May-Day | Page 6

catamount,
And wit to track 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
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:

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?
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,

Or stumbling on through vast self-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,
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;

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
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
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
Competing seekers of a rumoured 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,
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
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,
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 the hollows of the hills
To feed
this wealth of lakes and rivulets,
So Nature shed all beauty lavishly
From her
redundant horn.
Lords of this realm,
Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day
Rounded by hours
where each outdid the last
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.
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.
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,
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,

But which we learn to scatter with a smudge,
Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn?
Our foaming ale we drunk from hunters' pans,
Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward
gave
Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread;
All ate like abbots, and, if any
missed
Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss
With hunters' appetite and
peals of mirth.
And Stillman, our guides' guide, and Commodore,
Crusoe, Crusader,
Pius AEneas, said aloud,
"Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating
Food
indigestible":--then murmured some,
Others applauded him who spoke the truth.
Nor doubt but visitings of graver thought
Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday

'Mid all the hints and glories of the home.
For who can tell what sudden privacies

Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry
Of scholars furloughed from their tasks,
and let
Into this Oreads' fended Paradise,
As chapels in the city's thoroughfares,


Whither gaunt Labour slips to wipe his brow,
And meditate a moment on Heaven's rest.

Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke
To each apart, lifting her lovely shows

To spiritual lessons pointed home.
And as through dreams in watches of the night,

So through all creatures in their form and ways
Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant,

Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense
Inviting to new knowledge, one with old.

Hark to that petulant chirp! what ails the warbler?
Mark his capricious ways to draw the
eye.
Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird,
Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer
light,
Thirsting in that