Please play while viewing to get the full emotion of what is happening this weekend at this home. I went however to pay my respects to a home I have loved forever. I could not buy anything as I felt great sorrow for the family. It could have been my home……
In memory of Bernard Cameron
This home is a historic and architecturally significant stone house in Almonte, built in 1870 for Alexander Elliot, textile mill baron, and remodeled in the Tudor Revival style for Archibald Rosamond in 1916.
Four Generations have lived in this 8 bedroom home, with 10 fireplaces and over 5,000 square feet of living space including full height attic, basement and garages.
The shrubs, which snowed their blossoms on
The walks wide-stretching from its doors
Like friendly arms, are dead and gone,
And over all a grand house soars
Within its front no welcome lies,
But pride’s aloofness; wealth, that stares
From windows, cold as haughty eyes,
The arrogance of new-made heirs.
Its very flowers breathe of cast;
And even the Springtide seems estranged;
In that stiff garden, caught, held fast,
All her wild beauty trimmed and changed
How fair she walked here with her Hours,
Pouring out colours and perfumes,
And, with her bosom heaped with flowers,
Climbed by the rose-vines to its rooms.
Or round the old porch, ’mid the trees,
Fluttered a flute of bluebird song;
Or, murmuring with a myriad bees,
Drowsed in the garden all day long.
How Summer, with her apron full
Of manna, shook the red peach down;
Or, stretched among the shadows cool,
Wove for her hair a daisy crown.
Or with her crickets, night and day,
Gossiped of many a fairy thing,
Her sweet breath warm with scents of hay
And honey, purple-blossoming.
How Autumn, trailing tattered gold
And scarlet, in the orchard mused,
And of the old trees taking hold
Upon the sward their ripeness bruised.
It lived. The house was part of us.
It was not merely wood and stone,
But had a soul, a heart, that thus
Grappled and made us all its own.
The lives that with its life were knit,
In some strange way, beyond the sense,
Had gradually given to it
A look of old experience.
A look, which I shall not forget,
No matter where my ways may roam.
I close my eyes: I see it yet—
The old house that was once my home
The Old Home
By Madison Cawein
lindaseccaspina 