Temagami
Temagami
Original Text
The Poems of Archibald Lampman, ed. Duncan Campbell Scott (Toronto: George N. Morang, 1900): 292-93, as reprinted in The Poems of Archibald Lampman (including At the Long Sault), intro. by Margaret Coulby.
2That turn the rivers eastward to the sea,
3Set with a thousand islands, crowned with pines,
4Lies the deep water, wild Temagami:
5Wild for the hunter's roving, and the use
6Of trappers in its dark and trackless vales,
7Wild with the trampling of the giant moose,
8And the weird magic of old Indian tales.
9All day with steady paddles toward the west
10Our heavy-laden long canoe we pressed:
11All day we saw the thunder-travelled sky
12Purpled with storm in many a trailing tress,
13And saw at eve the broken sunset die
14In crimson on the silent wilderness.
Notes
1] Lake Temagami, 100 kilometres north of North Bay, Ontario, a native settlement that was developed in the 1890s as a tourist area for south Ontarian campers like Lampman, who went on a trip there in autumn 1896 and suffered a cardiac relapse as a result of the physical strains of the camping and portaging. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1943
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1997.
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