There seems some pathetic prescience in these lines, written by Boake in Miss Jean McKeahnie's scrap-book on the night before he left Rosedale.
GOOD-BYE. 12TH AUGUST, 1888.
Rosedale, my other home, to you I bid
Regretfully one lingering, sad farewell.
We two have met as on that mountain stream
Which, clearly flowing, bathes your furrowed fields,
Two leaflets meet and gently glide along
In friendly company, linked side by side,
When, lo! an eddy or a hidden rock
Remorselessly doth tear them far apart:
Perchance it leaves one stranded on the bank
To shrivel up and wither in the sun,
And bears the other on its widening stream
To fate unknown.
So, Rosedale, you remain, while I go on,
Launched on that treacherous stream that men call Life,
Which bears them helpless over spray-wrapt falls,
O'er sparkling shallows and deep, gloomy pools,
To strand them in oblivion whence they sprung.
It may be that Life's stream, by some strange freak,
May turn and bring me back to clasp again
Your hands outstretched to welcome my return;
To see once more the crossing at the stream,
The green of drooping willows and the plain
Fringed by its border of bold wooded hills;—
Once more at early morn to see the mist
Drawn from the river’s bosom by the sun
Lift up to heaven and vanish like a dream;
Or in the evening by the genial fire,
In merry cadence hear your voices rise,
Telling of pleasures past and joys to come.
