In his 1898 poem, Charles G.D. Roberts, one of Canada’s most prominent confederation-era poets and a keen follower of Emerson and Thoreau, vividly evokes the transcendentalist theme of the sublime in nature. My own musical response to the poem grows out of a simple, hymn-like melody, fragmented and transformed over the course of the piece, hopeful of catching a glimpse in sound of the same.