Full text of "My garden acquaintance ; A good word for winter ; A Moosehead journal ; [At sea]"

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MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE, 

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER, 

A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

THE FARMER S BOY. 

BY ROBERT BLOOMFIELD. 



ILLUSTRATED. 




BOSTON: 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 
(STfce fttoeiffte $re#& &lt;Camfcrifr0e. 



Copyright, 1864 and 1871, 
By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 



GIFT 



nl 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 

AND 

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



582 



CONTENTS. 

Pag* 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE .... 5 

A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER .... ^ 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 




XE of the most delightful books in 
my father s library was White s Nat 
ural History of Selborne. For me 
it has rather gained in charm with years. I 
used to read it without knowing the secret 
of the pleasure I found in it, but as I grow 
older I begin to detect some of the simple 
expedients of this natural magic. Open the 
book where you will, it takes you out of 
doors. In our broiling July weather one 
can walk out with this genially garrulous 
Fellow of Oriel and find refreshment instead 
of fatigue. You have no trouble in keeping 
abreast of him as he ambles along on his 
hobby-horse, now pointing to a, pretty view, 
now stopping to watch the motions of a bird 



6 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

or an insect, or to bag a specimen for the 
Honorable Daines Barrington or Mr. Pen 
nant. In simplicity of taste and natural 
refinement he reminds one of Walton ; in 
tenderness toward what he would have called 
the brute creation, of Cowper. I do not 
know whether his descriptions of scenery are 
good or not, but they have made me familiar 
with his neighborhood. Since L first read 
him, I have walked over some of his favor 
ite haunts, but I still see them through his 
eyes rather than by any recollection of actual 
and personal vision. The book has also the 
delightfulness of absolute leisure. Mr. White 
seems never to have had any harder work to 
do than to study the habits of his feathered 
fellow-townsfolk, or to watch the ripening 
of his peaches on the wall. His volumes 
tire the journal of Adam in Paradise, 

" Annihilating all that s made 
To a green thought in a green shade." 

It is positive rest only to look into that gar 
den of his. It is vastly better than to 

" See great Diocletian walk 
In the Salonian garden s noble shade/ 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 7 

for thither ambassadors intrude to bring with 
them the noises of Rome, while here the 
world has no entrance. No rumor of the 
revolt of the American Colonies seems to 
have reached him. " The natural term of 
an hog s life " has more interest for him than 
that of an empire. Burgoyne may surrender 
and welcome ; of what consequence is that 
compared with the fact that we can explain 
the odd tumbling of rooks in the air by their 
turning over " to scratch themselves with one 
claw " ? All the couriers in Europe spurring 
rowel-deep make 110 stir in Mr., White s lit- 

JT* j &lt;&lt;S~A-rTr^JL. \ K^AA.^i VV. M_Jv jf^u ^, ^ "* """""* 

tie Chartreuse ; but me arrival 61 the house- 
martin a day earlier or later than last year 
is a piece of news worth sending express to 
all his correspondents. 

Another secret charm of this book is its 
inadvertent humor, so much the more deli 
cious because unsuspected by the author. 
How pleasant is his innocent vanity in add 
ing to the list of the British, and still more 
of the Selbornian,/6m?m / I believe he would 
gladly have consented to be eaten by a tiger 
or a crocodile, if by that means the occasional 



8 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

presence within the parish limits of either 
of these anthropophagous brutes coulcl have 
been established. He brags of no fine so 
ciety, but is plainly a little elated by " hav 
ing considerable acquaintance with a tame 
brown owl." Most of us have known our 
share of owls, but few can boast of intimacy 
with a feathered one. The great events of 
Mr. White s life, too, have that dispropor 
tionate importance which is always humor 
ous. To think of his hands having actually 
been thought worthy (as neither Willough- 
by s nor Ray s were) to hold a stilted plover,; 
the Charadrius himantopus, with no back toe, 
and therefore " liable, in speculation, to per 
petual vacillations " ! I wonder, by the way, 
if metaphysicians have no hind toes. In 
1770 he makes the acquaintance in Sussex 
of " an old family tortoise," which had then 
oeen domesticated for thirty years. It is 
clear that he fell in love with it at first 
sight. We have no means of tracing the 
growth of his passion ; but in 1780 we find 
him eloping with its object in a post-chaise. 
"The rattle and hurry of the journey so per- 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 9 

fectly roused it that, when I turned it out 
in a border, it walked twice down to the 
bottom of my garden." It reads like a Court 
Journal : " Yesterday morning H. R. H. the 
Princess Alice took an airing of half an hour 
on the terrace of Windsor Castle." This tor 
toise might have been a member of the Royal 
Society, if he could have condescended to so 
ignoble an ambition. It had but just been 
discovered that a surface inclined at a cer 
tain angle with the plane of the horizon 
took more of the sun s rays. The tortoise 
had always known this (though he unosten 
tatiously made no parade of it), and used 
accordingly to tilt himself up against the 
garden-wall in the autumn. He seems to 
have been more of a philosopher than even 
Mr. White himself, caring for nothing but 
to get under a cabbage-leaf when it rained, 
or the sun was too hot, and to bury himself 
alive before frost, a four-footed Diogenes, 
who carried his tub on his back. 

There are moods in which this kind of 
history is infinitely refreshing. These crea 
tures whom we affect to look down upon as 



10 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

the drudges of instinct are members of a 
commonwealth whose constitution rests on 
immovable bases. Never any need of re 
construction there ! They never dream of 
settling it by vote that eight hours are equal 
to ten, or that one creature is as clever as 
another and no more. They do not use their 
poor wits in regulating God s clocks, nor 
think they cannot go astray so long as they 
carry their guide-board about with them, 
a delusion we often practise upon ourselves 
with our high and mighty reason, that ad 
mirable finger-post which points every way 
and always right. It is good for us now 
and then to converse with a world like Mr. 
White s, where Man is the least important 
of animals. But one who, like me, has al 
ways lived in the country and always on the 
same spot, is drawn to his book by other 
occult sympathies. Do we not share his 
indignation at that stupid Martin who had 
graduated his thermometer no lower than 4 
above zero of Fahrenheit, so that in the cold 
est weather ever known the mercury basely 
absconded into the bulb, and left us to see 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 11 

the victory slip through our fingers just as 
they were closing upon it ? No man. I sus 
pect, ever lived long in the country without 
being bitten by these meteorological ambi 
tions. He likes to be hotter and colder, to 
have been more deeply snowed up, to have 
more trees and larger blown down than his 
neighbors. With us descendants of the Pu 
ritans especially, these weather-competitions 
supply the abnegated excitement of the race 
course. Men learn to value thermometers 
of the true imaginative temperament, capa 
ble of prodigious elations and correspond 
ing dejections. The other day (5th July) I 
marked 98 in the shade, my high-water 
mark, higher by one degree than I had ever 
seen it before. I happened to meet a neigh 
bor ; as we mopped our brows at each other, 
he told me that he had just cleared 100, 
and 1 went home a beaten man. I had not 
felt the heat before, save as a beautiful exag 
geration of sunshine ; but now it oppressed 
me with the prosaic vulgarity of an oven. 
What had been poetic intensity became all 
at once rhetorical hyperbole. 1 might sus- 



12 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

pect his thermometer (as indeed I did, for 
we Harvard men are apt to think ill of any 
graduation but our own) ; but it was a poor 
consolation. The fact remained that his her 
ald Mercury, standing a-tiptoe, could look 
down on mine. I seem to glimpse some 
thing of this familiar weakness in Mr. White. 
He, too, has shared in these mercurial tri 
umphs and defeats. Nor do I doubt that 
he had a true country-gentleman s interest 
in the weathercock ; that his first question 
on coming down of a morning was, like 
Barabbas s, 

" Into what quarter peers my halcyon s bill ? " 

It is an innocent and healthful employ 
ment of the mind, distracting one from too 
continual study of himself, and leading him 
to dwell rather upon the indigestions of the 
elements than his own. " Did the wind 
back round, or go about with the sun ? " is 
a rational question that bears not remotely 
on the making of hay and the prosperity of 
crops. I have little doubt that the regulated 
observation of the vane in many different 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 13 

places, and the interchange of results by tel 
egraph, would put the weather, as it were, 
in our power, by betraying its ambushes be 
fore it is ready to give the assault. At first 
sight, nothing seems more drolly trivial than 
the lives of those whose single achievement 
is to record the wind and the temperature 
three times a day. Yet such men are doubt 
less sent into the world for this special end, 
and perhaps there is no kind of accurate ob 
servation, whatever its object, that has not 
its final use and value for some one or other. 
It is even to be hoped that the speculations 
of our newspaper editors and their myriad 
correspondents upon the signs of the political 
atmosphere may also fill their appointed place 
in a well-regulated universe, if it be only 
that of supplying so many more jack-o -lan 
terns to the future historian. Nay, the ob 
servations on finance of an M. C. whose sole 
knowledge of the subject has been derived 
from a lifelong success in getting a living 
out of the public without paying any equiv 
alent therefor, will perhaps be of interest 
hereafter to some explorer of our cloaca 
maxima, whenever it is cleansed. 



14 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

For many years I have been in the habit 
of noting down some of the leading events 
of my embowered solitude, such as the com 
ing of certain birds and the like, a kind 
of memoires pour servir, after the fashion of 
White, rather than properly digested natural 
history. I thought it not impossible that a 
few simple stories of my winged acquaint 
ances might be found entertaining by per 
sons of kindred taste. 

There is a common notion that animals 
are, "better meteorologists than men, and I 
have little* doubt that in immediate weather- 
wisdom they have the advantage of our so 
phisticated senses (though I suspect a sailor 
or shepherd would be their match), but I 
have seen nothing that^ leads me to believe 
their minds capable of erecting the horoscope 
of a whole season, and letting "us know be 
forehand whether the winter will be severe 
or the summer Tainlej^. I. more, than sus 
pect that the clerk of the" weather himself - 
does not always know very long in advance 
whether he is to draw an order for hot or 
cold, dry or moist, and the musquash is 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 15 

scarce likely to be wiser. I have noted but 
two days difference in the coming of the 
song-sparrow between a very early and a 
very backward spring. This very year I 
saw the linnets at work thatching, just be 
fore a snow-storm which covered the ground 
several inches deep for a number of days. 
They struck work and left us for a while, 
no doubt in search of food. Birds frequently 
perish from sudden changes in our whimsi 
cal spring weather of which they had no 
foreboding. More than thirty years ago, a 
cherry-tree, then in full bloom, near my 
window, was covered with humming-birds 
benumbed by a fall of mingled rain and 
snow, which probably killed many of them. 
It should seem that their coming was dated 
by the height of the sun, which betrays them 
into unthrifty matrimony ; 

" So nature pricketh hem in their corages " ;Ux 



but their going is another matter. The 
chimney-swallows leave us early, for exam 
ple, apparently so soon as their latest fledg 
lings are firm enough of wing to attempt the 



16 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

long rowing-match that is before them. On 
the other hand, the wild-geese probably do 
not leave the North till they are frozen out, 
for I have heard their bugles sounding south 
ward so Hte as the middle of December. 
What may be called local migrations are 
doubtless dictated by the chances of food. 
I have once been visited by large nights 
- of cross-bills ; and whenever the snow lies 
long and deep on the ground, a flock of 
cedar-birds comes in midwinter to eat the 
berries on my hawthorns. I have never 
been quite able to fathom the local, or rather 
geographical partialities of birds. Never be 
fore this summer (1870) have the king-birds, 
handsomest of fly-catchers, built in my or 
chard ; though I always know where to find 
them within half a mile. The rose-breasted 
grosbeak has been a familiar bird in Brook- 
line (three miles away), yet I never saw one 
here till last July, when I found a female 
busy among my raspberries and surprisingly 
bold. I hope she was prospecting with a view 
to settlement in our garden. She seemed, 
on the whole, to think well of my fruit, and 



MY GARDEN ACqUAINTANCE. 17 

I would gladly plant another bed if it would 
help to win over so delightful a neighbor. 

The return of the robin is commonly an 
nounced by the newspapers, like that of 
eminent or notorious people to a watering- 
place, as the first "authentic notification of 
spring. And such his appearance in the 
orchard and garden undoubtedly is. But, 
in spite of his name of migratory thrush, he 
stays with us all winter, and I have seen 
him when the thermometer marked 15 be 
low zero of Fahrenheit, armed impregnably 
within, like Emerson s Titmouse, and as 
cheerful as he. The robin has a bad repu 
tation among people who do not value them 
selves less for being fond of cherries. There 
is, I admit, a spice of vulgarity in him, and 
his song is rather of the Bloomfield sort, too 
largely ballasted with prose. Ilis, ethics are 
of the Poor Richard school, anct the-maitr : 
chance which calls forth all his energy is 
altogether of the belly. He never has those 
fine intervals of lunacy into which his cous 
ins, the catbird and the mavis, are apt to 

*itx* 

fall. But for a that and twice as muckle s 



18 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

, tf that, I would not exchange him for all the 

JL.j VV&gt;\^ f O 

cherries that ever came out of Asia Minor. 
With whatever faults, he has not wholly for 
feited that superiority which belongs to the 
children of nature. He has a finer taste in 
fruit than could be distilled from many 
successive committees of the Horticultural 
Society, and he eats with a relishing gulp 
not inferior to Dr. Johnson s. He feels and 
freely exercises his right of eminent domain. 
His is the earliest mess of green peas ; his 
all the mulberries I had fancied mine. But 
if he get also the lion s share of the rasp 
berries, he is a great planter, and sows those 
wild ones in the woods, that solace the pe 
destrian and give a momentary calm even 
to the jaded victims of the White Hills. 
He keeps a strict eye over one s fruit, and 
knows to a shade of purple when your grapes 
have cooked long enough in the sun. Dur 
ing the severe drought a few years ago, the 
robins wholly vanished from my garden. I 
neither saw nor heard one for three weeks. 
Meanwhile a small foreign grape-vine, rather 
shy of bearing, seemed to find the dusty air 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 19 

k congenial, and, dreaming perhaps of its sweet 
across the sea, decked itself with a 



score or so of fair bunches. I watched them 
from day to day till they should have se 
creted sugar enough from the sunbeams, and 
at last made up my mind that I would cele 
brate my vintage the next morning. But 
the robins too had somehow kept note of 
them. They must have sent out spies, as i 
did the Jews into the promised land, before 
I was stirring. When I went with my bas 
ket, at least a dozen of these winged vin 
tagers bustled out from among the leaves, 
and alighting on the nearest trees inter 
changed some shrill remarks about me of a 
derogatory nature. They had fairly sacked 
the vine. Not Wellington s veterans made 
cleaner work of a Spanish town ; not Fed 
erals or Confederates were ever more impar 
tial in the confiscation of neutral chickens. 
I was keeping my grapes a secret to surprise 
the fair Fidele with, but the robins made 
them a profounder secret to her than I had 
meant. The tattered remnant of a single 
bunch was all my harvest-home. How pal- 



20 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

try it looked at the bottom of my basket, - 
as if a humming-bird had laid her egg in an 
eagle s nest ! I could not help laughing ; 
and the robins seemed to join heartily in the 
merriment. There was a native grape-vine 
close by, blue with its less refined abun 
dance, but ray cunning thieves preferred the 
foreign flavor. Could I tax them with want 
of taste ? 

The robins are not good solo singers, but 
their chorus, as, like primitive fire- worship 
pers, they hail the return of light and warmth 
to the world, is unrivalled. There are a 
hundred singing like one. They are noisy 
enough then, and sing, as poets should, with 
no afterthought. But when they come after 
cherries to the tree near my window, they 
muffle their voices, and their faint pip, pip, 
pop ! sounds far away at the bottom of the 
garden, where they know I shall not suspect 
them of robbing the great black-walnut of 
its bitter-rinded store.* They are feathered 

* The screech-owl, whose cry, despite his ill 
name, is one of the sweetest sounds in nature, 
softens his voice in the same way with the most 
beguiling mockery of distance. 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 21 

xW~. 

Pecksniffs, to be sure, but then how brightly 
their breasts, that look rather shabby in the 
sunlight, shine in a rainy day against the 
dark green of the fringe-tree ! After they 
have pinched and shaken all the life out 
of an earthworm, as Italian cooks pound all 
the spirit out of a steak, and then gulped 
him, they stand up in honest self-confidence, 
expand their red waistcoats with the virtu 
ous air of a lobby member, and outface you 
with an eye that calmly challenges inquiry. 
" Do I look like a bird that knows the flavor 
of raw vermin ? I throw myself upon a jury 
of my peers. Ask any robiij if hg ever ate 
anything less ascetic than the frugal berry 
of the jumper, and he will answer that his 
vow forbids him." Can such an open bosom 
cover such depravity ? Alas, yes ! I have 
no doubt his breast was redder at that very 
moment with the blood of my raspberries. 
On the whole, he is a doubtful friend in the 
garden. He makes his dessert of all kinds 
of berries, and is not averse iroin early pears. 
But when we remember how omnivorous he 
is, eating his own weight in an incredibly 



22 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

short time, and that Nature seems exhaust- 
less in her invention of new insects hostile 
to vegetation, perhaps we may reckon that he 
does more good than harm. For my own 
part, I would rather have his cheerfulness 
and kind neighborhood than many berries. 

For his cousin, the catbird, I have a still 
warmer regard. Always a good singer, he 
sometimes nearly equals the brown thrush, 
and has the merit of keeping up his music 
later in the evening than any bird of my 
familiar acquaintance. Ever since I can 

Z"v?to 

remember, a pair of them have built in a 
gigantic syringa, near our front door, and I 
have known the male to sing almost un 
interruptedly during the evenings of early 
summer till twilight duskened into dark. 
They differ greatly in vocal talent, but all 
have a delightful way of crooning over, and, 
as it were, rehearsing their song in an un 
dertone, which makes their nearness always 
unobtrusive. Though there is the most trust 
worthy witness to the imitative propensity 
of this bird, I have only once, during an in 
timacy of more than forty years, heard him 



MY GA11DEN ACQUAINTANCE. 23 

indulge it. In that case, the imitation was 
by no means so close as to deceive, but a 
free reproduction of the notes of some other 
birds, especially of the oriole, as a kind of 
variation in his own song. The catbird is as 
shy as the robin is vulgarly familiar. Only 
when his nest or his fledglings are approached 
does he become noisy andfimost aggressive. 
I have, kftown him to station his young in 
a tmcK corne^bush on the edge of the rasp 
berry-bed, after the fruit began to ripen, and 
feed them there for a week or more. In such 
cases he shows none of that conscious guilt 
which makes the robin contemptible. On 
the contrary, he will maintain his post in 
the thicket, and sharply scold the intruder 
who ventures to steal his berries. After all, 
his claim is only for tithes, while the robin 
will ]g your entire crop if he -g^ a chance. 
DrTwatts s statement that " birds in their 
little nests agree," like too many others in 
tended to form the infant mind, is very far 
from being true. On the contrary, the most 
peaceful relation of the different species to 
each other is that oi armed neutrality. They 



2 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

are very jealous of neighbors. A few years 
ago, I was much interested in the house 
building of a pair of summer yellow-birds. 
They had chosen a very pretty site near the 
top of a tall white lilac, within easy eye-shot 
of a chamber window. A very pleasant thing 
it was to see their little home growing with 
mutual help, to watch their industrious skill 
interrupted only by little flirts and snatches 
of endearment, frugally cut short by the 
common-sense of the tiny housewife. They 
had brought their work nearly to an end, 
and had already begun to line it with fern- 
down, the gathering of which demanded 
more distant journeys and longer absences. 
But, alas ! the syringa, immemorial manor 
of the catbirds, was not more than twenty, 
feet away, and these " giddy neighbors " had, v 
as it appeared, been all along jealously watch 
ful, though silent, witnesses of what they 
deemed an intrusion of squatters. No sooner 
were the pretty mates fairly gone for a new 
load of lining, than 

" To their unguarded nest these weasel Scots 
Came stealing." 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 25 

Silently they flew back and forth, each giv 
ing a vengeful dab at the nest in passing. 
They did not fall-to and deliberately de 
stroy it, for they might have been caught 
at their mischief. As it was, whenever the 
yellow-birds came back, their enemies were 
hidden in their own sight-proof bush. Sev 
eral times their unconscious victims repaired 
damages, but at length, after counsel taken 
together, they gave it lip. Perhaps, like 
other unlettered folk, they came to the con 
clusion that the Devil was in it, and yielded 
to the invisible persecutions of witchcraft. 

The robins, by constant attacks and an 
noyances, have succeeded in driving off the 
blue-jays who used to build in our pines, 
their gay colors and quaint noisy ways mak 
ing them welcome and amusing neighbors. 
I once had the chance of doing a kindness 
to a household of them, which they received 
with very friendly condescension. I had had 
my eye for some time upon a nest, and was 
puzzled by a constant fluttering of what 
seemed full-grown wings in it whenever I 
drew nigh. At last I climbed the tree, in 



26 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

spite of angry protests from the old "birds 
against my intrusion. The mystery had a 
very simple solution. In building the nest, 
a long piece of packthread had been some 
what loosely woven in. Three of the young 
had contrived to entangle themselves in it, 
and had become full-grown without being 
able to launch themselves upon the air. 
One was unharmed ; another had so tightly 
twisted the cord about its shank that one 
foot w T as curled up and seemed paralyzed ; 
the third, in its struggles to escape, had 
sawn through the flesh of the thigh and so 
much harmed itself that I thought it hu 
mane to put an end to its misery. When I 
took out my knife to cut their hempen bonds, 
the heads of the family seemed to divine 
my friendly intent. Suddenly ceasing their 
cries and threats, they perched quietly with 
in reach of my hand, and watched me in my 
work of manumission. This, owing to the 
fluttering terror "of the prisoners, was an 
affair of some delicacy ; but erelong I was 
rewarded by seeing one of them fly away to 
a neighboring tree, while the cripple, making 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 27 

a parachute of his wings, came lightly to the 
ground, and hopped off as well as he could 
with one leg, obsequiously waited on by his 
elders. A week later I had the satisfaction 
of meeting him in the pine-walk, in good 
spirits, and already so far recovered as to 
be able to balance himself with the lame 
foot. I have no doubt that in his old age 
he accounted for his lameness by some hand 
some story of a wound received at the fa 
mous Battle of the Pines, when our tribe, 
overcome by numbers, was driven from its 
ancient camping-ground. Of late years the 
jays have visited us only at intervals ; and 
in winter their bright plumage, set off by 
the snow, and their cheerful cry, are espe 
cially welcome. They would have furnished 
^Esop with a fable, for the feathered crest in 
which they seem to take so much satisfac 
tion is often their fatal snare. Country boys 
make a hole with their finger in the snow- 
crust just large enough to admit the jay s 
head, and, hollowing it out somewhat be 
neath, bait it with a few kernels of corn. 
The crest slips easily into the trap, but re- 



28 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.^ 

^iH * 4 

fuses to be pulled out again, and he Vho 
came to feast remains a pre^xu^vv^f A^| 
Twice have the crow-blackbirds attempted 

a settlement in my pines, and twice have the 

i- , T . . T, f Vw - c r &&amp;lt;.$ -O,r^ 

robins, who claim a right of pre-emp^[OTi,^so 

successfully played the part of border-ruf 
fians as to drive them away, to my great 
regret, for they are the best substitute we 
have for rooks. At Shady Hill (now, alas ! 
empty of its so long-loved household) they 
build by hundreds, and nothing can be more 
cheery than their creaking clatter (like a 
convention of old-fashioned tavern-signs) as 
they gather at evening to debate in mass 
meeting their windy politics, or to gossip 
at their tent-doors over the events of the 
day. Their port is grave, and their stalk 
across the turf as martial as that of a second- 
rate ghost in Hamlet. They never meddled 
with my corn, so far as I could discover. 
J For a few years I had crows, but their 
"nests are an irresistible bait for boys, and 
their settlement was broken up. They grew 
so wonted as to throw off a great part of 
their shyness, and to tolerate my near ap- 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 2 

proach. One very hot day I stood for some 
time within twenty feet of a mother and 
three children, who sat on an elm bough 
over my head, gasping in the sultry air, and 
holding their wings half-spread for coolness. 
All birds during the pairing season become 
more or less sentimental, and murmur soft 
nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding- 
organ repetition and loudness of their ha 
bitual song. The crow is very comical as a 
lover, and to hear him trying to soften his 
croak to the proper Saint treux" standard, 
has something the effect of a Mississippi 
boatman quoting Tennyson. Yet there are 
few things to my ear more melodious than 
his caw of a clear winter morning as it drops 
to you filtered through five hundred fathoms 
of crisp blue air. The hostility of all smaller 
birds makes the moral character of the crow, 
for all his deaconlike demeanor and garb, 
somewhat questionable. He could never 
sally forth without insult. The golden rob 
ins, especially, would chase him as far as I 
could follow with my eye, making him duck 
clumsily to avoid their importunate bills. I 



30 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

do not believe, however, that he robbed any 
nests hereabouts, for the refuse of the gas 
works, which, in our free-and-easy commu 
nity, is allowed to poison the river, supplied 
him with dead ale wives in abundance. I 
used to watch him making his periodical 
visits to the salt-marshes and coming back 
with a fish in his beak to his young savages, 
who, no doubt, like it in, that condition 

which majte,s it savory to the Kanakas and 

. tC \*\ r %&lt;f& . f 

other corvine races of men. 

Orioles are in great plenty with me. I 
have seen seven males flashing about the 
garden at once. A merry crew of them 
swing their hammocks from the pendulous 
boughs. During one of these latter years, 
when the canker-worms stripped our elms 
as bare as winter, these birds went to the 
trouble of rebuilding their unroofed nests, 
and chose for the purpose trees which are 
safe from those swarming vandals, such as 
the ash and the button-wood. One year a 
pair (disturbed, I suppose, elsewhere) built 
a second nest in an elm, within a few yards 
of the house. My friend, Edward E. Hale, 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 31 

told me once that the oriole rejected from 
hjs, web all strands of brilliant color, and I 
thought it a striking example of that in 
stinct of concealment noticeable in many 
birds, though it should seem in this instance 
that the nest was amply protected^ by its 
position) from all marauders but owls and 
squirrels. Last year, however, I had the 
fullest proof that Mr. Hale was mistaken. 
A pair of orioles built on the lowest trailer 
of a weeping elm, which hung within ten 
feet of our drawing-room window, and so 
low that I could reach it from the ground. 
The nest was wholly woven and felted with 
ravellings of woollen carpet in which scarlet 
predominated. Would the same thing have 
happened in the woods ? Or did the near 
ness of a human dwelling perhaps give the 
birds a greater feeling of security ? They 
are very bold, by the way, in quest of cord 
age, and I have often watched them strip 
ping the fibrous bark from a honeysuckle 
growing over the very door. But, indeed, 
all my birds look upon me as if I were a 
mere tenant at will, and they were land- 



32 MY GA11DEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

lords. .With shame I confess it, I have been 
bullied even by a humming-bird. This 
spring, as I was cleansing a pear-tree of its 
lichens, one of these little zigzagging blurs 
came purring toward me, couching his long 
bill like a lance, his throat sparkling with 
angry fire, to warn me off from a Missouri- 
currant whose honey he. was sipping. And 
many a time he has driven me out of a 
flower-bed. This summer, by the way, a 
pair of these winged emeralds fastened their 
mossy acorn-cup upon a bough of the same 
elm which the orioles had enlivened the 
year before. We watched all their proceed 
ings from the window through an opera- 
glass, and saw their two nestlings grow from 
black needles with a tuft of down at the 
lower end, till they whirled away on their 
first short experimental flights. They be 
came strong of wing in a surprisingly short 
time, and I never saw them or the male bird 
after, though the female was regular as usual 
in her visits to our petunias and verbenas. 
I do not think it ground enough for a gen 
eralization, but in the many times when I 



MY GAftDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 33 

watched the old birds feeding their young, 
the mother always alighted, while the father 
as uniformly remained upon the wing. 

The bobolinks are generally chance visit 
ors, tinkling through the garden in blos 
soming-time, but this year, owing to the 
long rains early in the season, their favorite 
meadows were flooded, and they were driven 
to the upland. So I had a pair of them 
domiciled in my grass-field. The male used 
to perch in an apple-tree, then in full bloom, 
and, while I stood perfectly still close by, 
he would circle away, quivering round the 
entire field of five acres, with no break in 
his song, and settle down again among the 
blossoms, to be hurried away almost imme 
diately by a new rapture of music. 5e had the 

%. A** Y*v*^ -7*1^5. frty"-^ ** 

volubility of an Italian charlatan at a fair, 

and, like him, appeared to be proclaiming the 
merits of some quack remedy. CKSu^Moi^ 
opodeldoc - try -Doctor - Lincoln s -opodeldoc ! he l 
seemed to repeat over and over again, with 
a rapidity that i^ould., have distanced the 
deftest-tongued Figaro that ever rattled. I 
remember Count Gurowski saying once, 



34 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

with that easy superiority of knowledge 
about this country which is the monopoly 
of foreigners, that we had no singing-birds ! 
Well, well, Mr. Hepworth Dixon has found 
the typical America in Oneida and Salt 
Lake City. Of course, an intelligent Euro 
pean is the best judge of these matters. 
The truth is there are more singing-birds 
in Europe because there are fewer forests. 
These songsters love the neighborhood of 
man because hawks and owls are rarer, 
while their own food is more abundant. 
Most people seem to think, r jhe more trees, 
the more birds. Even Chateaubriand, who 
first tried the primitive-forest-cure, and 
whose description of the wilderness in its 
imaginative effects is unmatched, fancies the 
"people of the air singing their hymns to 
him." So far as my own observation goes, 
the farther one penetrates the sombre soli 
tudes of the woods, the more seldom does 
he hear the. voice of any singing-bird. In 
spite of Chateaubriand s minuteness of de 
tail, in spite of that marvellous reverbera 
tion of the decrepit tree falling of its own 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 35 

weight, which, he was the first to notice, I 
cannot help doubting whether he made his 
way very deep into the wilderness. At any 
rate, in a letter to FoniarieSj written in 1804, 
he speaks of mes cl\evaux paissant d quelque 
distance. To be sure Chateaubriand was 
apt to mount the mgh horse, and this may 
have been but an afterthought of the grand 
seigneur, but certainly one would not make 
much headway on horseback toward the 
druid fastnesses of the primeval pine. 

The bobolinks build in considerable num 
bers in a meadow within a quarter of a mile 
of us. A houseless lane passes through the 
midst of their camp, and in clear westerly 
weather, at the right season, one may hear a 
score of them singing at once. When they 
are breeding, if I chance to pass, one of the 
male birds always accompanies me like a 
constable, flitting from post to post of the 
rail-fence, with a short note of reproof con 
tinually repeated, till I am fairly out of the 
neighborhood. Then he will swing away 
into the air and run down the wind, gurg 
ling music without stint over the unheeding 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

tussocks of meadow-grass and dark clumps 
of bulrushes that mark his domain. 

We have no bird whose song will match 
the nightingale s in compass, none whose 
note is so rich as that of the European 
blackbird ; but for mere rapture I have 
never heard the bobolink s rival. But his 
opera-season is a short one. The ground 
and tree sparrows are our most constant 
performers. It is now late in August, and 
one of the latter sings every day and all day 
long in the garden. Till within a fortnight, 
a pair of indigo-birds would keep up their 
lively duo for an hour together. While I 
write, I hear an oriole gay as in June, and 
the plaintive may-be of the goldfinch tells 
me he is stealing my lettuce-seeds. I know 
not what the experience of others may have 
been, but the only bird I have ever heard 
sing in the night has been the chip-bird. I 
should say he sang about as often during the 
darkness as cocks crow. One can hardly 
help fancying that he sings in his dreams. 

"Father of light, what sunnie seed, 
What glance of day hast tliou confined 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 37 

Into this bird ? To all the breed 
This busie ray thou hast assigned ; 
Their magnetism works all night, 
And dreams of Paradise and light." 

On second thought, I remember to have 
heard the cuckoo strike the hours nearly all 
night with the regularity of a Swiss clock. 

The dead limbs of our elms, which I spare 
to that end, bring us the flicker every sum 
mer, and almost daily I hear his wild scream 
and laugh close at hand, himself invisible. 
He is a shy bird, but a few days ago I had 
the satisfaction of studying him through the 
blinds as he sat on a tree within a few feet 
of me. Seen so near and at rest, he makes 
good his claim to the title of pigeon- wood 
pecker. Lumberers have a notion that he 
is harmful to timber, digging little holes 
through the bark to encourage the settle 
ment of insects. The regular rings of such 
perforations which one may see in almost 
any apple-orchard seem to give some proba 
bility to this theory. Almost every season 
a solitary quail visits us, and, unseen among 
the currant-bushes, calls Bob TVhite, Bob 



38 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

TPTiite, as if he were playing at hide-and- 
seek with that imaginary being. A rarer 
visitant is the turtle-dove, whose pleasant 
coo (something like the muffled crow of 
a cock from a coop covered with snow) I 
have sometimes heard, and whom I once 
had the good luck to see close by me in the 
mulberry-tree. The wild-pigeon, once nu 
merous, I have not seen for many years.* 
Of savage birds, a hen-hawk now and then 
quarters himself upon us for a few days, 
sitting sluggish in a tree after a surfeit of 
poultry. One of them once offered me a 
near shot\jrom my study- window pne drizzly 
dayyor several hours. But it was Sunday, 
and I gave him the benefit of its gracious 
truce of God. 

Certain birds have disappeared from our 
neighborhood within my memory. I re 
member when the whippoorwill could be 
rd in Sweet Auburn. The night-hawk, 
once common, is now rare. The brOwn 
thrushjhas moved farther up country. For 

* They made their appearance again this sum 
mer (1870). 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 39 

t years I have not seen or heard any of the 
(il larger owls, whose hooting was one of my 
boyish terrors. The cliff-swallow, strange 
emigrant, that eastward takes his way, has 
come and gone again in my time. The 
bank-swallows, wellnigh innumerable during 
my boyhood, no longer frequent the crumbly 
cliff of the gravel-pit by the river.. The 
barn-swallows, which once swarmed in our 
barn, flashing through the dusty sun-streaks 
of the mow, have been gone these many 
years. My father would lead me out to see 
them gather on the roof, and take counsel 
before their yearly migration, as Mr. White 
used to see them at Selborne. Eljs^^/ugfic.es ! 
Thank fortune, the swift still glues his nest, 
and rolls his distant thunders night and day 
in the wide-throated chimneys, still sprinkles 
the evening air with his merry twittering. 
The populous tieronisr in Fresh Pond mead^ 
ows has been wellnigh broken up, but still 
a pair or two haunt the old home, as th&lt;t 
gypsies of EHajigowan fheif "ruined huts, 
and every evening fly over us riverwards, 
clearing their throats with a hoarse hawk 



40 MY GA11DEN ACqiJAINTANCE. 






as they go, and, in cloudy weather, scarce 
higher than the tops of the chimneys. Some 
times I have known one to alight in one of 
our trees, though for what purpose I never 
could divine. Kingfishers have sometimes 
puzzled me in the same way, perched at 
high noon in a pine, springing their watch 
man s rattle when they flitted away from my 
curiosity, and seeming to shove their top- 
heavy heads along as a man does a wheel 
barrow. 

Some birds have left us, I suppose, because 
the country is growing less wild. I once 
found a summer duck s nest within quartejr/^ 
of a mile of our house, but such .a trouvaille 
would be impossible now as KidcFs treasure. 
And yet the mere taming of the lieighbor- 
hood does not quite satisfy me as an expla 
nation. Twenty years ago, on my way to 
bathe in the river, I saw every day a brace 
of woodcock, on the miry edge of a spring 
within a few rods of a house, and constantly 
visited by thirsty cows. There was no growth 
of any kind to conceal them, and yet these 
ordinarily shy birds were almost as indiffer- 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 41 

ent to my passing as common poultry would 
have been. Since bird-nesting has become^ 
scientific, and dignified itself as oology, that, 



no doubt, is partly to blame for some of 
losses. But some old friends are constant. 
Wilson s thrush comes every year to remind 
me of that most poetic of 6riiith &lt; ologi$ts. 1 *&e 
flits before me through the pine-walk like 
the very genius of solitude. A pair of pe- 
wees have built immemorially on a jutting 
brick in the arched entrance to the ice-house. 
Always on the same brick, and never more 
than a single pair, though two broods of five 
each are raised there every summer. How 
do they settle their claim to the homestead ? 
By what right of primogeniture 1 Once the 
children of a man employed about the place 
oologized the nest, and the pewees left us for 
a year or two. I felt towards those boys as 
the messmates of the Ancient Mariner did 
towards him after he had shot the albatross. 
But the pewees came back at last, and one 
of them is now on his wonted perch, so near 
my window that I can hear the click of his 
bill as he snaps a fly on the wing with 



42 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

._*,/. K* M - i x*"-, tl /Q^nZX/\n*tAi . J^ & *&lt;.*.t j 



the unerring precision a stately trasteven^a 
shows in the capture of her smaller deer, 
The pewee is the first bird to ]3ipe up in the 
morning ; and during the early summer he 
preludes his mattttinal ejaculation of peicee 
with a slender whistle, unheard at any other 
time. He saddens with the season, and, as 
summer declines, he changes his note to eheu, 
pewee ! as if in lamentation. Jfjjid he been 
an Italian bird, Uvid would have had a 
plaintive tale to tell about him. He is so 
familiar as o^ten to pursue a fly through the 
open window into my library. 

There is something inexpressibly dear to 
me in these old friendships of a lifetime. 
There is scarce a tre^of mine but has had, 
at some time or other, a happy homestead 
among its boughs, to which. I cannot say, 

" Many light hearts and wings, 
Which now be dead, lodged in thy living bowers. " 

My walk under the pines would lose half 
its summer charm were I to miss that shy 
1 ahckorifepihe Wilson s thrush, nor hear in 
haying-time the metallic ring of his song, 



WV GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 43 

that justifies his rustic name of scythe-whet. 
I protect my game as jealously as an English 
squire. If anybody had oologized a certain 
cuckoo s nest I know of (I have a pair in 
my garden every year), it would have left 
me a sore place in my mind for weeks. I 
love to bring these aborigines back to the 
mansuetiicle^they showed to the early voy 
agers, and before (forgive the involuntary 
pun) they had grown accustomed to man, 
and knew his savage ways. And they repay 
your kindness with a sweet familiarity too 
delicate ever to breed contempt. I have 
made a Penn-treaty with them, preferring 
that to the Puritan way with the natives, 
which converted them to a little Hebraism 
and a great deal of Mecfforct rum. If they 
will not come near enough to me (as most 
of them will), I bring them close with an 
opera-glass, a much better weapon than a 
gun. I would not, if I could, convert them 
from their pretty pagan ways. The only one 
I sometimes have savage doubts about is the 
red squirrel. I think he oologizes. I know 
he eats cherries (we counted five of them at- 

~ 



44 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

one time in a single tree, the stones pattering 
down like the sparse hail that preludes a 
storm), and that he gnaws off the small end 
of pears to get at the seeds. He steals the 
corn from under the noses of my poultry. 
But what would you have 1 He will come 
down upon the limb of the tree I am lying 
under till he is within a yard of me. He 
and his mate will scurry up and down the 
great black-walnut for my diversion, chat 
tering like monkeys. Can I sign his death- 
warrant who has tolerated me about his 
grounds so long? Not I. Let them steal, 
and welcome. I am sure I should, had I 
had the same bringing up and the same 
temptation. As for the birds, I do not be 
lieve there is one of them but does more good 
than harm ; and of how many featherless 
bipeds can this be said ? 




A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 




EN scarcely know how beautiful, fire 
is," says Shelley ; and I am apt to 
think there are a good many other 
things concerning which their knowledge 
might be largely increased without becom 
ing burdensome. Nor are they altogether 
reluctant to be taught, not so reluctant, 
perhaps, as unable, and education is sure 
to find one fulcrum ready to her hand by 
which to get a purchase on them. For most 
of us, I have noticed^ jjre not without an 
amiable willingness fo assist ^any spectacle 
or entertainment (loosely so called) for which 
no fee is charged at the door. If special 
tickets are sent us, another element of pleas 
ure is added in a sense of privilege and pre- 



46 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

* 

eminence (pitiably scarce in a democracy) so 
deeply rooted in human nature that I have 
seen people take a strange satisfaction in 
being near of kin to the mute chief person 
age in a funeral. It gave them a moment s 
advantage over the rest of us whose grief 
was rated at a lower place in the procession. 
But the words " admission free " at the 
bottom of a handbill, though holding out no 
bait of inequality, have yet a singular charm 
for many minds, especially in the country. 
There is something touching in the con 
stancy with which men attend free lectures, 
and in the honest patience with which they 
listen tojthem. He who pays may yawn or 
shift testily in his seat, or even go out with 
an awful reverberation of criticism, for he has 
bought the right to do any or all of these 
and paid for it. But gratuitous hearers are 
anaesthetized to suffering by a sense of virtue. 
They are performing perhaps the noblest, 
as it is one of the most difficult, of human 
functions in getting Something (no matter 
how small) for Nothing. They are not pes 
tered by the awful duty of securing their 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 47 

money s worth. They are wasting time, to 
do which elegantly and without lassitude is 
the highest achievement of civilization. If 
they are cheated, it is, at worst, only of a 
superfluous hour which was rotting on their 
hands. Not only is mere amusement made 
more piquant, b iit instruction more palata 
ble, by this universally relished sauce of 
gratuity. And if the philosophic observer 
finds an object .of agreeable contemplation 
in the audience, as they listen to a discourse 
on the probability of making missionaries 
go down better with the Feejee- Islanders by 
balancing the *hymn-book in one pocket 
with a bottle of Worcestershire in the other, 
or to a plea for arming the female gorilla 
with the ballot, he also takes a friendly in 
terest in the lecturer, and admires the wise 
economy of Nature who thus contrives an 
ample field of honest labor for her bores. 
Even when the insidious hat is passed round 
after one of these eleemosynary feasts, the 
relish is but heightened"by a conscientious 
refusal to disturb the satisfaction s complete 
ness with the rattle of a single contributory 



48 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

penny. So firmly persuaded am I of this 
gratis-instinct in. our common humanity, 
that I believe I could fill a house by adver 
tising a free lecture on Tupper considered as 
a philosophic poet, or on my personal recol 
lections of the late James K. Polk. This 
being so, I have sometimes wondered that 
the peep-shows which Nature provides with 
such endless variety for her children, and 
to which we are admitted on the bare condi 
tion of having eyes, should be so generally 
neglected. To be sure, eyes are not so com 
mon as people think, or poets would be 
plentier, and perhaps also these exhibitions 
of hers are cheapened in estimation by the 
fact that in enjoying them we are not get- ., 
ting the better of anybody else. Your true 
lovers of nature, however, contrive to get even 
this solace ; and Wordsworth looking upon 
mountains as his own peculiar sweethearts, 
was jealous of anybody else who ventured 
upon even the most innocent flirtation with 
them. As if such fellows, indeed, could pre 
tend to that nicer sense of what-d ye-call-it 
which was so remarkable in him ! Marry 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 49 

come iT ! Mountains, no doubt, may in 
spire a profounder and more exclusive passion, 
but on the whole I am not sorry to have 
been born and bred among more domestic 
scenes, where I can be hospitable without a 
pang. I aro going to ask you presently to 
: :&lt; i /take potluck with me at a board where Win- 
*titt&r shall supply whatever there is of cheer. 

I think the old fellow has hitherto had 
scant justice done him in the main. We 
make him the symbol of old age or death, 
and think we have settled the matter. As if 
old age were never kindly as well as frosty ; 
as if it had no reverend graces of its own as 
good in their way as the noisy impertinence of 
childhood, the elbowing self-conceit ojF youth, 
or the pompous mediocrity oT middle life ! 
As if there were anything discreditable in 
death, or nobody had ever longed for it ! Sup 
pose we grant that Winter is the sleep of the 
year, what then ? I take it upon me to say 
that his dreams are finer than the best reality 
of his waking rivals. 

(&lt; Sleep, Silence child, the father of soft Rest," 



50 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

is a very agreeable acquaintance, and most 
of us are better employed in his company 
than anywhere else. For my own part, I 
think Winter a pretty wide-awake old boy, 
and his bluff sincerity and hearty ways are 
more congenial to my mood, and more whole 
some for me, than any charms of which his 
rivals are capable. Spring is a fickle mis 
tress, who either does not know her own 
mind, or is so long in making it up, whether 
you shall have her or not have her, that 
one gets tired at last of her pretty miffs and 
reconciliations. You go to her to be cheered 
up a bit, and ten to one catch her in the 
sulks, expecting you to find enough good- 
humor for both. After she has become 
Mrs. Summer she grows a little more staid 
in her demeanor ; and her abundant table, 
where you are sure to get the earliest fruits 
and vegetables of the season, is a good foun 
dation for steady friendship ; but ,she has./ 
lost that delicious aroma 01* maidenhood, and 

^MM0MMMM* 

what was delicately rounded grace in the 
girl gives more than hints of something like 
redundance in the matron. Autumn is the 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 51 

poet of the family. He gets you up a splen 
dor that you would say was made out of real 
sunset ; but it is nothing more than a few 
T ^ctic leaves, when all is done. He is but a 
sentimentalist, after all ; a kind of Lamar- 
tine whining along the ancestral avenues he 
has made bare timber of, and begging a 
contribution of good-spirits from your own 
savings to keep him in countenance. But 
Winter has his delicate sensibilities too, only 
he does not make them as good as indelicate 
by thrusting them forever in your face. He 
is a better poet than Autumn, when he has 
a mind, but, like a truly great one as he is, 
he brings you down to your bare manhood, 
and bids you understand him out of that, 
with no adventitious helps of association, 01 
he will none of you. He does not touch 
those melancholy chords on which Autumn 
is as great a master as Heine. Well, is there 
no such thing as thrumming on tliem atidT 
maundering over them till they get out ot 
tune, and you wish some manly hand would 
crash through them and leave them dangling 
brokenly forever ? Take Winter as you find 



2 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

him, and he turns out to be a thoroughly 
honest fellow, with no nonsense in him, and 
tolerating none in you, which is a great com 
fort in the long run. He is not what they 
call a genial critic ; but bring a real man 
along with you, and you will find there is a 
crabbed generosity about the old cynic that 
you would not exchange for all the creamy 
concessions of Autumn. " Season of /nists. 
and mellow fruitfulness," qiibtfia ? Th^t^s 
just ,it ; Winter soon blows joux-h^aa clear 
of ig* and makes you see things as they are ; 
I thank him for it ! The truth is, between 
ourselves, I have a very good opinion of the 
whole family, who always welcome me with 
out making me feel as if I were too much of 
a poor relation. There ought to be some 
kind of distance, never so little, you know, 
to give the true relish. They are as good 
company, the worst of them, as any I know, 
and I am not a little flattered by a conde 
scension from any one of them ; but I hap 
pen to hold Winter s retainer, this time, and, 
like an honest advocate, am bound to make 
as good a showing as I can for him, even if 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 53 

it cost a few slurs upon the rest of the 
household. Moreover, Winter is coming, 
and one would like to get on the blind side 
of him. 

The love of Nature in and for herself, or 
as a mirror for the moods of the mind, is a 
modern thing. The fleeing to her as an es 
cape from man was brought into, fashion by 
Rousseau ; for his prototype Pefrarcli, though 
^ The had a taste for pretty scenery, had a true 
antique horror for the grander aspects of .na- ^ 
ture. He got once to the top of Motif Ven4". 
toux, but it is very plain that he did not 
enjoy it. Indeed, it is only within a century 
or so that the search after the picturesque 
h&s been a _safe employment. It is not so 
even now in Greece or Southern Italy. Where 
the Anglo-Saxon carves his cold fowl, and 
leaves the relics of his picnic, the ancient or 
mediaeval man might be pretty confident 
that some ruffian would try the edge of his 
knife on a chicken of the Platonic sort, and 
leave more precious bones as~an offering to 
the genius of the place. The ancients were 
certainly more social than we, though that, 



54 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

perhaps, was natural enough, when a good 
part of the world was still covered with for 
est. They huddled together in cities as well 
for safety as to keep their minds warm. The 
Romans had a fondness for country life, but 
they had fine roads, and Rome was always 
within easy reach. The author of the Book 
of Job is the earliest I know of who showed 
any profound sense of the moral meaning of 
the outward world ; and I think none has 
approached him since, though Wordsworth 
comes nearest with the first two books of the 
" Prelude." But their feeling is not precisely 
of the kind I speak of as modern, and which 
gave rise to what is called descriptive poe 
try. Chaucer opens his Clerk s Tale with a 
bit of landscape admirable for its large style, 
and as well composed as any Claude. 

" There is right at the west end of Itaille, 
Down at the root of Vesulus the cold, 

\ A- 1 *tt*/ 

A lusty plain abundant of vitaille, 
Where many a tower and town thou mayst be 
hold, 

That founded were in time of fathers old, 
And many an other delectable sight ; 
And Saluces this noble country hight. " 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 55 

What an airy precision of touch there is 
here, and what a sure eye for the points of 
character in landscape ! But the picture is 
altogether ^ubidjafy. No doubt the works of 
Salvator Rosa and Gaspar Poussin show that 
there must have been some amateur taste for 
the grand and terrible in scenery ; but the 
British poet Thomson (" sweet-souled " is 
Wordsworth s apt word) was the first to do 
with words what they had done partially 
with colors. He was turgid, -no good me- 
trist, and his English is like a translation 
from one of those poets who wrote in Latin 
after it was dead ; but he was a man of sin 
cere genius, and not only English, but Euro 
pean literature is r largely in his debt. He 
was the inventor of cheap amusement for the 
million, to be had of All-out-doors for^the 
asking. It was his impulse which uncon 
sciously gave direct jon ta-^asseai-L and it is. 
to the school of JfeaiTtJacques tKat we owe 
St. Pierre, Cowper, Chateaubriand, 
worth, Byron^amartine, George Sand, 
kin, the great painters of ideal landscape. 

- So long as men had slender 






. , or 
goc 



56 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

er of keeping out cold or checkmating it 
with artificial heat, Winter was an unwel 
come euest, especially in the country. There 

to r J pAcaZ-d, XjUtfjjJ.a. ,V&lt;ryo. furt 

he was the bearer of a lettre de cachet, which?... 
shut its victims in solitary confinement wittf Vi^i 
few resources but to boose round the fire and 
repeat ghost-stories, which had lost all their 
freshness and none of their terror. To go to 
bed was to lie awake of cold, with an added 
shudder of fright whenever a loose casement 
or a waving curtain chose to give you the 
ose-flesh. Bussy Rabutin, in one of his 
letters, gives us a notion how uncomfort 
able it was in the country, with green wood, 
smoky chimneys, and doors and windows that 
thought it was their duty to make the wind 
whistle, not to keep it out. With fuel so 
dear, it could not have been niuch .better 

A F/L* qJkJjLff^fJfU&f 

in the city, to judge by Menage s warning 
against the danger of our dressing-gowns tak 
ing fire, while we cuddle too closely over the 
sparing blaze. The poet of Winter himself &lt; 
is said to have written in bed, with his hand 
through a hole in the blanket ; and we may 
suspect that it was the warmth quite as 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 57 

much as the company that first drew men 
together at the coffee-house. Coleridge, J. 
January, 1800, writes to Wedgewpod f" " 

am sitting by a fire in a ru^ great-coat i^&lt;* v-&lt; 

It is most barbarously cold, and you, I fear, 
can shield yourself from it only by perpetual 
imprisonment." This thermometrical view 
of winter is, I grant, a depressing one ; for 
I think there is nothing so demoralizing as 
cold. I know of a boy who, when his father, 
a bitter economist, was brought home dead, 
said~~only, " Now we can burn as much wood 
as we like." I would not off-hand prophesy 
the gallows for that boy. I remember with 
a shudder a pinch I go\ from the cold once 
in a railroad-car. r jj^/porfr ianatic_j)f fresh 
air, I found myselfglad to see the windows 
hermetically sealed by the freezing vapor 
of our breath, and plotted the assassination 
of the conductor every time he opened the 

door. I felt myself sensibly barbarizing, 

*f^y^wrf*f Cfi 
and would have shared Colonel Jack s bed &gt; 

in the ash-hole of the glass-furnace with a . 
grateful heart. Since then I have had more ( r 
charity for the prevailing ill-opinion of win- ^ I* 



$ 



nr ^t^^AV 

58 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

" 



A&* ,,*- (3 

ter. It was natural enough that Ovid should 
measure the years of his exile in Pontus by 
the number of winters. 

(r^ -Cl^t *vMt/(^ , 

Ut sumus in Ponto, ter frigore constitit Ister, 
Facta est Euxini dura ter unda raaris : 




Thrice hath the cold bound Ister fast, since I 
In Pontus was, thrice Euxine s wave made hard. 

i- . 

Jubinal has printed an Anglo-Norman piece 
dg& ere l m wn i cn Winter and Summer 
dispute which is, the better man, . It is i;ot 

1- JaAJSr v^X?-t - / V- . \/vx^vp*j ivjfT 1 xxxiX!^*Wi&gt; 

without a kind 6 f rough and Inchoate humor, 
and I like it because old Whitebeard gets 
tolerably fair play. The jolly old fellow 
boasts of his rate of living, with that con 
tempt of poverty which is the weak spot in 
t]^e burly English nature. 

Ja Dieu ne place que me avyenge 
Que ne face plus honour 
Et plus despenz en un soul jour 
Que vus en tote vostre vie : 

Now God forbid it hap to me 
That I make not more great display, 
And spend more in a single day 
Than you can do in all your life. 



A GOOD WOUD FOR WINTER. 59 

The best touch, perhaps, is Winter s claim 
for credit as a mender of the highways, 

which was not without point when ever 

, . _, tia&e***** &* 

road in Europe was a quagmire during 

good part of the year unless it was bottomed./ , 
on some remains of Roman enineerin. 7i/j 



. 



Je su, fet-il, seignur et mestre 
Et a bon droit le dey estre, 
Quant de la bowe face cauce 
Par mi petit de geele : 

Master and lord I am, says he, 

And of good right so ought to be, /^^ 

Since I make causeys, safely crost, 



veL &lt;flt 




. . , . 

ut there is no recognition 
best of outdoor company. 

Even Emerson, an open-air man, and a 
bringer of it, if ever any, confesses, 

" The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, 
Sings in my ear, my hands are stones, 
Curdles the blood to the marble bones, 
Tugs at the heartstrings, numbs the sense, 
And herns in life with narrowing fence." 



60 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

Winter was literally " the inverted year,* 1 
as Thomson called him ; for such entertain 
ments as could be had must be got withii.. 
doors. What cheerfulness there was in "hru 
mal verse was that of Horace s dissolve frig\Jr 
Ugna super foco large reponens , so pleasantly 
associated with the cleverest scene in Roder 
ick Random. This is the tone of that poem 
of Walton s friend Cotton, which won tho 
praise of Wordsworth : 

" Let us home, 
Our mortal enemy is come ; 
Winter and all his blustering train 
Have made a voyage o er the main. 

" Fly, fly, the foe advances fast ; 
Into our fortress let us haste, 
Where all the roarers of the north 
Can neither storm nor starve us forth. 

" There underground a magazine 
Of sovereign juice is cellared in, 
Liquor that will the siege maintain 
Should Phoebus ne er return again. 

" Whilst we together jovial sit 
Careless, and crowned with mirth and wit, 



A GOOD WORD FOE, WINTER. 61 

Where, though bleak winds confine us home, 
Our fancies round the world shall roam." 

Thomson s view of Winter is also, on the 
whole, a hostile one, though he does justice 
to his grandeur. 

"Thus Winter falls, 

A heavy gloom oppressive o er the world, 
Through Nature shedding influence malign. "j 

X^VVv-jp^- 

He finds his consolations, like Cotton, in the 
house, though more refined : 

" While without 

The ceaseless winds blow ice, be my retreat 
Between the groaning forest and the shore 
Beat by the boundless multitude of waves, 
A rural, sheltered, solitary scene, 
Where ruddy fire and beaming tapers join 
To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit 
. And hold high converse with the mighty dead." 

/V^t^&gt;/t*^iC*&lt;JLvv J e^jrf^ f ^*55kMbMA Ajl6 &lt;$ 

Doctor Akenside, a man to be spoken of withy 11 
respect, follows Thomson. With him, too. . - 
" Winter desolates the year," and *fT^ 



" How pleasing wears the wintry night 
Spent with the old illustrious dead ! 
While by the taper s trembling light 



, 




62 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

I seem those awful scenes to tread 
Where chiefs or legislators lie," &c. 

Akenside had evidently been reading 
Thomson. He had the conceptions of a 
great poet with less faculty than many a 
little one, and is one of those versifiers of 
whom it is enough to say that we are always 
willing to break him off in the middle with 
an &c., well knowing that what follows is 
but the coming-round again of what went 
before, marching in a circle with the cheap 
numerosity of a stage-army. In truth, it 
is no wonder that the short days of that 
cloudy northern climate should have added 
to winter a gloom borrowed of the mind. 
We hardly know, till we have experienced 
the contrast, how sensibly our winter is alle 
viated by the longer daylight and the pel 
lucid atmosphere. I once spent a winter in 
Dresden, a southern climate compared with 
England, and really almost lost my respect 
for the sun when I saw him groping among 
the chimney-pots opposite ^y wjndows^ as^r. 
he described his impoverished arc in the 
sky. The enforced seclusion of the season 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 63 

makes it the time for serious study and oc 
cupations that demand fixed incomes of un 
broken time. This is why Milton said " that 
Ws vein never happily flowed but from the 
autumnal equinox to the vernal/ though in 
his twentieth year he had written, on the re 
turn of spring, 

Fallor ? an et nobis redeunt in carmina vires 
Ingeniumque mihi munere veris adest ? 

Err I ? or do the powers of song return 
To me, and genius too, the gifts of Spring ? 

Goethe, so far as I remember, was the first 
to notice the cheerfulness of snow in sun 
shine. His Harz-reise im Winter gives no 
hint of it, for that is a diluted reminiscence 
of Greek tragic choruses and the Book of 
Job in nearly equal parts. In one of the 
singularly interesting and characteristic let 
ters to Frau von Stein, however, written 
during the journey, he says : " It is beauti 
ful indeed ; the mist heaps itself together in 
light snow-clouds, the sun looks through, 
and the snow over everything gives back a 



64 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

feeling of gayety." But I find in Cowper 
the first recognition of a general amiability 
in Winter. The gentleness of his temper, 
and the wide charity of his sympathies, made 
it natural for him to find good in everything 
except the human heart. A dreadful creed 
distilled from the darkest moments of dys 
peptic solitaries compelled him against his 
will to see in that the one evil thing made 
by a God whose goodness is over all his 
works. Cowper s two walks in the morn 
ing and noon of a winter s day are delight 
ful, so long as he contrives to let himself be 
happy in the graciousness of the landscape. 
Your muscles grow springy, and your lungs 
dilate with the crisp air as you walk along 
with him. You laugh with him at the gro-^ 
tesque shadow of your legs lengthened across 
the snow by the just-risen sun. I know r 
nothing that gives a purer feeling of out 
door exhilaration than the easy v/erseq of this 

, J&*"**lC -jOf ^*ycA*dW**-* -c^-iv ,4 

escaped hypochondriac. But Ctfwper also 
preferred his sheltered garden-walk to those 
robuster joys, and bitterly acknowledged the 
depressing influence of the darkened year. 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 65 

In December, 1780, he writes : "At this 
season of the year, and in this gloomy un 
comfortable climate, it is no easy matter for 
the owner of a mind like mine to divert it 
from sad subjects, and to fix it upon such 
as may administer to its amusement." Or 
was it because he was writing to the rlread- 

ful Newton ? Perhaps his poetry bears truer 
( witness to his habitual feeling, for it is only 

"^ there that poets disenthral themselves of their 

&lt;HK-^ 

) Deserve and become fully possessed of their 

.- ^ greatest charm, the power of being franker 

( than other men. In the Third Book of the 

; Task he boldly affirms his preference of the 

country to the city even in winter : 

. -i Biit are not wholesome airs, though unperfumed 
By roses, and clear suns, though scarcely felt, 



And groves, if inharmonious, yet secure 
From clamor, and whose very silence charms, 
To be preferred to smoke ? . . . . 
They would be, were not madness in the head 
And folly in the heart ; were England now 
What England was, plain, hospitable kind, 
And undebauched." 

The conclusion shows, however, that he 
was thinking mainly of fireside delights, not 



66 A GOOD WORD TOR WINTER. 

of the blusterous companionship of nature. 
This appears even more clearly in the 
Fourth Book : 

" Winter, ruler of the inverted year" ; 

but I cannot help interrupting him to say 
how pleasant it always is to track poets 
through the gardens of their predecessors 
and find out their likings by a flower 
snapped off here and there to garnish their 
own nosegays. Cowper had been reading 
Thomson, and "the inverted year" pleased 
his fancy with its suggestion of that starry 
wheel of the zodiac moving round through 
its spaces infinite. He could not help lov 
ing a handy Latinism (especially with elision"^/ 



beauty added), any more than Gray, 

more than Wordsworth, on the sly. ButUv 

the member for Olney has the floor : ,&lt;t/Jt\ 

" Winter, ruler of the inverted year, ^ 
Thy scattered hair with sleet like ashes filled, 
Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks 
Fringed with a beard made white with other snows 
Than those of age, thy forehead wrapt in clouds, 
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne 
A sliding car, indebted to no wheels, 



A GOOD WORD FOE, WINTER. 67 

But urged by storms along its slippery way, 
I love thee all unlovely as thou seem st, 
And dreaded as thou art ! Thou hold st the sun 
A prisoner in the yet undawning east, 
Shortening his journey between morn and noon, 
And hurrying him, impatient of his stay, 
Down to the rosy west, but kindly still 
Compensating his loss with added hours 
Of social converse and instructive ease, 
And gathering at short notice, in one group, 
The family dispersed, and fixing thought, 
Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares. 
I crown thee king of intimate delights, 
Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness, 
And all the comforts that the lowly roof 
Of undisturbed Retirement, and the hours 
Of long uninterrupted evening know." 

I call this a good human bit, of writing, 
imaginative, too, not so flushed, not so 
.... highfaluting (let me dare the odious 
word ! ) as the modern style since poets have 
got hold of a theory that imagination is 
common-sense turned inside out, and not 
common-sense sublimed, but wholesome, 
masculine, and strong in the simplicity of a 
mind wholly occupied with its theme. To 



68 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

me Cowper is still the best of our descrip 
tive poets for every-day wear. And what 
unobtrusive skill he has ! How he height 
ens, for example, your sense of winter-even 
ing seclusion, by the twanging horn of the 
postman on the bridge ! That horn has 
rung in my ears ever since I first heard it, 
during the consulate of the second Adams. 
Wordsworth strikes a deeper note ; but does 
it not sometimes come over one (just the 
least in the world) that one would give any 
thing for a bit of nature pure and simple, 
without quite so strong a flavor of W. W. 1 
W. W. is, of course, sublime and all that 
but ! For my part, I will make a clean 
breast of it, and confess that I can t look at 
a mountain without fancying the late laure 
ate s gigantic Roman nose thrust between 
me and it, and thinking of Dean Swift s 
profane version of Romanos rerum dominos 
into Roman nose ! a rare un ! dom your nose ! 
But do I judge verses, then, by the impres 
sion made on me by the man who wrote 
them ? Not so fast, my good friend, but, 
for good or evil, the character and its intel 
lectual nroduct are inextricably interfused. 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 69 

If I remember aright, Wordsworth him 
self (except in his magnificent skating-scene 
in the "Prelude") has not much to say for 
winter out of doors. I cannot recall any 
picture by him of a snow-storm. The 
reason may possibly be that in the Lake 
Country even the winter storms bring rain 
rather than snow. He was thankful for the 
Christmas visits of. CraBb TSofSnson , because 
they "helped him through the winter." 
His only hearty praise of winter is when, as ; &gt; ..y 
General Fevrier, he defeats the French : - t a ^j 

"Humanity, delighting to behold 
A fond reflection of her own decay, 
Hath painted Winter like a traveller old, 
Propped on a staff, and, through the sullen day, 
In hooded mantle, limping o er the plain 
As though his weakness were disturbed by pain : 
Or, if a juster fancy should allow 
An undisputed symbol of command, 
The chosen sceptre is a withered bough 
Infirmly grasped within a withered hand. 
These emblems suit the helpless and forlorn ; 
But mighty Winter the device shall scorn." 

The Scottish poet Grahame, in his " Sab- 
says manfully : - 



70 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

" Now is the time 
To visit Nature in her grand attire " ; 

and he has one little picture which no other 
poet has surpassed : 

" High-ridged the whirled drift has almost reached 
The powdered keystone of the churchyard porch : 
Mute hangs the hooded bell; the tombs lie buried." 

Even in our own climate, where the sun 
shows his winter face as long and as brightly 
as in Central Italy, the seduction of the 
chimney-corner is apt to predominate in the 
mind over the severer satisfactions of muf 
fled fields and penitential woods. The very 
title of Whittier s delightful " Snow-Bound" 
shows what he was thinking of, though he 
does vapor a little about digging out paths. 
The verses of Emerson, perfect as a Greek 
fragment (despite the archaism of a dissyl 
labic fire), which ^e_ has chosen for his epi 
graph, tell us, too, how the 

"Housemates sit 

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm." 



A GOOD WOUD POR WINTER. 71 

They are all in a tale. It is always the 
tristis Hiems of Virgil. Catch one of them 
having a kind word for old Barbe Fleurie, 
unless he whines through some cranny, like 
a beggar, to heighten their enjoyment while 
they toast their slippered toes. I grant 
there is a keen relish of contrast about 
the bickering flame as it gives an emphasis 
beyond Gherarclo della Notte to loved faces, 
or kindles the gloomy gold of volumes 
scarce less friendly, especially when a tem 
pest is blundering round the house. Words 
worth has a fine touch that brings home to 
us the comfortable contrast of without and 
within, during a storm at night, and the 
passage is highly characteristic of a poet 
whose inspiration always has an undertone 
of bourgeois : Q. ****- * 

" How touching, when, at midnight, sweep 
Snow-muffled winds, and all is dark, 
To hear, and sink again to sleep ! " 

J. H., one of those choice poets who will 
not tarnish their bright fancies by publica 
tion, always insists on a snow-storm as essen- 



72 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

tial to the true atmosphere of whist. Mrs. 
Battle!, in her famous rule for the game, im 
plies winter, and would doubtless have added 
tempest, if it could be had for the asking. For 
a good solid read also, into the small hours, 
there is nothing like that sense of safety 
against having your evening laid waste, 
which Euroclydon brings, as he bellows 
down the chimney, making your fire gasp, 
or rustles snow-flakes against the pane with 
abound more soothing than sijence. Emer 
son, as he is apt to do, not only hit the nail 
on the head, but drove it home, in that last 
phrase of the " tumultuous privacy." 

But I would exchange this, and give some 
thing to boot, for the privilege of walking 
out into the vast blur of a north-northeast 
snow-storm, and getting a strong draught on 
the furnace within, by drawing the first fur 
rows through its sandy drifts. I love those 

" Noontide twilights which snow makes 
With tempest of the blinding flakes." 

If the wind veer too much toward the east f 
you get the heavy snow that gives a true 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 73 

Alpine slope to the boughs of your ever 
greens, and traces a skeleton of your elms in 
white ; but you must have plenty of north 
in your gale if you want those driving nettles 
of frost that sting the cheeks to a crimson 
manlier than that of fire. During the great 
storm of two winters ago, the most robustious 
periwig-pated fellow of late years, I waded 
and floundered a couple of miles through the 
whispering night, and brought home that 
feeling of expansion we have after being in 
good company. " Great things doeth He 
which we cannot comprehend ; for he saith 
to the snow, Be thou on the earth. " 

There is admirable snow scenery in JudcVs 
" Margaret," but some one has confiscated 
my copy of that admirable book, and, per- ^ 
haps, Homer s picture of a snow-storrn is the 
best yet in its large simplicity : - 



t-fr-r, - .^KWW^-v^CA 

" And as in winter-time, when Jove his cold sliai 

javelins throws 
Amongst us mortals, and is moved to white the 

earth with snows, 
The winds asleep, he freely pours till highest 

prominents, 



74 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

; V* s /fcW9L I MW* V* *" vVv X* 

Hill-tops, low meadows, and the fields that crown 

with most contents 
The toils of men, seaports and shores, are hid, 

and every place, 
But floods, that fair snow s tender flakes, as their 

own brood, embrace." 
r-9&gt;*f? . ; ;.;-- 

Chapman, after all, though he makes very 

free with him, comes nearer Homer than 
anybody else. There is nothing in the origi 
nal of that fair snow s tender flakes, but 
neither Pope nor Cowper could get out of 
their heads the Psalmist s tender phrase, 
" He giveth his snow like wool," for which 
also Homer affords no hint. Pope talks of 
" dissolving fleeces," and Cowper of a " fleecy 
mantle." But David is nobly simple, w r hile 
Pope is simply nonsensical, and Cowper 
pretty. If they must have prettiness, Mar 
tial would have supplied them with it in his 

Densum tacitarum vellus aquarum, 

which is too pretty, though I fear it would 
have pleased Dr. Donne. Eustathius of 
Thessalonica calls snow vSoop epuoSes, woolly 
water, which a poor old French poet, Godeau, 
has amplified into this : 



A GOOD WORD FOE, WINTER. 75 

Lorsque la froiclure inhumaine 
De leur verd ornement depouille les forets 
Sous une neige epaisse il couvre les guerets, 
Et la neige a pour eux la chaleur de la laine. 

In this, as in Pope s version of the passage in 
Homer, there is, at least, a sort of suggestion 
of snow-storm in the blinding drift of words. 
But, on the whole, if one would know what 
snow is, I should advise him not to hunt up 
what the poets have said about it, but to look 
at the sweet miracle itself. 

The preluclings of Winter are as beautiful 
as those of Spring. In a gray December 
day, when, as the farmers say, it is too cold 
to snow, his numbed fingers will let fall 
doubtfully a few star-shaped flakes, the snow 
drops and anemones that harbinger his more 
assured reign. Now, and now only, may be 
seen, heaped on the horizon s eastern edge, 
those "blue clouds" from forth which 
Shakespeare says that Mars " doth pluck the 
masoned turrets." Sometimes also, when 
the sun is low, you will see a single cloud 
trailing a flurry of snow along the south 
ern hills in a wavering fringe of purple. 



76 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

And when at last the real snow-storm comes, 
it leaves the earth with a virginal- look on 
it that no other of the seasons can rival, 
compared with which, indeed, they seem 
soiled and vulgar. 

And what is there in nature so beautiful 
as the next morning after such confusion of 
the elements ? Night has no silence like 
this of busy day. All the batteries of noise 
are spiked. We see the movement of life as 
a deaf man sees it, a mere wraith of the 
clamorous existence that inflicts itself on our 
ears when the ground is bare. The earth is 
clothed in innocence as a garment. Every 
wound of the landscape is healed ; whatever 

was stiff has c beeft sweetly rou,nded as the i 

- 

breasts of Aphrodite ; * wflat was unsightly , 
has been covered gently with a soft splendor, 
as if, Cowley would have said, Nature had 
cleverly let fall her handkerchief to hide it. 
If the Virgin (Notre Dame de la neige) were 
to come back, here is an earth that would 
not bruise her foot nor stain it. It is 

" The fanned snow 
That s bolted by the northern blasts twice o er," 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 77 

Soffiata e stretta dai venti Schiavi, 

Winnowed and packed by the Sclavonian winds, 

packed so hard sometimes on hill-slopes that 
it will bear your weight. What grace is in 
all the curves, as if every one of them had 
been s\vept by that inspired thumb of PhiiL: 
ias s journeyman ! 

Poets have fancied the footprints of the 
wind in those light ripples that sometimes 
scurry across smooth water with a sudden 
blur. But on this gleaming hush the aerial 
deluge has left plain marks of its course ; 
and in gullies through which it rushed tor 
rent-like, the eye finds its bed irregularly 
scooped like that of a brook in hard beach- 
sand, or, in more sheltered spots, traced with 
outlines like those left by the sliding edges 
of the surf upon the shore. The air, $fter 
all, is only an infinitely thinner kind of 
water, such as I suppose we shall have to 
drink when the state does her whole duty as 
a moral reformer. Nor is the wind the only 
thing whose trail you will notice on this 
sensitive surface. You will find that you 



78 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

have more neighbors and night visitors than 
you dreamed of. Here is the dainty foot 
print of a cat ; here a dog has looked in on 
you like an amateur watchman to see if all is 
right, slumping clumsily about in the mealy 
treachery. And look ! before you were up 
in the morning, though you were a punctual 
courtier at the sun s levee, here has been a 
squirrel zigzagging to and fro like a hound 
gathering the scent, and some tiny bird 
searching for unimaginable food, perhaps 
for the tinier creature, whatever it is, that 
drew this slender continuous trail like those 
made on the wet beach by light borderers of 
the sea. The earliest autographs were as 
frail as these. Poseidon trd&lt;ftct his lines, or . 
giant birds made their mark, on preadamite 
sea-margins ; and the thunder-gust left the 
te^-stains of its sudden passion there ; nay, 
we have the signatures of delicatest fern- 
leaves on the soft ooze of seons that dozed 
away their dreamless leisure before conscious 
ness came upon the earth with man. Some 
whim of nature locked them fast in stone 
for us after-thoughts of creation. Which of 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 79 

us^ shall leave a footprint as imperishable as 
that of the ornithorhyncus, or much more 
so than that of these Bedouins of the snow-,. 
desert 1 Perhaps it was only because the 
ripple and the rain-drop and the bird were 
not thinking of themselves, that they had 
such luck. The chances of immortality de 
pend very much on that. How often have 
we not seen poor mortals, dupes of a season s 
notoriety, carving their names on seeming- 
solid rock of merest beach-sand, whose feeble 
hold on memory shall be washed away by 
. the next wave of fickle opinion ! Well, well, 
c ^}ionest Jacques, there are better things to be 
in the snow than sermons. 



snow that falls damp comes commonly 
in larger flakes from windless skies, and is 
the prettiest of all to watch from under cover. 
This is the kind Homer had in mind ; and 
Dante, who had never read him, compares 
the dilatate falde, the flaring flakes, of his 
fiery rain, to those of snow among the moun 
tains without wind. This sort of snowfall 
has no fight in it, and does not challenge you 
to a wrestle like that which drives well from 



80 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

the northward, with all moisture thoroughly 
winnowed out of it by the frosty wind. 
Burns, who was more out of doors than most 
poets, and whose barefoot Muse got the color 
in her cheeks by vigorous exercise in all 
weathers, was thinking of this drier deluge, 
when he speaks of the " whirling drift," arid 

tells how 

" Chanticleer 

Shook off the powthery snaw." 

But the damper and more deliberate falls 
have a choice knack at draping the trees ; 
and about eaves or stone-walls, wherever, 
indeed, the evaporation is rapid, and it finds 
a chance to cling, it will build itself out in 
curves of wonderful beauty. I have seen 
one of these dumb waves, thus caught in the 
act of breaking, curl four feet beyond the 
edge of my roof and hang there for days, as 
if Nature were too well pleased with her 
work to let it crumble from its exquisite 
pause. After such a storm, if you are lucky 
enough to have even a sluggish ditch for 
a neighbor, be sure to pay it a visit. You 
will find its banks corniced with what seem* 



A GOOD WORD TOE, V- ,NTEU. 81 

precipitated light, and the dark current 
down below gleams as if with an inward 
lustre. Dull of motion as it is, you never 
saw water that seemed alive before. It has 
a brightness, like that of the eyes of some 
smaller animals, which gives assurance of 
life, but of a life foreign and unintelligible. 

A damp snow-storm often turns to rain, 
and, in our freakish climate, the wind will 
whisk sometimes into the northwest so sud 
denly as to plate all the trees with crystal 
before it has swept the sky clear of its last 
cobweb of cloud. Ambrose Philips, in y 
poetical epistle from Copenhagen to the Earl 
of Dorset, describes this strange confectionery 
of Nature, for such, I am half ashamed to 
say, it always seems to me, recalling the 
" glorified sugar-candy " of Lamb s first night 
at the theatre. It has an artificial air, alto 
gether beneath the grand artist of the atmos 
phere, and besides does too much mischief to 
the trees for a philodendrist to take unmixed 
pleasure in it. Perhaps~it deserves a poet 
like Philips, who really loved Nature and 
yet liked her to be mighty fine, as Pepys 



82 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

would say, with a heightening of powder and 

rouge : 

" And yet but lately have 1 seen e en here 

The winter in a lovely dress appear. 

Ere yet the clouds let fall the treasured snow, 

Or winds begun through hazy skies to blow, 

At evening a keen eastern breeze arose, 

And the descending rain unsullied froze. 

Soon as the silent shades of "night withdrew, 

The ruddy noon disclosed at once to view 

The face of Nature in a rich disguise, 

And brightened every object to my eyes ; 

For every shrub, and every blade of grass, 

And every pointed thorn, seemed wrought in glass ; 

In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show, 

And through the ice the crimson berries glow ; 

The thick-sprung reeds, which watery marshes yield, 

Seem polished lances in a hostile field ; 

The stag in limpid currents with surprise 

Sees crystal branches on his forehead rise ; 

The spreading oak, the beech, the towering pine, 

Glazed over in the freezing ether shine ; 

The frighted birds the rattling branches shun, 

Which wave and glitter in the distant sun, 

When, if a sudden gust of wind arise, 

The brittle forest into atoms flies, 

The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends 

And in a spangled shower the prospect ends." 



A GOOD W011D FOR WINTER. 83 

It is not uninstructive to see how tolerable 
Ambrose is, so long as he sticks manfully 
to what he really saw. The moment he 
undertakes to improve on Nature he sinks 
into the mere court poet, and we surrender 
him to the jealousy of Pope without a sigh. 
His "rattling branches " and " crackling for 
est " are good, as truth always is after a fash 
ion ; but what shall we say of that dreadful 
stag which, there is little doubt, he valued 
above all the rest, because it was purely his 
own ? 

The damper snow tempts the .amateur 
architect and sculptor. His Pentelicus f nas 
been brought to his very door, ancTi? there 
are boys to be had (wtiose company beats all 
other ^ecipes for rJrotonging life) a middle- 
aged Master of the Works will knock the 
years off his account and make the faniily 
Bible seem a dealer in foolish fables, by a 
few hours given heartily to this business. 
First comes the Sisyphean toil of rolling the 
clammy balls till ^they refuse to budge far 
ther. Then, if you would play the statuary, 
they are piled one upon the other to the 



84 A GOOD WORD FOE WINTEK. 

proper height ; or if your aim be masonry, 
whether of house or fort, they must be 
squared and beaten solid with the shovel. 
The material is capable of very pretty effects, 
and your young companions meanwhile ^are 
unconsciously learning lessons in : sestHetid& 
From the feeling of satisfaction with which 
one squats on the damp floor of his extem 
porized dwelling, I have been led to think 
that the backwoodsman must get a sweeter 
savor of self-reliance from the house his own^/^ 
hands have built than Bramante or Sdnso- 
vino could ever give. Perhaps the fort is 
the best thing, for it calls out more mascu 
line qualities and adds the cheer of battle 
with that dumb artillery which gives pain 
enough to test pluck without risk of serious 
hurt. Already, as I write, it is twenty-odd: 
years ago. The balls fly thick and fast. 
The uncle defends the waist-high ramparts 
against a storm of nephews, his breast plas 
tered with decorations like another Radet- 
sky s. How well I recall the indomitable" 
good-humor under fire of him who fell in 
the front at Ball s Bluff, the silent perti- 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER 85 

nacity of the gentle scholar who got his last 
hurt at Fair Oaks, the ardor in the charge of 
the gallant gentleman who, with the death- 
wound in his side, headed his brigade at 
Cedar Creek ! How it all comes back, and 
they never come ! I cannot again be the 
Vauban of fortresses in the innocent snow, 
but I shall never see children moulding their 
clumsy giants in it without longing to help. 
It was a pretty fancy of the young Vegf&jffi 
sculptor to make his first essay in this eva 
nescent material. Was it a figure of Youth, I 
wonder ? Would it not be well if all artists 
could begin in stuff as perishable, to melt 
away when the sun of prosperity began to 
shine, and leave nothing behind but the gain 
of practised hands ? It is pleasant to fancy 
that Shakespeare served his apprenticeship at 
this trade, and owed to it that most pathetic 
of despairing wishes, 

" 0, that I were a mockery -king of snow, 
Standing before the sun of Bojingbroke, 
To melt myself away in water-drops ! " 

I have spoken of the exquisite curves of 
snow surfaces. Not less rare are the tints of 



86 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

which they are capable, the faint blue of 
the hollows, for the shadows in snow are 
always blue, and the tender rose of higher 
points, as you stand with your back to the 
setting sun and look upward across the soft 
rondure of a hillside. I have seen within a 
mile of home effects of color as lovely as 
any iridescence of the Silberhorn after sun 
down. Charles II., who never said a foolish 
thing, gave the English climate the highest 
praise when he said that it allowed you more 
hours out of doors than any other, and I 
think our winter may fairly make the same 
boast as compared with the rest of the year. 
Its still mornings, with the thermometer 
near zero, ^ut a premium on walking. There 
is more sentiment in turf, perhaps, and it is 
more elastic to the foot ; its silence, too, is 
wellnigh as congenial with meditation as that 
of fallen pine^tasaaL; but for exhilaration 
there is nothing like a stiff snow-crust that 
creaks like a cricket at every step, and com 
municates its own sparkle to the senses. 
The air you drink is /ra^jpV/all its grosser 
particles precipitated, and the dregs of your 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 87 

blood with them. A purer current mounts 
to the brain, courses sparkling through it, 
and rinses it thoroughly of all dejected stuff. 
There is nothing left to breed an exhalation 
of ill-humor or despondency. They say that 
this rarefied atmosphere has lessened the 
capacity of our lungs. Be it so. Quart-pots 
are for muddier liquor than nectar. To me, 
the city in winter is infinitely dreary, the 
sharp street-corners have such a chill in them, 
and the snow so soon loses its maidenhood 
to become a mere drab, " doing shameful 
things," as Steele says of politicians, " with 
out being ashamed." I pine for the Quaker 
purity of my country landscape. I am 
speaking, of course, of those winters that 
are not niggardly o&gt;r snow, as ours too often 
are, giving us a gravelly dust instead. Noth 
ing can be unsightlier than thos tf piebald 
fields where the coarse brown hide of Earth 
shows through the holes of her ragged 
ermine. But even when there is abundance 
of snow, I find as I grow older that there 
are not so many good crusts as there used to 
be. When I first observed this, I rashly set 



88 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

it to the account of that general degeneracy 
in nature ( keeping pace with the same mel 
ancholy phenomenon in man ) which forces 
itself upon the attention and into the philos 
ophy of middle life. But happening once to 
be weighed, it occurred to me that an arch 
which would bear fifty pounds could hardly 
be blamed for giving way under more than 
three times the weight. I have sometimes 
thought that if theologians would remember 
this in their arguments, and consider that the 
man may slump through, with no fault of 
his own, where the boy would have skimmed 
the surface in safety, it would be better for 
all parties. However, when you do get a 
crust that will bear, and know any brooklet 
that runs down a hillside, be sure to go and 
take a look at him, especially if your crust is 
due, as it commonly is, to a cold snap follow 
ing eagerly on a thaw. You will never find 
him so cheerful. As he shrank away after 
the last thaw, he built for himself the most 
exquisite caverns of ice to run through, if 
not measureless to man" like those of 
Alph, the sacred river, yet perhaps more 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 89 

pleasing for their narrowness than those for 
their grandeur. What a cunning silversmith 
is Frost ! The rarest workmanship of Delhi 
or Genoa copies him but clumsily, as if the 
fingers of all other artists were thumbs. 
Fernwork and lacework and filigree in end 
less variety, and under it all the water tin 
kles like a distant guitar, or drums like a^ 
tambourine, or gurgles like the Tokay of an 
anchorite s dream. Beyond doubt there is a 
fairy procession inarching along those frail 
arcades and translucent corridors. 

" Their oaten pipes blow wondrous shrill, 
The hemlock small blow clear." 

And hark ! is that the ringing of Titania s 
bridle, or the bells of the wee, wee hawk 
that sits on Oberon s wrist ? This wonder 
of Frost s handiwork may be had every win 
ter, but he can do better than this, though 
I have seen it but once in my life. There 
had been a thaw without wind or rain, mak 
ing the air fat with gray vapor. Towards 
sundown came that chill, the avant-courier 
of a northwesterly gale. Then, though there 



90 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

was no perceptible current in the atmos 
phere, the fog began to attach itself in frosty 
roots and filaments to the southern side of 
every twig and grass-stem. The very posts 
had poems traced upon them by this dumb 
minstrel. Wherever the moist seeds found 
lodgment grew an inch-deep moss fine as 
cobweb, a slender coral-reef, argentine, deli 
cate, as of some silent sea in the moon, such 
as Agassiz dredges when he dreams. The 
frost, too, can wield a delicate graver, and 
in fancy leaves Piranesi far behind. He 
covers your window-pane with Alpine etch 
ings, as if in memory of that sanctuary where 
he finds shelter even in midsummer. 

Now look down from your hillside across 
the valley. The trees are leafless,- but this 
is the season to study their anatomy, and did 
you ever notice before how much color there 
is in the twigs of many of them ? And the 
smoke from those chimneys is so blue it 
seems like a feeder of the sky into which it 
flows. Winter refines it and gives it agree 
able associations. In summer it suggests 
cookery or the drudgery of steam-engines, 



A GOOD WORD FOE, WINTER. 91 

but now your fancy (if it can forget for 
a moment the dreary usurpation of stoves) 
traces it down to the fireside and the bright 
ened faces of children. Thoreau is the only 
poet who has fitly sung it. The wood-cutter 
rises before day and 

, " First in the dusky dawn he sends abroad 
His early scout, his emissary, smoke, 
The earliest, latest pilgrim from his roof, 
To feel the frosty air ; .... 
And, while lie crouches still beside the hearth, 
Nor musters courage to unbar the door, 
It has gone down the glen with the light wind 
And o er the plain unfurled its venturous wreath, 
Draped the tree-tops, loitered upon the hill, 
And warmed the pinions of the early bird ; 
And now, perchance, high in the crispy air, 
Has caught sight of the day o er the earth s edge, 
And greets its master s eye at his low door 
As some refulgent cloud in the upper sky." 

Here is very bad verse and very good 
imagination. He had been reading Words 
worth, or he would not have made tree-tops 
an iambus. In the Moretum of Virgil (or, 
if not his, better than most of his) is a pretty 
picture of a peasant kindling his winter- 
morning fire. He rises before dawn, 



92 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

Sollicitaque maim tenebras explorat inertes 
Vestigatque focum Isesus quern deuique sen sit. 
Parvulus exusto remanebat stipite fumus, 
Et cinis obductse celabat lumina pruna3. 
Admovet his pronam submissa fronte lucernam, 
Et producit acu stupas humore carentes, 
Excitat et crebris languentem flatibus ignem ; 
Tandem concepto tenebrse fulgore recedunt, 
Oppositaque manu lumen defendit ab aura. 

With cautious hand he gropes the sluggish dark, 
Tracking the hearth which, scorched, he feels erelong. 
In burnt-out logs a slender smoke remained, 
And raked-up ashes hid the cinders eyes ; 
Stooping, to these the lamp outstretched he nears^ 
And, with a needle loosening the dry wick, 
With frequent breath excites the languid flame. 
Before the gathering glow the shades recede, 
And his bent hand the new-caught light defends. 

Ovid heightens the picture by a single 
touch : 

Ipse genu poito flammas exsuscitat aura. 
Kneeling, his breath calls back to life the^ames. 

If you walk down now into the woods, 
you may find a robin or a bluebird among 
the red-cedars, or a nuthatch scaling devi- 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 93 

* 

ously tlie trunk of some hardwood tree with 
an eye as keen as that of a French soldier 
foraging for the p&t-au-feu of his mess. 
Perhaps a blue-jay shrills cah cah in his 
corvine trebles, or a chickadee 

"Shows feats of his gymnastic play, 
Head downward, clinging to the spray." 

But both him and the snow-bird I love 
better to see, tiny fluffs of feathered life, as 
they scurry about in a driving mist of snow, 
than in this serene air. 

Coleridge has put into verse one of the 
most beautiful phenomena of a winter 
walk : 

"The woodman winding westward up the glen 
At wintry dawn, where o er the sheep-track s maze 
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glistening haze, 
Sees full before him, gliding without tread, 
An image with a halo round its head. " 

But this aureole is not peculiar to winter, 
I have noticed it often in a summer morn- 
ing, when the grass was heavy with dew, 
and even later in the (lav, when the dewless 



94 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

grass was still fresh enough to have a gleam 
of its own. 

For my own part I prefer a winter walk 
that take in the nightfall and the intense 
silence that erelong follows it. The evening 
lamps look yellower by contrast with the 
snow, and give the windows that hearty 
look of which our secretive fires have almost 
robbed them. The stars seem 

To hang, like twinkling winter lamps, 
Among the branches of the leafless trees," 

or, if you are on a hill-top (whence it is 
sweet to watch the home-lights gleam out 
one by one), they look nearer than in 
summer, and appear to take a conscious part 
in the cold. Especially in one of those 
stand-stills of the air that forebode a change 
of weather, the sky is dusted with motes of 
fire of which the summer-watcher never 
dreamed. Winter, too, is, on the whole, the 
triumphant season of the moon, a moon 
devoid of sentiment, if you choose, but 
with the refreshment of a purer intellectual 
light, the cooler orb of middle life. Who 



A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 95 

ever saw anything to match that gleam, 
rather divined than seen, which runs before 
her over the snow, a breath of light, as she 
rises on the infinite silence of winter night ? 
High in the heavens, also she seems to bring 
out some intenser property of cold with her 
chilly polish. The poets have instinctively 
noted this. When Goody Blake imprecates 
a curse of perpetual chill upon Harry Gill, 
she has 

"The cold, cold moon above her head"; 
and Coleridge speaks of 

"The silent icicles, 
Quietly gleaming to the quiet moon." 

As you walk homeward, for it is time 
that we should end our ramble, you may 
perchance hear the most impressive sound 
in nature, unless it be the fall of a tree in 
the forest during the hush of summer noon. 
It is the stifled shriek of the lake yonder 
as the frost throttles it. Wordsworth has 
described it (too much, I fear, in the style 
of Dr. Armstrong) : 



96 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 

"And, interrupting oft that eager game, 
From under Esthwaite s splitting fields of ice, 
The pent-np air, struggling to free itself, 
Gave out to meadow-grounds and hills a loud 
Protracted yelling, like the noise of wolves 
Howling in troops along the Bothnicmain." 

Thoreau (unless the English lakes have a 
different dialect from ours) calls it admirably 
well a " whoop." But it is a noise like none 
other, as if Demogorgon were moaning in 
articulately from under the earth. Let us 
get within doors, lest we hear it again, for 
there is something bodeful and uncanny 
in it. 





Presently our hunter came back. 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 





CONTENTS. 



Page 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 



AT SEA 



75 




ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Presently our hunters came back " . . Frontispiece. 

Page 
" &lt; Wahl, t ain t ushil, said he " 33 

" We sat round and ate thankfully " . . . . 49 
" He had begun upon a second bottle " . . . .55 





A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

Addressed to the Edelmann Storg at the Bagni di 
Lucca. 

jHURSDAY, llth August. I knew 
as little yesterday of the interior of 
Maine as the least penetrating person 
knows of the inside of that great social mill 
stone which, driven by the river Time, sets 
imperatively agoing the several wheels of our 
individual activities. Born while Maine was 
still a province of native Massachusetts, I was 
as much a foreigner to it as yourself, my dear 
Storg. I had seen many lakes, ranging from 
that of .Tipgil s Cumsean to that of ScpttV 
JUaieaoniaii Lady ; but ttopsehea^, j ithiii i wo~ ^ 
days of me, had never enjoyed the profit of 
being mirrored in my retina. At the sound of 
the name, no reminiscential atoms (according 






12 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

to Kenelm Digby s Theory of Association, 
as good as any) stirred and marshalled them 
selves in my brain. The truth is, we think 
lightly of Nature s penny shows, and estimate 
what we see by the cost of the ticket. Em- 
pedocles gave his life for a pit-entrance to 
r A ^Etna, and no doubt found his account in it. 
Accordingly, the clean face of Cousin Bull is 

imaged patronizingly iii Lake George, -and , 

*s J Kfa r~ &lt;%&gt;& ** .&lt;f,zO? VtVf^a* 

Loch Lomona glasses the hurried countenance u ^ 

r tp^f^tTonathan, diving deeper in the streams of ^ ^ 
\ tTi ^ ur P ean association (and coming up drier) fc* 
^ l^ than any other man. Or is the cause of ourr^ r 
not caring to see what is equally within the 
reach of all our neighbors to be sought in that 
aristocratic principle so deeply implanted in 
human nature ? I knew a pauper graduate 
who always borrowed a black coat, and came 
.-to eat the Commencement dinner, not that 
it was better than the one which daily graced 
the board of the public institution in which he 
hibernated (so to speak) during the other three 
hundred and sixty-four days of the year, save 
in this one particular, that none of his elee 
mosynary fellow-commoners could eat it. If 
^^ fr^\&-* I%A, tr*\ &lt;A*tv/&y c*~- &t&/\- 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 13 

there are unhappy men who wish that they 
were as the Babe Unborn, there are more who 
would aspire to the lonely distinction of being 
that other figurative personage, the Oldest 
Inhabitant. You remember the charming ir 
resolution of our dear Estkwaite, (like Ma(&gt;^.v 
heath between his two doxies,) .divided between ^ 
his theory that he is unoef thirty; and his pride \. 
at being the only one of us who witnessed the l Vi? 
September gale and the rejoicings at the Peace? d2fi 
Nineteen years ago I was walking through the 9 
Franconia Notch, and stopped to chat with a d*& 
hermit, who fed with gradual logs the un 
wearied teeth of a saw-mill. As the panting 
steel slit off the slabs of the log, so did the less 
willing machine of talk, acquiring a steadier 
up-and-down motion, pare away that outward 
bark of conversation which protects the core, 
and which, like other bark, has naturally most 
to do with the weather, the season, and the 
heat of the day, At length I asked him the 
best point of view for the. Old Man of the 

Mountain. ~&lt; ^^^j6^^^ $jL^ 
" Dunno, never see it/i^* ^^^.o^. fa. \*L&lt; 
Too young and too happy v ef?her io feel or ^ 



14 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

affect the Juvenalian indifference,, I was sin 
cerely astonished, and I expressed it. 

The log-compelling man attempted no justi 
fication, but after a little asked, " Come from 
Bawsn?" 

" Yes " (with peninsular pride). 

" Goodie to see in the vycinity o Bawsn." 

" yes ! " I said, and I thought, see 
Boston and die ! see the State Houses, old 
and new, the caterpillar wooden bridges crawl 
ing with innumerable legs across the flats of 
Charles ; see the Common, largest park, 
doubtless, in the world, with its files of trees 
planted as if by a drill-sergeant, and then for 
your nunc dimittis I 

" I should like, awl, I should like to stan, 
on Bunker Hill. You ve ben there offen, 
likely ? " 

"N o o," unwillingly, seeing the little 
end of the horn in clear vision at the terminus 
of this Socratic perspective. 

" Awl, my young frien , you ve larned 
neow thet wut a man kin see any day for 
nawthin , childern half price, he never doos 
see. Nawthin pay, nawthin vally." 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 15 

With this modern instance of a wise saw, I 
departed, deeply revolving these things with 
myself, and convinced that, whatever the ratio 
of population, the average amount of human 
nature to the square mile is the same the world 
over. I thought of it when I sa^wjpeople upon 
the Pincian wondering at the Alchemist sun, ^ 
as if he never burned the leaden clouds to 




!d in sight of Charles Street. I thought of &gt; 
it when I found eyes first discovering at Montri--^ 
Blaiic how beautiful snow was. As I walked J 
on, I said to myself, There is one exception, \ t 
.wise hermit, it is just these gratis pictures 
which the poet puts in his show-box, and which 
*+k jt Q a H g^dly P a J Wordsworth and the rest for 
4-rt*# peep at. The divine faculty is to see what 
Everybody can look at. 

While every well-informed man in Europe, 
from the barber down to the diplomatist, has ^ 
his view of the Eastern Question", why should 
I not go personally down East and see for my- v 
s^lf? Why not, likeTTancred, attempt nW 
own solution of the Mystery of the Orient; r 



mysterious when you begin the two*"" 
words with capitals? You know my way of ^ r 



16 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

doing things, to let them simmer in my mind 
gently for months, and at last do them im 
promptu in a kind of desperation, driven by the 
[^gumenides of unfulfilled purpose. So, after 
talking about Moosehead till nobody believed 
e capable of going thither, I found myself at 
e Eastern Railway station. The only event 
the journey hither (I am now at Waterville) 
l was" a boy hawking exhilaratingly the last great . 
railroad smash, thirteen lives lost, and no 
doubt devoutly wishing there had been fifty. 
This having a mercantile interest in horrors, 
holding stock, as it were, in murder, misfortune, 
and pestilence, must have an odd effect on the 
human mind. The birds of ill-omen, at whose 
sombre flight the rest of the world turn pale, 
are the ravens which bring food to this little 
outcast in the wilderness. If this lad give 
thanks for daily bread, it would be curious to 
inquire what that phrase represents to his un 
derstanding. If there ever be a plum in it, it 
is Sin or Death that puts it in. Other details 
of my dreadful ride I will spare you. Suffice 
it that I arrived here in safety, in complexion 
like an Ethiopian serenader half got-up, and so 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 17 

broiled and peppered that I was more like a dev 
illed kidney than anything else I can think of. 
10 P. M. The civil landlord and neat cham 
ber at the "Elm wood House" were very grate 
ful, and after tea I set forth to explore the 
town. It has a good chance of being pretty ; 
but, like most American towns, it is in a holp Z 
bledehoy age, growing yet, and one cannot tell- 4 
what may happen. A child with great promise 
of beauty is often spoiled by its second teeth. 
There is something agreeable in the sense of 
completeness which a walled town gives one. 
It is entire, like a crystal, a work which 
man has succeeded in finishing. I think the 
human mind pines more or less where every 
thing is new, and is better for a diet of stale 
bread. The number of Americans who visit 
the Old World is beginning to afford matter of 
speculation to observant Europeans, and the 
deep inspirations with which they breathe the 
air of antiquity, as if their mental lungs had 
been starved with too thin an atmosphere. 
Por my own part, I never saw a house which 
I thought old enough to be torn down. It is 
too like that Scythian fashion of knocking old 



18 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

people on the head. I cannot help thinking 

that the indefinable something whiph we call 
. ^Uvf^^^^ tf/o-^^y 
character is cumulative, that \m influence 

of the same climate, scenery, and associations 
for several generations is necessary to its gath 
ering head, and that the process is disturbed 
by continual change of place. The American 
is nomadic in religion, in ideas, in morals, and 
leaves his faith and opinions with as much in 
difference as the house in which he was born. 
However, we need not bother : Nature takes 
care not to leave ont of the great heart of so 
ciety either of its two ventricles of hold-back 
and go-ahead. 

It seems as if every considerable American 
town must have its one specimen of every 
thing, and so there is a college in Waterville, 
the buildings of which are three in number, 
of brick, and quite up to the average ugliness 
which seems essential in edifices of this de 
scription. Unhappily, they do not reach that 
extreme of ugliness where it and beauty come 
together in the clasp of fascination. We erect 
handsomer factories for cottons, woollens, and 
steam -engines, than for doctors, lawyers, aiid 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 19 

parsons. The truth is, that, till our struggle 
with nature is over, till this shaggy hemi 
sphere is tamed and subjugated, the workshop 
will be the college whose degrees will be most 
valued. Moreover, steam has made travel so 
easy that the great university of the world is 
open to all comers, and the old cloister, "sys-^y^ 
tern is falling astern. : Perhaps it is only the 
more needed, and, were I rich, I should like 
to found a few. lazyships in my Alma Matei^ * 
as a kind of cmfnTefpoiseT" The Anglo-Saxon 
...race has accepted the primal curse as a bless- 

y* ing, has deified work, amT would not have 

thanked Adam for abstaining from the apple. 

They would have dammed the four rivers 

-of Paradise, substituted cotton for fig-leaves 

Among the antediluvian populations, and com- 

yd* mended man s first disobedience as a wise 
measure of political economy. But to return 
to our college. We cannot have fine build 
ings till we are less in a hurry. We snatch 
an education like a meal at a railroad-station. 
Just in time to make us dyspeptic, the whistle 
shrieks, and we must rush, or loss our places 
in the great train of life. Yet noble architect 



20 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

ture is one element of patriotism, and an emi 
nent one of culture, the finer portions of 
which are taken in by unconscious absorption 
through the pores of the mind from the sur 
rounding atmosphere. I suppose we must a 

/^l-w-\ -r" VV^ ^ ** * /V "* * t "**** 9l 

wait, for we are a great bivouac as yet rather^^ 
than a nation, on the march from the At- ^ 
lantic to the Pacific, and pitch tents instead 
of building houses. Our very villages seem ;l 
to be in motion, following westward the be 
witching music of some Pied Piper of Hame- 
lin. We still feel the great push toward 
down given to the peoples somewhere in the \ 
gray dawn of history. The cliff-swallow alone 
of all animated nature emigrates eastward. 

Friday, Y&th. The coach leaves Water-/ 
ville at five o clock in the morning, and one--; 
must breakfast in the dark at a quarter past J&gt; 
four, because a train starts at twenty minutes^ 

before five, the passengers by botji conyey-^x 

\r f ~- &lt;* C- ^H/I^,^ t rVs! 
ances being pastured gregariously: So one^y 

must be up at half past three. The primary . . . 
geological formations contain no trace of man,; : 
^^J^and it seems to me that these eocene periods 
of the day are not fitted for sustaining the 




A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 21 

human forms of life. One of the Fathers held 
that the sun was created to be worshipped at 
his rising by the Gentiles. The more reason 
that Christians (except, perhaps, early Chris 
tians) should abstain from these heathenish 
ceremonials. As one arriving by an early 
train is welcomed by a drowsy maid with the 
sleep scarce brushed out of her hair, and 
finds empty grates and polished mahogany, on 
whose arid plains the pioneers of breakfast 
have not yet encamped, so a person waked 
thus unseasonably is sent into the world before 
his faculties are up and dressed to serve him. 
It might have been for this reason that my 
stomach resented for several hours a piece of 
fried beefsteak which I forced upon it, or, 
more properly speaking, a piece of that leath 
ern conveniency which in these regions as 
sumes the name. You will find it as hard 
to believe, my dear Storg, as that quarrel of 
- /the Sorbonists, whether one should say ego 
*)m&lt;tt or no, that the use of the gridiron is 
unknown hereabout, and so near a river" 
named after St. Lawrence, too! 

To-day has been the hottest day of th 



22 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

son, yet our drive lias not been unpleasant. 
Eor a considerable distance we followed the 
course of tlie Sebasticook River, a pretty 
stream with alternations of dark brown pools 
and wine-colored rapids. Oil eacli side of the 
road the land had been cleared, and little one- 
story farm-houses were scattered at intervals. 
But the stumps still held out in most of the 
fields, and the tangled wilderness closed iy 
behind, striped here and there with the slim 
white trunks of the elm. As yet only the 
edges of the great forest have been nibbled 
away. Sometimes a root-fence stretched up 
its bleaching antlers, like the trophies of a 
giant hunter. Now and then the houses 
thickened into an unsocial-looking village, and 
we drove up to the grocery to leave and take 
a mail -bag, stopping again presently to water 
the horses at some pallid little tavern, whose 
one red-curtained eye (the bar-room) had been 
put out by the in.exoraj)le ^thrust of Maiiiel 
Law. Had Slienstone 7 travelled this road, he 
would never have written that famous stanza 
of his ; had Johnson, he would never have 
quoted it. They are to real inns as the skull 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 23 

\ 

of Yorick to his face. Where these villages 
occurred at a distance from the river, it was 
difficult to account for them. Qa. the river- 
bank, a saw-mill or a tannery served as a logi 
cal premise, and saved them from total incon- 
sequentiality. As we trailed along, at the 
rate of about four miles an hour, it was dis 
covered that one of our mail-bags was missing. 
" Guess somebody 11 pick it up," said the 
driver coolly: " tany rate, likely there s 
nothin in it." Who knows how long it took 
some Elam D. or Zebulon K. to compose the 
missive intrusted to that vagrant bag, and 
how much longer to persuade Pamela Grace 
or Sophronia Melissa that it had really and 
truly been written ? The discovery of our 
loss was made by a tall man who sat next to 
me on the top of the coach, every one of 
whose senses seemed to be prosecuting its 
several investigation as we went along. Pres 
ently, sniffing gently, he remarked: "Tears 
to me } s though I smelt sunthiu . Ain t the 
aix het, think ? " The driver pulled up, and, 
sure enough, the off fore-wheel was found 
to be smoking. In three minutes lie had 



24 A MOOSEHEAI) JOURNAL. 

snatched a rail from the fence, made a lever, 
raised the coach, and taken off the wheel, 
bathing the hot axle and box with water from 
the river. It was a pretty spot, and I was 
not sorry to lie under a beech -tree (Tityrus- 
like, meditating over my pipe) and watch the 
operations of the fire-annihilator. I could not 
help contrasting the ready helpfulness of our 
driver, all of whose wits were about him, cur 
rent, and redeemable in the specie of action on 
emergency, with an incident of travel in Italy, 
where, under a somewhat similar stress of cir 
cumstances, our vetturino had nothing for it 
but to dash his hat on the ground and call on 
- Sant Antonio, the Italian Hercules. 

( U . There being four passengers for the Lake, 

IT" vehicle called a mud-wagon was detailed 

at Newport for our accommodation. In this 

we jolted and rattled along at a livelier pace 

.than in the coach. As we got farther north, 

u&gt; &lt; the country (especially the hills) gave evi 
dence of longer cultivation. About the thriv 
ing town of Dexter we saw fine farms and 
crops. The houses, too, became prettier; 
hop-vines were trained about the doors, and 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 25 



hung their clustering thym over the open 
windows. A kind of wiTd rose (called by 
the country folk the primrose) and asters were 
planted about the door-yards, and orchards, 
commonly of natural fruit, added to the pleas 
ant home-look. But everywhere we could 
see that the war between the white man and 
the forest was still fierce, and that it would 
be a long while yet before the axe was buried. 
The haying being over, fires blazed or smoul 
dered against the stumps in the fields, and the 
blue smoke widened slowly upward through 
the quiet August atmosphere. It seemed to 
me that I could hear a sigh now and then 
from the immemorial pines, as they stood 
watching these camp-fires of the inexorable 
invader. Evening set in, and, as we crunched 
and crawled up the long gravelly hills, I some 
times began to fancy that Nature had forgot 
ten to make the corresponding descent on 
the other side. But erelong we were rushing 
down at full speed ; and, inspired by the 
dactylic beat of the horses hoofs, I essayed 
to repeat the opening lines of Evangeline. 
At the moment I was beginning, we plunged 



26 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

into a hollow, where the soft clay had been 
overcome by a road of unhewn logs. I got 
through one line to this corduroy accompani 
ment, somewhat as a country choir stretches 
a short metre on the Procrustean rack of a long- 
drawn tune. The result was like this : 

" Thihis ihis thehe fohorest prihihimeheval ; thehe 
murhurmuring pihiues hahand thehe hehern- 
lohocks ! " 

At a quarter past eleven, p. M., we reached 
Greenville, (a little village which looks as if it 
:- ^ had dripped down from the hills, and settled 
in the hollow at the foot of the lake,) having 
accomplished seventy-two miles in eighteen 
hours. The tavern was totally extinguished. 
The driver rapped upon the bar-room window, 
and after a while we saw heat-lightnings of un 
successful matches followed by a low grumble 
of vocal thunder, which I am afraid took the 

-&lt;_!* ^ 

^jf imprecation. Presently there was a 
v great success, and the steady^ blur of lighted 
tallow succeeded the fugitive brilliance of the 
pine. A hostler fumbled the door open, and 
stood staring at but not seeing us, with the 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 27 



sleep sticking out,alj over him. We at last 
contrived to launch -turn more like an insensi- 



e Inissile than an ififelTigmit or intelligible^ ^ 
.. being, at the slumbering landlord, who came 
- t)iit wide-awake, and welcomed us as so many 
^^j half-dollars, twenty-five cents each for bed, 
ditto breakfast. Shenstone, Shenstone ! 

,Vf -&lt;?&lt;/ ___ . _ _^_ ___ _^_ _____ - 

^H^-Tlie only roost was in the garret, which had 
been made into a single room, and contained 
eleven double-beds, ranged along the walls. 
It was like sleeping in a hospital. However, 
nice c ustorns cGjtsy to eighteen-nour rides, and 
we slept, * 

Saturday, 13M. This morning I performed 
my toilet in the bar-room, where there was an 
abundant supply of water, and a lialo^of inter 
ested spectators. After a sufficient breakfast, 
we embarked on the little steamer Moosehead, 
and were soon throbbing up the lake. The 
boat, it appeared, had been chartered by a 
party, this not being one of her regular trips. 
Accordingly we were muEESm twice the 
usual fee, the philosophy of which I could not 
understand. However, it always comes easier 
to us to comprehend why we receive than why 



28 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

we pay. I dare say it was quite clear to the 
captain. There were three or four clearings 
on the western shore ; but after passing these, - 



r pass 
vat a 



the lake became wholly pnmevaVand looked 
to us as it did to the first adventurous French 
man who paddled across it. Sometimes a 
cleared point would be pink with the blossom- 

" iiig wtllow-herb, " a cheap an(J- excellent 
&lt;*" JtJZc* &gt; V 1 *; o c -* " " 
./jtitute " for Ueafnei /and/ like an such, 

biL&Jquifo so good as the real thing. On all sides 
^/^rose deep-blue mountains of remarkably grace 
ful outline, and more fortunate than common 
in their names. There were the Big and Little 
Squaw, the Spencer and Lily -bay Mountakis. 
It was debated whether we saw ETaiafiain or 
not (perhaps more useful as an intellectual* 
exercise than the assured vision would have 
been), and presently Mount Kineo rose ab 
ruptly before us, in shape not unlike the island 
of Capri. Mountains are called great natural 
/, features, and why they should not retain their 

tf**^y UIies ^ 011 8 euou 8 h f r them also to become 
7 ^V. naturalized, it is hard to say. Why should 
every new surveyor rechristen them with the 
y- //gubernatorial patronymics of (he current year 











OSEHEAD JOURNAL. * |2tf 

They are geological noses, "and, as they tare /" 
or pug, indicate terrestrial idiosyn- 6 / 
^&gt;&lt;3osmical physiognomist, after a ~ 

glance at them, will draw no vague inference A* 



j as to the character of the country. The w 
tlose * s no Better than anv other word; but L - 
since the organ has got that name, it is con 
venient to keep it. Suppose we had to label 
our facial prominences every season with the 
name of our provincial governor, how should 
we like it ? If the old names have no other 
meaning, they have that of age ; and, after all, 
meaning is a plant of slow growth, as every 
reader of Shakespeare knows. It is well 
enough to call mountains after their discover 
ers, for Nature has a knack of throwing doub-^"* 
lets, and somehow contrives it that discoverers 
have good names. Pike s Peak is a curious 
hit in this way. But these surveyors names 



. have no natural stick in them. They remind 
L one* of the epithets of poetasters, / wfitct/j5eel o 



, 



like a badly gummed postage-stamp. 



ff ^ 



early settlers did better, and there is some-^ t 

d ^, 



^f 

thing pleasant in the sound of Graylock, Sad 



dleback, and Great Hay stack .-^^.^V-f/. 





30 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

" 1 love those names 
Wherewith the exiled farmer tames 
Nature down to companionship 

With his old world s more homely mood, 
And strives the shaggy wild to clip 

With arms of familiar hahitude." 

/^ylt is possible that Mount Marcy and Mount 
* *p Hitchcock may sound as well hereafter as Hel-cx, 

""lespoiit avid Peloponnesus, when the heroes,^ 
/ - their namesakes, have become mythic with an-. /^ 
?.-,. ^iquity. But that is to look forward a 

way. I am no fanatic for Indian nomencla 
ture, the name of my native district having * 
been Pigsgusset, but let us at least agree 
on names for ten years. ^^//.;V-^ W 
sjtoB There were a couple of loggers on board, 
in red flannel shirts, and with rifles. They 
were the first I had seen, and I was interesteckj 
appearance. They were tall, 
, straight as~Hobin Hood, and with a&lt; 
, self-contained look that pleased me. I 

fell into talk with one of them. 



" Is there a good market for the farmers 
here in the woods F " I asked. 

" None better. They can sell what they - 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 31 

raise at their doors, and for the best of prices. 
The lumberers want it all, and more." 

" It must be a lonely life. But then we all 
have to pay more or less life for a living-." 

" Well, it is lonesome. Should n t like it. 
After all, the best crop a man can raise is a 
good crop of society. We don t live none too 
long, anyhow ; and without society a fellow 
could n t tell mor n half the time whether he 
was alive or not/ 5 

This speech gave me a glimpse into the life 
of the lumberers camp. It was plain that 
there a man would soon find out how much 
alive he was, there he could learn to esti 
mate his quality, weighed in the nicest self- 
adjusting balance. The best arm at the axe 
or the paddle, the surest eye for a road or for 
the weak point of a. jam, the steadiest foot upon 
the squirming log, the most persuasive voice 
to the tugging oxen, all these things are 
rapidly settled, and so an aristocracy is evolved 
from this democracy of the woods, for good 
old mother Nature speaks Saxon still, and 
with her either Canning or Kenning means 
King. 



32 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 




A string of five loons was flying back And 

/forth in long, irregular zigzags, uttering at 

(T i intervals their wild, tremulous cry, which al- 

. ways seems far away, like the last faint pulse 

i. of echo dying. among the hills, and which is 

, fc , one of those few sounds that, instead of dis 

turbing solitude, only deepen and confirm it. 

On our inland ponds they are usually seen in 

pairs, and I asked if it were common to meet 

five together. My question was answered by 

a queer-looking old man, chiefly remarkable for 

a pair of enormous cowhide boots, over which 

large blue trousers of frocking strove in vain 

to crowd themselves. 

"Wahl, t ain t usliil," said he, "and it s 
called a sign o rain comin , that is." 

" Do you think it will rain? " 

With the caution of a veteran ampex, he 
evaded a direct reply. " Wahl, they du say 
it s a sign o rain comin ," said he. 

I discovered afterward that my interlocutor 
was Uncle Zeb. Formerly, every New Eng 
land town had its representative uncle. He 
was not a pawnbroker, but some elderly man 
who, for want of more defined family ties, had 




" Wahl, t ain t usliil, said he." 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 



gradually assumed this avuncular relation to 
the community, inhabiting the border-land be^ 
tween respectability and the almshouse, with 
no regular calling, but working at haying, wood^ 
sawing, whitewashing, associated with the de 
mise of pigs and the ailments of cattle, and 
possessing as much patriotism as might be inv 
plied in a devoted attachment to " New Eng 
land " with a good deal of sugar and very 
little water in it. Uncle Zeb ^was a, good 
specimen of this palaeozoic class, extinct among 
us for the most part, or surviving, like the 
f- Dodo, in the Botany^Bays of society. He was 
ready to contribute (somewhat muddily) to aUN^ 
, general conversation ; but his chief topics ^n 
were his boots and the Roostick war. Upon- 4 

V I L^ $ ^ r b\ 

1 he lowlands and levels of ordinary palaver he 
would make rapid and unlooked-for ipqurakms j 
but, provision foiling, he would retffaflo these Vf* 1 
two fastnesses, "^wnence it was impossible to\^L^ 
dislodge him, and to which be knew innumer-^^ 

,able passes and short cuts quite beyond. the . 
M V *^ p /oVWjLt^v w&qLj&tAjL* 4^ 

conjejcture ot common w_ooacratt/ His mmcL^ ^ 

opened naturally to these two subjects, like a 
book to some favorite passage. As the ear ac-- 



36 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

customs itself to any sound recurring regularly, c, 
such as the ticking of a clock, and, without a 
conscious effort of attention, takes no impres 
sion from it whatever, so does the mind find a 
natural safeguard against this pendulum species - v 
of discourse, and performs its duties in the par 
liament by an unconscious reflex action, like 
the beating of the heart or the movement of s$ 
the lungs. If talk seemed to be flagging, our ^ &gt; 
Uncle would put the heel of one boot upon the -y t 
toe of the other, to bring it within point-blank^/ 
range, and say, " Wahl, I stump the Devil him- "f 
self to make that ere boot hurt my foot," leav-^ v 
ing us in doubt whether it were the virtue of ^ 
the foot or its case which set at nought the fas 
wiles of the adversary ; or, looking up sud- 
, he would exclaim, " Wahl, we eat some 
to the Roostick war, I tell you!" 
v t .hen his poor, old clay was wet ^ith ^m, 
% ^iis thoughts and words acquired a raiik flavor 
from it, as from-, too strong a fertilizer. At 
such times, too, his fancy commonly reverted 
to a pre-historic period of his life, when he 
singly had settled all the surrounding country, 
subdued the Injuns and other wild animals, 
and named all the towns. 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 37 

We talked of the winter-camps and the life 
there. " The best thing is," said our uncle, 
" to hear a log squeal thru the snow. Git a 
good, cole, frosty mornin , in Febuary say, an 
take an hitch the critters on to a log that 11 
scale seven thousan , an it 11 squeal as pooty 
as an thin you ever hearn, I tell you." 

A pause. 

" Lessee, seen Cal Hutchins lately ?" 
. "No." 

" Seems to me s though I hed n t seen Cal 
sence the Roostick war. Wahl," etc., etc. 

Another pause. 

" To look at them boots you d think they 
was too large ; but kind o git your foot into 
em, and they re as easy s a glove." (I ob 
served that he never seemed really to get his 
foot in, there was always a qualifying kind 
o\) "Wahl, my foot can play in em like a 
young hedgehog." 

By this time we had arrived at Kineo, a 
flourishing village of one house, the tavern, 
kept by Squire Barrows. The Squire is a 
large, hearty man, with a voice as clear and 
strong as a northwest wind, and a great laugh 



?8 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

suitable to it. His table is neat and well sup- 
plied, and he waits upon it himself in the good 
old landlordly fashion. One may be much 
better off here, to my thinking, than in one of 
t hose gigantic Columbaria which are foisted^ /v 
rrfL^pon us patient Americans for hotels,, and^ : 
^&gt;^ *where one is packed away in a pigeon-hole so 
;oear the heavens that, if the comet should flirt 
its ta ^ ( ll unlikely thing in the- month of flies,) 
one would be in danger of being brushed 
away. Here one does not pay his diurnal d~& 

dollars for an undivided five-hundredth 
part of the pleasure of looking at gilt ginger 
bread. Here one s relations are with the mon 
arch himself, and one is not obliged to wait 
the slow leisure of those " attentive clerks " 
whose praises are sung by thankful deadheads, 
and to whom the slave who pays may feel as 
much gratitude as might thrill the heart of a 
brown-paper parcel toward the express-man 
who labels it and chucks it under his counter. 
Sunday, \kth. -- The loons were right. 
About midnight it began to rain in earnest, 
and did not hold up till about ten o clock this 
morning. " This is a Maine dew," said a 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 39 

shaggy woodman cheerily, as he shook the wa 
ter out of his wide-awake, " if it don t look out 
sharp, it 3 11 begin to rain afore it thinks on 3 t." 
The day was mostly spent within doors ; but 
I found good and intelligent society. We 
should have to be shipwrecked on Juan Fer- ,V! 
nandez not to find men who knew more 



we. In these travelling encounters one is ," 
thrown upon his own resources, and is worth ; 
just what he carries about him. The social^ 
currency of home, the smooth-worn coin which 
passes freely among friends and neighbors, is^.-rf 
of no account. "V^e are thrown back upon the 
old system of barter; and, even with savages,^ 
we bring away only as much of the wild wealth Q*& 
of the woods as we carry beads of thought and ^ 
experience, strung one by one in painful years, *^ Co 
to pay for them with. A useful old jackknife /^^ 
will buy more than the daintiest Louis Quinze 
paper-folder fresh from Paris. Perhaps the 
kind of intelligence one gets in these out-of-the- 
way places is the best, where one takes a 
fresh man after breakfast instead of the damp 
morning paper, and where the magnetic tele 
graph of human sympathy flashes swift news 
from brain to brain. 



40 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

Meanwhile, at a pinch, to-morrow s weather 
can be discussed. The fugury ^om Ifie flight 
of birds is favorable, the loons no longer^/^ 
prophesying rain. The wind also is hauling 
round to the right quarter, according to some, 
to the wrong, if we are to believe others. 
Each man has his private barometer of hope, 
the mercury in which is more or less sensitive, 
and the opinion vibrant with its rise or fall. 
Mine has an index which can be moved me 
chanically. I fixed it at set fair, and resigned 
myself. I read an old volume of the Patent- 
Ofnce Report on Agriculture, and stored away 
a beautiful pile of facts and observations for 
future use, which the current of occupation, 
at its first freshet, would sweep quietly off to 
blank oblivion. Practical application is the 
only mordant which will set things in the 
memory. Study, without it, is gymnastics, 
and not work, which alone will get intellectual 
bread. One learns more metaphysics irom v {v C 
single temptation than from all the philoso- 
phers. It is curious, though, how tyrannical 
" the habit of reading is, and what shifts we 
make to escape thinking. There is no bore , 

f 



_ 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 41 

we dread being left alone with so much as our 
own minds. I have seen a sensible man study 
a stale newspaper in a country tavern, and 
husband it as he would an old shoe on a raft 
after shipwreck. Why not try a bit of hiber 
nation ? There are few brains that would 
be better for living on their own fat a 
while. With these reflections, I, 
standing, spent the afternoon over my 
If our own experience is of so little use to us, 
whnt a dolt is hi- who recommends to man or 
nation the experience of others ! Like the 
mantle in the old ballad, it is always too short 
or too long, and exposes or trips us up. " Keep 
out of that candle," says old Father Miller, 
"or you ll get a singeing." "Pooh, pooh, 
father, I Ve been dipped in the new asbestos 
preparation," and frozz ! it is all over with 
young Hopeful. How many warnings have 
been drawn from Pretoriarf bahcls, and Janiza^- 
^/.ries, ancT^[amelukes, to make Napoleon III. 
impossible m 1851 ! I found myself thinking 

tt t&lt;/ r " 

/the same thoughts over again, when we walked 
later on the beach and picked up pebbles. &&* 
The old time-ocean throws uon its shores"" 






-"* - * 

^^ft \ n ^ 



42 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

just such rounded and polished results of the 
eternal turmoil, but we only see the beauty of 
those we have got the headache in stooping 
for ourselves, and wonder at the dull brown 
bits of common stone with which our comrades 
have stuffed their pockets. Afterwards this 
little fable came of it. 



DOCTOR LOBSTER. 



A PERCH, who had the toothache, once 
Thus moaned, like any human dunce : 
" Why must great souls exhaust so soon 
Life s thin and unsubstantial boon ? 

T-l - 1 /3-^ V* &lt; 

Existence on such sculpm terms, ^^-^^i^ . 

Their vulgar loves and hard-won worms, 

What is it all but dross to me, 

W T hose nature craves a larger sea ; 

Whose inches, six from head to tail, 

Enclose the spirit of a whale ; 

Who, if great baits were still to win, 

By watchful eye and fearless fin 

Might with the Zodiac s awful twain 

Room for a third immortal gain ? 

Better the crowd s unthinking plan, 

The hook, the jerk, the frying-pan ! 

O Death, thou ever roaming shark, 

Ingulf me in eternal dark ! " 




A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 43 

The speech was cut in two by flight : 

A real shark had come in sight ; 

No metaphoric monster, one 

It soothes despair to call upon, 

But stealthy, sidelong, grim, I wis 

A bit of downright Nemesis - 

While it recovered from tlie sno6k, 

Our fish took shelter neath a rock : 

This was an ancient lobster s house, "&&amp;gt; 

A lobster of prodigious nous, O 

So old that barnacles had spread ^r***-^ a^ 

Their white encampments o er its headf 

And of experience so stupend, 

His claws were blunted at the end, 

Turning life s iron pages o er, 

That shut and can be oped no more. 

Stretching a hospitable claw, 

" At once," said he, " the point I saw ; 

My dear young friend, your case I rue, 

Your great-great-grandfather I knew; 

He was a tried and tender friend 

I know, I ate him in the end : 

In this vile sea a pilgrim long, 

Still my sight s good, my memory strong ; 

The only sign that age is near 

Is a slight deafness in this ear ; 

I understand your case as well 

As this my old familiar shell; 



44 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

This sorrow s a new-fangled notion, 
Come in since first I knew the ocean ; 
We had no radicals, nor crimes, 
Nor lobster-pots, in good old times ; 
Your traps and nets and hooks we owe 
To Messieurs Louis Blanc and Co. ; 
I say to all my sons and daughters, 
Shun Red Republican hot waters ; 
No lobster ever cast his lot 
Among the reds, but went to pot: 
Your trouble s in the jaw, you said ? 
Come, let me just nip off your head, 
And, when a new one comes, the pain 
Will never trouble you again : 
Nay, nay, fear naught : t is nature s law. 
Four times I ve lost this starboard claw ; 
And still, erelong, another grew, 
Good as the old, and better too ! " 

The perch consented, and next day 
An osprey, marketing that way, 
Picked up a fish without a head, 
Floating with belly up, stone dead. 



MORAL. 

j f / Sharp are the teeth of ancient saws, 
* * "/And sauce for goose is gander s sauce ; 

But perch s heads are n t lobster s claws. 
. 

*v/j^V 



A MOOSEHBAD JOURNAL. 45 

Monday, Vzth. The morning was fine, 
and we were called at four o clock. At the 
moment my door was knocked at, I was 
mounting a giraffe with that charming nilad-^ ^ 
mirari which characterizes dreams, to visit r 
c&nJJrester John. Eat-tat-tat-tat ! upon my door 
^ v and upon the horn gate of dreams also. I 
- remarked to my skowhegan (the Tatar for 
^ giraffe-driver) that I was quite sure the ani- 



IUU.L had the raps, a common disease among 
them, for I heard a queer knocking noise in 
side him. It is the sound of his joints, 

^cTambourgi ! (an Oriental term of reverence,) 
and proves him to be of the race of El Kei- 
rat. Rat-tat-tat-too ! and I lost my dinner at 
the frester s, embarking for a voyage to the 
Northwest Carry instead. Never use the 
W/ord canoe, my dear Storg, if you wish to 

retain your self-respect. Birch is the term 
among us backwoodsmen. I never knew it 
till yesterday; but, like a true philosopher, I 
made it appear as if I had been intimate with 

i it from childhood. The rapidity with which 
the human mind levels itself to the standard 

around it gives us the most pertinent warning 

-_ 



46 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

as to the company we keep. It is as hard 
for most characters to stay at their own aver 
age point in all companies, as for a thermome 
ter to say 65 for twenty -four hours together. 
I like this in our friend Johannes TauMs/lKat 
he carries everywhere and maintains his in 
sular temperature, and will have everything 
accommodate itself to that. Shall I confess 
that this morning I would rather have broken 
the moral law, than have endangered the equi 
poise of the birch by my awkwardness ? that 
I should have been prouder of a compliment 
to my paddling, than to have had both my 
guides suppose me the author of Hamlet ? 
Well, Cardinal Richelieu used to jump over 
chairs. 

We were to paddle about twenty miles ; but 
we made it rather more by crossing and re- 
crossing the lake. Twice we landed, once 
at a camp, where we found the cook alone, 
baking bread and gingerbread. Monsieur 
Soyer would have been startled a little by this 
shaggy professor, this Pre-Raphaelite of 
cookery. He represented the salaratus period 
of the art, and his bread was of a brilliant yel- 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 47 

low, like those cakes tinged with saffron, which 

hold out so long against time and the flies in 

little water-side shops of seaport towns, 

dingy extremities of trade fit to moulder on 

* Lethe wharf. His water was better, squeezed 

JV out of ice-cold granite in the neighboring 

-.mountains, and sent through subterranean 

^cfucts to sparkle up by the door of the camp. 

, - L " There s nothin so sweet an hulsome as 

your real spring water," said Uncle Zeb, " git 

it pure. But it s dreffle hard to git it that 

^ain t got sunthin the matter of it. Snow- 



11 burn a man s inside out, I lamed 
tliat to the Roostick war, and the snow 
Jays terrible long on some o thes ere hills. 
^le an Eb Stiles was up old Ktahdn once jest 
about this time o year, an we come acrost a 
kind o holler like, as full o snow as your 
^ ^stockin s full o your foot. / see it fust, an 
; took an rammed a settin -pole ; wahl, it was 
all o twenty foot into t, an could n t fin no 
bottom. I dunno as there s snow-water 
\ enough in this to do no hurt. I don t some- 
.;. r ^Low seem to think that real spring-water s so 
plenty as it used to be." And Uncle Zeb, with 



48 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

perhaps a little over-refinement of scrupulosity, 
applied his lips to the Ethiop ones of a bottle 
of raw gin, with a kiss that drew out its very * 
soul, a basia that Secuiidus mightiiave [ r ^ 
sung. He must have been a wonderful judge 
of water, for he analyzed this, and detected i 
latent snow simply by his eye, and without tl\eU^, 
clumsy process of tasting. I could not help jgjh. 
thinking that he had made the desert his dwell 
ing-place chiefly in order to enjoy the minis- . /2 . 
trations of this one fair spirit unmolested. ^^^ 
We pushed on. Little islands loomed trem- , 
bling between sky and water, like hanging 
gardens. Gradually the filmy trees defined 
themselves, the aerial enchantment lost its 
potency, and we came up with common prose 
islands that had so late been magical and po 
etic. The old story of the attained and uiiat- 
tained. About noon we reached the head of 
the lake, and took possession of a deserted 
icongen, in which to cook and eat our dinner. 
No Jew, I am sure, can have a more thorough 
dislike of salt pork than I have in a normal 
state, yet I had already eaten it raw with hard 
bread for lunch, and relished it keenly. We 




"We sat round and ate thankfully." 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 51 

soon had our tea-kettle over the fire, and before 
long the cover was chattering with the escaping 
steam, which had thus vainly begged of ^11 rnen 
to be saddled and bridled, till Jafrfes Waft one " 
day happened to overhear it. One of our 
guides shot three Canada grouse, and these 
were turned slowly between the lire and a bit 
of salt pork, which dropped fatness upon them 
as it fried. Although my fingers were certainly 
not made before knives and forks, yet they 
served as a convenient substitute for those 
more ancient inventions. We sat round, Turk- 
fashion, and ate thankfully, while a party of 
aborigines of the Mosquito tribe, who had 



--^a- Mosquit 

camped in the wongen before we arrived, dined 
upon us. I do not know what the British 
Protectorate of the Mosquitoes amounts to ; 
but, as I squatted there at the mercy of these 
blood-thirsty savages, I no longer wondered 
that the classic JSvefett had been stung into a 
willingness for war on the question. 

" This ere d be about a complete place for 
a camp, ef there was on y a spring o sweet 
water handy. Frizzled pork goes wal, don t 
it ? Yes, an sets wal, too," said Uncle Zeb, 






52 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

and lie again tilted his bottle, which rose 
nearer and nearer to an angle of forty-five at 
every gurgle. He then broached a curious 
, Ur/ dietetic theory : The reason we take salt 
*i?(jj)ork along is cos it packs handy : you git the 
&lt;. ^ ""greatest amount o board in the smallest com- 
pass, let alone that it s more nourishin 
than an thin else. It kind o don t disgest 
%) quick, but stays by ye, anourishin ye all 
i the while. 

"A feller can live wal on frizzled pork an 
good spring-water, git it good. To the Roos- 
tick war we did n t ask for nothin better, 
on y beans." (Tilt, tilt, gurgle, gurgled] 
Then, with an apparent feeling of inconsis 
tency, " But then, come to git used to a par 
ticular kind o spring-water, an it makes a 
feller hard to suit. Most all sorts o water 
taste kind o //zsipid away from home. Now, 
I ve gut a spring to rny place that s as sweet 
wahl, it s as sweet as maple sap. A feller 
acts about water jest as he does about a pair 
o boots. It s all on it in gittin wonted. 
Now, them boots," etc., etc. (Gurgle, gurgle, 
e, smack /) 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 53 

All tins while lie was packing away the 
remains of the pork and hard bread in two 
large firkins. This accomplished, we re-em 
barked, our uncle on his way to the birch 
essaying a kind of song in four or five parts, 
of which the words were hilarious and the 
tune profoundly melancholy, and which was 
finished, and the rest of his voice apparently 
jerked out of him in one sharp falsetto note, 
by his tripping over the root of a tree. We 
paddled a short distance up a brook which 
came into the lake smoothly through a little 
meadow not far off. We soon reached the 
Northwest Carry, and our guide, pointing 
through the woods, said : " That s the Can- 
nydy road. You can travel that clearn to 
Kebeck, a hundred an twenty mile," a 
privilege of which I respectfully declined to 
avail myself. The offer, however, remains 
open to the public. The Carry is called two 
miles ; but this is the estimate of somebody 
who had nothing to lug. I had a headache 
and all my baggage, which, with a traveller s 
instinct, I had brought with me. (P. S. 
I did not even take the keys out of my pocket, 



54 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

and both my bags were wet through before 
I came back.) My estimate of the distance 
is eighteen thousand six hundred and seyenJty- 
four miles and three quarters, the fraction . 
being the part left to be travelled after one 
of my companions most kindly insisted on 
relieving me of my heaviest bag. I know 
very well that the ancient Roman soldiers 
used to carry sixty pounds weight, and all 
that; but I am not, and never shall be, an 
ancient Roman soldier, no, not even in the 
miraculous Thundering Legion. Uncle Zeb 
, "* stung the two provender firkins across his 
shoulder, and trudged along, grumbling that 
"lie never see secli a contrairy pair as them." 
He had begun upon a second bottle of his ./ 
^"particular kind o spring- water/ and, ^f 
^ ft .every rest, the gurgle of this peripatetic fouii-^ 
iain might be heard, followed by a smack, a^j 
fragment of mosaic song, or a confused clatter -/; 
with the cowhide boots, being an arbitrary ;J- 
symbol, intended to represent the festive ^J 
V^ dance. Christian s pack gave him not half. ; ^ 
*^&lt; -*-*so much trouble as the firkins gave Uncle t v&lt; 
It grew harder and harder to sling 




He had begun on a second bottle. 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

them, and with every fresh gulp of the 
vian elixir, they got heavier. Or rather, ther^, 
truth was, that his hat grew heavier, in which* $* 
he was carrying on an extensive manufac 
ture of bricks without straw. At last affairs 
reached a crisis, and a particularly favorable 
pitch offering, with a puddle at the foot of it, 
even the boots afforded no sufficient ballast, 
and awa t y went our uncle, the satellite firkins 
accompanying faithfully his headlong flight. 
Did ever exiled monarch or disgraced minis 
ter find the cause of his fall in himself? Is 
there not always a strawberry at the bottom 
of our cup of life, on which we can lay all 
the blame of our deviations from the straight 
path ? Till now Uncle Zeb had contrived to 
rve" a gloss of volition to smaller stumblings 
, and gyrations, by exaggerating them into an 
appearance of playful burlesque. But the 
present case was beyond any such subterfuges. 
He held a bed of justice where he sat, and 
then arose slowly, with a stern determination 
of vengeance stiffening every muscle of his 
face. But what would he select as the cul 
prit ? "It s that cussed firkin," he mumbled 



58 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

to himself. "I never knowed a firkin cair 
on so, no, not in the Roostehicick war. 
There, go long, will ye ? and don t come back 
till you ve lamed how to walk with a genel- 
man ! " And, seizing the unhappy scapegoat 
by the bail, he hurled it into the forest. It 
is a curious circumstance, that it was not the 
firkin containing the bottle which was thus 
condemned to exile. 

The end of the Carry was reached at last, 
and, as we drew near it, we heard a sound of 
shouting and laughter. It came from a party 
of men making hay of the wild grass in .Se- 
boomok meadows, which lie around Seboomok 
pond, into which the Carry empties itself. 
Their camp was near, and our two hunters 
set out for it, leaving us seated in the birch on 
the plashy border of the pond. The repose 
was perfect. Another heaven hallowed and 
deepened the polished lake, and through that 
nether world the fish-hawk s double floated 
with balanced wings, or, wheeling suddenly, 
flashed his whitened breast against the sun. 
As the clattering kingfisher flew unsteadily 
across, and seemed to push his heavy head 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 59 

along with ever-renewing effort, a visionary 
mate flitted from downward tree to tree below. 
Some tall alders shaded us from the sun, in 
whose yellow afternoon light the drowsy for 
est was steeped, giving out that wholesome 
resinous perfume, almost the only warm odor 
which it is refreshing to breathe. The tame 
haycocks in the midst of the wildness gave one 
a pleasant reminiscence of home, like hearing 
one s native tongue in a strange country. 

Presently our hunters came back, bringing 
with them a tall, thin, active-looking man, 
with black eyes, that glanced unconsciously 
on all sides, like one of those spots of sunlight 
which a child dances up and clown the street 
with a bit of looking-glass. This was M., the 
captain of the hay-makers, a famous river- 
driver, and who was^ to have fifty men under 
him next winter. I could now understand 
that sleepless vigilance of eye. He had con 
sented to take two of our party in his birch to 
search for moose. A quick, nervous, decided 
man, he got them into the birch, and was off 
instantly, without a superfluous word. He evi 
dently looked upon them as he would upon a 



60 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

couple of logs which lie was to deliver at a 
certain place. Indeed, I doubt if life and the ,/, 

A^ v ^? 
world presented themselves to NapiefuimselfMf^ 

in a more logarithmic way. His only thought 
was to do the immediate duty well, and to pilot ^ 
his particular raft down the crooked stream of 
life to the ocean beyond. The birch seemed to ) 
feel him as an inspiring soul, and slid ^ 



straight and swift for the outlet of the pond. 
As he disappeared under the overarching alders 
of the brook, our two hunters could not re 
press a grave and measured applause. There 
is never any extravagance among these wood 
men ; their eye, accustomed to reckoning the 
number of feet which a tree will scale, is rapid 
and close in its guess of the amount of stuff in 
a man. It was laudfari a laudato, however, 
for they themselves were accounted good men 
in a birch. I was amused, in talking with 
them about him, to meet with an instance of 
that tendency of the human mind to assign 
some utterly improbable reason for gifts which 
seem unaccountable. After due praise, one of 
them said, "I guess he s got some Injun in 
him," although I knew very well that the 



A MOOSEHEAD JOtJRNAL. 61 

speaker had a thorough contempt for the 
red-man, mentally and physically. Here was 
mythology in a small way, the same that 
under more fa\ 7 orable auspices hatched Helen ^ 
put of an egg and gave Merlin an Incubus for 
jffjSi father. I was pleased with all I saw of 
M. He was in his narrow sphere a true az/a 
avftpav, and the ragged edges of his old hat 
seemed to become coronated as I looked at 
him. He impressed me as a man really edu 
cated, that is, with his aptitudes drawn out 
and ready for use. He was A. M. and LL. D. 
in Woods College, Axe-master and Doctor 
of Logs. Are not our educations commonly 
like a pile of books laid over a plant in a pot ? 
The compressed nature struggles through at 
every crevice, but can never get the cramp 
and stunt out of it. We spend all our youth 
in building a vessel for our voyage of life, and 
set forth with streamers flying ; but the mo 
ment we come nigh the great loadstone moun 
tain of our proper destiny, out leap all our 
carefully-driven bolts and nails, and we get 
many a mouthful of good salt brine, and many 
a buffet of the rough water of experience, ba- 
fore we secure the bare right to live. 



62 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

We now entered the outlet, a long-drawn 
aisle of alder, on eacli side of which spired tall 
firs, spruces, and white cedars. The motion 
of the birch reminded me of the gondola, and 
they represent among water-craft the felidae, 
the cat-tribe, stealthy, silent, treacherous, and 
preying by night. I closed my eyes, and 
strove to fancy myself in the dumb city, whose 
only horses, are the bronze ones of St. Mark. 
But Nature would allow no rival, and bent 
down an alder-bough to brush my cheek and 
recall me. Only the robin sings in the emerald 
chambers of these tall sylvan palaces, and the 
squirrel leaps from hanging balcony to balcony. 

The rain which the loons foreboded had 
raised the west branch of the Penobscot so 
much, that a strong current was setting back 
into the pond ; and, when at last we brushed 
through into the river, it was full to the brim, 
too full for moose, the hunters said. Rivers 
with low banks have always the compensation 
of giving a sense of entire fulness. The sun 
sank behind its horizon of pines, whose pointed 
summits notched the rosy west in an endless 
black sierra. At the same moment the golden 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 63 

moon swung slowly up in the east, like the 
other scale of that Homeric balance in which 
Zeus weighed the deeds of men. Sunset and 
moonrise at once ! Adam had no more in 
Eden except the head of Eve upon his 
shoulder. The stream was so smooth, that the 
floating logs we met seemed to hang in a glow 
ing atmosphere, the shadow-half being as real 
as the solid. And gradually the mind was 
etherized to a like dreamy placidity, till fact 
and fancy, the substance and the image, float 
ing on the current of reverie, became but as 
the upper and under halves of one unreal 
reality. 

In the west still lingered a pale-green light. 
I do not know whether it be from greater 
familiarity, but it always seems to me that the 
pinnacles of pine-trees make an edge to the 
landscape which tells better against the twi 
light, or the fainter dawn before the rising 
moon, than the rounded and cloud-cumulus 
outline of hard- wood trees. 

After paddling a couple of miles, we found 
the arbored mouth of the little Malahoodus 
River, famous for moose. We had been on 



64 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

the look-out for it, and I was amused to hear 
one of the hunters say to the other, to assure 
himself of his familiarity with the spot, " You 
drove the West Branch last spring, did n t 
you ? " as one of us might ask about a horse. 
We did not explore the Malahoodus far, but 
left the other birch to thread its cedared soli 
tudes, while we turned back to try our fortunes 
in the larger stream. We paddled on about 
four miles farther, lingering now and then op 
posite the black mouth of a moose-path. The 
incidents of our voyage were few, but quite as 
exciting and profitable as the items of the news 
papers. A stray log compensated very well 
for the ordinary run of accidents, and the float 
ing carkus of a moose which we met could 
pass muster instead of a singular discovery of 
human remains by workmen in digging a cellar. 
Once or twice we saw what seemed ghosts of 
trees ; but they turned out to be dead cedars, 
in winding-sheets of long gray moss, made 
spectral by the moonlight. Just as we were 
turning to drift back down-stream, we heard a 
loud gnawing sound close by us on the bank. 
One of our guides thought it a hedgehog, the 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 65 

other a bear. I inclined to the bear, as mak 
ing the adventure more imposing. A rifle was 
fired at the sound, which began again with the 
most provoking indifference, ere the echo, flar 
ing madly at first from shore to shore, died far 
away in a hoarse sigh. 

Half past Eleven, p. M. No sign of a 
moose yet. The birch, it seems, was strained 
at the Carry, or the pitch was softened as she 
lay on the shore during dinner, and she leaks 
a little. If there be any virtue in the sitzbad, 
I shall discover it. If I cannot extract green 
cucumbers from the moon s rays, I get some 
thing quite as cool. One of the guides shivers 
so as to shake the birch. 

Quarter to Twelve. Later from the Fresh 
et! The water in the birch is about three 
inches deep, but the dampness reaches already 
nearly to the waist. I am obliged to remove 
the matches from the ground-floor of my trou 
sers into the upper story of a breast-pocket. 
Meanwhile, we are to sit immovable, for 
fear of frightening the moose, which in 
duces cramps. 

Half past Twelve. A crashing is heard on 



66 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

the left bank. This is a moose in good ear 
nest. We are besought to hold our breaths, 
if possible. My fingers so numb, I could not, 
if I tried. Crash ! crash ! again, and then a 
plunge, followed by dead stillness. " Swim- 
min crik," whispers guide, suppressing all un 
necessary parts of speech, " don t stir." I, 
for one, am not likely to. A cold fog which 
has been gathering for the last hour has fin 
ished me. I fancy myself one of those naked 
pigs that seem rushing out of market-doors in 
winter, frozen in a ghastly attitude of gallop. 
If I were to be shot myself, I should feel no 
interest in it. As it is, I am only a spectator, 
having declined a gun. Splash ! again ; this 
time the moose is in sight, and click ! click ! 
one rifle misses fire after the other. The fog 
has quietly spiked our batteries. The moose 
goes crashing up the bank, and presently we 
can hear it chewing its cud close by. So we 
lie in wait, freezing. 

At one o clock, I propose to land at a de 
serted wongen I had noticed on the way up, 
where I will make a fire, and leave them to 
refrigerate as much longer as they please. 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 67 

Axe in hand, I go plunging through waist- 
deep weeds dripping with dew, haunted by 
an intense conviction that the gnawing sound 
we had heard was a bear, and a bear at least 
eighteen hands high. There is something pok- 
erish about a deserted dwelling, even in broad 
daylight ; but here in the obscure wood, and 
the moon filtering unwillingly through the 
trees ! Well, I made the door at last, and 
found the place packed fuller with darkness 
than it ever had been with hay. Gradually I 
was able to make things out a little, and be 
gan to hack frozenly at a log which I groped 
out. I was relieved presently by one of the 
guides. He cut at once into one of the up 
rights of the building till he got some dry 
splinters, and we soon had a fire like the burn 
ing of a whole wood-wharf in our part of the 
country. My companion went back to the 
birch, and left me to keep house. First I 
knocked a hole in the roof (which the fire 
began to lick in a relishing way) for a chim 
ney, and then cleared away a damp growth 
of " pison-elder," to make a sleeping place. 
When the unsuccessful hunters returned, I 



68 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

had everything quite comfortable, and was 
steaming at the rate of about ten horse-power 
a minute. Young Telemachus was sorry to 
give up the moose so soon, and, with the 
teeth chattering almost out of his head, he de 
clared that he would like to stick it out all 
night. However, he reconciled himself to the 
fire, and, making our beds of some " splits " 
which we poked from the roof, we lay down 
at half past two. I, who have inherited a 
habit of looking into every closet before I go 
to bed, for fear of fire, had become in two 
days such a stoic of the woods, that I went 
to sleep tranquilly, certain that my bedroom 
would be in a blaze before morning. And so, 
indeed, it was ; and the withes that bound it 
together being burned off, one of the sides fell 
in without waking me. 

Tuesday, \th. After a sleep of two hours 
and a half, so sound that it was as good as 
eight, we started at half past four for the hay 
makers camp again. We found them just 
getting breakfast. We sat down upon the 
deacon-seat before the fire blazing between the 
bedroom and the salle a manger^ which were 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 69 

simply two roofs of spruce-bark, sloping to tlie 
ground on one side, the other three being left 
open. We found that we had, at least, been 
luckier than the other party, for M. had brought 
back his convoy without even seeing a moose. 
As there was not room at the table for all of 
us to breakfast together, these hospitable 
woodmen forced us to sit down first, although 
we resisted stoutly. Our breakfast consisted 
of fresh bread, fried salt pork, stewed whortle 
berries, and tea. Our kind hosts refused to 
take money for it, nor would M. accept any 
thing for his trouble. This seemed even more 
open-handed when I remembered that they 
had brought all their stores over the Carry 
upon their shoulders, paying an ache extra for 
every pound. If their hospitality lacked any 
thing of hard external polish, it had all the 
deeper grace which springs only from sincere 
manliness. I have rarely sat at a table d hote , 
which might not have taken a lesson from ^ &gt;. 
them in essential courtesy. I have never seen &- &lt;? 
a finer race of men. They have all the virtues 7?&lt; : 
of the sailor, without that unsteady roll in the 
gait with which the ocean proclaims itself quite 



70 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

as much in the moral as in the physical habit 
of a man. They appeared to me to have hewn 
out a short northwest passage through wintry 
woods to those spice-lands of character which 
we dwellers in cities must reach, if at all, by 
weary voyages in the monotonous track of the 
trades. 

By the way, as we were embirching last 
evening for our moose-chase, I asked what I 
was to do with my baggage. " Leave it here," 
said our guide, and he laid the bags upon a 
platform of alders, which he bent down to 
keep them beyond reach of the rising water. 

" Will they be safe here ? " 

"As safe as they would be locked up in 
your house at home." 

And so I found them at my return ; only the 
hay-makers had carried them to their camp for 
greater security against the chances of the 
weather. 

We got back to Kineo in time for dinner ; 
and in the afternoon, the weather being fine, 
went up the mountain. As we landed at the 
foot, our guide pointed to the remains of a 
red shirt and a pair of blanket trousers. 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 71 

" That," said he, " is the reason there s such 
a trade in ready-made clo es. A suit gits pooty 
well wore out by the time a camp breaks up in 
the spring, and the lumberers want to look 
about right when they come back into the set 
tlements, so they buy somethin ready-made 
and heave ole bust-up into the bush." True 
enough, thought I, this is the Ready-made Age. 
It is quicker being covered than fitted. So 
we all go to the slop-shop and come out uni 
formed, every mother s son with habits of 
thinking and doing cut on one pattern, with 
no special reference to his peculiar build. 

Kineo rises 1750 feet above the sea, and 
750 above the lake. The climb is very easy, 
with fine outlooks at every turn over lake 
and forest. Near the top is a spring of water, 
which even Uncle Zeb might have allowed to 
be wholesome. The little tin dipper was 
scratched all over with names, showing that 
vanity, at least, is not put out of breath by the 
ascent. Ozymandias, King of kings ! We 
are all scrawling on something of the kind. 
" My name is engraved on the institutions of 
my country," thinks the statesman. But, 



72 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

alas ! institutions are as changeable as tin-dip 
pers ; men are content to drink the same old 
water, if the shape of the cup only be new, 
and our friend gets two lines in the Biograph 
ical Dictionaries. After all, these inscrip 
tions, which make us smile up here, are about 
as valuable as the Assyrian ones which Hincks 
and Rawlinson read at cross-purposes. Have 
we not Smiths and Browns enough, that we 
must ransack the ruins of Nimroud for more ? 
Near the spring we met a Bloomer ! It was 
the first chronic one I had ever seen. It 
struck me as a sensible costume for the occa 
sion, and it will be the only wear in the Greek 
Kalends, when women believe that sense is an 
equivalent for grace. 

The forest primeval is best seen from the 
top of a mountain. It then impresses one by 
its extent, like an Oriental epic. To be in it 
is nothing, for then an acre is as good as a 
thousand square miles. You cannot see five 
rods in any direction, and the ferns, mosses, 
and tree-trunks just around you are the best 
of it. As for solitude, night will make a better 
one with ten feet square of pitch dark; and 



A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 73 

mere size is hardly an element of grandeur, 
except in works of man, as the Colosseum. 
It is through one or the other pole of vanity 
that men feel the sublime in mountains. It is 
either, How small great I am beside it ! or, 
Big as you are, little Fs soul will hold a dozen 
of you. The true idea of a forest is not a selva 
selvaggia, but something humanized a little, 
as we imagine the forest of Arden, with trees 
standing at royal intervals, a commonwealth, 
and not a communism. To some moods, it is 
congenial to look over endless leagues of un 
broken savagery without a hint of man. 

Wednesday. This morning fished. Tele- 
machus caught a laker of thirteen pounds and 
a half, and I an overgrown cusk, which we 
threw away, but which I found afterwards 
Agassiz would have been glad of, for all is fish 
that comes to his net, from the fossil down. 
The fish, when caught, are straightway knocked 
on the head. A lad who went with us seem 
ing to show an over-zeal in this operation, we 
remonstrated. But he gave a good, human 
reason for it, " He no need to ha j gone and 
been a fish if he did n t like it," an excuse 



74 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL. 

which superior strength or cunning has always 
found sufficient. It was some comfort, in this 
case, to think that St. Jerome believed in a 
limitation of God s providence, and that it did 
not extend to inanimate things or creatures 
devoid of reason. 

Thus, my dear Storg, I have finished my 
Oriental adventures, and somewhat, it must be 
owned, in the diffuse Oriental manner. There 
is very little about Moosehead Lake in it, and 
not even the Latin name for moose, which I 
might have obtained by sufficient research. If 
1 had killed one, I would have given you his 
name in that dead language. I did not profess 
to give you an account of the lake ; but a jour 
nal, and, moreover, my journal, with a little 
nature, a little human nature, and a great deal 
of I in it, which last ingredient I take to be 
the true spirit of this species of writing ; all 
the rest being so much water for tender throats 
which cannot take it neat. 



AT SEA. 




AT SEA. 



TIE sea was meant to be looked at from 
the shore, as mountains are from the 
plain. Lucretius made this discovery 
long ago, and was blunt enough to blurt it 
forth, romance and sentiment in other words, 
the pretence of feeling what we do not feel 
being inventions of a later day. To be sure, 
Cicero used to twaddle about Greek literature 
and philosophy, much as people do about 
ancient art nowadays ; but I rather sympa 
thize with those stout old Romans who de 
spised both, and believed that to found an 
empire was as grand an achievement as to 
build an epic or to carve a statue. But though 
there might have been twaddle, (as why not, 
since there was a Senate ? ) I rather think Pe- 



78 AT SEA. 

trarch was the first clioragus of that senti 
mental dance which so long led young folks 
away from the realities of life like the piper of 
Hamelin, and whose succession ended, let us 
hope, with Chateaubriand. But for them, 
Byron, whose real strength lay in his sincerity, 
would never have talked about the " sea bound 
ing beneath him like a steed that knows his 
rider," and all that sort of thing. Even if it 
had been true, steam has been as fatal to that 
part of the romance of the sea as to hand-loom 
weaving. But what say you to a twelve days 
calm such as we dozed through in mid-Atlantic 
and in mid- August ? I know nothing so tedious 
at once and exasperating as that regular slap 
of the wilted sails when the ship rises and falls 
with the slow breathing of the sleeping sea, 
one greasy, brassy swell following another, 
slow, smooth, immitigable as the series of 
Wordsworth s "Ecclesiastical Sonnets." Even 
at his best, Neptune, in a tete-a-tete , has a way 
of repeating himself, an obtuseness to the ne 
quid nimis, that is stupefying. It reminds me 
of organ-music and my good friend Sebastian 
Bach. A fugue or two will do very well; but 



AT SEA. 79 

a concert made up of nothing else is altogether 
too epic for me. There is nothing so desper 
ately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer 
wonder at the cruelty of pirates. Fancy an 
existence in which the coming up of a clumsy 
finback whale, who says Pooh ! to you solemnly 
as you lean over the taffrail, is an event as ex 
citing as an election on shore ! The dampness 
seems to strike into the wits as into the lucifer- 
matches, so that one may scratch a thought 
half a dozen times and get nothing at last but 
a faint sputter, the forlorn hope of fire, which 
only goes far enough to leave a sense of suffo 
cation behind it. Even smoking becomes an 
employment instead of a solace. Who less 
likely to come to their wit s end than W. M. T. 
and A. H. C. ? Yet I have seen them driven 
to five meals a day for mental occupation. I 
sometimes sit and pity Noah ; but even he had 
this advantage over all succeeding navigators, 
that, wherever he landed, he was sure to get 
no ill news from home. He should be canon 
ized as the patron-saint of newspaper corre 
spondents, being the only man who ever had 
the very last authentic intelligence from every 
where. 



80 AT SEA. 

The finback whale recorded just above has 
much the look of a brown-paper parcel, the 
whitish stripes that run across him answering 
for the pack-thread. He has a kind of acci 
dental hole in the top of his head, through 
which he pooh-poohs the rest of creation, and 
which looks as if it had been made by the 
chance thrust of a chestnut rail. He was our 
first event. Our second was harpooning a 
sunfisli, which basked dozing on the lap of the 
sea, looking so much Iik3 the giant turtle of 
an alderman s dream, that I am persuaded he 
would have made mock-turtle soup rather 
than acknowledge his imposture. But he 
broke away just as they were hauling him 
over the side, and sank placidly through the 
clear water, leaving behind him a crimson trail 
that wavered a moment and was gone. 

The sea, though, has better sights than these. 
When we were up with the Azores, we began 
to meet flying-fish and Portuguese men-of- 
war beautiful as the galley of Cleopatra, tiny 
craft that dared these seas before Columbus. 
I have seen one of the former rise from the 
crest of a wave, and, glancing from another 



AT SEA. 81 

some two hundred feet beyond, take a fresh 
flight of perhaps as long. How Calderon 
would have similized this pretty creature had 
he ever seen it ! How would he have run him 
up and down the gamut of simile ! If a fish, 
then a fish with wings ; if a bird, then a bird 
with fins; and so on, keeping up the poor 
shuttle-cock of a conceit as is his wont. 
Indeed, the poor thing is the most killing bait 
for a comparison, and I assure you I have 
three or four in my inkstand; but be calm, 
they shall stay there. Moore, who looked on 
all nature as a kind of Gradns ad Parnassum, 
a thesaurus of similitude, and spent his life in 
a game of What is my thought like? with 
himself, did the flying-fish on his way to Ber 
muda. So I leave him in peace. 

The most beautiful thing I have seen at sea, 
all the more so that I had never heard of it, 
is the trail of a shoal of fish through the phos 
phorescent water. It is like a flight of silver 
rockets, or the streaming of northern lights 
through that silent nether heaven. I thought 
nothing could go beyond that rustling star- 
foam which was churned up by our ship s 



82 AT SEA. 

bows, or those eddies and disks of dreamy 
flame that rose and wandered out of sight 
behind us. 

T was fire our ship was plunging through, 
Cold fire that o er the quarter flew ; 
And wandering moons of idle flame 
Grew full and waned, and went and came, 
Dappling with light the huge sea-snake 
That slid behind us in the wake. 

But there was something even more delicately 
rare in the apparition of the fish, as they 
turned up in gleaming furrows the latent 
moonshine which the ocean seemed to have 
hoarded against these vacant interlunar nights. 
In the Mediterranean one day, as we were 
lying becalmed, I observed the water freckled 
with dingy specks, which at last gathered to a 
pinkish scum on the surface. The sea had 
been so phosphorescent for some nights, that 
when the Captain gave me my bath, by dous 
ing me with buckets from the house on deck, 
the spray flew off my head and shoulders in 
sparks. It occurred to me that this dirty- 
looking scum might be the luminous matter, 
and I had a pailful dipped up to keep till after 



AT SEA. 83 

dark. When I went to look at it after night 
fall, it seemed at first perfectly dead; but 
when I shook it, the whole broke out into 
what I can only liken to milky flames, whose 
lambent silence was strangely beautiful, and 
startled me almost as actual projection might an 
alchemist. I could not bear to be the death 
of so much beauty; so I poured it all over 
board again. 

Another sight worth taking a voyage for is 
that of the sails by moonlight. Our course 
was "south and by east, half south," so that 
we seemed bound for the full moon as she 
rolled up over our wavering horizon. Then 
I used to go forward to the bowsprit and look 
back. Our ship was a clipper, with every rag 
set, stunsails, sky-scrapers, and all; nor was 
it easy to believe that such a wonder could 
be built of canvas as that white many-storied 
pile of cloud that stooped over me, or drew 
back as we rose and fell with the waves. 

These are all the wonders I can recall of 
my five weeks at sea, except the sun. Were 
you ever alone with the sun ? You think it a 
very simple question ; but I never was, hi the 



84 AT SEA. 

full sense of the word, till I was held up to 
him one cloudless day on the broad buckler 
of the ocean. I suppose one might have the 
same feeling in the desert. I remember get 
ting something like it years ago, when I 
climbed alone to the top of a mountain, and 
lay face up on the hot gray moss, striving to 
get a notion of how an Arab might feel. It 
was my American commentary of the Koran, 
and not a bad one. In a New England win 
ter, too, when everything is gagged with snow, 
as if some gigantic physical geographer were 
taking a cast of the earth s face in plaster, the 
bare knob of a hill will introduce you to the 
sun as a comparative stranger. But at sea 
you may be alone with him day after day, and 
almost all day long. I never understood 
before that nothing short of full daylight can 
give the supremest sense of solitude. Dark 
ness will not do so, for the imagination peo 
ples it with more shapes than ever were 
poured from the frozen loins of the populous 
North. The sun, I sometimes think, is a 
little grouty at sea, especially at high noon, 
feeling that he wastes his beams on those 



AT SEA. 85 

fruitless furrows. It is otherwise with the 
moon. She "comforts the night," as Chap 
man finely says, and I always found her a 
companionable creature. 

In the ocean-horizon I took untiring delight. 
It is the true magic-circle of expectation and 
conjecture, almost as good as a wishing-ring. 
What will rise over that edge we sail toward 
daily and never overtake ? A sail ? an island ? 
the new shore of the Old World ? Something 
rose every day, which I need not have gone so 
far to see, but at whose levee I was a much 
more faithful courtier than on shore. A cloud 
less sunrise in mid-ocean is beyond comparison 
for simple grandeur. It is like Dante s style, 
bare and perfect. Naked sun meets naked 
sea, the true classic of nature. There may be 
more sentiment in morning on shore, the 
shivering fairy-jewelry of dew, the silver point- 
lace of sparkling hoar-frost, but there is also 
more complexity, more of the romantic. The 
one savors of the elder Edda, the other of the 
Minnesingers. 

And I thus floating, lonely elf, 
A kind of planet by myself, 



86 AT SEA. 

The mists draw up and furl away, 

And in the east a warming gray, 

Faint as the tint of oaken woods 

When o er their buds May breathes and broods, 

Tells that the golden sunrise-tide 

Is lapsing up earth s thirsty side, 

Each moment purpling on the crest 

Of some stark billow farther west : 

And as the sea-moss droops and hears 

The gurgling flood that nears and nears, 

And then with tremulous content 

Floats out each thankful filament, 

So waited I until it came, 

God s daily miracle, shame 

That I had seen so many days 

Unthankful, without wondering praise, 

Not recking more this bliss of earth 

Than the cheap fire that lights my hearth ! 

But now glad thoughts and holy pour 

Into my heart, as once a year 

To San Miniato s open door, 

In long procession, chanting clear, 

Through slopes of sun, through shadows hoar, 

The coupled monks slow-climbing sing, 

And like a golden censer swing 

From rear to front, from front to rear 

Their alternating bursts of praise, 



AT SEA. 87 

Till the roof s fading seraphs gaze 
Down through an odorous mist, that crawls 
Lingeringly up the darkened walls, 
And the dim arches, silent long, 
Are startled with triumphant song. 

I wrote yesterday that the sea still rimmed 
our prosy lives with mystery and conjecture. 
But one is shut up on shipboard like Mon 
taigne in his tower, with nothing to do but to 
review his own thoughts and contradict him 
self. Dire, redire, et me contredire, will be the 
staple of my journal till I see land. I say noth 
ing of such matters as the montagna bruna on 
which Ulysses was wrecked ; but since the six 
teenth century could any man reasonably hope 
to stumble on one of those wonders which were 
cheap as dirt in the days of St. Saga ? Faustus, 
Don Juan, and Tanhau ser are the last ghosts 
of legend, that lingered almost till the Gallic 
cock-crow of universal enlightenment and dis 
illusion. The Public School has done for Im 
agination. What shall I see in Outre-Mer, or 
on the way thither, but what can be seen with 
eyes ? To be sure, I stick by the sea-serpent, 



88 AT SEA. 

and would fain believe that science lias scotched, 
not killed, him. Nor is he to be lightly given 
up, for, like the old Scandinavian snake, he 
binds together for us the two hemispheres of 
Past and Present, of Belief and Science. He 
is the link which knits us seaboard Yankees 
with our Norse progenitors, interpreting be 
tween the age of the dragon and that of the 
railroad train. We have made ducks and 
drakes of that large estate of wonder and 
delight bequeathed to us by ancestral vikings, 
and this alone remains to us unthrift heirs of 
Linn. 

I feel an undefined respect for a man who 
has seen the sea-serpent. He is to his brother- 
fishers what the poet is to his fellow-men. 
Where they have seen nothing better than a 
school of horse-mackerel, or the idle coils of 
ocean around Half-way Rock, he has caught 
authentic glimpses of the withdrawing mantle- 
hem of the Edda age. I care not for the 
monster himself. It is not the thing, but the 
belief in the thing, that is dear to me. May 
it be long before Professor Owen is comforted 
with the sight of his unfleshed vertebrae, long 



AT SEA. 89 

before they stretch many a rood behind Kim- 
ball s or Barnum s glass, reflected in the shal 
low orbs of Mr. and Mrs. Public, which stare, 
but see not ! When we read that Captain* 
Spalding, of the pink-stern Three follies, has 
beheld him rushing through the brine like an 
infinite series of bewitched mackerel-casks, we 
feel that the mystery of old Ocean, at least, 
has not yet been sounded, that Faith .and 
Awe survive there unevaporate. I once ven 
tured the horse-mackerel theory to an old 
fisherman, browner than a tomcod. "Hos- 
mackril ! " he exclaimed indignantly, " hos- 
mackril be " (here he used a phrase com 
monly indicated in laical literature by the same 
sign which serves for Doctorate in Divinity,) 
"don t yer spose / know a hos-mackril ?" 
The intonation of that "/" would have si 
lenced Professor Monkbarns Owen with his 
provoking phoca forever. What if one should 
ask him if he knew a trilobite ? 

The fault of modern travellers is, that they 
see nothing out of sight. They talk of eocene 
periods and tertiary formations, and tell us 
how the world looked to the plesiosaur. They 



90 AT SEA. 

take science (or nescience) with them, instead 
of that soul of generous trust their elders had. 
All their senses are sceptics and doubters, 
materialists reporting things for other sceptics 
to doubt still further upon. Nature becomes 
a reluctant witness upon the stand, badgered 
with geologist hammers and phials of acid. 
There have been no travellers since those 
included in Hakluyt and Purchas, except 
Martin, perhaps, who saw an inch or two into 
the invisible at the Orkneys. We have peri 
patetic lecturers, but no more travellers. 
Travellers stories are no longer proverbial. 
We have picked nearly every apple (wormy or 
otherwise) from the world s tree of knowledge, 
and that without an Eve to tempt us. Two 
or three have hitherto hung luckily beyond 
reach on a lofty bough shadowing the interior 
of Africa, but there is a German Doctor at this 
very moment pelting at them with sticks and 
stones. It may be only next week, and these 
too, bitten by geographers and geologists, will 
be thrown away. 

Analysis is carried into everything. Even 
Deity is subjected to chemic tests. We must 



AT SEA. 91 

have exact knowledge, a cabinet stuck full of 
facts pressed, dried, or preserved in spirits in 
stead of the large, vague world our fathers had. 
With them science was poetry ; with us, poetry 
is science. Our modern Eden is a hortus sic- 
cus. Tourists defraud rather than enrich us. 
They have not that sense of aesthetic propor 
tion which characterized the elder traveller. 
Earth is no longer the fine work of art it was, 
for nothing is left to the imagination. Job 
Hortop, arrived at the height of the Bermudas, 
thinks it full time to indulge us in a merman. 
Nay, there is a story told by Webster, in his 
" Witchcraft," of a merman with a mitre, who, 
on being sent back to his watery diocese of fin- 
land, made what advances he could toward an 
episcopal benediction by bowing his head thrice. 
Doubtless he had been consecrated by St. 
Antony of Padua. A dumb bishop would be 
sometimes no unpleasant phenomenon, by the 
way. Sir John Hawkins is not satisfied with 
telling us about the merely sensual Canaries, 
but is generous enough to throw us in a hand 
ful of " certain flitting islands " to boot. 
Henry Hawkes describes the visible Mexican 



92 AT SEA. 

cities, and then is not so frugal but that he can 
give us a few invisible ones. Thus do these 
generous ancient mariners make children of us 
again. Their successors show us an earth 
effete and past bearing, tracing out with the 
eyes of industrious fleas every wrinkle and 
crowfoot. 

The journals of the elder navigators are 
prose Odysseys. The geographies of our an 
cestors were works of fancy and imagination. 
They read poems where we yawn over items. 
Their world was a huge wonder-horn, ex- 
haustless as that which Thor strove to drain. 
Ours would scarce quench the small thirst of 
a bee. No modern voyager brings back the 
magical foundation-stones of a Tempest. No 
Marco Polo, traversing the desert beyond the 
city of Lok, would tell of things able to inspire 
the mind of Milton with 

" Calling shapes and beckoning shadows dire, 
And airy tongues that syllable men s names 
On sands and shores and desert wildernesses." 

It was easy enough to believe the story of 
Dante, when two thirds of even the upper- 



AT SEA. 93 

world were yet untraversed and unmapped. 
With every step of the recent traveller our 
inheritance of the wonderful is diminished. 
Those beautifully pictured notes of the Possi 
ble are redeemed at a ruinous discount in the 
hard and cumbrous coin of the actual. How 
are we not defrauded and impoverished ? Does 
California vie with El Dorado ? or are Bruce s 
Abyssinian kings a set-off for Prester John ? 
A bird in the bush is worth two in the hand. 
And if the philosophers have not even yet 
been able to agree whether the world has any 
existence independent of ourselves, how do we 
not gain a loss in every addition to the cata 
logue of Yulgar Errors ? Where are the 
fishes which nidificated in trees ? Where the 
monopodes sheltering themselves from the sun 
beneath their single umbrella-like foot, um 
brella-like in everything but the fatal necessity 
of being borrowed? Where the Acephali, 
with whom Herodotus, in a kind of ecstasy, 
wound up his climax of men with abnormal 
top-pieces ? Where the Roc whose eggs are 
possibly boulders, needing no far-fetched the 
ory of glacier or iceberg to account for them ? 



94 AT SEA. 

Where the tails of the men of Kent ? Where 
the no legs of the bird of paradise ? Where 
the Unicorn, with that single horn of his, sov 
ereign against all manner of poisons ? Where 
the Fountain of Youth? Where that Thes- 
salian spring, which, without cost to the coun 
try, convicted and punished perjurers ? Where 
the Amazons of Orellaua? All these, and a 
thousand other varieties, we have lost, and 
have got nothing instead of them. And those 
who have robbed us of them have stolen that 
which not enriches themselves. It is so much 
wealth cast into the sea beyond all approach 
of diving-bells. We owe no thanks to Mr. J. 
E. Worcester, whose Geography we studied 
enforcedly at school. Yet even he had his 
relentings, and in some softer moment vouch 
safed us a fine, inspiring print of the Mael 
strom, answerable to the twenty-four mile 
diameter of its suction. Year by year, more 
and more of the world gets disenchanted. 
Even the icy privacy of the arctic and antarctic 
circles is invaded. Our youth are no longer 
ingenious, as indeed no ingenuity is demanded 
of them. Everything is accounted for, every- 



AT SEA. 



95 



thing cut and dried, and the world may be put 
together as easily as the fragments of a dis 
sected map. The Mysterious bounds nothing 
now on the North, South, East, or West. We 
have played Jack Horner with our earth, till 
there is never a plum left in it. 




THE FARMER S BOY. 




SPRING. 



INVOCATION, ETC. SEED-TIME. HARROWING. MORNING WALKS. 

MILKING. THE DAIRY. SUFFOLK CHEESE. SPRING COMING 

FORTH. SHEEP FOND OF CHANGING. LAMBS AT PLAY. ^THE 
BUTCHER, ETC. 




COME, blest spirit! whatso er thou 

art, 
Thou kindling warmth that hover st 

round my heart, 
Sweet inmate, hail ! thou source of sterling 

joy, 

That poverty itself cannot destroy, 
Be thou my Muse ; and, faithful still to me, 
Retrace the paths of wild obscurity. 
No deeds of arms my humble lines rehearse ; 
No Alpine wonders thunder through my verse, 
The roaring cataract, the snow-topt hill, 



6 SPRING. 

Inspiring awe, till breath itself stands still : 
Nature s sublimer scenes ne er charmed mine 

eyes, 
Nor science led me through the boundless 

skies ; 

From meaner objects far my raptures flow ; 
point these raptures ! bid my bosom glow ! 
And lead my soul to ecstasies of praise 
For all the blessings of my infant days ! 
Bear me through regions where gay Fancy 

dwells ; 
But mould to Truth s fair form what Memory 

tells. 

Live, trifling incidents, and grace my song, 
That to the humblest menial belong : 
To him whose drudgery unheeded goes, 
His joys unreckoned as his cares or woes ; 
Though joys and cares in every path are sown, 
And youthful minds have feelings of their 

own, 

Quick-springing sorrows, transient as the dew, 
Delights from trifles, trifles ever new. r 
T was thus with Giles : meek, fatherless, 

and poor : 



SPRING. 7 

Labor his portion, but he felt no more ; 
No stripes, no tyranny his steps pursued : 
His life was constant, cheerful servitude : 
Strange to the world, he wore a bashful look, 
The fields his study, Nature was his book ; 
And, as revolving seasons changed the scene 
From heat to cold, tempestuous to serene, 
Though every change still varied his employ, 
Yet each new duty brought its share of joy. 

Where noble Grafton spreads his rich do 
mains, 
Round Euston s watered vale and sloping 

plains, 
Where woods and groves in solemn grandeur 

rise, 

Where the kite brooding unmolested flies, 
The woodcock and the painted pheasant race, 
And skulking foxes, destined for the chase, 
There Giles, untaught and unrepining, strayed 
Through every copse, and grove, and winding 

glade ; 
There his first thoughts to Nature s charms 

inclined, 
That stamps devotion on the inquiring mind. 



8 SPRING. 

A little farm his generous master tilled, 
Who with peculiar grace his station filled ; 
By deeds of hospitality endeared, 
Served from affection, for his worth revered ; 
A happy offspring blest his plenteous board, 
His fields were fruitful, and his barns well 

stored, 

And fourscore ewes he fed ; a sturdy team ; 
And lowing kine that grazed beside the 

stream : 

Unceasing industry he !iept in view ; 
And never lacked a job for Giles to do. 

Fled now the sullen murmurs of the North, 
The splendid raiment of the Spring peeps 

forth ; 

Her universal green, and the clear sky, 
Delight still more and more the gazing eye. 
Wide o er the fields, in rising moisture strong, 
Shoots up the simple flower, or creeps along 
The mellowed soil ; imbibing fairer hues, 
Or sweets from frequent showers and evening 

dews, 

That summon from their sheds the slumber 
ing ploughs, 



SPRING. 9 

While health impregnates every breeze that 

blows : 

No wheels support the diving, pointed share ; 
No groaning ox is doomed to labor there ; 
No helpmates teach the docile steed his road 
(Alike unknown the ploughboy and the 

goad) ; 

But, unassisted through each toilsome day, 
With smiling brow the ploughman cleaves 

his way, 

Draws his fresh parallels, and, widening still, 
Treads slow the heavy dale, or climbs the hill : 
Strong on the wind his busy followers play, 
Where writhing earthworms meet the unwel 
come day ; 

Till all is changed, and hill and level down 
Assume a livery of sober brown ; 
Again disturbed, when Giles with wearying 

strides 
From ridge to ridge the ponderous harrow 

guides, 

His heels deep sinking every step he goes, 
Till dirt adhesive loads his clouted shoes. 
Welcome, green headland ! firm beneath his 

feet; 



10 SPRING. 

Welcome, the friendly bank s refreshing seat ; 
There, warm with toil, his panting horses 

browse 

Their sheltering canopy of pendent boughs ; 
Till rest, delicious, chase each transient pain, 
And new-born vigor swell in every vein. 
Hour after hour, and day to day succeeds, 
Till every clod and deep-drawn furrow spreads 
To crumbling mould, a level surface clear, 
And strewed with corn to crown the rising 

year ; 
And o er the whole Giles, once transverse 

again, 

In earth s moist bosom buries up the grain. 
The work is done : no more to man is given ; 
The grateful farmer trusts the rest to Heaven. 
Yet oft with anxious heart he looks around, 
And marks the first green blade that breaks 

the ground ; 

In fancy sees his trembling oats uprun, 
His tufted barley yellow with the sun ; 
Sees clouds propitious shed their timely store, 
And all his harvest gathered round his door. 
But still unsafe the big swoln grain below, 
A favorite morsel with the rook and crow ; * 



SPRING. 11 

From field to field the flock increasing goes ; 
To level crops most formidable foes : 
Their danger well the wary plunderers know, 
And place a watch on some conspicuous 

bough ; 

Yet oft the skulking gunner by surprise 
Will scatter death amongst them as they rise. 
These, hung in triumph round the spacious 

field, 

At best will but a short-lived terror yield : 
Nor guards of property (not penal law, 
But harmless riflemen of rags and straw) ; 
Familiarized to these they boldly rove, 
Nor heed such sentinels that never move. 
Let then your birds lie prostrate on the earth, 
In dying posture, and with wings stretcht 

forth ! 

Shift them at eve or morn from place to place, 
And death shall terrify the pilfering race ; 
In the mid air, while circling round and 

round, 
They call their lifeless comrades from the 

ground ; 
With quickening wing, and notes of loucl 

alarm, 



12 SPRING. 

Warn the whole flock to shun the impending 

harm. 
This task had Giles, in fields remote from 

home ; 

Oft has he wished the rosy morn to come : 
Yet never famed was he nor foremost found 
To break the seal of sleep ; his sleep was 

sound : 
But when at daybreak summoned from his 

bed, 
Light as the lark that carolled o er his 

head. 

His sandy way, deep-worn by hasty showers, 
Overarched with oaks that formed fantastic 

bowers, 

Waving aloft their towering branches proud, 
In borrowed tinges from the eastern cloud, 
Gave inspiration, pure as ever flowed, 
And genuine transport in his bosom glowed. 
His own shrill matin joined the various notes 
Of Nature s music, from a thousand throats : 
The blackbird strove with emulation sweet, 
And Echo answered from her close retreat , 
The sporting white-throat, on some twig s end 

borne, 



SPRING. 13 

Poured hymns to freedom and the rising 
rnorn ; 

Stopt in her song, perchance the starting 
thrush 

Shook a white shower from the blackthorn- 
bush, 

Where dew-drops thick as early blossoms 
hung, 

And trembled as the minstrel sweetly sung. 

Across his path, in either grove to hide, 

The timid rabbit scouted by his side ; 

Or pheasant boldly stalked along the road, 

Whose gold and purple tints alternate glowed. 

But groves no farther fenced the devious 

way ; 

A wide-extended heath before him lay, 
Where on the grass the stagnant shower had 

run, 

And shone a mirror to the rising sun, 
Thus doubly seen to light a distant wood, 
To give new life to each expanding bud ; 
And chase away the dewy foot-marks found, 
Where prowling Reynard trod his nightly 

round ; 



14 SPRING. 

To shun whose thefts t was Giles s evening 

care, 

His feathered victims to suspend in air, 
High on the bough that nodded o er his 

head, 
And thus each morn to strew the field with 

dead. 

His simple errand done, he homeward 

hies ; 

Another instantly its place supplies. 
The clattering dairy-maid immersed in steam, 
Singing and scrubbing, midst her milk and 

cream, 
Bawls out, " Go fetch the cows ! " he hears 

no more ; 
For pigs, and ducks, and turkeys throng the 

door, 

And sitting hens, for constant war prepared ; 
A concert strange to that which late he heard. 
Straight to the meadow then he whistling 

goes; 

With well-known halloo calls his lazy cows : 
Down the rich pasture heedlessly they graze, 
Or hear the summons with an idle gaze ; 



SPRING. 15 

For well they know the cow-yard yields no 
more 

Its tempting fragrance, nor its wintry store. 

Reluctance marks their steps, sedate and 
slow ! 

The right of conquest all the law they know J 

The strong press on, the weak by turns suc 
ceed, 

And one superior always takes the lead ; 

Is ever foremost, wheresoe er they stray ; 

Allowed precedence, undisputed sway ; 

With jealous pride her station is maintained, 

For many a broil that post of honor gained. 

At home, the yard affords a grateful scene ; 

For Spring makes e en a miry cow-yard clean. 

Thence from its chalky bed behold con 
veyed 

The rich manure that drenching Winter made, 

Which, piled near home, grows green with 
many a weed, 

A promised nutriment for Autumn s seed. 

Forth comes the maid, and like the morning 
smiles ; 

The mistress too, and followed close by Giles. 

A friendly tripod forms their humble seat, 



16 SPRING. 

With pails bright scoured, and delicately 

sweet. 
Where shadowing elms obstruct the morning 

ray, 

Begins the work, begins the simple lay ; 
The full-charged udder yields its willing 

streams, 
While Mary sings some lover s amorous 

dreams ; 
And crouching Giles beneath a neighboring 

tree 
Tugs o er his pail, and chants with equal 

glee ; 

Whose hat with tattered brim, of nap so bare, 
From the cow s side purloins a coat of hair, 
A mottled ensign of his harmless trade, 
An unambitious, peaceable cockade. 
As unambitious too that cheerful aid 
The mistress yields beside her rosy maid ; 
With joy she views her plenteous reeking 

store, 

And bears a brimmer to the dairy door : 
Her cows dismissed, the luscious mead to 

roam, 
Till eve again recall them loaded home. 



SPRING. 17 

And now the dairy claims her choicest care, 
And half her household find employment 

there : 
Slow rolls the churn, its load of clogging 

cream 

At once foregoes its quality and name : 
From knotty particles first floating wide, 
Congealing butter s dashed from side to side ; 
Streams of new milk through flowing coolers 

stray, 

And snow-white curd abounds, and whole 
some whey. 
Due north the unglazed windows, cold and 

clear, 

For warming sunbeams are unwelcome here. 
Brisk goes the work beneath each busy hand, 
And Giles must trudge, whoever gives com 
mand ; 

A Gibeonite that serves them all by turns : 
He drains the pump, from him the fagot 

burns ; 

From him the noisy hogs demand their food ; 
While at his heels run many a chirping brood,- 
Or down his path in expectation stand, 
With equal claims upon his strewing hand. 



18 SPRING. 

Thus wastes the morn, till each with pleasure 

sees 
The bustle o er, and pressed the new-made 

cheese. 

Unrivalled stands thy country cheese, 

Giles ! 

Whose very name alone engenders smiles ; 
Whose fame abroad by every tongue is 

spoke, 

The well-known butt of many a flinty joke, 
That pass like current coin the nation 

through ; 

And, ah ! experience proves the satire true. 
Provision s grave, thou ever-craving mart, 
Dependent, huge metropolis I where Art 
Her poring thousands stows in breathless 

rooms, 
Midst poisonous smokes, and steams, and 

rattling looms : 

Where Grandeur revels in unbounded stores j 
Restraint, a slighted stranger at their doors ! 
Thou, like a whirlpool, drain st the countries 

round, 
Till London market, London price, resound 



SPRING. 19 

Through every town, round every passing 

load, 

And dairy produce throngs the eastern road : 
Delicious veal and butter, every hour, 
From Essex lowlands, and the banks of Stour ; 
And further far, where numerous herds re 
pose, 

From Orwell s brink, from Waveny, or Ouse. 
Hence Suifolk dairy- wives run mad for cream, 
And leave their milk with nothing but its 

name ; 

Its name derision and reproach pursue, 
And strangers tell of " three times skimmed 

sky-blue." 

To cheese converted, what can be its boast 1 
What, but the common virtues of a post ! 
If drought o ertake it faster than the knife, 
Most fair it bids for stubborn length of life, 
And, like the oaken shelf whereon ? t is laid, 
Mocks the weak efforts of the bending blade ; 
Or in the hog-trough rests in perfect spite, 
Too big to swallow, and too hard to bite. 
Inglorious victory ! Ye Cheshire meads, 
Or Severn s flowery dales, where plenty 
treads, 



20 SPRING. 

Was your rich milk to suffer wrongs like 

these, 
Farewell your pride ! farewell, renowned 

cheese ! 

The skimmer dread, whose ravages alone 
Thus turn the meads sweet nectar into stone. 

Neglected now the early daisy lies ; 
Nor thou, pale primrose, bloom st the only 

prize : 

Advancing Spring profusely spreads abroad 
Flowers of all hues, with sweetest fragrance 

stored ; 

Where er she treads Love gladdens every plain, 
Delight on tiptoe bears her lucid train ; 
Sweet Hope with conscious brow before her 

flies, 

Anticipating wealth from Summer skies ; 
All nature feels her renovating sway ; 
The sheep-fed pasture, and the meadow gay ; 
And trees and shrubs, no longer budding seen, 
Display the new-grown branch of lighter 

green ; 

On airy downs the idling shepherd lies, 
And sees to-morrow in the marbled skies. 



SPRING. 21 

Here then, my soul, thy darling theme pursue, 
For every day was Giles a shepherd too. 

Small was his charge : no wilds had they 

to roam ; 
But bright enclosures circling round their 

home. 
No yellow-blossomed furze nor stubborn 

thorn, 
The heath s rough produce, had their fleeces 

torn ; 

Yet ever roving, ever seeking thee, 
Enchanting spirit, dear Variety ! 
O happy tenants, prisoners of a day ! 
Released to ease, to pleasure, and to play ; 
Indulged through every field by turns to 

range, 

And taste them all in one continual change. 
For though luxuriant their grassy food, 
Sheep long confined but loathe the present 

good : 

Bleating around the homeward gate they meet, 
And starve, and pine, with plenty at their 

feet. 
Loosed from the winding lane, a joyful throng, 



22 SPRING. 

See, o er yon pasture, how they pour along ! 
Giles round their boundaries takes his usual 

stroll ; 

Sees every pass secured, and fences whole ; 
High fences, proud to charm the gazing eye, 
Where many a nestling first essays to fly ; 
Where blows the woodbine, faintly streaked 

with red, 

And rests on every bough its tender head ; 
Round the young ash its twining branches 

meet, 
Or crown the hawthorn with its odor sweet. 

Say, ye that know, ye who have felt and 

seen, 
Spring s morning smiles, and soul-enlivening 

green, 

Say, did you give the thrilling transport way ? 
Did your eye brighten when young lambs at 

play 

Leaped o er your path with animated pride, 
Or gazed in merry clusters by your side 1 
Ye who can smile, to wisdom no disgrace, 
At the arch meaning of a kitten s face : 
If spotless innocence, and infant mirth, 



SPRING. 23 

Excites to praise, or gives reflection birth ; 
In shades like these pursue your favorite joy, 
Midst Nature s revels, sports that never cloy. 

A few begin a short but vigorous race, 
And Indolence, abashed, soon flies the place ; 
Thus challenged forth, see thither one by one, 
From every side assembling playmates run ; 
A thousand wily antics mark their stay, 
A starting crowd, impatient of delay. 
Like the fond dove from fearful prison freed, 
Each seems to say, " Come, let us try our 

speed " ; 

Away they scour, impetuous, ardent, strong, 
The green turf trembling as they bound 

along ; 

Adown the slope, then up the hillock climb, 
Where every molehill is a bed of thyme ; 
There panting stop ; yet scarcely can refrain ; 
A bird, a leaf will set them off again ; 
Or, if a gale with strength unusual blow, 
Scattering the wild-brier roses into snow, 
Their little limbs increasing efforts try, 
Like the torn flower the fair assemblage fly. 
Ah, fallen rose ! sad emblem of their doom \ 



24 SPRING. 

Frail as thyself, they perish as they bloom ! 
Though unoffending Innocence may plead, 
Though frantic ewes may mourn the savage 

deed, 

Their shepherd comes, a messenger of blood, 
And drives them bleating from their sports 

and food. 

Care loads his brow, and pity wrings his heart 
For lo, the murdering butcher, with his cart. 
Demands the firstlings of his flock to die, 
And makes a sport of life and liberty ! 
His gay companions Giles beholds no more ; 
Closed are their eyes, their fleeces drenched 

in gore ; 

Nor can compassion, with her softest notes, 
Withhold the knife that plunges through 

their throats. 

Down, indignation ! hence, ideas foul ! 
Away the shocking image from my soul ! 
Let kindlier visitants attend my way, 
Beneath the approaching Summer s fervid ray; 
Nor thankless glooms obtrude, nor cares an 
noy, 
Whilst the sweet theme is universal .ioy. 



SUMMER. 




TURNIP-SOWING. WHEAT RIPENING. SPARROWS. INSECTS. 
THE SKYLARK. REAPING, ETC. HARVEST FIELD, DAIRY 
MAID, ETC. LABORS OF THE BARN. THE GANDER. NIGHT. 
A THUNDER-STORM. HARVEST-HOME. REFLECTIONS, ETC. 



HE farmer s life displays in every 

part 

A moral lesson, to the sensual heart, 
Though in the lap of Plenty, thoughtful still, 
He looks beyond the present good or ill ; 
Nor estimates alone one blessing s worth 
From changeful seasons, or capricious earth, 
But views the future with the present hours, 
And looks for failures as he looks for showers ; 
For casual as for certain want prepares, 
And round his j^ard the reeking haystack 

rears ; 



S SUMMER. 

Ox* clover, blossomed lovely to the sight, 
His team s rich store through many a wintry 

night. 
What though abundance round his dwelling 

spreads, 

Though, ever moist, his self-improving meads 
Supply his dairy with a copious flood, 
And seem to promise unexhausted food ; 
That promise fails, when buried deep in 

snow, 

And vegetative juices cease to flow. 
And this his plough turns up with destined 

lands, 

Whence stormy Winter draws its full de 
mands ; 

For this, the seed minutely small he sows, 
Whence, sound and sweet, the hardy turnip 

grows. 

But how unlike to April s closing days ! 
High climbs the sun, and darts his powerful 

rays : 
Whitens the fresh-drawn mould, and pierces 

through 
The cumbrous clods that tumble round the 

plough. 



SUMMER. 29 



O er heaven s bright azure hence with joyful 

eyes 

The farmer sees dark clouds assembling rise : 
Borne o er his fields a heavy torrent falls. 
And strikes the earth in hasty driving squalls. 
" Right welcome down, ye precious drops," he 

cries ; 

But soon, too soon, the partial blessing flies. 
" Boy, bring the harrows, try how deep the 

rain 
Has forced its way." He comes, but comes 

in vain ; 

Dry dust beneath the bubbling surface lurks, 
And mocks the pains the more, the more he 

works : 

Still, midst huge clods, he plunges on forlorn, 
That laugh his harrows and the shower to 

scorn. 

E en thus the living clod, the stubborn fool, 
Resists the stormy lectures of the school, 
Till tried with gentler means, the dunce to 

please, 

His head imbibes right reason by degrees ; 
As when from eve till morning s wakeful 

hour, 



30 SUMMER. 

Light constant rain evinces secret power, 
And ere the day resumes its wonted smiles, 
Presents a cheerful, easy task for Giles. 
Down with a touch the mellowed soil is laid, 
And yon tall crop next claims his timely 

aid ; 

Thither well pleased he hies, assured to find 
Wild, trackless haunts, and objects to his 

mind. 

Shot up from broad rank blades that droop 

below, 

The nodding wheat-ear forms a graceful bow, 
With milky kernels starting full, weighed 

down, 
Ere yet the sun -hath tinged its head with 

brown ; 

There thousands in a flock, forever gay, 
Loud chirping sparrows welcome on the day, 
And from the mazes of the leafy thorn 
Drop one by one upon the bending corn. 
Giles with a pole assails their close retreats, 
And round the grass-grown dewy border 

beats ; 
On either side completely overspread, 



SUMMER. 31 

Here branches bend, their corn o ertops his 

head. 
Green covert, hail ! for through the varying 

year 

No hours so sweet, no scene to him so dear. 
Here "Wisdom s placid eye delighted sees 
His frequent intervals of lonely ease, 
And with one ray his infant soul inspires, 
Just kindling there her never-dying fires, 
Whence solitude derives peculiar charms, 
And heaven-directed thought his bosom 

warms. 

Just where the parting bough s light shad 
ows play, 

Scarce in the shade, nor in the scorching day, 
Stretched on the turf he lies, a peopled bed, 
Where swarming insects creep around his 

head. 
The small dust-colored beetle climbs with 

pain, 
O er the smooth plantain-leaf, a spacious 

plain ! 
Thence higher still, by countless steps con- 

veyel, 
He gains the summit of a shivering blade, 



32 SUMMER. 

And flirts his filmy wings, and looks around, 
Exulting in his distance from the ground. 
The tender speckled moth here dancing seer,. 
The vaunting grasshopper of glossy green. 
And all prolific Summer s sporting train, 
Their little lives by various powers sustain. 
But what can unassisted vision do ? 
What but recoil where most it would pursue ; 
His patient gaze but finish with a sigh, 
When Music waking speaks the skylark nigh ! 
Just starting from the corn, he cheerly sings, 
And trusts with conscious pride his downy 

wings ; 

Still louder breathes, and in the face of day 
Mounts up, and calls on Giles to mark his 

way. 

Close to his eyes his hat he instant bends, 
And forms a friendly telescope that lends 
Just aid enough to dull the glaring light, 
And place the wandering bird before his sight, 
That oft beneath a light cloud sweeps along, 
Lost for a while, yet pours the varied song : 
The eye still follows, and the cloud moves by. 
Again he stretches, up the clear blue sky ; 
His form, his motion, undistinguished quite, 



SUMMER. 33 

Save when he wheels direct from shade to 

light : 

E en then the songster a mere speck became, 
Gliding like fancy s bubbles in a dream, 
The gazer sees ; but, yielding to repose, 
Unwittingly his jaded eyelids close. 
Delicious sleep ! from sleep who could for 
bear, 
With no more guilt than Giles, and no more 

care 1 
Peace o er his slumbers waves her guardian 

wing, 
Nor conscience once disturbs him with a 

sting ; 

He wakes refreshed from every trivial pain, 
And takes his pole, and brushes round again. 

Its dark-green hue, its sicklier tints, all fail 
And ripening harvest rustles in the gale. 
A glorious sight, if glory dwells below, 
Where Heaven s munificence makes all the 

show 

O er every field and golden prospect found, 
That glads the ploughman s Sunday morn 
ing s round, 



34 SUMMER. 

When on some eminence he takes his stand, 
To judge the smiling produce of the land. 

Here Vanity slinks back, her head to hide : 
What is there here to flatter human pride ? 
The towering fabric, or the dome s loud roar, 
And steadfast columns, may astonish more, 
Where the charmed gazer long delighted stays, 
Yet traced but to the architect the praise ; 
Whilst here, the veriest clown that treads the 

sod, 

Without one scruple gives the praise to God ; 
And twofold joys possess his raptured mind, 
From gratitude and admiration joined. 

Here, midst the boldest triumphs of her 
worth, 

Nature herself invites the reapers forth ; 

Dares the keen sickle from its twelvemonth s 
rest, 

And gives that ardor which in every breast, 

From infancy to age, alike appears, 

When the first sheaf its plumy top uprears. 

No rake takes here what Heaven to all be 
stows 

Children of want, for you the bounty flows ! 



SUMMER,. 35 

And every cottage from the plenteous store 
Receives a burden nightly at his door. 

Hark ! where the sweeping scythe now 

rips along, 

Each sturdy mower, emulous and strong, 
"Whose writhing form meridian heat defies, 
Bends o er his work, and every sinew tries ; 
Prostrates the waving treasure at his feet, 
But spares the rising clover, short and sweet. 
Come, Health ! come, Jollity ! light-footed, 

come ; 
Here hold your revels, and make this your 

home. 

Each heart awaits and hails you as its own ; 
Each moistened brow that scorns to wear a 

frown ; 
The unpeopled dwelling mourns its tenant 

strayed ; 

E en the domestic laughing dairy-maid 
Hies to the field, the general toil to share. 
Meanwhile the farmer quits his elbow-chair, 
His cool brick floor, his pitcher, and his ease, 
And braves the sultry beams, and gladly sees 
His gates thrown open, and his team abroad, 



36 SUMMER. 

The ready group attendant on his word, 
To turn the swath, the quivering load to rear, 
Or ply the busy rake, the land to clear. 
Summer s light garb itself now cumbrous 

grown, 
Each his thin doublet in the shade throws 

down ; 
Where oft the mastiff skulks with half-shut 

eye, 

And rouses at the stranger passing by ; 
Whilst unrestrained the social converse flows, 
And every breast Love s powerful impulse 

knows, 

And rival wits with more than rustic grace 
Confess the presence of a pretty face. 

For, lo ! encircled there, the lovely maid, 
In youth s own bloom and native smiles ar 
rayed ; 

Her hat awry, divested of her gown, 
Her creaking stays of leather, stout and 

brown ; 

Invidious barrier ! Why art thou so high, 
When the slight covering of her neck slips by, 
There half revealing to the eager sight 



SUMMER. 37 

Her full, ripe bosom, exquisitely white ? 
In many a local tale of harmless mirth, 
And many a jest of momentary birth, 
She bears a part, and as she stops to speak, 
Strokes back the ringlets from her glowing 
cheek. 

Now noon gone by, and four declining 

hours, 

The weary limbs relax their boasted powers ; 
Thirst rages strong, the fainting spirits fail, 
And ask the sovereign cordial, home-brewed 

ale : 

Beneath some sheltering heap of yellow corn 
Rests the hooped keg, and friendly cooling 

horn, 

That mocks alike the goblet s brittle frame, 
Its costlier portions, and its nobler name. 
To Mary first the brimming draught is given, 
By toil made welcome as the dews of heaven, 
And never lip that pressed its homely edge 
Kad kinder blessings or a heartier pledge. 

Of wholesome viand here a banquet smiles, 
Limon 
Giles, 



38 SUMMER. 

Who joys his trivial services to yield 
Amidst the fragrance of the open field ; 
Oft doomed in suffocating heat to bear 
The cobwebbed barn s impure and dusty air ; 
To ride in murky state the panting steed, 
Destined aloft the unloaded grain to tread, 
Where, in his path, as heaps on heaps are 

thrown, 
He rears and plunges the loose mountain 

down : 
Laborious task ! with what delight, when 

done, 
Both horse and rider greet the unclouded sun ! 

Yet by the unclouded sun are hourly bred 
The bold assailants that surround thine head, 
Poor, patient Ball ! and with insulting wing 
Eoar in thine ears, and dart the piercing sting ; 
In thy behalf the crest- waved boughs avail 
More than thy short-clipt remnant of a tail, 
A moving mockery, a useless name, 
A living proof of cruelty and shame. 
Shame to the man, whatever fame he bore, 
Who took from thee what man can ne er re 
store, 



SUMMER. 39 

weapon of defence, thy chiefest good, 
When swarming flies contending suck thy 

blood. 

Nor thine alone the suffering, thine the care, 
The fretful ewe bemoans an equal share ; 
Tormented into sores, her head she hides, 
Or angry sweeps them from her new-shorn 

sides. 

Penned in the yard, e en now at closing day 
Unruly cows with marked impatience stay, 
And, vainly striving to escape their foes, 
The pail kick down ; a piteous current flows. 

Is t not enough that plagues like these 

molest 1 

Must still another foe annoy their rest ? 
He comes, the pest and terror of the yard, 
His full-fledged progeny s imperious guard ; 
The gander ; spiteful, insolent and bold, 
At the colt s footlock takes his daring hold ; 
There, serpent-like, escapes a dreadful blow ; 
And straight attacks a poor defenceless cow : 
Each booby goose the unworthy strife enjoys, 
And hails his prowess with redoubled noise. 
Then back he stalks, of self-importance full, 



40 SUMMER. 

Seizes the shaggy foretop of the bull, 
Till, whirled aloft, he falls : a timely check, 
Enough to dislocate his worthless neck : 
For lo ! of old he boasts an honored wound ; 
Behold that broken wing that trails the 

ground ! 

Thus fools and bravoes kindred pranks pur 
sue ; 

As savage quite, and oft as fatal too. 
Happy the man that foils an envious elf, 
Using the darts of spleen to serve himself. 
As when by turns the strolling swine engage 
The utmost efforts of the bully s rage, 
Whose nibbling warfare on the grunter s side 
Is welcome pleasure to his bristly hide ; 
Gently he stoops, or, stretched at ease along, 
Enjoys the insults of the gabbling throng, 
That march exulting round his fallen head, 
As human victors trample on their dead. 

Still Twilight, welcome ! Rest, how sweet 

art thou ! 
Now eve o erhangs the western cloud s thick 

brow : 
The far-stretched curtain of retiring light, 



SUMMER. 41 

With fiery treasures fraught ; that on the 

sight 
Flash from its bulging sides, where darkness 

lowers, 

In fancy s eye, a chain of mouldering towers ; 
Or craggy coasts just rising into view, 
Midst javelins dire, and darts of streaming 

blue. 

Anon tired laborers bless their sheltering 

home, 
When midnight and the frightful tempest 

come. 

The farmer wakes, and sees, with silent dread, 
The angry shafts of Heaven gleam round his 

bed; 

The bursting cloud reiterated roars, 
Shakes his straw roof, and jars his bolting 

doors : 
The slow-winged storm along the troubled 

skies 
Spreads its dark course ; the wind begins to 

rise ; 
And full-leafed elinSj his dwelling s shade by 

day, 



42 SUMMER. 

With mimic thunder give its fury way : 
Sounds in his chimney-top a doleful peal 
Midst pouring rain, or gusts of rattling hail : 
With tenfold danger low the tempest bends, 
And quick and strong the sulphurous flame 

descends : 

The frightened mastiff from his kennel flies, 
And cringes at the door with piteous cries. 

Where now s the trifler 1 where the child 

of pride ? 
These are the moments when the heart is 

tried ! 
Nor lives the man, with conscience e er so 

clear, 

But feels a solemn, reverential fear ; 
Feels too a joy relieve his aching breast, 
When the spent storm hath howled itself to 

rest, 
Still, welcome beats the long-continued 

shower, 
And, sleep protracted, comes with double 

power ; 

Calm dreams of bliss bring on the morning sun, 
For every barn is filled, and harvest done ! 



SUMMER. 43 

N"ow, ere sweet summer bids its long adieu, 
Ad winds blow keen where late the blossom 

grew, 

The bustling day and jovial night must come, 
The long-accustomed feast of harvest-home. 
No blood-stained victory, in story bright, 
&lt;Jan give the philosophic mind delight ; 
N"o triumph please, while rage and death de 
stroy : 

Reflection sickens at the monstrous joy. 
A.nd where the joy, if rightly understood, 
Like cheerful praise for universal good ? 
The soul nor check nor doubtful anguish 

knows, 
But free and pure the grateful current flows. 

Behold the sound oak table s massy frame 
Bestride the kitchen floor ! the careful dame 
And generous host invite their friends around, 
For all that cleared the crop, or tilled the 

ground, 
Are guests by right of custom ; old and 

young ; 
And many a neighboring yeoman join the 

throng, 



44 SUMMER. 

With artisans that lent their dexterous aid, 
When o er each field the flaming sunbeams 
played. 

Yet Plenty reigns, and from her boundless 

hoard, 

Though not one jelly trembles on the board, 
Supplies the feast with all that sense can 

crave ; 

With all that made our great forefathers brave, 
Ere the cloyed palate countless flavors tried, 
And cooks had Nature s judgment set aside. 
With thanks to Heaven, and tales of rustic 

lore, 

The mansion echoes when the banquet s o er ; 
A wider circle spreads and smiles abound, 
As quick the frothing horn performs its 

round ; 

Care s mortal foe ; that sprightly joys imparts 
To cheer the frame and elevate their hearts. 
Here, fresh and brown, the hazel s produce lies 
In tempting heaps, and peals of laughter rise ; 
And crackling music, with the frequent song, 
Unheeded bear the midnight hour along. 
Here once a year distinction lowers its 

crest : 



SUMMER. 45 

The master, servant, and the merry guest 
Are equal all ; and round the happy ring 
The reaper s eyes exulting glances fling, 
And, warmed with gratitude, he quits his 

place, 

With sunburnt hands and ale-enlivened face, 
Refills the jug his honored host to tend, 
To serve at once the master and the friend ; 
Proud thus to meet his smiles, to share his 

tale, 
His nuts, his conversation, and his ale. 

Such were the days. of days long past I 

sing, 
When pride gave place to mirth without a 

sting ; 

Ere tyrant customs strength sufficient bore 
To violate the feelings of the poor ; 
To leave them distanced in the madd ning race, 
Where er refinement shows its hated face : 
Nor causeless hated ; t is the peasant s 

curse, 
That hourly makes his wretched station 

worse ; 
Destroys life s intercourse ; the social plan 



46 SUMMER. 

That rank to rank cements, as man to man : 
Wealth flows around him, Fashion lordly 

reigns : 
Yet poverty is his, and mental pains. 

Methinks I hear the mourner thus impart 
The stifled murmurs of his wounded heart : 
" Whence comes this change, ungracious, irk 
some, cold 1 
Whence the new grandeur that mine eyes 

behold ? 

The widening distance which I daily see, 
Has Wealth done this ? then Wealth s a 

foe to me : 

Foe to our rights ; that leaves a powerful few 
The paths of emulation to pursue : 
For emulation stoops to us no more : 
The hope of humble industry is o er ; 
The blameless hope, the cheering sweet pres 
age 

Of future comforts for declining age. 
Can my sons share from this paternal hand 
The profits w T ith the labors of the land ? 
No, though indulgent Heaven its blessing 
deigns, 



SUMMER. 47 



Where s the small farm to suit my scanty 

means ? 

Content, the poet sings, with us resides ; 
In lonely cots like mine, the damsel hides ; 
And will he then in raptured visions tell 
That sweet con tent with want can never dwell I 
A barley loaf, t is true, my table crowns, 
That, fast diminishing in lusty rounds, 
Stops Nature s cravings ; yet her sighs willflow 
From knowing this, that once it was not so. 
Our annual feast, when Earth her plenty 

yields, 
When crowned with boughs the last load quits 

the fields, 

The aspect still of ancient joy puts on ; 
The aspect only, with the substance gone : 
The selfsame horn is still at our command, 
But serves none now but the plebeian hand ; 
For home-brewed ale, neglected and debased, 
Is quite discarded from the realms of taste. 
Where unaffected freedom charmed the soul, 
The separate table, and the costly bowl, 
Cool as the blast that checks the budding 

Spring, 
A mockery of gladness round them fling. 



48 SUMMER. 

For oft the farmer, ere his heart approves, 
Yields up the custom which he dearly loves ; 
Refinement forces on him like a tide ; 
Bold innovations down its current ride, 
That bear no peace beneath their showy dress, 
Nor add one title to his happiness. 
His guests selected, rank s punctilios known ; 
What trouble waits upon a casual frown ! 
Restraint s foul manacles his pleasures maim ; 
Selected guests selected phrases claim : 
Nor reigns that joy, when hand in hand they 

join, 

That good old master felt in shaking mine. 
Heaven bless his memory ! bless his honored 

name ! 
(The poor will speak his lasting worthy 

fame :) 
To souls fair-purposed strength and guidance 

give; 

In pity to us still let goodness live : 
Let labor have its due ! my cot shall be 
From chilling want and guilty murmurs frea 
Let labor have its due ; then peace is mine, 
And never, never shall my heart repine." 



AUTUMN. 



ACORNS. HOGS IN THE WOOD. WHEAT-SOWING. THE CHURCH. 
VILLAGE GIRLS. THE MAD GIRL. THE BIRD-BOY S HUT. DIS 
APPOINTMENT, REFLECTIONS, ETC. EUSTON-HALL. FOX 
HUNTING. OLD TROUNCER. LONG NIGHTS. A WELCOME TO 
WINTER. 




GAIN, the year s decline, midst storms 

and floods, 
The thundering chase, the yellow 

fading woods, 

Invite my song ; that fain would boldly tell 
Of upland coverts and the echoing dell. 
By turns resounding loud, at eve and morn, 
The swineherd s halloo, or the huntsman s 
horn. 

No more the fields with scattered grain 
supply 



52 AUTUMN. 

The restless wandering tenants of the sty ; 
From oak to oak they run with eager haste, 
And wrangling share the first delicious taste 
Of fallen acorns ; yet but thinly found 
Till the strong gale has shook them to the 

ground. 

It comes ; and roaring woods obedient wave : 
Their home well pleased the joint adventur 
ers leave: 
The trudging sow leads forth her numerous 

young, 
Playful, and white, and clean, the briers 

among, 
Till briers and thorns increasing fence them 

round, 
Where last year s smouldering leaves bestrew 

the ground, 
And o er their heads, loud lashed by furious 

squalls, 
Bright from their cups the rattling treasure 

falls ; 
Hot, thirsty food ; whence doubly sweet and 

cool 
The welcome margin of some rush-grown 

pool, 



AUTUMN. 53 

The wild duck s lonely haunt, whose jealous 

eye 

Guards every point ; who sits, prepared to fly, 
On the calm bosom of her little lake, 
Too closely screened for ruffian winds to 

shake ; 

And as the bold intruders press around, 
At once she starts, and rises with a bound : 
With bristles raised, the sudden noise they 

hear, 

And ludicrously wild, and winged with fear, 
The herd decamp with more than swinish 

speed, 
And snorting dash through sedge, and rush. 

and reed : 
Through tangling thickets headlong on they 

go, 

Then stop and listen for their fancied foe ; 
The hindmost still the growing panic spreads, 
Repeated fright the first alarm succeeds, 
Till Folly s wages, wounds and thorns, they 

reap : 

Yet glorying in their fortunate escape, 
Their groundless terrors by degrees soon 

cease. 



54 AUTUMN. 

And Night s dark reign restores their wonted 

peace. 
For now the gale subsides, and from each 

bough 
The roosting pheasant s short but frequent 

crow 

Invites to rest ; and, huddling side by side, 
The herd in closest ambush seek to hide ; 
Seek some warm slope with shagged moss 

o erspread, 
Dried leaves their copious covering and their 

bed: 
In vain may Giles, through gathering glooms 

that fall, 

And solemn silence, urge his piercing call : 
Whole days and nights they tarry midst 

their store, 
Nor quit the woods till oaks can yield no more. 

Beyond bleak Winter s rage, beyond the 

Spring 
That rolling Earth s unvarying course will 

bring, 
Who tills the ground looks on with mental 



AUTUMN. 55 

And sees next Summer s sheaves and cloud 
less sky ; 

And even now, whilst Nature s beauty dies, 
Deposits seed, and bids new harvests rise ; 
Seed well prepared, and warmed with glow 
ing lime, 
Gainst earth-bred grubs, and cold, and lapse 

of time : 

For searching frosts and various ills invade, 
Whilst wintry months depress the springing 

blade. 
The plough moves heavily, and strong the 

soil, 

And clogging harrows with augmented toil 
Dive deep : and clinging, mixes with the 

mould 

A fattening treasure from the nightly fold, 
And all the cow-yard s highly valued store 
That late bestrewed the blackened surface 

o er. 

No idling hours are here, when Fancy trims 
Her dancing taper over outstretched limbs, 
And, in her thousand thousand colors drest, 
Plays round the grassy couch of noontide rest: 
Here Giles for hours of indolence atones 



56 AUTUMN. 

With strong exertion and with weary bones, 
And knows no leisure ; till the distant chime 
Of Sabbath bells he hears at sermon-time, 
That down the brook sound sweetly in the 

gale, 
Or strike the rising hill, or skim the dale. 

Nor his alone the sweets of ease to taste : 
Kind rest extends to all : save one poor 

beast, 
That, true to time and pace, is doomed to 

plod, 

To bring the pastor to the house of God : 
Mean structure : where no bones of heroes 

lie! 

The rude inelegance of poverty 
Keigns here alone : else why that roof of 

straw 1 
Those narrow windows with the frequent 

flaw? 
O er whose low cells the dock and mallow 

spread, 

And rampant nettles lift the spiry head, 
Whilst from the hollows of the tower on high 
The gray-capped daws in saucy legions fly. 



AUTUMN. 57 

Round these lone walls assembling neigh 
bors meet, 

And tread departed friends beneath their feet; 

And new-briered graves, that prompt the se 
cret sigh, 

Show each the spot where he himself must lie. 

Midst timely greetings village ne~ws goes 

round, 
Of crops late shorn, or crops that deck the 

ground ; 

Experienced ploughmen in the circle join ; 
While sturdy boys, in feats of strength to 

shine, 

With pride elate, their young associates brave 
To jump from hollow-sounding grave to 

grave ; 

Then close consulting, each his talent lends 
To plan fresh sports when tedious service ends. 

Hither at times, with cheerfulness of soul, 
Sweet village maids from neighboring hamlets 

stroll, 
That, like the light-heeled does o er lawns 

that rove, 



58 AUTUMN. 

Look shyly curious ; ripening into love ; 
For love s their errand : hence the tints that 

glow 

On either cheek, a heightened lustre know : 
When, conscious of their charms, e en Ago 

looks sly, 
And rapture beams from Youth s observant 

eye. 

The pride of such a party, Nature s pride, 
Was lovely Poll ; who innocently tried, 
With hat of airy shape and ribbons gay, 
Love to inspire, and stand in Hymen s way : 
But, ere her twentieth summer could ex 
pand, 

Or youth was rendered happy with her hand, 
Her mind s serenity, her peace was gone, 
Her eye grew languid and she wept alone : 
Yet causeless seemed her grief ; for quick re 
strained, 

Mirth followed loud ; or indignation reigned : 
Whims wild and simple led her from her 

home, 

The heath, the common, or the fields to roam: 
Terror and joy alternate ruled her hours ; 



AUTUMN. 59 

Now blithe she sung, and gathered useless 

flowers ; 

Now plucked a tender twig from every bough, 
To whip the hovering demons from her brow. 
Ill-fated maid* ! thy guiding spark is fled, 
And lasting wretchedness awaits thy bed 
Thy bed of straw! for mark, where even now 
O er their lost child afflicted parents bow ; 
Their woe she knows not, but perversely coy, 
Inverted customs yield her sullen joy! 
Her midnight meals in secrecy she takes, 
Low muttering to the moon, that rising breaks 
Through night s dark gloom : 0, how much 

more forlorn 
Her night, that knows of no returning 

morn ! 

Slow from the threshold, once her infant seat, 
O er the cold earth she crawls to her retreat ; 
Quitting the cot s warm walls, unhoused to 

lie, 

Or share the swine s impure and narrow sty ; 
The damp night-air her shivering limbs 

assails : 
In dreams she moans, and fancied wronga 

bewails. 



60 AUTUMN. 

When morning wakes, none earlier roused 

than she, 
When pendent drops fall glittering from the 

tree. 

But naught her rayless melancholy cheers, 
Or soothes her breast, or stops her streaming 

tears. 

Her matted locks unornamented flow ; 
Clasping her knees, and waving to and fro ; 
Her head bowed down, her faded cheek to 

hide ; 

A piteous mourner by the pathway side. 
Some tufted molehill through the livelong 

day 
She calls her throne : there weeps her life 

away : 

And oft the gayly passing stranger stays 
His well-timed step, and takes a silent gazes 
Till sympathetic drops unbidden start, 
And pangs quick springing muster round his 

heart ; 

And soft he treads with other gazers round, 
And fain would catch her sorrow s plaintive 

sound. 
One word alone is all that strikes the ear, 



AUTUMN. 61 

One short, pathetic, simple word, U 

dear ! " 

A thousand times repeated to the wind, 
That wafts the sigh, but leaves the pang be 
hind ! 

Forever of the proffered parley shy, 
She hears the unwelcome foot advancing nigh ; 
Nor quite unconscious of her wretched plight, 
Gives one sad look and hurries out of sight. 

"Fair promised sunbeams of terrestrial bliss, 
Health s gallant hopes, and are ye sunk to 

this ? 
For in life s road, though thorns abundant 

grow, 

There still are joys poor Poll can never know ; 
Joys which the gay companions of her prime 
Sip as they drift along the stream of time : 
At eve to hear beside their tranquil home 
The lifted latch, that speaks the lover come : 
That love matured, next playful on the knee 
To press the velvet lip of infancy ; 
To stay the tottering step, the features 

trace ; 
Inestimable sweets of social peace ! 



62 AUTUMN. 

Thou who bidd st the vernal juices rise ! 
Thou, on whose blasts autumnal foliage flies ! 
Let peace ne er leave me, nor my heart grow 

cold, 
Whilst life and sanity are mine to hold. 

Shorn of their flowers that shed the un- 

treasured seed, 

The withering pasture, and the fading mead, 
Less tempting grown, dimmish more and 

more, 
The dairy s pride ; sweet Summer s flowing 

store. 

New cares succeed, and gentle duties press, 
Where the fireside, a school of tenderness, 
Eevives the languid chirp, and warms the 

blood 

Of cold-nipped weaklings of the latter brood, 
That from the shell just bursting into day, 
Through yard or pond pursue their venturous 

way. 

Far weightier cares and wider scenes ex 
pand ; 
What devastation marks the new-sown land J 



AUTUMN. 63 

" From hungry woodland s foes go, Giles, 

and guard 

The rising wheat, insure its great reward : 
A future sustenance, a Summer s pride, 
Demand thy vigilance : then be it tried : 
Exert thy voice, and wield thy shotless gun : 
Go, tarry there from morn till setting sun." 

Keen blows the blast, or ceaseless rain 

descends ; 

The half- stripped hedge a sorry shelter lends. 
O, for a hovel, e er so small or low, 
Whose roof, repelling winds and early snow, 
Might bring home s comforts fresh before 

his eyes ! 
No sooner thought, than see the structure 

rise, 

In some sequestered nook, embanked around, 
Sods for its walls, and straw in burdens 

bound ! 

Dried fuel hoarded is his richest store, 
And circling smoke obscures his little door : 
Whence creeping forth, to duty s call he 

yields, 
And strolls the Crusoe of the lonely fields. 



64 AUTUMN. 

On whitethorns towering, and the leafless rose, 
A frost-nipt feast in bright vermilion glows ; 
Where clustering sloes in glossy order rise, 
He crops the loaded branch ; a cumbrous 

prize : 
And o er the flame the spluttering fruit he 

rests, 
Placing green sods to seat the coming 

guests ; 
His guests by promise ; playmates young 

and gay : 

But ah ! fresh pastimes lure their steps away ! 
He sweeps his hearth, and homeward looks 

in vain, 

Till feeling disappointment s cruel pain, 
His fairy revels are exchanged for rage, 
His banquet marred, grown dull his hermit 
age. 

The field becomes his prison, till on high 
Benighted birds to shades and coverts fly. 
Midst air, health, daylight, can he prisoner 

be? 

If fields are prisons, where is Liberty 1 
Here still she dwells, and here her votaries 

stroll ; 



AUTUMN. 65 

But disappointed hope untunes the soul : 
Restraints unfelt whilst hours of rapture 

flow, 
When troubles press, to chains and barriers 

grow. 

Look then from trivial up to greater woes ; 
From the poor bird-boy with his roasted sloes, 
To where the dungeoned mourner heaves the 

sigh, 
Where not one cheering sunbeam meets his 

eye. 

Though ineffectual pity thine may be, 
No wealth, no power, to set the captive free ; 
Though only to thy ravished sight is given 
The radiant path that Howard trod to heaven ; 
Thy slights can make the wretched more for 
lorn, 

And deeper drive affliction s barbed thorn. 
Say not, " I 11 come and cheer thy gloomy 

cell 
With news of dearest friends ; how good, 

how well : 

I 11 be a joyful herald to thine heart " ; 
Then fail, and play the worthless trifler s part, 
To sip flat pleasures from thy glass s brim, 



66 AUTUMN. 

And waste the precious hour that s due to 

him. 

In mercy spare the base, unmanly blow : 
Where can he turn, to whom complain of 

you ? 
Back to past joys in vain his thoughts may 

stray, 

Trace and retrace the beaten, worn out way, 
The rankling injury will pierce his breast, 
And curses on thee break his midnight rest. 

Bereft of song, and ever-cheering green, 
The soft endearments of the Summer scene, 
New harmony pervades the solemn wood, 
Dear to the soul, and healthful to the blood : 
For bold exertion follows on the sound 
Of distant sportsmen, and the chiding hound ; 
First heard from kennel bursting, mad with 



Where smiling Euston boasts her good Fitz- 



Lord of pure alms, and gifts that wide ex 

tend ; 
The farmer s patron, and the poor man s 

friend : 



AUTUMN. 67 

Whose mansion glitters with the eastern ray, 
Whose elevated temple points the way, 
O er slopes and lawns, the park s extensive 

pride, 

To where the victims of the chase reside, 
Ingulfed in earth, in conscious safety warm, 
Till lo ! a plot portends their coming harm. 

In earliest hours of dark and hooded morn, 
Ere yet one rosy cloud bespeaks the dawn, 
Whilst far abroad the fox pursues his prey, 
He s doomed to risk the perils of the day, 
From his stronghold blocked out ; perhaps to 

bleed, 

Or owe his life to fortune or to speed. 
For now the pack, impatient rushing on, 
Eange through the darkest coverts one by one ; 
Trace every spot ; whilst down each noble 

glade 
That guides the eye beneath a changeful 

shade, 
The loitering sportsman feels the instinctive 

flame, 
And checks his steed to mark the springing 

game. 



68 AUTUMN. 

Midst intersecting cuts and winding ways 
The huntsman cheers his dogs, and anxious 

strays 

Where every narrow riding, even shorn, 
Gives back the echo of his mellow horn : 
Till fresh and lightsome, every power untried, 
The starting fugitive leaps by his side, 
His lifted finger to his ear he plies, 
And the view-halloo bids a chorus rise 
Of dogs quick-mouthed, and shouts that min 
gle loud 

As bursting thunder rolls from cloud to cloud. 
With ears erect, and chest of vigorous mould, 
O er ditch, o er fence, unconquerably bold, 
The shining courser lengthens every bound, 
And his strong footlocks suck the moistened 

ground, 

As from the confines of the wood they pour, 
And joyous villages partake the roar. 
O er heath far-stretched, or down, or valley 

low, 

The stiff-limbed peasant, glorying in the show, 
Pursues in vain ; where youth itself soon 

tires, 
Spite of the transports that the chase inspires ; 



AUTUMN. 69 

For who unmounted long can charm the eye, 
Or hear the music of the leading cry ? 

Poor faithful Trouncer ! thou canst lead no 

more ; 

All thy fatigues and all thy triumphs o ; er ! 
Triumphs of worth, whose long excelling 

fame 

Was still to follow true the hunted game ! 
Beneath enormous oaks, Britannia s boast, 
In thick, impenetrable coverts lost, 
When the warm pack in faltering silence 

stood, 
Thine was the note that roused the listening 

wood, 

Rekindling every joy with tenfold force, 
Through all the mazes of the tainted course. 
Still foremost thou the dashing stream to 

cross, 

And tempt along the animated horse ; 
Foremost o er fen or level mead to pass, 
And sweep the showering dew-drops from 

the grass ; 

Then bright emerging from the mist below, 
To climb the woodland hill s exulting brow. 



70 AUTUMN. 

Pride of thy race ! with worth far less than 

thine, 

Full many human leaders daily shine ! 
Less faith, less constancy, less generous 

zeal ! 

Then no disgrace my humble verse shall feel, 
Where not one lying line to riches bows, 
Or poisoned sentiments from rancor flows ; 
Nor flowers are strewn around Ambition s car: 
An honest dog s a nobler theme by far. 
Each sportsman heard the tidings with a sigh, 
When Death s cold touch had stopt his tune 
ful cry ; 
And though high deeds, and fair exalted 

praise, 

In memory lived, and flowed in rustic lays, 
Short was the strain of monumental woe : 
" Foxes, rejoice ! here buried lies your foe" 
In safety housed, throughout Night s length 
ening reign, 
The cock sends forth a loud and piercing 

strain ; 

More frequent, as the glooms of midnight flee, 
And hours roll round, that brought him lib 
erty, 



AUTUMN. 71 

When Summer s early dawn, mild, clear, and 

bright, 

Chased quick away the transitory night : 
Hours now in darkness veiled ; yet loud the 

scream 

Of geese impatient for the playful stream ; 
And all the feathered tribe imprisoned raise 
Their morning notes of inharmonious praise ; 
And many a clamorous hen and cock rel gay, 
When daylight slowly through the fog breaks 

way, 

Fly wantonly abroad : but, ah, how soon 
The shades of twilight follow hazy noon, 
Shortening the busy day ! day that slides by 
Amidst the unfinished toils of husbandry : 
Toils still each morn resumed with double 

care 

To meet the icy terrors of the year ; 
To meet the threats of Boreas undismayed, 
And Winter s gathering frowns and hoary head. 

Then welcome, Cold ; welcome, ye snowy 

nights ! 

Heaven midst your rage shall mingle pure 
delights, 



72 AUTUMN. 

And confidence of hope the soul sustain, 
While devastation sweeps along the plain : 
Nor shall the child of poverty despair, 
But bless the Power that rules the changing 

year ; 
Assured though horrors round his cottage 

reign 
That Spring will come, and Nature smile 

again. 




WINTER. 



TENDERNESS TO CATTLE. FROZEN TURNIPS. THE COW-YARD. 
NIGHT. THE FARM-HOUSE. FIRESIDE. FARMER S ADVICE AND 
INSTRUCTION. NIGHTLY CARES OF THE STABLE. DOBBIN. 
THE POST-HORSE. SHEEP-STEALING DOGS. WALKS OCCA 
SIONED THEREBY. THE GHOST. LAMB TIME. RETURNING 
SPRING. CONCLUSION. 



jITH kindred pleasures moved, and 

cares opprest, 

Sharing alike our weariness and rest ; 
Who lives the daily partner of our hours, 
Through every change of heat, and frost, and 

showers, 

Partakes our cheerful meals, partaking first 
In mutual labor, and fatigue, and thirst ; 
The kindly intercourse will ever prove 
A bond of amity and social love. 




76 WINTER. 

To more than mail this generous warmth ex 
tends, 

And oft the team and shivering herd be 
friends ; 

Tender solicitude the bosom fills, 
And pity executes what reason wills : 
Youth, learns compassion s tale from every 

tongue, 
And flies to aid the helpless and the young. 

When now, unsparing as the scourge of war, 
Blasts follow blasts, and groves dismantled 

roar, 
Around their home the storm-pinched cattle 

lows, 

No nourishment in frozen pastures grows ; 
Yet frozen pastures every morn resound 
With fair abundance thundering to the 

ground. 

For though on hoary twigs no buds peep out, 
And e en the hardy brambles cease to sprout, 
Beneath dread Winter s level sheets of snow 
The sweet nutritious turnip deigns to grow. 
Till now imperious Want and wide-spread 

Dearth 



WINTER. 77 

Bid Labor claim her treasures from the earth. 
On Giles, and such as Giles, the labor, falls, 
To strew the frequent load where hunger 

calls. 

On driving gales sharp hail indignant flies, 
And sleet, more irksome still, assails his eyes ; 
Snow clogs his feet ; or if no snow is seen, 
The field with all its juicy store to screen, 
Deep goes the frost, till every root is found 
A rolling mass of ice upon the ground. 
No tender ewe can break her nightly fast, 
Nor heifer strong begin the cold repast, 
Till Giles with ponderous beetle foremost go, 
And scattering splinters fly at every blow ; 
When pressing round him, eager for the prize. 
From their mixed breath warm exhalations 

rise. 

In beaded rows if drops now deck the spray, 
While the sun grants a momentary ray, 
Let but a cloud s broad shadow intervene, 
And stiffened into gems the drops are seen ; 
And down the furrowed oak s broad southern 

side 
Streams of dissolving rime no longer glide. 



78 WINTER. 

Though night approaching bids for rest 

prepare, 

Still the flail echoes through the frosty air, 
Nor stops till deepest shades of darkness come, 
Sending at length the weary laborer home. 
From him, with bed and nightly food sup 
plied, 
Throughout the yard, housed round on every 

side, 

Deep-plunging cows their rustling feast enjoy, 
And snatch sweet mouthfuls from the passing 

boy, 

Who moves unseen beneath his trailing load, 
Fills the tall racks, and leaves a scattered road ; 
Where oft the swine from ambush warm and 

dry 

Bolt out, and scamper headlong to their sty, 
When Giles with well-known voice, already 

there, 
Deigns them a portion of his evening care. 

Him, though the cold may pierce, and 

storms molest, 

Succeeding hours shall cheer with warmth 
and rest ; 



WINTER. 79 

Gladness to spread, and raise the grateful 

smile, 

He hurls the fagot bursting from the pile, 
And many a log and rifted trunk conveys, 
To heap the fire, and wide extend the blaze, 
That quivering strong through every opening 

flies, 

Whilst smoky columns unobstructed rise. 
For the rude architect, unknown to fame 
(Nor symmetry nor elegance his aim), 
Who spread his floors of solid oak on high, 
On beams rough hewn, from age to age that lie, 
Bade his wide fabric unimpaired sustain 
The orchard s store, and cheese, and golden 

grain; 

Bade from its central base, capacious laid, 
The well-wrought chimney rear its lofty 

head ; 
Where since hath many a savory ham been 

stored, 
And tempests howled and Christmas gambols 

roared. 

Flat on the hearth the glowing embers lie, 
And flames reflected dance in every eye ; 



80 WINTER 

There the long billet, forced at last to bend, 
While gushing sap froths out at either end, 
Throws round its welcome heat : the 

ploughman smiles, 

And oft the joke runs hard on sheepish Giles, 
Who sits joint tenant of the corner-stool, 
The converse sharing, though in duty s school ; 
For now attentively t is his to hear 
Interrogations from the master s chair. 

" Left ye your bleating charge, when day 
light fled, 

Near where the haystack lifts its snowy 
head ? 

Whose fence of bushy furze, so close and 
warm, 

May stop the slanting bullets of the storm. 

For, hark ! it blows ; a dark and dismal 
night : 

Heaven guide the traveller s fearful steps 
aright ! 

Now from the woods, mistrustful, and sharp- 
eyed, 

The fox in silent darkness seems to glide, 

Stealing around us, listening as he goes, 



WINTER. 81 

If chance the cock or stammering capon crows, 
Or goose, or nodding duck, should darkling 

cry, 

As if apprised of lurking danger nigh : 
Destruction waits them, Giles, if e er you 

fail 

To bolt their doors against the driving gale. 
Strewed you (still mindful of the unsheltered 

head) 

Burdens of straw, the cattle s welcome bed ] 
Thine heart should feel, what thou mayst 

hourly see, 

That duty s basis is humanity. 
Of pain s unsavory cup though thou must 

taste 

(The wrath of Winter from the bleak north 
east), 

Thine utmost sufferings in the coldest day 
A period terminates, and joys repay. 
Perhaps e en now, while here those joys we 

boast. 
Full many a bark rides down the neighboring 

coast, 
Where the high northern waves tremendous 



roar 



82 WTNTEK. 

Drove down by blasts from Norway s icy 

shore. 

The sea-boy there, less fortunate than thou, 
Feels all thy pains in all the gusts that blow ; 
His freezing hands now drenched, now dry, 

by turns ; 
Now lost, now seen, the distant light that 

burns, 

On some tall cliff upraised, a flaming guide, 
That throws its friendly radiance o er the tide. 
His labors cease not with declining day, 
But toils and perils mark his watery way ; 
And whilst in peaceful dreams secure we lie, 
The ruthless whirlwinds rage along the sky, 
Round his head whistling ; and shalt thou 

repine, 
rfhile this protecting roof still shelters 

thine ? " 

Mild as the vernal shower, his words pre 
vail, 

And aid the moral precept of his tale : 
His wondering hearers learn, and ever keep 
These first ideas of the restless deep : 
And, as the opening mind a circuit tries, 



WINTER. 83 

Present felicities in value rise. 
Increasing pleasures every hour they find, 
The warmth more precious, and the shelter 

kind ; 
Warmth that long reigning bids the eyelids 

close. 
As through the blood its balmy influence 

goes, 
When the cheered heart forgets fatigues and 

cares, 
And drowsiness alone dominion bears. 

Sweet then the ploughman s slumbers, hale 

and young, 

When the last topic dies upon his tongue ; 
Sweet then the bliss his transient dreams in 
spire, 
Till chilblains wake him, or the snapping 

fire : 

He starts, arid ever thoughtful of his team, 
Along the glittering snow a feeble gleam 
Shoots from his lantern, as he yawning goes 
To add fresh comforts to their night s repose ; 
Diffusing fragrance as their food he moves, 
And pats the jolly sides of those he loves. 



84 WINTER. 

Thus full replenished, perfect ease possest, 
From night till morn alternate food and rest, 
No rightful cheer withheld, no sleep debarred, 
Their each day s labor brings its sure reward. 
Yet when from plough or lumbering cart set 

free, 

They taste awhile the sweets of liberty : 
E en sober Dobbin lifts his clumsy heel 
And kicks, disdainful of the dirty wheel ; 
But soon, his frolic ended, yields again 
To trudge the road, and wear the clinking 

chain. 

Short-sighted Dobbin! thou canst only- 
see 

The trivial hardships that encompass thee : 
Thy chains were freedom", and thy toils re 
pose, 
Could the poor post-horse tell thee all his 

woes, 

Show thee his bleeding shoulders, and unfold 
The dreadful anguish he endures for gold : 
Hired at each call of business, lust, or rage, 
That prompts the traveller on from stage to 
stage. 



WINTER. 85 

Still on his strength depends their boasted 

speed ; 
!For them his limbs grow weak, his bare ribs 

bleed ; 

And though he groaning quickens at com 
mand, 

Their extra shilling in the rider s hand 
Becomes his bitter scourge, tis he must feel 
The double efforts of the lash and steel ; 
Till when, up hill, the destined hill he gains, 
And, trembling under complicated pains, 
Prone from his nostrils, darting on the 

ground, 

His breath emitted floats in clouds around ; 
Drops chase each other down his chest and 

sides, 

And spattered mud his native color hides : 
Through his swoln veins the boiling torrent 

flows, 

And every nerve a separate torture knows. 
His harness loosed, he welcomes, eager-eyed, 
The pail s full draught that quivers by his 

side ; 

And joys to see the well-known stable-door, 
As the starved mariner the friendly shore. 



86 WINTER. 

Ah, well for him if here his suffering ceased, 
And ample hours of rest his pains appeased ! 
But roused again, and sternly bade to rise, 
And shake refreshing slumber from his eyes, 
Ere his exhausted spirits can return, 
Or through his frame reviving ardor burn, 
Come forth he must, though limping, maimed, 

and sore ; 
He hears the whip, the chaise is at the 

door : 

The collar tightens, and again he feels 
His half-healed wounds inflamed; again the 

wheels 

With tiresome sameness in his ears resound, 
O er blinding dust, or miles of flinty ground. 
Thus nightly robbed and injured day by 

day, 

His peacemeal murderers wear his life away. 
What sayest thou, Dobbin ? what though 

hounds await 

With open jaws the moment of thy fate, 
No better fate attends his public race ; 
His life is misery, and his end disgrace. 
Then freely bear thy burden to the mill ; 
Obey but one short law, thy driver s will. 



WINTER. 87 

Affection, to thy memory ever true, 

Shall boast of mighty loads that Dobbin 

drew ; 
And back to childhood shall the mind with 

pride 

Recount thy gentleness in many a ride 
To pond, or field, or village fair, when thou 
Held st high thy braided main and comely 

brow ; 

And oft the tale shall rise to homely fame 
Upon thy generous spirit and thy name. 

Though faithful to a proverb we regard 
The midnight chieftain of the farmer s yard, 
Beneath whose guardianship all hearts re 
joice, 

"Woke by the echo of his hollow voice ; 
Yet as the hound may faltering quit the pack, 
Snuff the foul scent and hasten yelping back : 
And e en the docile pointer know disgrace, 
Thwarting the general instinct of his race ; 
E en so the mastiff, or the meaner cur. 
At times will from the path of duty err 
(A pattern of fidelity by day, 
By night a murderer, lurking for his prey), 



00 WINTER. 

And round the pastures or the fold will creep, 
And, coward-like, attack the peaceful sheep. 
Alone the wanton mischief he pursues, 
Alone in reeking blood his jaws imbrues ; 
Chasing amain his frightened victims round, 
Till death in wild confusion strews the 

ground ; 

Then wearied out, to kennel sneaks away, 
And licks his guilty paws till break of day. 

The deed discovered, and the news once 

spread, 
Vengeance hangs o er the unknown culprit s 

head : 

And careful shepherds extra hours bestow 
In patient watchings for the common foe, 
A foe most dreaded now, when rest and peace 
Should wait the season of the flock s increase. 

In part these nightly terrors to dispel, 
Giles, ere he sleeps, his little flock must tell. 
From the fireside with many a shrug he hies, 
Glad if the full-orbed moon salute his eyes, 
And through the unbroken stillness of the 
night 



WINTER. 89 

Shed on his path her beams of cheering light. 
With sauntering step he climbs the distant 

stile, 

Whilst all around him wears a placid smile ; 
There views the white-robed clouds in clus 
ters driven, 

And all the glorious pageantry of heaven. 
Low, on the utmost boundary of the sight, 
The rising vapors catch the silver light ; 
Thence Fancy measures, as they parting fly, 
Which first will throw its shadow on the eye, 
Passing the source of light, and thence away, 
Succeeded quick by brighter still than they. 
Far yet above these wafted clouds are seen 
(In a remoter sky, still more serene) 
Others, detached in ranges through the air, 
Spotless as snow, and countless as they re fair ; 
Scattered immensely wide from east to west, 
The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest. 
These, to the raptured mind, aloud proclaim 
Their Mighty Shepherd s everlasting name. 

Whilst thus the loiterer s utmost stretch of 

soul 
Climbs the still clouds, or passes those that roll, 



90 WINTER. 

And loosed imagination soaring goes 
High o er his home, and all his little woes, 
Time glides away ; neglected duty calls ; 
At once from plains of light to earth he falls, 
And down a narrow lane, well known by day, 
With all his speed pursues his sounding way, 
In thought still half absorbed and chilled with 

cold, 

When lo ! an object frightful to behold ; 
A grisly spectre, clothed in silver-gray, 
Around whose feet the waving shadows play, 
Stands in his path ! He stops, and not a 

breath 
Heaves from his heart, that sinks almost to 

death. 

Loud the owl halloos o er his head unseen ; 
All else is silent, dismally serene : 
Some prompt ejaculation, whispered low, 
Yet bears him up against the threatening foe ; 
And thus poor Giles, though half inclined to 

fly, 

Mutters his doubts, and strains his steadfast 
eye. 

" 7 T is not my crimes thou com st here to re 
prove ; 



WINTER. 91 

No murders stain my soul, no perjured love ; 
If thou rt indeed what here thou seem st to 

be, 

Thy dreadful mission cannot reach to me. 
By parents taught still to mistrust mine eyes, 
Still to approach each object of surprise, 
Lest Fancy s formful visions should deceive 
In moonlight paths, or glooms of falling eve, 
This then s the moment when my mind should 

try 

To scan thy motionless deformity ; 
But 0, the fearful task ! yet well I know 
An aged ash, with many a spreading bough 
(Beneath whose leaves I ve found a Summer s 

bower, 
Beneath whose trunk I Ve weathered many a 

shower), 

Stands singly down this solitary way, 
But far beyond where now my footsteps stay. 
7 T is true, thus far I Ve come with heedless 

haste ; 

No reckoning kept, no passing objects traced. 
And can I then have reached that very tree 1 
Or is its reverend form assumed by thee 1 " 
The happy thought alleviates his pain : 



92 WINTER. 

He creeps another step ; then stops again ; 
Till slowly, as his noiseless feet draw near, 
Its perfect lineaments at once appear ; 
Its crown of shivering ivy whispering peace, 
And its white bark that fronts the moon s pale 

face. 
Now, whilst his blood mounts upward, now 

he knows 

The solid gain that from conviction flows ; 
And strengthened confidence shall hence fulfil 
(With conscious innocence more valued still) 
The dreariest task that Winter nights can 

bring, 

By churchyard dark, or grove, or fairy ring ; 
Still buoying up the timid mind of youth, 
Till loitering Reason hoists the scale of Truth. 
With these blest guardians Giles his course 

pursues, 

Till, numbering his heavy-sided ewes, 
Surrounding stillness tranquillize his breast, 
And shape the dreams that wait his hours of 

rest. 

As when retreating tempests we behold, 
Whose skirts at length the azure sky unfold, 



WINTER. . 93 

And full of murmurings and mingled wrath, 
Slowly unshroud the smiling face of earth, 
Bringing the bosom joy : so Winter flies ! 
And see the source of life and light uprise ! 
A heightening arch o er southern hills he 

bends, 

Warm on the cheek the slantingbeam descends, 
And gives the reeking mead a brighter hue, 
And draws the modest primrose-bud to view. 
Yet frosts succeed, and winds impetuous rush, 
And hail-storms rattle through the budding 

bush ; 
And night-fallen lambs require the shepherd s 

care, 
And teeming ewes, that still their burdens 

bear ; 
Beneath whose sides to-morrow s dawn may 

see 
The milk-white strangers bow the trembling 

knee ; 
At whose first birth the powerful instinct s 

seen 

That fills with champions the daisied green : 
For ewes that stood aloof with fearful eye, 
With stamping foot now men and dogs defy, 



94 WINTER. 

And, obstinately faithful to their young, 
Guard their first steps to join the bleating 
throng. 

But casualties and death from damps and 

cold 

Will still attend the well-conducted fold : 
Her tender offspring dead, the dam aloud 
Calls, and runs wild amidst the unconscious 

crowd : 

And orphaned sucklings raise the piteous cry ; 
No wool to warm them, no defenders nigh. 
And must her streaming milk then flow in 

vain ? 

Must unregarded innocence complain ? 
No ; ere this strong solicitude subside, 
Maternal fondness may be fresh applied, 
And the adopted stripling still may find 
A parent most assiduously kind. 
For this he a doomed a while disguised to 

range 
(For fraud or force must work the wished-foi 

change) ; 

For this his predecessor s skin he wears, 
Till, cheated into tenderness and cares, 



WINTER. 95 

The unsuspecting dam, contented grown, 
Cherish and guard the fondlings as her own. 

Thus all by turns to fair perfection rise ; 
Thus twins are parted to increase their size : 
Thus instinct yields as interest points the way, 
Till the bright flock, augmenting every day, 
On sunny hills and vales of springing flowers 
"With ceaseless clamor greet the vernal hours. 



The humbler shepherd here with joy be 
holds 

The approved economy of crowded folds, 
And, in his small contracted round of cares, 
Adjusts the practice of each hint he hears ; 
For boys with emulation learn to glow, 
And boast their pastures, and their healthful 

show 

Of well -grown lambs, the glory of the Spring ; 
And field to field in competition bring. 
E en Giles, for all his cares and watchings 

past, 

And all his contests with the wintry blast, 
Claims a full share of that sweet praise be 
stowed 



96 WINTER. 

By gazing neighbors, when along the road, 
Or village green, his curly coated throng 
Suspends the chorus of the spinner s song ; 
When admiration s unaffected grace 
Lisps from the tongue, and beams in every 

face : 
Delightful moments ! sunshine, health, and 

jy 

Play round, and cheer the elevated boy ! 
" Another Spring ! " his heart exulting cries ; 
" Another year ! " with promised blessings 

rise ! 
" Eternal Power ! from whom those blessings 

flow, 

Teach me still more to wonder, more to know: 
Seed-time and harvest let me see again ; 
Wander the leaf-strewn wood, the frozen 

plain : 
Let the first flower, corn-waving field, plain, 

tree, 
Here round my home still lift my soul to 

thee ; 

And let me ever, midst thy bounties, raise 
An humble note of thankfulness and praise ! " 



/&gt;M. 1/vM 




MODERN CLASSICS. 

11. The Princess. ) 

Maud. &gt; TENNYSON. 

Locksley Hall. ) 

12. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. An Essay by E. C. STEDMAN. 
Lady Geraldine s Courtship. MRS. BROWNING. 

Favorite Poems. ROBERT BROWNING. 

13. Goethe. An Essay by CARLYLE. 



14. Schiller. An Essay, by CARLYLE. 

The Lay of the Bell ; Fridolin. ) ~ __ 
Favorite Poems. j bCHILLER 

15. Burns. An Essay, by CARLYLE. 
Favorite Poems. BURNS. 
Favorite Poems. SCOTT. 

16. Byron. An Essay, by MACAULAY. 
Favorite Poems. BYRON. 
Favorite Poems. HOOD. 

17. Milton. An Essay, by MACASLAY. 
L Allegro, II Penseroso. MILTON. 

Elegy in a Country Churchyard, etc. GRAY. 

18. The Deserted Village, etc. GOLDSMITH. 
Favorite Poems. COVVPER. 

Favorite Poems. MRS. HEMANS. 

19. Character! sties. CARLYLE. 
Favorite Poems. SHELLEY. 

The Eve of St. Agnes, etc. KEATS. 

20. An Essay on Man. ) T&gt; 
Favorite Poems. } PopE 
Favorite Poems. MOORE. 

21. The Choice of Books. CARLYLS. 
Essays from Elia. LAMB. 
Favorite Poems. SOUTHBY. 

22. Spring. 1 

1= [THOMSON. 
Winter. J 

23. The Pleasures of Hope. \ r .,, , 
Favorite Poems. j CAMPBELL. 
Pleasures of Memory. ROGERS. 

- See page opposite inside of first cover. 



MODERN CLASSICS. 



SHAKESPEARE. 
Favorite Poems. LEIGH HUNT. 

25. Favorite Poems. HERBERT. 

Favorite Poems. COLLINS, DRYDEN, MARVELL. 
Favorite Poems. HERRICK. 

26. Lays of Ancient Rome, and other Poems. MACAULAY. 
Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers. AYTOUN. 

27. Favorite Poems. CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
Favorite Poems. OWEN MEREDITH. 
Favorite Poems. STEDMAN. 

28. Nathaniel Hawthorne. An Essay, by FIELDS. 
Tales of the White Hills. ) HAWTHORNE 
Legends of New England. } WA WTHORNE. 

29. Oliver Cromwell. CARLYLE. 

A VirtUOSO s Collection. 

Legends of the Province House. 

30. Favorite Poems. ) TT __ 
My Hunt after "The Captain." f MOLME 

31. My Garden Acquaintance. ) T nwTTTT 
A Moosehead Journal, etc. } M***"" 
The Farmer s Boy. BLOOMFIELD. 

32. A Day s Pleasure. 1 
Buying a Horse. 

&gt; 



Flitting. &gt; HOWELLS. 



The Mouse. 

- J 



A Year in a Venetian Palace. 



33. Selections from the Breakfast-Table Series and from Pages 

from an Old Volume of Life. HOLMES. 

34. Thackeray s Lighter Hours. Selections. (With portrait.! 

THACKERAY. 
All the volumes are illustrated except Nos. 2, 3, and 34. Each 

32mo, orange edges, tastefully bound and stamped, 75 cents. 

The set, 34 vols., in box, $21.00. 
* SCHOOL EDITION, neatly and substantially bound in cloth, 

each, post-paid, 40 cents, net. 

A pamphlet containing the table of contents. of each volume 
will be sent to any address, on application. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY. 
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