Greenspace Alliance of Canada's Capital

Ottawa River, Gatineau Hills
 
To The Ottawa  by W.W. Campbell
 
Out of the northern wastes,  land of winter and death,
     Regions of ruin and age, spaces of solitude lost;
          You wash and thunder and sweep,
          And dream and sparkle and creep,

Barberries  (Berberis vulgaris)      photograph and identification by Bill Royds
 
Barberries  by W.W. Campbell
 
Barberries clustering on the bare walls,
     What is the beauty with which you glow?
     What are the blushes of secrets you know?
Flaming each spot where my footstep falls,
Barberries clustering on the bare walls.

 The Silence in McCarthy Woods    photograph by  Ryan James
 
Solitude by Archibald Lampman
 
How still it is here in the woods. The trees
Stand motionless, as if they did not dare
To stir, lest it should break the spell. The air
Hangs quiet as spaces in a marble frieze.
Even this little brook, that runs at ease,
Whispering and gurgling in its knotted bed,
Seems but to deepen with its curling thread

Tree, McCarthy area, Nov. 2006,   photograph by Ben Glossop
 
On the Companionship With Nature by Archibald Lampman
 
Let us be much with Nature; not as they
That labour without seeing, that employ
Her unloved forces, blindly, without joy;
Not those whose hands and crude delights obey
The old  brute passion to hunt down and slay;
But rather as children of one common birth,
Discerning in each natural fruit of earth

Ottawa in January                 photograh by Ryan James
 
 
The First Snow  by William Wilfred Campbell
 
Over the querulous age of the grey old year
Heaven its mantle of white sends softly  down;
And far over mountain and fell and woodland sere
its folds are thrown.
 

McCarthy Meadow July 2005    photograph by Ryan James
 
 
from  Among The Timothy  by Archibald Lampman

And here... it is sweet to lie
And watch the grass and the few-clouded sky,
Nor think but only dream.

McCarthy Woods  Nov. 2006               photograph  by Ben Glossop
 
From The Joys of the Road  by Bliss Carman
 
 
The racy smell of forest loam
when the stealthy sad-heart leaves go home;

McCarthy Meadow June 2007
photograph by Doug Macdonald
 
From April in the Hills  by Archibald Lampman
 
I break the spirit's cloudy bands
A wanderer in enchanted lands,
I feel the sun upon my hands;
And far from care and strife
The broad earth bids me forth. I rise
With lifted brow and upward eyes.
I bathe my spirit in blue skies,
And taste the springs of life.
 
I feel the tumult of new birth;

McCarthy Woods July 2007
photograph by Doug Macdonald
 
From A Wood Lyric by William Wilfred Campbell
 
Come where the bells of the forest are ringing,
Come where the orioles nest is swinging,
Where the brooks are foaming in amber pools,
 
The mornings are still and the noonday cools.

Nepean Creek, 2005            photograph by Ryan James
 
 From The Frogs by  Archibald Lampman      
 
All the day long, wherever pools might be
Among the golden meadows...
Or where the birds made riot of their glee
In the still woods, and the hot sun shone down,
Crossed with warm lucent shadows on the brown
Leaf-paven pools, that bubbled dreamily,
Ye sat and murmured...