The Pines / We sleep in the sleep of ages mp3 midi free download beach motel Sechelt bed breakfast

The Pines

Melody -

Robert W. Service, 1874-1958

We sleep in the sleep of ages,
The bleak, barbarian pines;
The gray moss drapes us like sages,
And closer we lock our lines,
And deeper we clutch
Through the gelid gloom
Where never a sunbeam shines.

On the flanks of the storm-gored ridges
Aree our black battalions massed;
We surge in a host
To the sullen coast,
And we sing in the ocean blast;
From empire of sea
To empire of snow
We grip our empire fast.

To the niggard lands were we driven,
'Twixt desert and floes are we penned;
To us was the Northland given,
Ours to stronghold and defend;
Ours till the world be riven
In the crash of the utter end;

Ours from the bleak beginning,
Through the aeons of death-like sleep;
Ours from the shock
When the naked rock
Was hurled from the hissing deep;
Ours through the twilight ages
Of weary glacier creep.

Wind of the East, wind of the West,
Wandering to and fro,
Chant your songs in our topmost boughs,
That the sons of men may know
The peerless pine was the first to come,
And the pine will be last to go!

We pillar the halls
Of perfumed gloom;
We plume where the eagles soar;
The North-wind swoops
From the brooding Pole,
And our ancients crash and roar;
But where one falls
From the crumbling walls
Shoots up a hardy score.

We spring from the gloom
Of the canyon's womb;
In the valley's lap we lie;
From the white foam-fringe,
Where the breakers cringe
To the peaks that tusk the sky,
We climb, and we peer
In the crag-locked mere
That gleams like a golden eye.

Gain to the verge of the hog-back ridge
Where the vision ranges free:
Pines and pines and the shadow of pines
As far as the eye can see;
A steadfast legion of stalwart knights
In dominant empery.

Sun, moon and stars give answer;
Shall we not staunchly stand,
Even as now, forever,
Wards of the wilder strand,
Sentinels of the stillness,
Lords of the last, lone land?