beast we have to stride well
Without saddle or a bridle.
Friends, with pleasure we do meet you,
And with hearty welcome greet you;
With many we have met before,
So pleasantly in days of yore.
But some new faces we do find,
And hope they’ll criticise us kind;
Abroad for talent we don’t roam,
But friends and neighbors here at home
Will give us now a splendid treat,
With speeches good and songs so sweet;
And instruments whose soothing charms
Will banish cares and our alarms.
In friendly deeds they lead the van,
Both Oxford and Samaritan,
To relieve brothers in distress,
And bounteously the widows bless.
A man rafting down the river,
Time he will remember ever,
He shouted, “Pole, the raft to land,
Or we’ll be wrecked upon the strand.”
But captain gave him a reply
That all danger he would defy;
But, in another moment more
Part was wrecked upon the shore
Of a Nova Scotian bay;
The other half was borne away.
Enough to make a person shiver,
Man was drifted out of river,
All alone on the broken raft,
Driven where e’er the wind did waft;
Right out on the open sea,
Where the storm did blow so free.
No shelter from the wind or wave,
He thought the gulf would be his grave.
He had no food, life to sustain,
He laid him down, there to remain.
What happened he did know no more,
But old man on Prince Edwards shore,
While gazing through his good spy glass,
“What do I see?” he cried, “Alas!
Some poor man, and I fear he’s dead,
Drifting to my humble shed.”
The body acted like a sail,
And wafted raft before the gale;
He called on men to man a boat,
And quickly crew had it afloat,
And in haste full soon they bore
His lifeless body to the shore.
But old man did them then desire
To place body near the fire,
And wrap it up in blankets warm—
Which did act
