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Could I but wake one never dying strain

Which Patriot hearts might echo back again,

I’d ask no meed—no wreath of glory crave—

If her approving smile my own Acadia gave!

Are those lines any less true, human, sincere, winning poetry than the opening apostrophe of Goldsmith’s Deserted Village?—

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain;

Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain,

Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid,

And parting Summer’s lingering blooms delayed:

Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,

Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,

How often have I loitered o’er thy green,

Where humble happiness endeared each scene!

How often have I paused on every charm....

and so on. ‘Pearl of the West!’—in just as short, apt, and felicitous poetic phrase as Goldsmith’s apostrophe ‘Sweet Auburn!’ Howe signalizes Nova Scotia, her natural beauty and magic, her ‘homeland’ thrall over the heart and imagination of her native sons, a thrall of mountain, mead, and wood, and flood, of kinship with nature and of pride in her resources on land and sea. His Acadia is all authentic poetry.