The years are many since, at first, For dreamed-of wonders all athirst, I saw on Winnipesaukee fall The shadow of the mountain wall.
Ah! where are they who sailed with me The beautiful island-studded sea?
And am I he whose keen surprise Flashed out from such unclouded eyes?
Still, when the sun of summer burns, My longing for the hills returns; And northward, leaving at my back The warm vale of the Merrimac, I go to meet the winds of morn, Blown down the hill-gaps, mountain-born, Breathe scent of pines, and satisfy The hunger of a lowland eye.
Again I see the day decline Along a ridged horizon line; Touching the hill-tops, as a nun Her beaded rosary, sinks the sun.
One lake lies golden, which shall soon Be silver in the rising moon; And one, the crimson of the skies And mountain purple multiplies.
With the untroubled quiet blends The distance-softened voice of friends; The girl's light laugh no discord brings To the low song the pine-tree sings; And, not unwelcome, comes the hail Of boyhood from his nearing sail.
The human presence breaks no spell, And sunset still is miracle!
Calm as the hour, methinks I feel A sense of worship o'er me steal; Not that of satyr-charming Pan, No cult of Nature shaming man, Not Beauty's self, but that which lives And shines through all the veils it weaves,-- Soul of the mountain, lake, and wood, Their witness to the Eternal Good!
And if, by fond illusion, here The earth to heaven seems drawing near, And yon outlying range invites To other and serener heights, Scarce hid behind its topmost swell, The shining Mounts Delectable A dream may hint of truth no less Than the sharp light of wakefulness.
As through her vale of incense smoke.
Of old the spell-rapt priestess spoke, More than her heathen oracle, May not this trance of sunset tell That Nature's forms of loveliness Their heavenly archetypes confess, Fashioned like Israel's ark alone From patterns in the Mount made known?
A holier beauty overbroods These fair and faint similitudes; Yet not unblest is he who sees Shadows of God's realities, And knows beyond this masquerade Of shape and color, light and shade, And dawn and set, and wax and wane, Eternal verities remain.
O gems of sapphire, granite set!
O hills that charmed horizons fret I know how fair your morns can break, In rosy light on isle and lake; How over wooded slopes can run The noonday play of cloud and sun, And evening droop her oriflamme Of gold and red in still Asquam.
The summer moons may round again, And careless feet these hills profane; These sunsets waste on vacant eyes The lavish splendor of the skies; Fashion and folly, misplaced here, Sigh for their natural atmosphere, And travelled pride the outlook scorn Of lesser heights than Matterhorn.
But let me dream that hill and sky Of unseen beauty prophesy; And in these tinted lakes behold The trailing of the raiment fold Of that which, still eluding gaze, Allures to upward-tending ways, Whose footprints make, wherever found, Our common earth a holy ground.
1883.
SWEET FERN.
The subtle power in perfume found Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned; On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound No censer idly burned.
That power the old-time worships knew, The Corybantes' frenzied dance, The Pythian priestess swooning through The wonderland of trance.
And Nature holds, in wood and field, Her thousand sunlit censers still; To spells of flower and shrub we yield Against or with our will.
I climbed a hill path strange and new With slow feet, pausing at each turn; A sudden waft of west wind blew The breath of the sweet fern.
That fragrance from my vision swept The alien landscape; in its stead, Up fairer hills of youth I stepped, As light of heart as tread.
I saw my boyhood's lakelet shine Once more through rifts of woodland shade; I knew my river's winding line By morning mist betrayed.
With me June's freshness, lapsing brook, Murmurs of leaf and bee, the call Of birds, and one in voice and look In keeping with them all.
A fern beside the way we went She plucked, and, smiling, held it up, While from her hand the wild, sweet scent I drank as from a cup.
O potent witchery of smell!
The dust-dry leaves to life return, And she who plucked them owns the spell And lifts her ghostly fern.
Or sense or spirit? Who shall say What touch the chord of memory thrills?
It passed, and left the August day Ablaze on lonely hills.
THE WOOD GIANT
From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome, From Mad to Saco river, For patriarchs of the primal wood We sought with vain endeavor.
And then we said: "The giants old Are lost beyond retrieval; This pygmy growth the axe has spared Is not the wood primeval.
"Look where we will o'er vale and hill, How idle are our searches For broad-girthed maples, wide-limbed oaks, Centennial pines and birches.
"Their tortured limbs the axe and saw Have changed to beams and trestles; They rest in walls, they float on seas, They rot in sunken vessels.
"This shorn and wasted mountain land Of underbrush and boulder,-- Who thinks to see its full-grown tree Must live a century older."
At last to us a woodland path, To open sunset leading, Revealed the Anakim of pines Our wildest wish exceeding.
Alone, the level sun before; Below, the lake's green islands; Beyond, in misty distance dim, The rugged Northern Highlands.
Dark Titan on his Sunset Hill Of time and change defiant How dwarfed the common woodland seemed, Before the old-time giant!
What marvel that, in simpler days Of the world's early childhood, Men crowned with garlands, gifts, and praise Such monarchs of the wild-wood?
That Tyrian maids with flower and song Danced through the hill grove's spaces, And hoary-bearded Druids found In woods their holy places?
With somewhat of that Pagan awe With Christian reverence blending, We saw our pine-tree's mighty arms Above our heads extending.
We heard his needles' mystic rune, Now rising, and now dying, As erst Dodona's priestess heard The oak leaves prophesying.
Was it the half-unconscious moan Of one apart and mateless, The weariness of unshared power, The loneliness of greatness?
O dawns and sunsets, lend to him Your beauty and your wonder!
Blithe sparrow, sing thy summer song His solemn shadow under!
Play lightly on his slender keys, O wind of summer, waking For hills like these the sound of seas On far-off beaches breaking,
And let the eagle and the crow Find shelter in his branches, When winds shake down his winter snow In silver avalanches.
The brave are braver for their cheer, The strongest need assurance, The sigh of longing makes not less The lesson of endurance.
1885.