POETRY.
THE SALMON-RUN: FRASER RIVER.
ORION and the Pleiades
Are paling in the sky, The murmur of the tide-way seems To breathe a lullaby; A lazy morning zephyr The placid surface blurs, And the croon of the loon To yonder waning moon Is wafted on the water whence he stirs.
A thousand phantom fishing skiffs Are drifting on the tide ; Deep down beneath their even keels The hempen trammels hide ; The trailing lines of floats above Meander on the wave, With a gap where they lap, And the tangled loops enwrap With a winding-sheet the salmon in his grave.
Beyond the eastern mountains, Where embryo day is born, A glowing band of saffron light Betrays the coming morn; We watch the lightening zenith, And Vega's cresset burn, As we drift in the rift Of the dawn, while we lift The salmon-laden meshes o'er the stern.
As gulls with herring glutted Go to their rest ashore, And spread their pinions white as snow The rippled surface o'er, So one by one the mainsails Are flung upon the wind, And the fleet, with the sheet Slackened off through the cleat, Steers landward with a freshening breeze behind.
The laughing wavelets follow, They tinkle by the strake, Anon they race abreast the boat, Now bubble in its wake; A shoal of lustrous salmon Lie in the knotted twine Of the net dripping wet, And little need we fret At the breaking and the chafing of the line.
Unmark'd, their countless squadrons drive Toward the distant goal, Drawn surely by a hidden spell Past fairway, reef, and shoal : Whence come the spangled armies, And whither do they roam?
As they leap from the deep, And round the headlands creep Through the backward-driving current's rim of fottau.
No bottom-trawl has found them, They haunt not with the whale; But Tuscarora's sapphire deep Returns a yearly tale Of pilgrims to the river Where it races from the snow; And they thrash through the crash Of the rapids, as they dash To their shallow native reaches from below.
LEONARD S.
South Ponder Island, British Columbia.
Previous page
