May-Day | Page 5

and architect,?Rebuild the ruin, mend defect;?Chemist to vamp old worlds with new,?Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue,?New-tint the plumage of the birds,?And slough decay from grazing herds,?Sweep ruins from the scarped mountain,?Cleanse the torrent at the fountain,?Purge alpine air by towns defiled,?Bring to fair mother fairer child,?Not less renew the heart and brain,?Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain,?Make the aged eye sun-clear,?To parting soul bring grandeur near.?Under gentle types, my Spring?Masks the might of Nature's king,?An energy that searches thorough?From Chaos to the dawning morrow;?Into all our human plight,?The soul's pilgrimage and flight;?In city or in solitude,?Step by step, lifts bad to good,?Without halting, without rest,?Lifting Better up to Best;?Planting seeds of knowledge pure,?Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure.
THE ADIRONDACS.
A JOURNAL.
DEDICATED TO MY FELLOW-TRAVELLERS IN AUGUST, 1858.
Wise and polite,--and if I drew?Their several portraits, you would own?Chaucer had no such worthy crew,?Nor Boccace in Decameron.
We crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends,?Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks?Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach?The Adirondac lakes. At Martin's Beach?We chose our boats; each man a boat and guide,--?Ten men, ten guides, our company all told.
Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac,?With skies of benediction, to Round Lake,?Where all the sacred mountains drew around us,?Tahawus, Seaward, MacIntyre, Baldhead,?And other Titans without muse or name.?Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on,?Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills,?And made our distance wider, boat from boat,?As each would hear the oracle alone.?By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid?Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets,?Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower,?Through scented banks of lilies white and gold,?Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day,?On through the Upper Saranac, and up?Pere Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass?Winding through grassy shallows in and out,?Two creeping miles of rushes, pads, and sponge,?To Follansbee Water, and the Lake of Loons.
Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed,?Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge?Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore.?A pause and council: then, where near the head?On the east a bay makes inward to the land?Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank,?And in the twilight of the forest noon?Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard.?We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts,?Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof,?Then struck a light, and kindled the camp-fire.
The wood was sovran with centennial trees,--?Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir,?Linden and spruce. In strict society?Three conifers, white, pitch, and Norway pine,?Five-leaved, three-leaved, and two-leaved, grew thereby.?Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth,?The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower.
'Welcome!' the wood god murmured through the leaves,--?'Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known 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,?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?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,?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.?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:?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.?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:?Temper to face wolf, bear, or 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