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IN CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN'S POEM, Korf's clock had two pairs of hands, one advancing and the other robbing Time of its terrors.

In Charlevoix County, northeast of Quebec City, the landscape, the river, the wild-life and the illusion that its inhabitants kneel down at night and say: "Thank you God, that nothing happened today; and please let nothing happen tomorrow," still, in the summer, the advancing hands of Korf's clock.

How this miracle is accomplished was described last year in Gabrielle Roy's seductive book, Cet Eté Qui Chantait. In it the eminent French Canadian writer captured, with all the literary virtues at her command, the genuine warmth of life beating with the rhythm of a natural vitality.

Eschewing sentimentality, exploiting the rare gift for the sudden illuminating image that conveys a sense of well-being, Cet Eté Qui Chantait gave and continues to give enormous pleasure.

It has now been exquisitely translated by Joyce Marshall, the author of A Private Place and the translator of Gabrielle Roy's La route d'Altamont (The Road past Altamont) and La Rivière sans Repos (Windflower).

Enchanted Summer -- McClelland & Stewart, 125 pp. $7.95 - the title of the translation will give non French readers the opportunity to savor Charlevoix County's serenity.

Bullfrogs, flowers, cows, crows, cats, birds and fireflies, among other flora and fauna, carefully but not inspectorially observed, become part of a collage, or rather a tapestry, to which the land itself lends its particularities.

To give the due this book deserves quotation is essential. Here is a paragraph on Jeannot the crow.

Nothing in this world is more difficult than to distinguish one crow from another. If I was finally able to recognize Jeannot, this was because he came without fail on days when the wind sang from the southwest, to perch in the delicate tip of my wild cherry tree and let himself be rocked for a long time, the tree in this summer wind being simply a swing in the sky.

And another on fireflies:

Then the little creatures rose into the air and now they were ballet dancers. And spin. And turn on the spot. And pivot, a diadem on the forehead. The sky was full of them. It was fantasy? Fire above, fire a little farther away, and fire suddenly in my hand. Had I been quicker I might have grasped the flying flame. Berthe has told me that as a child she caught more than one firefly. I myself would fear that I might shatter the delicate mechanism that releases the swift blue flame. And I am troubled by the thought that by day I might mistake for a common insect one of these celebrants of fire.

Gabrielle Roy introduces us to human characters - whose naturalness and actions mesh with their habitat.

Without strain, without whimsicality, but with a kind of spontaneous, instinctive sensitivity and intelligence, Enchanted Summer mirrors what its title implies.

John Richmond is the Literary Editor of The Montreal Star.

Source: Montreal Star, September 18, 1976.

By permission of The Gazette, Montreal.