The timid it concerns to ask their way, And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray, Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps 4. 'Twas one of the charmed days, A tempest cannot blow; It may blow north, it still is warm; Or south, it still is clear; Or east, it smells like a clover-farm ; Or west, no thunder fear. The musing peasant lowly great Beside the forest water sate; The rope-like pine roots crosswise grown The wide lake, edged with sand and grass, Of the tree and of the cloud. He was the heart of all the scene; The public child of earth and sky. Me through trackless thickets led, Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide? I found the water's bed. The watercourses were my guide; I travelled grateful by their side, Or through their channel dry; They led me through the thicket damp, Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp, Through beds of granite cut my road, And their resistless friendship showed; The falling waters led me, The foodful waters fed me, And brought me to the lowest land, The moss upon the forest bark Was polestar when the night was dark; The purple berries in the wood Supplied me necessary food; For Nature ever faithful is To such as trust her faithfulness. When the forest shall mislead me, When the night and morning lie, When sea and land refuse to feed me, "Twill be time enough to die; Then will yet my mother yield A pillow in her greenest field, The clay of their departed lover. } WOODNOTES. II. As sunbeams stream through liberal space, And nothing jostle or displace, So waved the pine-tree through my thought, And fanned the dreams it never brought. 'Whether is better the gift or the donor? Come to me,' Quoth the pine-tree, 'I am the giver of honor. My garden is the cloven rock, And my manure the snow; And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock, In summer's scorching glow. Ancient or curious, Who knoweth aught of us? Old as Jove, Old as Love, Who of me Tells the pedigree? Only the mountains old, Only the waters cold, Only moon and star My coevals are. Ere the first fowl sung My relenting boughs among; Ere Adam wived, Ere Adam lived, Ere the duck dived, Ere the bees hived, Ere the lion roared, Ere the eagle soared, Light and heat, land and sea, Spake unto the oldest tree. Glad in the sweet and secret aid Which matter unto matter paid, The water flowed, the breezes fanned, The tree confined the roving sand, |