I swing to the land to be: I am the power that laid its floors, I am the guide to its western stores, I am the key to its golden doors, That open alone to me. (2) _C.P.R. Eastbound._ I swing to the land of morn, The grey old east with its grey old seas, The land of leisure, the land of ease, The land of flowers and fruits and trees, And the place where we were born. Freighted with wealth I come,-- Food and fortune; and fellow that went Far out west on adventure bent, With well-worn pick and a folded tent, Is bringing his bullion home. I never will be renowned As my twin that swings to the western marts, For I am she of the humbler parts; But I am the joy of the waiting hearts, For I am the homeward-bound! 53. LAURIER'S TRIBUTE TO MACDONALD (1891). =Source.=--Sir Wilfred Laurier's Speech in the Canadian House of Commons on the death of Sir John Macdonald: Canadian Hansard, 8th June, 1891, quoted in part in J. S. Willison's _Sir Wilfred Laurier and the Liberal Party_; and in part also in G. R. Parkin's _Sir John A. Macdonald_. The place of Sir John Macdonald in this country was so large and so absorbing that it is almost impossible to conceive that the political life of this country, the fate of this country, can continue without him.... I think it can be asserted that, for the supreme art of governing men, Sir John Macdonald was gifted as few men in any land or in any age were gifted--gifted with the highest of all qualities, qualities which would have made him famous wherever exercised, and which would have shone all the more conspicuously the larger the theatre. The fact that he could congregate together elements the most heterogeneous and blend them into one compact party, and to the end of his life keep them steadily under his hand, is perhaps altogether unprecedented. The fact that during all those years he retained unimpaired not only the confidence, but the devotion--the ardent devotion--and affection of his party, is evidence that, besides those higher qualities of statesmanship to which we were daily witnesses, he was also endowed with those inner, subtle, undefinable graces of soul which win and keep the hearts of men.... He was fond of power and he never made any secret of it. Many times we have heard him avow it on the floor of this Parliament, and his ambition in this respect was gratified as perhaps no other man's ambition ever was. In my judgment even the career of William Pitt can hardly compare with that of Sir John Macdonald in this respect; for although William Pitt, moving in a higher sphere, had to deal with problems greater than our problems, yet I doubt if in the intricate management of a party William Pitt had to contend with difficulties equal to those that Sir John Macdonald had to contend with.