y and ease
Think not of all your country's fathers bore;
And still forget the famine and disease
Those pioneers suffered on your shore.
Their names are unfamiliar on your tongue,
Their deeds but vaguely known, their praise unsung.

VII.

So has it been, and so shall ever be
The man who stands to-day a shining light,
The hero who commands our fealty,
To-morrow, in oblivion's dark night,
Will be forgotten, or, on history's page,
May flicker dimly in a future age.

VIII.

Think not, ye men who seek to carve your name
On monuments of everlasting stone,
That ye can thus secure eternal fame.
Far greater deeds than yours have others done,
And greater far the harvest they have sown,
Which now ye reap, while they remain unknown.

IX.

As through the ages, silent and unseen,
The tiny corals work beneath the wave
And build a reef, which reef had never been
Except each coral there had found a grave;
So work the heroes of the human race,
And in their work-field find a resting place.

X.

How vast the number of the coral shells
That form the reef! And yet of these but one
Of many thousands ever elsewhere dwells
Than on that reef; all hidden and unknown
The rest remain, and few indeed are they
Which shine as jewels at a later day.

XI.

And thus have lived our heroes in the past:
The army of the brave and noble who
Have laboured uncomplaining, and at last
Have yielded up their lives; but there are few
Whose names stand forth, as worth would bid them stand,
Revered and honoured in their fatherland.

XII.

But Canada, let not the brave Champlain
Be thus in dark oblivion forgot.
Grant him the fame he never sought to gain;
Pay him the honour that he courted not;
And on thine earliest page of history
Write large his name, not as a mystery

XIII.

Or name unknown--but tell his deeds abroad,
And teach thy children all that he has done
Not hard the task, and thou canst well afford
To show the gratitude that he has won
From thee; and thus thou surely wilt impart
A proud ambition in thy children's heart

XIV.

To imitate the man, so true and brave,
Who laboured self-denyingly in life,
And 'neath the city's walls has found a grave,
At rest at last, and free from further strife.
Thus, as thy children knowledge of him gain,
Their hearts shall burn to emulate Champlain.

XV.

I stand upon the plains of Abraham,
And, silent as I stand, a train of tho