Montreal

I

O city metropole, isle riverain!
Your ancient pavages and sainted routs
Traverse my spirit’s conjured avenues!
Splendor erablic of your promenades
Foliates there, and there your maisonry
Of pendent balcon and escalier’d march,
Unique midst English habitat,
Is vivid Normandy!

II

You populate the pupils of my eyes:
Thus, does the Indian, pluméd, furtivate
Still through your painted autumns, Ville-Marie!
Though palisades have passed, though calumet
With tabac of your peace enfumes the air,
Still do I spy the phantom, aquiline,
Genuflect, moccasin’d, behind
His statue in the square!

III

Thus, costumed images before me pass,
Haunting your archives architectural:
Coureur de bois, in posts where pelts were portaged
Seigneur within his candled manoir; Scot
Ambulant through his bank, pillar’d and vast.
Within your chapels, voyaged mariners
Stull pray, and personage departed,
All present from your past!

IV

Grand port of navigations, multiple
The lexicons uncargo’d at your quays,
Sonnant though strange to me; but chiefest, I,
Auditor of your music, cherish the
Joined double-melodied vocabulaire
Where English vocable and roll Ecossic,
Mollified by the parle of French
Bilinguefact your air!

V

Such your suaver voice, hushed Hochelaga!
But for me also sound your potencies,
Fortissimos of sirens fluvial,
Bruit of manufactory, and thunder
From foundry issuant, all pussiant tone
Implenishing your hebdomad; and then
Sanct silence, and your argent belfries
Clamant in orison!

VI

You are a part of me, O all your quartiers —
And of dire pauvrete and of richesse —
To finished time my homage loyal claim;
You are locale of infancy, milieu
Vital of institutes that formed my fate;
And you above the city, scintillant,
Mount Royal, are my spirit’s mother,
Almative, poitrinate!

VII

Never do I sojourn in alien place
But I do languish for your scenes and sounds,
City of reverie, nostalgic isle,
Pendant most brilliant on Laurentian cord!
The coigns of your boulevards — my signiory —
Your suburbs are my exile’s verdure fresh,
Your parks, your fountain’d parks —
Pasture of memory!

VIII

City, O city, you are vision’d as
A parchemin roll of saecular exploit
Inked with the script of eterne souvenir!
You are in sound, chanson and instrument!
Mental, you rest forever edified
With tower and dome; and in these beating valves,
Here in these beating valves, you will
For all my mortal time reside!