Of Petoobok and of its golden sea,
The fairest gem of Nature’s fashioning
The beauty spot of beauteous Acadie,
Its summer and its winter scenes I sing:
Here in primeval days great Neptune wise
Conspired with Fora, bounteous and free,
To make a masterpiece, a paradise,
Where Nymphs and Naiad’s might forever woo;
And now by night and day it ever lies
Reflecting in its waters, deep and blue
The heavenly wonders of the vaulted skies.

In splendour, wild and picturesque and grand,
Beneath its sentinel hills like crystal set
With rarest taste by God and Nature’s hand.
It mirrors in its depth the silhouette
Of mountains, which, like heroes of romance,
Along its lovely shores forever stand,
To guard the waters of its vast expanse,
And holds to-day the same bewitching charm
Of loveliness divine, you to entrance,
As on the morn the cry of Golden Arm,
Burst from the lips of sons of sunny France.

Lake Petoobok, on summer afternoon
Looks fair and lovely to the mortal gaze,
And lovely too, what time the hunter’s moon
Illuminates it with her bewitching rays,
As it lies sleeping ’neath its guardian hills
By Flora robed in beauty, rare and boon,
With foliage of variegated frills
On which the dancing beams like fairies glint
And from Dame Nature’s ample store distils
Those dyes of one and thousand autumn tints
Wrought by some magic hand in fairy mills.

But Petoobok is fairest to behold
On Autumn morn, when orient Sunlight breaks
In radiant glory on its arm of gold,
And gentle noosuk[A] into the ripples shakes,
The placid surface of its crystal sea,
And to the eye a vista doth unfold,
A wondrous scene of heavenly alchemy,
Like that told us by John in Holy Writ,
Which fills the soul with perfect ecstasy,
And which once seen, though time be preterit
In after life in dreams you’ll ever see.
[A] West wind.