A. C. Doyle – The Athabasca Trail Poem

The Athabasca Trail Poem : The Guards Came Through and Other Poems by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Athabasca Trail Poem

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Athabasca Trail Poem

My life is gliding downwards; it speeds swifter to the day
When it shoots the last dark Canyon to the Plains of Far-away,
But while its stream is running through the years that are to be,
The mighty voice of Canada will ever call to me.

I shall hear her mighty rivers where the waters foam and tear;
I shall smell her virgin uplands with their balsam-laden air;
And in dreams I shall be riding down the winding wooded vale
With the packer and the pack-horse on the Athabasca trail.

I have passed the warden cities by the eastern water-gate
Where the hero and the martyr laid the corner-stone of state;
The habitant, courier-du-bois, and hardy voyageur,
Where dwells the breed more strong at need to venture and endure.

I have passed the gorge of Erie, where the foaming waters run;
I have crossed the inland ocean lying golden in the sun;
But the last and best and sweetest is the ride by hill and dale
With the packer and the pack-horse on the Athabasca Trail.

I will dream again of fields of grain that stretch from sky to sky,
And little prairie hamlets where the cars go roaring by;
Wooden hamlets as I saw them, mighty cities yet to be,
To girdle stately Canada with gems from sea to sea.

Mother of a mighty manhood, land of promise and of hope,
From your eastern sea-swept islands to your sunny western slope,
Evermore my heart is with you, evermore till life shall fail,
I’ll be out with pack and packer on the Athabasca Trail.