Dear yesterdays,
I love you, love you still,
For all your foolish ways
And headlong will.
Your laughter and your tears
Cling to the years,
Your whisperings
Are ever in my ears.

Faint songs drift out from some forgotten shore,
Faint shouts of greeting and of last good-byes —
Listen! I hear the same Meductic roar,
A wisp of burning driftwood dims my eyes
(Or is it only time-dust in my eyes?)
I hear the loons' thin laughter down the years
(Or is it Fate communing with her shears?).

The paddle thumps against the gunnel still;
The water brushes past the red birch bow;
Strong shadows thrust aside the current's will —
(Are these but shadows now?)
And still the camp-fires gleam along the stream,
The straining herons creak among the stars,
The bark canoes go silently as dream,
Sliding between the islands and the bars —
Sliding between the present and the past,
Until, at last —
Listen! I hear the river ledges roar
And see the froth of faces slow eddy past the door

Listen! It comes again, the clear hail —
Coo-ee —
'Tis someone turning homeward down the long dim trail,
From hearty-hungry thickets and weary waste places —
(How far that signal echoes through the solitudes and spaces!
Is it true that he is with us in these dear familiar places?).
Comrades, we are with you still, our hands won't fail —
We are camping all together on the long, long trail!