WOODNOTES. I. 1. For this present, hard Is the fortune of the bard, Born out of time; All his accomplishment, From Nature's utmost treasure spent, Booteth not him. When the pine tosses its cones He speeds to the woodland walks, He stands in the meadows wide, Nor gun nor scythe to see; With none has he to do, And none seek him, Nor men below, Nor spirits dim. Sure some god his eye enchants: Planter of celestial plants, What he knows nobody wants; What he knows he hides, not vaunts. Knowledge this man prizes best Seems fantastic to the rest: Pondering shadows, colors, clouds, And why the star-form she repeats : Lover of all things alive, Wonderer at all he meets, Wonderer chiefly at himself,- Coming and past eternities? 2. And such I knew, a forest seer, Wise harbinger of spheres and tides, In quaking bog, on snowy hill, Beneath the grass that shades the rill, Under the snow, between the rocks, In damp fields known to bird and fox, But he would come in the very hour It opened in its virgin bower, As if a sunbeam showed the place, And tell its long-descended race. It seemed as if the breezes brought him; It seemed as if the sparrows taught him; Where, in far fields, the orchis grew. Seldom seen by wishful eyes, But all her shows did Nature yield, To please and win this pilgrim wise. He saw the partridge drum in the woods; He found the tawny thrush's broods; And guessed within the thicket's gloom, And at his bidding seemed to come. 3. In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers' gang Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang ; He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds, The slight Linnæa hang its twin-born heads, And blessed the monument of the man of flowers, Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers. He heard, when in the grove, at intervals, One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree, Low lies the plant to whose creation went Sweet influence from every element; Whose living towers the years conspired to build, Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild. |