The Fairies in Prince Edward Island

FIRST halt. They heard within a sugar patch
The rhyming tic-a-tac of axes chopping,
So scouts were sent ahead to try to catch
A glimpse of whom or what 'twas caused the lopping,
And bring back a description of the natives —
If they were cannibals or friends, or caitiffs.

The scouts returned and said where they had stole,
They'd seen a score or so of stalwart creatures
In flannel shirts, not smock-frocks ; on the whole
They rather liked their friendly bearded features,
And that the first glance of these live Canadians
Impressed them favourably — (they were Acadians).

Then onward. Sudden on the horizon came
A burst of blaze like to a town on fire,
While smoke in columns and fierce tongues of flame
Rose grandly heavenwards, high and ever higher —
They were so scared they went by with a rush,
And did not know 'twas choppers burning brush.

With feelings as on field of Waterloo,
They came upon a space of blackened stumps ;
" Alas ! " cried they, " here greenwood temples grew,
And columns, ruined now, have stood in clumps."
They thought that war had here wiped out a nation
And left this ghastly scene of desolation.

They reached a scaffold frame beside a weir
With criss-cross beams, and rafters gaunt and slewed,
And in it agonising screams could hear,
And saw a whirling fiend devouring wood —
It was a sawmill, and, too scared for speech,
They skirred away beyond the monster's reach.

It pleased them much to see the birds about,
And one boy cried, " A robin ! big as thrush !
Ma, can that be Cock Robin grown so stout ? "
Whereon his mother, with her thoughts a-rush
With English memories, said (and checked a sob in),
" My dear, that is a fowl and not a robin."

They saw woodpeckers hanging by the toes,
Bluejay they thought was a professional beauty ;
They looked for rooks but only lit on crows,
Whose only link with crows, is both are sooty ;
And as to linnets, finches, and those others,
They looked on them in light of little brothers.

A number of strange other things they noted
As quite unlike what they had seen at home,
To all of which they curiously devoted
Attention, as a gentle hill they clomb,
Where on them burst a true colonial scene
Of wood and meadow land of living green.