Greenspace Alliance of Canada's Capital

 
 
Path in McCarthy Meadow - July 2005      photograph by Ryan James
 
From Winter-Store by Archibald Lampman
 
He who through this common air
Surely knows the great and fair,
What is lovely, what sublime,
Becomes, in an increasing span
One with earth and one with man,
One, despite these mortal scars,
With the planets and the stars;
And Nature from her holy place,
Bending with unveiled face,
Fills him in her divine employ
With her own majestic joy.
 
Up the fielded slopes at morn,
Where light wefts of shadow pass,
Films upon the bending corn,
I shall sweep the purple grass.
Sun-crowned heights and mossy woods,
And the outer solitudes,
Mountain valleys, dim with pine,
Shall be home and haunt of mine.