WOOD NOTES.
And such I knew a forest seer,
A minstrel of the natural year,
Foreteller of the vernal ides,
Wise harbinger of spheres and tides—
A lover true, who knew by heart,
Each joy the mountain dales impart;
It seemed that Nature could not raise
A plant in any secret place;
In quaking bog, or snowy hill.
Beneath the grass that shades the rill,
Under the snow, between the rocks,
In damp fields, known to bird and fox;
But he would come in the very hour
It opened in its virgin bower,
As if a sunbeam showed the place,
And tell its long-descended race.
It seemed as if the breezes brought him;
It seemed as if the sparrows taught him;
As if by secret sight he knew
Where, in far fields, the orchis grew.
Many haps fall in the field,
Seldom seen by wistful eyes;
But all her shows did Nature yield,
To please and win this pilgrim wise.
He saw the partridge drum in the woods,
He heard the woodcock’s evening hymn;
He found the tawny thrush’s broods;
And the sky-hawk did wait for him.
What others did at distance hear,
And guessed within the thicket’s gloom,
Was showed to this philosopher,
And at his bidding seemed to come.
In unplowed Maine he sought the lumberer’s gang,
Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang;
He trod the unplanted forest floor, whereon
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone;
Where feeds the moose and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.
He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,
The slight Linnea hang its twin-born heads;
And blessed the monument of the man of flowers,
Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers.
He heard, when in the grove, at intervals,
With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls—
One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree,
Declares the close of its green century.
Low lies the plant to whose creation went
Sweet influence from every element;
Whose living towers the years conspired to build—
Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild.
Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed,
He roamed, content alike with man and beast.
Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;
There the red morning touched him with its light.
Three moons his great heart him a hermit made,
So long he roved at will the boundless shade.
The timid it concerns to ask their way,
And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray;
To make no step until the event is known,
And ills to come, as evils past, bemoan.
Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps,
To spy what danger on his pathway creeps.
Go where he will, the wise man is at home—
His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there his road,
By God’s own light illumined and foreshowed.
R. W. Emerson.