Lyr Req: Deep Dark River (Lloyd Roberts)

Subject: Lyr Req: Chaudiere, canoe
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Sep 07 - 10:44 PM

Commander Crabbe was seeking the poem or song, a fragment of which appears in the book "Tales of an Empty Cabin," by Grey Owl.

Can anyone identify and complete it?

And always I hear the sound of men dipping
Down to the Chaudiere, their long blades dipping,
Catch the long low wraith of a bark canoe
And hear the wild sweet chanson of a phantom crew.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Chaudiere, canoe
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 12:42 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Chaudiere, canoe
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 01:27 PM

Commander Crabbe says he struck out with a brief google, but dogpile led me to lots of info about the probable author of this verse, Lloyd Roberts, the son of nature writer Charles G. D. Roberts, whose stories were a bedtime staple during my boyhood. According to the link, back in 1911 Lloyd Roberts worked for the newspaper in the small B. C. town where I now live. The complete text of his book England Over Seas is available from the Gutenberg Project. If the ghost canoe poem is in that book, I missed it during my quick scan. I'll betcha it's in his book called "Along The Ottawa".

The text of the verse as it appears in my copy of Tales Of An Empty Cabin is:

And always I hear the stir of men dipping
Down to the Chaudiere, their thin blades dripping,
Catch the long low wraith of a bark canoe
And hear the wild sweet chansons of a phantom crew.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Chaudiere, canoe
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 02:22 PM

Thanks. Since the subtitle of "Along the Ottawa" is a book of lyrics, that looks like a good bet.

C. G. D. Roberts, as well as Ernest Thomson Seton, undoubtedly influenced Grey Owl.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Chaudiere, canoe
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 08:28 PM

Google Book Search finds this poem in 3 anthologies:

Our Canadian literature; representative verse, English and French, by Bliss Carman and Lorne Pierce, Toronto, The Ryerson press [1935]

New harvesting; contemporary Canadian poetry, 1918-1938, by Ethel Hume Bennett, Toronto: Macmillan, 1938, page 146.

Canadian poetry in English, by Bliss Carman, Lorne Pierce, and V B Rhodenizer; Toronto : Ryerson Press, [1954], page 232.

These books are available online only in "snippet view," but I was able to piece together several snippets to make the following text. (It seems to have something missing at the beginning.).

Sorry, I wasn't able to figure out the title or author:

And from the portage trail below Deschênes
The pulse of paddles and A la Claire Fontaine.

I hear the ghost waves lapping on a million beaches,
I hear the ghost laughter of loons down lonely reaches,
The sighing of spent winds in the matted spruce
And the sudden honk and splash of arrow-stricken goose.

And always I hear the stir of men slipping
Down the Chaudière, their thin blades dripping,
Catch the long low wraith of a bark canoe
And the wild sweet chansons of a phantom crew.

Strange smells are loosed by the hurrying prows—
Wood-smoke, trade rum, dried balsam boughs;
Strange smells steeped from the drip of years
And dyed with the stuff of dead dreams and tears.

Into the wash and waste of thy brave debris
Drifting through the dark night toward a dark sea,
Into thy silent keeping receive from me
The gleam of one more broken dream, O Ottawa!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Chaudiere, canoe
From: Peace
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 08:36 PM

Great work, guys.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Chaudiere, canoe
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 08:50 PM

You rock, Jim.

Subject: Lyr Add: DEEP DARK RIVER (Lloyd Roberts)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Sep 07 - 06:03 PM

Lyr. Add: DEEP DARK RIVER
Lloyd Roberts

Deep dark river drifting through the night,
Stabbed with cold stars and the cold moon's light,
Quickened with the north wind and the drifting snow,
What strange dreams stir in thy turgid flow!

I can see the black slit of far-drowned places,
And the white froth of rapids like drowned faces,
And the red and purple stains of sunsets burning,
And the endless grey rains of winter's turning.

I can hear the bobcat scream, the cow moose calling,
The dull reverberant crash of rampike falling,
And from the portage trail below Deschênes
The pulse of paddles and A la Claire Fontaine.

I hear the ghost waves lapping on a million beaches,
I hear the ghost laughter of loons down lonely reaches,
The sighing of spent winds in the matted spruce
And the sudden honk and splash of arrow-stricken goose.

And always I hear the stir of men slipping
Down the Chaudière, their thin blades dripping,
Catch the long low wraith of a bark canoe
And the wild sweet chansons of a phantom crew.

Strange smells are loosed by the hurrying prows-
Wood-smoke, trade rum, dried balsam boughs;
Strange smells steeped from the drip of years
And dyed with the stuff of dead dreams and tears.

Into the wash and waste of thy brave dèbris,
Drifting through the dark night toward a dark sea,
Into thy silent keeping receive from me
The gleam of one more broken dream, O Ottawa!

P. 249; Bliss Carman and Lorne Pierce, chosen by, 1922 (rev. 1935), "Our Canadian Literature, Representative Verse English and French," The Ryerson Press, Toronto.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Chaudiere, canoe
From: Commander Crabbe
Date: 25 Sep 07 - 05:31 PM

Q

You're a star, what a great poem.

Thanks to evryone else too.

CC

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Chaudiere, canoe
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 25 Sep 07 - 09:14 PM

Don't know where it was first published. Not in Lloyd Roberts' fine little book of lyrics, "Along the Ottawa."