"Welcome!" the wood god murmured through

the leaves,

45" Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known

30

to me."

Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple

boughs,

Which o'erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire.
Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks,
Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor.

Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft
In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed,
Lie here on hemlock boughs, like Sacs and Sioux,
And greet unanimous the joyful change.
So fast will Nature acclimate her sons,
55 Though late returning to her pristine ways.
Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold;
And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned,
Sleep on the fragrant brush as on down-beds.
Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air
60 That circled freshly in their forest dress

Made them to boys again. Happier that they
Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind,
At the first mounting of the giant stairs.

No placard on these rocks warned to the polls,

65 No door-bell heralded a visitor,

No courier waits, no letter came or went,

Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or

sold;

The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop,
The falling rain will spoil no holiday.

70 We were made freemen of the forest laws,
All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends,
Essaying nothing she cannot perform.

In Adirondac lakes,

At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded; 75 Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make His brief toilette at night, or in the rain, He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn : A paddle in the right hand, or an oar, And in the left, a gun, his needful arms. 80 By turns we praised the stature of our guides, Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp, To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down : 85 Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount, And wit to trap or take him in his lair. Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent, In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides; Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired 90 Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to

eve.

Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen!
No city airs or arts pass current here.
Your rank is all reversed: let men of cloth
Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls :

95 They are the doctors of the wilderness,
And we the low-prized laymen.

In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test
Which few can put on with impunity.

What make you, master, fumbling at the oar? 100 Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretension

here.

The sallow knows the basket-maker's thumb;

The oar, the guide's. Dare you accept the tasks
He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes,
Tell the sun's time, determine the true north,

105 Or stumbling on through vast sclf-similar woods To thread by night the nearest way to camp?

Ask you, how went the hours?

All day we swept the lake, searched every cove, North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay, 110 Watching when the loud dogs should drive in

deer,

Or whipping its rough surface for a trout; Or bathers, diving from the rock at noon; Challenging Echo by our guns and cries; Or listening to the laughter of the loon ; 115 Or, in the evening twilight's latest red, Beholding the procession of the pines ; Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack, In the boat's bows, a silent night-hunter Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds 120 Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist. Hark to that muffled roar a tree in the woods Is fallen but hush! it has not scared the buck

114. Thoreau, in Walden, has an admirable account of the loon and its habits. "His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long drawn, unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning, perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision at my efforts, confident of his own resources." Page 254.

116. One of Mr. Emerson's companions in this excursion, Stillman the artist, painted The Procession of the Pines, the aspect, so familiar to the woodman, of a line of pines upon a hilltop outlined against the evening sky, and seeming to be marching solemnly.

125

Who stands astonished at the meteor light,
Then turns to bound away,—is it too late?

Sometimes we tried our rifles at a mark,
Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five;
Sometimes our wits at sally and retort,
With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle;
Or parties scaled the near acclivities
130 Competing seekers of a rumored lake,
Whose unauthenticated waves we named
Lake Probability, - our carbuncle,
Long sought, not found.

Two Doctors in the camp

Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain, 135 Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew,

Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow, and moth
Insatiate skill in water or in air

Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss;
The while, one leaden pot of alcohol

140 Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds.

Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants,
Orchis and gentian, fern, and long whip-scirpus,
Rosy polygonum, lake-margin's pride,

Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge, and

moss,

'45 Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls.

Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed, The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp As water poured through hollows of the hills 150 To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets, So Nature shed all beauty lavishly

From her redundant horn

132. See Hawthorne's story of The Great Carbuncle.

Lords of this realm,

Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day
Rounded by hours where each outdid the last
155 In miracles of pomp, we must be proud,
As if associates of the sylvan gods.

We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac,

So

pure

the Alpine element we breathed, So light, so lofty pictures came and went. 160 We trode on air, contemned the distant town, Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge, And how we should come hither with our sons, Hereafter, willing they, and more adroit.

165

Hard fare, hard bed, and comic misery,
The midge, the blue-fly, and the mosquito
Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands:
But, on the second day, we heed them not,
Nay, we saluted them Auxiliaries,

170 Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names. For who defends our leafy tabernacle

From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd, -
Who but the midge, mosquito, and the fly,
Which past endurance sting the tender cit,
175 But which we learn to scatter with a smudge,
Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn?

Our foaming ale we drank from hunters' pans, Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread; 180 All ate like abbots, and, if any missed

Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss With hunter's appetite and peals of mirth. And Stillman, our guides' guide, and Commodore, 183. Stillman left his own record of this excursion in a prose