INSCRIPTION FOR THE ENTRANCE TO A WOOD STRANGER, if thou hast learned a truth which needs No school of long experience, that the world Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares, To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky That sucks its sweets. The massy rocks themselves, Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots, Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed SONG. Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow Reflects the day-dawn cold and clear, The hunter of the west must go In depth of woods to seek the deer. His rifle on his shoulder placed, His stores of death arranged with skill, His moccasins and snow-shoes laced,Why lingers he beside the hill? Far, in the dim and doubtful light, And oft he turns his truant eye, And pauses oft, and lingers near; But when he marks the reddening sky, He bounds away to hunt the deer. TO A WATERFOWL. WHITHER, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,— The desert and illimitable air,—— Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, And soon that toil shall end; Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright. |