MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE,
A GOOD \WORD FOR WINTER,
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
BY JAMIES RUSSELL LOWELL.
THE FARMER'S BOY.
BY ROBERT BLOOMFIELD.
ILL US TRA TED.
BOSTON:
HOUGHTON, MIFFI.IN AND COMPANY.
Atb iii'crsihe;Pre##, Cambriboc.
eobcrii Cla#OiCO.
- -I.
I! 
Copyright, 1864 and 1871,
By JAIES RUSSELL LOWELL.
:            t:::
: 1. 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE
AND
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 
I 
CONTENTS.
Page
~ 5
45
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE..
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER..  
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.
NE  of the most delightful books in
F     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. Pelnnant.  Ill simplicity of taste and natural
refinement hlie reinids 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 liot, but they have niade me familiar
with his neighborhood.  Since I first read
himin, I have walked over some of his favorite haunts, but I still see theiii 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 onI the wall. His voliumes
are 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 garden 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 hint than
that of an empire. Burgoyne may surrender
and welcome; of what consequence is that
comipared with the fact that we can explain
the odd ttumbling of rooks in the air by their
turning over "to scratch themselves with one
claw"?  All the couriers in Europe spurring
rowel-deep make no stir in Mr. White's little Chartreuse; but the arrival of the housemartin 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 delicious because unsuspected by the author.
How pleasant is his innocent vanitv in adding to the list of the British, and still more
of the Selbornian, fauna! 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 ACQUAINTAXCE.
presence within the parish limits of either
of these anthropophagous brutes could have
been established.  He brags of no fine society, but is plainly a little elated by "having 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 disproportionate importance which is always humorous. To think of his hands having actually
been thought worthy (as neither Willoughby's nor Ray's were) to hold a stilted plover,
the Charadrius himantopus, with no back toe,
and therefore "liable, in speculation, to perpetual 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
teen 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.
" Thie 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 tortoise 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 certain angle with the plane of the horizon
took more of the sun's rays.  The tortoise
had always known this (though he unostentatiously 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 creatures whom we affect to look down upon as 
10 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.
the drudges of instinct are members of a
comnmonwealth 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 l
the victory slip thlrough our fingers just as
they were closing upon it? No man. I suspect, ever lived long in the country without
being bitten by these meteorological amnbitions.  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 Puritans especially, these weather-competitions
supply the abnegated excitement of the racecourse. Men learn to value thbermometers
of the true imaginative temperament, capable of prodigious elations and corresponding dejections.  The other day (5th July) Imarked 98~ in the shade, my high-water
mark, higher by one degree than I had ever
seen it before. I happened to meet a neighbor; as we mopped our brows at each other,
he told me that he had just cleared 100~,
and I went homne a beaten man.   I had not
felt the heat before, save as a beautiful exaggeration 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. I 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 herald Mercury, standing a-tiptoe, could look
down on mine. I seem to glimpse something of this familiar weakness in Mr. White.
He, too, has shared in these mercurial triumphs and defeats. Nor do I doubt that
he had a true country-gentleman's interest
in the weathewock; 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 employment of the mind, distracting one from too
continual study of himself, and leading himl
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 telegraph, would put the weather, as it were,
in our power, by betraying its ambushes before 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 recorl the wind and the temperature
three times a day.  Yet such men are doubtless sent into the world for this special end,
and perhaps there is no kind of accurate observation, whatever its object,Lthat 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-regllatedl universe, if it be only
that of supplying so many more jack-o'-lanterns to the future historian.  Nay, the olservations 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 equtivalent 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 conmin, of certain birds and the like,- a kind
of me'moires potr 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 acquaintances might be found entertaining by persons of kindred taste.
There is a common notion that animals
are better meteorologists than men, and I
have little doubt that in immediate weatherwisdomi they have the advantage of our sophisticated 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 beforehand whether the winter will be severe
or the summer rainles. I more than suspect 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 nrioted but
two days' difference in the coming of the
song-sparrow betweeni  a very early and  i
very backward spring.   This very year  I
saw the linnets at work thatching, just before 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 ill search of food. Birds frequently
perish from sudd(len changes in our whirnsical spring wAeather 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
benumibed by a fall of minigled rain and
snow, which probably killed mnany of them.
It should seem that their coming was dated
by the height of the sun, which betrays theni
illto unthrifty matrimony
"So nature pricketh hem in their corages ";
but their going is another  matter.. The
chimney-swallows leave us early, for example, apparently so soon as their latest flel,dglings 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 southward so late 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 flights
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 before this summer (1870) have the king-birds,
handsomest of fly-catchers, built in my orchard; though I always know where to find
them within half a mile. The rose-breasted
grosbeak has been a familiar bird in Brookline (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 announced by the newspapers, like that of
eminent or notorious people to a wateringplace, as the first authentic notification of
spring.   And such his appearance in the
orchard and garden un(doubtedly 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~ below zero of Fahrenheit, armed impregnably
within, like Emerson's Titmouse, and as
cheerful as he.  The robin has a bad reputation among people who do not value themselves 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. His ethics are
of the Poor Richard school, and the main
chance which calls forth all his energy is
altogether of the belly. He never has those
fine intervals of lunacy into which his cousins, the catbird and the mavis, are apt to
fall. But for a' that and twice as muckle's 
18  MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.
a' that, I would not exchange him for all the
cherries that ever came out of Asia Minor.
With whatever faults, he has not wholly forfeited 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 raspberries, he is a great planter, and sows those
wild ones in the woods, that solace the pedestrian 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. During the severe drouhlit 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
congenial, and, dreaming perhaps of its sweet
Argos across the sea, decked itself with a
score or so of fair bunches. I watched thema
from day to day till they should have secreted sugar enough from the sunbeams, and
at last made up my mind that I would celebrate my vintage the next morning. But
the robins too had somehow kept note of
them. They must have sent out spies, as
did the Jews into the promised land, before
I was stirring.  When I went with my basket, at least a dozen of these winged vintag,ers bustled out from among the leaves,
and alighting on the nearest trees interchanged 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 Fede;als or Confederates were ever more impartial 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
)inch was all my harvest-home.  IHow 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
mnerrinient. There was a native grape-vine
close by, blue with its less refined  abundance, butt my 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-worshippers, 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 shouLld, with
no afterthought. But when they come after
cherries to the tree near nry 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
berUilin_ mockery of distance. 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.  21
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 frin,nge-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 virtuous 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 robin if he ever ate
anything less ascetic than the frugal berry
of the juniper, and he will answer that his
vow forbids him."  Can such an open bosom
cover sutch depravity?  Alas, yes!  I have
no doubt his breast was redder at that very
moment with the blood of my raspberries.
Oin the whole, he is a doubtful friend in the
garden. He makes his dessert of all kinds
of berries, and is not averse froiu 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 exhaustless il 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 nei,ghborhood than many berries.
For his cousin, the catbird, I have a still
warmer regard.  Always a good singer, he
sometimes nearly equals tlie brown thrush,
and has the melit of keeping up his music
later in the evening than any bird of my
familiar  acquaintance.   Ever since  I can
remember, a pair of them have built in a
gigantic syringa, near our front door, and I
have known the male to sing almost  uninterrutptedly during the evenings of early
summer till twilight duskened into dark.
They differ greatly in vocal talent, but all
have a deli,ghtful way of crooning over, and,
as it were, rehearsing their song in an undertone, which makes their nearness always
unobtrusive. Thou,gh there is the most trustworthy witness to the imitative propensity
of this bird, I have only once, during an intilnacy of more than forty years, heard him 
MY GARDEN 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 owni song.  The catbird is as
shy as the robin is vulgarly familiar.  Only
when his nest or his fledglings are approache(l
does he become noisy and almost aggressive.
I have known him to station his young ill
a thick cornel-bush on the edge of the raspberry-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 bag your entire crop if he get a chance.
Dr. Watts's statement that "1 birds in their
little nests agree," like too many others intended 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 ii ~h b  oi.ar,io) nietrality.  They 
24  MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.
are very jealous of neighbors. A few years
ago, I was much interested in the housebuilding 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, friugally 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 ferndown, the gathering  of which demanded
more distant journeys and longer absences.
But, alas! tile syrinlga, immemorial manor
of the catbirds, was not more than twenty
feet away, and these "giddy neighbors" had,
as it appeared, been all along jealously watchful, 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 giving a vengeful dab at the nest in passing.
They did not fall-to and deliberately destroy 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. Several times their unconscious victims repaired
damages, but at length, after counsel taken
together, they gave it up.   Perhaps, like
other unlettered folk, they came to the conclusion that the Devil was in it, and yielded
to the invisible persecutions of witchcraft.
The robins, by constant attacks and annoyances, have succeeded in driving off the
blue-jays who  used to build in our pines,
their gay colors and quaint noisy ways making 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 tinme 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 somewhat 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 was curled up and seemed paralyzed;
the third, in its struggles to escape, had
sawn through the flesh of the thigh and so
much harimedl itself that I thought it humane 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
ciies and threats, they perched quietly within retch 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 crelong 1 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 wing,s, came lightly to the
ground, and hopped off as well as he coul(-t
with one leg, obsequiously waited on by his
elders. A week later I had the satisfaction
of meeting him in the piiie-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 handsome story of a wound received at the famous Battle of the Pines, when our tribe,
overcome by numbers, was driven from its
ancient campilng-ground. Of late years the
jays have visited us only at intervals; and
in winter their bright plumniage, set off by
the snow, and their cheerful cry, are especially welcome. They would have furnished
A3sop with a fable, for the feathered crest in
which they seem  to take so much satisfaction is often their fatal snare. Country boys
make a hole with their finger in the snowcrust just large enough to admit the jay's
head, and, hollowing it out somewhat beneath, bait it with a few kernels of corn.
The crest slips easily into the trap, but re 
28  MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.
fuses to be pulled out again, and he wh6
came to feast remains a prey.
Twice have the crow-blackbirds attempted
a settlement in my pines, and twice have the
robins, who claim a right of pre-emption, so
successfully played the part of border-ruffians 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 secondrate ghost in Hamlet. They never meddled
with my corn, so far as I could discover.
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. 2r
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 grindingorgan repetition and loudness of their habitual song.  The crow is very comical as a
lover, and to hear him trying to soften his
croak to the proper Saint Preux 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 deaconllike demeanor and garb,
somewhat questionable.   He  could  never
sally forth without insult. The golden robins, especially, would chase him as far as I
could follow with my eye, mnaking him duck
clumsily to avoid their importunate bills.  I 
30 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.
do not believe, howeveir, that he robbed any
nests hereabouts, for the refuse of the gasworks, which, in our fiee-and-easy coiimunity, is allowed to poison the river, spl)plied
him with dead alewives in abundance.  I
used to watch him  makiig  his periodical
visits to the salt-marshes and conling back
with a fish in his beak to his yoiung savages,
who, no doubt, like it in that condition
which makes it savory to the Kanakas and
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-wormis 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 elba, within a few yards
of the house.  My friend, Edward E. Hale, 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.   31
told me once that the oriole rejected from
his web all strands of brilliant color, and I
thotught it a striking example of that instilict of concealmnent noticeable iii miany
birdls, though it should seem in this instance
that the nest was amply protected by its
position fronm all marauders but owls and
squirrels. Last year, however, I had the
fullest proof that Mr. Hale was mistaken.
A pair of orioles built oil the lowest trailer
of a weeping eln, 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 nearness of a human dwelling perhaps give the
birds a greater feeling of security? They
are very bold, by the way, in quest of cordage, and I have often watched them stripping the fibrous bark from  a honeysuckle
growing over the very door.  BIlut, indeed,
all my birds look upon me as if I were a
mere tenant at will, and they were land 
32 MY GARDEN 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 Missouricurrant 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 proceedings from the window through an operaglass, 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 became 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 GARDEN 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 blossoming-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,
hlie 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 immediately lby a new rapture of music. He had the
volubility of an Italian charlatan at a fair,
and, like him, appeared to be proclaiming the
merits of some quack  remedy.   Opodeldocopodeldoc- try-Doctor-Lincoln's-opodeldoc! he
seemed to repeat over and over again, with
a rapidity that would  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
or 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 Eutropean 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, the 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 solitudes of the woodcls, the more seldom  does
he hear the voice of any sing,ing-birdl.   In
spite of ChateLubriatnd'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 wildeirness.  At any
rate, in a letter to Fontanes, written in 1804,
he speaks of ntes chevaux I)aissait d quelque
distance.   To b'oe suire Chateaubriand  was
apt  to mount the high horse, iand this may
have beeiin but an afterthought of the grand
seigyieur, 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 laine passes through the
midst of their camp, and in clear westerly
weather, at the right season, onie may hear a
score of themi singing at once.  When they
are breedcling, if I chance to pass, one of the
male birds always accompanies nme like a
constable, flitting  from post to post of the
rail-feniice, with a short note of reproof continually repeated, till I am fairly out of the
neighborhood.  Then he  will swing away
into the air and run down the wind, gurgling musi  without stint over the unheeding, 
$6  MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.
tussocks of meadow-grass and dark clumps
of bulrushes that mark his domain.
WVe 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 thou confined 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.   37
Into this bird? To all the breed
This busie ray thou hast assigned;
Their magnaetism works all night,
And dreams of Paradise amd( light."
On second thotug,ht, 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 summer, 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-woodpecker.   Lumberers have a notion that he
is harmful to timber, digging little holes
throug,h the bark to encourage the settlement of insects.  The regular rings of such
perforations which one may see in almost
any apple-orchard seem to give some probability to this theory. Almost every season
a solitary quail visits us, and, unseen anmong
the  cutrrant-bushes, calls Bob  Whitte, Bob 
38   MY GAItDEN ACQUAIN'TANCE.
[7tite, as if he were  playing at hide-andseek with that imagillary bciigI.  A  rarer
visitant is the turtle-dove, vwhose pleasant
coo (somnethlling like the  muffled crow  of
a cock from a coop covered with  snow) I
have sometimes heard, and whoi  I once
had the good luck to see close hy me in the
mulblerry-tree.   The wild-pigeon, once nlumerous, I have not seen for imany years.*
Of savage birds, a hen-hawk nlow and then
quarters himiself upon  us for a few days,
sitting slug,gish in a tree after a surfeit of
poultry.   One of them  once offered me a
near shot from my study-window one drizzly
day for several  hours.  But it was Sunday,
and I gave him  the benefit of its gracious
truce of God.
Certain birds have disappeared from our
nei,hborhood within  my  imemory.   I remember when  the whippoorwill  col(d be
heard in Sweet Auburn.  The ni(,ht-hawk,
once  coimmon, is now  rare.   The  b)rown
thrush has moved farther up country.  For
. They made their appearance again this summer (1870). 
MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.  39
years I have not seen or heard any of the
larger owls, whose hooting was one of my
boyish terrors.   The  cliff-swallow, strlange
elig,rant, that eastward(l takes his way, has
come  and  gonie agail  in my tinie.   The
I)ank-swallows, wAelluigh iinuniueral)le during
iy boyhood, no loinger frequent the crumbly
cliff of the gravel-pIit by the river.   The
barn-swallows, which once swarmed in our
barn, flashing through the (lusty sun-streaks
of the mnow, have been gonle these many
years.  My father would lead mne out to see
them gather on the roof  aii(nd take counsel
before their yearly migration, as Mr. White
used to see them at Selborie.  Eheu,fitgaces!
Thankl fortume, the swift still glues his nest,
and rolls his distant thunders night aiicd day
in the wide-throated( chimneys, still sprinkles
the evening air with his merry twittering.
The populous heronry in Fresh Pond nlea(lows has been wellnigh broken lup, but still
a plir or two'haunt the old0 home, as the
gypsies of Ellangowan  their ruinied huits,
andl every evening fly over us riverwards,
clearing their throats with a hoarse hawk 
40 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.
as they go, aid, in cloudy weather, scarce
higher than the tops of the chimneys. Sometimes I have known one to alight in one of
our trees, though for what purpose I never
could divine.   Kiing,fishers have sometimles
puzzled me in the same way, perched at
high noon in a pine, springing their watchman's rattle when they flitted away from my
curiosity, and  seeming to shove their topheavy heads along as a man dloes a wheelbarrow.
Some birds have left Lus, I suppose, because
the country is growing  less wild.   I once
found a summer duck's nest within quarter
of a mile of our house, but such a troutvaille
would be impossible now as Kidd's treasure.
And yet the niere taining of the neig,hborhood does not quite satisny ime as an explanation.   Twenty years ago, oIL 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 
MlY 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 our
losses.  But some old friends are constant.
WVilson's thrush comes every year to remind
me of that imost poetic of ornithologists.  He
flits before me thro,gh the pine-walk like
the very genius of solitude.  A  pair of pewees 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?  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 messmiates of the Ancient Mariner did
towards hint after hlie 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 GARtDEN ACQUAINTANCE.
the unerring precision a stately Trasteverina
shows iii the capture of her smaller deer.
The pewee is the first bird to pipe up ill the
mniorlning; and( dutrig, the early suliumner he
preludes his imatutinal ejaculation of peuee
with a slender iwhistle, unheard at aniy other
time.  He saddlens with the season, and, as
suanmer declines, he chang,es his note to eheu,
pewee! as if in lamentation.  Hlad he been
an  Italian bird, Ovid would  have had a
plaintive tale to tell about himi.  He is so
familiar as often to pursue a fly through the
open window into my library.
There is something, inexpressibly (lear to
me in these old firiendships of a lifetime.
There is scarce a tree of mine but has had,
at some time or other, a happy homestead
amnong its boug,,hs, to which I cannlot say,
"Manliy lilt hliearts and wiigs,
Wlhich now be deadl, lo(dged in tlhy liviig bowers."
iMy wvalk un(ler the pines wouldl lose half
its summer charim w-ere I to miss that slhy
anchorite, the -Wilsot',s thrush, nor hear in
haying,-time the metallic ring of his song, 
MuTY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.  43
that justifies his rustic name of scythe-wvhet.
I protect my game as jealously as in 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 mindl for weeks.  I
love to bring these aborigines back to the
mansuetude they showed to the early voyagers, 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 fiamiliarity 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 Medford rum.  If they
will not come near enough to me (as most
of them will), I bring them  close with an
opera-glass,- a nmuch 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 knowv
he eats cherries (we counted five of them at 
44  MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.
one time ill 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?  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, chattering like monkeys.  C,m  I sign his deathwarrant who  has tolerated mie about his
grounds so long?  Not I.  Let them steal,
and welcome. I am sure I should, hail I
had the same bringing utip and the same
temptation. As for the birds, I do not believe 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 becoming burdensome. Nor are they altogether
reluctant to be taught,-  not so reluctant,
perhaps, as unable,-and education is sure
to findl one fulcrum ready to her hand by
which to get a purchase on them. For most
of us, I have noticed, are not without an
amiable wvillingness to assist at any spectacle
or entertainment (Ioosely so called) for which
no fee is charged at the door. If special
tickets are sent us, another element of pleasure 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 strantge satisfaction in
being near of kin to the mute chief personage 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, thoug,h holding ouLt no
bait of inequality, have yet a singular charm
for many minds, especially in the country.
There is something toutching in the constancy with which men attenid free lectures,
andl in the honest patience with which they
listen to them.  He who pays may yawn or
shift testily in his seat, or even go out with
an awful reverberation of criticism, for he hlas
bought the right to do any or all of these
andcl paid for it. But gratuitouls hearers are
anesthetized to suffering hy 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 pestered by the awful duty of securing their 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTERP. 47
noney's worth. They are wasting time, to
do which ele,antlv and without lassitude is
the hi,gh(st achievemlent of' civilization.  If
they are clieated, it is, at worst, only of a
supcerfluous hour vwhich was rotting, on their
hand(ls.  Not only is miere almtuselment imadel
more piqluant, bullt instruction more palatable, 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 hymnn-book in one pocket
with a bottle of Worcestershire in the other,
or to a plea for arming the felniale gorilla
with the ballot, he also takes a friendly interest in the lecturcr, (and admires the wise
economy of Nature who thus contrives an
ampile fieldl of honest labor for her bores.
Even when the insidclious hat is passed round
after one of these eleemosynary feasts, the
relish is but heightened by a conscientious
refusal to disturl) the satisfaction's completeness with the rattle of a sin,gle 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 adclvertising a free lecture on Tupper considered as
a philosophic poet, or on my personal recollections 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 condition of having eyes, should be so generally
neglected. To be sure, eyes are not so coinmmon as people think, or poets would be
plentier, and perhaps also these exhibitions
of hers are cheapened in estimation by the
fact that in enjoyirng them  we are not getting 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 pretend to that nicer sense of what-d'ye-call-it
which was so remarkable in him! Marry 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTEil.  49
come  up! Mountains, no doubt, may inspire a profounider and more exclusive passion,
but on the whole I aim not sorry to have
been born and l)red among more domestic
scenes, where I can be hospitable without a
pang.  I am going to ask you presently to
take potluck with me at a board where Winter shall supply whatever there is of (cheer.
I think the old fellow has hitherto had
scant justice dlone 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 wvay as the noisy impertinence of
childhood, the elbowing self-conceit of youth,
or the pompous mediocrity of middle life!
As if there were anything discreditable in
death, or nobo,ly had ever longed for it! Suppose we grant that Winter is the sleep of the
year, what then?  I take it uipoii me to say
that his d(Ireams are finer than the best reality
of his waking rivals.
" Sleep, Silence' child, the father of soft Rest," 
50        A G('OOD WORD  FOR WINTER.
is a very agreeable acquaintance, and most
of us are better eniployed 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 miood, and more wholesome for me, than any charms of which his
rivals are capable. Spring is a fickle mistress, 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 goodhumor  for both.   After  she has beconme
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 of maidenhood, and
what was delicately rounded grace in the
girl gives more than hints of something like
redundance in the mnatron. Autumn is the 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 51
poet of the famnily. He gets you utp a splendor that you woull say was made out of real
sunset; lbut it is nothing more than a few
hectic leaves, wlhell all is done.  He is but a
sentimentalist, after all; a kind of Lamartiie whining along the ancestral avenues he
has nmade bare timber of, and begg,ing a
contribution of goodl-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 theiii forever in your face. He
is a better poet than Autumn, when he has
a iiiniid, but, like a truly great one as he is,
he bhrings you down to your bare manhood,
andl bids yout understand him  out of that,
with o10 adventitious liells of association, oi
hlie will none of you. He does not touch
those mnelancholy chords on which Autumn
is as great a master as Heine.  Well, is there
no slch thing as thrumming on them and
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 
r2  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 comfort in the long run. He is not what they
call a genial critic; but brinig a real man
along with you, and you will findl tbere is a
crabbed generosity about the old cynic that
you would not exchange for all the creamy
concessions of Aututmn.  " Season of mists
and nmellow fi'uitftlness," quotha? That's
just it; tWinter soon 1)lolvs your head clear
of fog and makes you see things as they are;
I thank him fior it! The truth is, between
ourselves, I have a very good opinion of the
whole family, who always welcome me without 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 tlhe true relish.  They are as good
colmpalny, the worst of tlhei-, as any I know,
and I am not a little flattered by a condescension from  any one of them; but I happen 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 escape from man was brought into fashion by
Rousseau; for his prototype Petrarch, though
he had a taste for pretty scenery, had a true
antique horror for the grander aspects of nature.  He got once to the top of Mont Ventoux, 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
has 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 forest.  They huddled together in cities as well
fi)r safety as to keep their mind(ls warm.  The
Romans had a fondness for country life, but
they hadl fine roadls, anld Rome was alway,s
within eas  reaellch.  The author of the Book
of Job is the earliest I know of wlho slhonved
any profound sense of the moral meanling of
the outwardcl world; and I think none has
approached him since, tholugh  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 poetry.  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 ri1ht at the west end of Itaille,
Down at tlhe root of tVesiulus the cold,
A   lusty plallin abundmlait of vitaille,
Where niany a towver and townl 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
altogethler subsidinry. No doubt the works of
SaTlvator Rosa and G(aspar Poutssin show that
there niust have been some amateur taste for
the grand alid terrible in scenery; but the
British poet Thomson  (" swceet-souled " is
Wordsworthl's apt word) was the first to do
with words what  they had done partially
with colors.  He was turgid, no good metrist, 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 sincere genius, and not only English, but European literature is largely in his debt. He
was the inventor of cheap amusemient for the
million, to be had of All-out-doors for the
asking.  It was his impulse which  unconsciously gave direction to Rousseau, and it is
to the school of Jean Jac(iues that we owe
St. Pierre, Cowper, Cliateatubriand, Wordsworth, Byron, Lainartine, Georg,e Sand, R,uskin,   the great painters of ideal landscape.
So long as men had slender means, wheth 
56 A GOOD WOIRD FOR WINTER.
er of keeping out cold or checkmating it
with artificial heat, Winter was an unwelcome guest, especially in the country. There
he was the bearer of a lettre de cachet, which
shut its victims in solitary confinement with
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 whienever a loose casement
or a waving curtain chose to give you the
goose-flesh.  Bussy Rabutin, in one of his
letters, gives us a notion how uncomfortable it was in the country, with green wood,
smoky chimnneys, 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 much better
in the city, to judge by Menage's warning
against the danger of our dressing-gowNns taking fire, while we cuddle too closely over the
sparing blaze.  The poet of Winter himself
is saidl 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 conipany that first drew men
together at the coffee-house.   Coleridge, in
January, 1800, writes to Wedgewood   "I
amI sittilig by a fire in a rt,g g,reat-coat.....
It is most barbarously cojld, andcl you, I fear,
call shield youtrself t'Iroiil it oIly by perpetual
imlprisonimenrt."  This  thernioietrical view
of winter is, I grant, a depressing one; for
I think there is niiothing so denioralizing as
col(l. 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 g,allows for that boy.  I reiniember with
a shudder a pinch I got froin  the cold once
in a railroad-car.  A  born fanatic of fresh
air, I found nimyself glad 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,
and would have shared Colonel Jack's bed
in the ash-hole of the glass-furnace with a
grateful heart.  Since then I have had more
charity for the prevailiiing ill-opinion of win 
58  A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.
ter.  It was natural enourh that Ovid should
measture the years of his exile in Pontus Ly
the number of winters.
Ut sumIus in Ponto, ter frigore constitit Ister,
Facta est Euxini dura ter uLnda manis:
Thrice hathl the coll bound Ister fast, since I
In Poitus was, tlhrlice Euxiie's wave. mnade lhard.
Jubinal has pi)iiited an Ang,lo-Norinan piece
of do,ggerel in whlich WTinter and Summner
dispute which is the better man. It is nlot
without a kind of rou,gh and inchoate humor,
and I like it hecause old Whitebeardcl gets
tolerably fair play.   The jolly old fellow
boasts of his rate of livin,, with that contempt of poverty which is the weak spot in
the burly English nature.
Ja Dien ne place que me avyenge
Que ne face plus honour
Et plus despeuz en un soul jour
Que vus en tote vostre vie:
Now God forlid it htp to me
That I make not more great display,
And spend more in a single d(lay
Than you can do in all your life. 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.  59
Tlhe best touch, perhaps, is Winter's claim
for credit as a mender of the highways,
which was not without point when every
road in Europe was a quagimire lduriing, a
good part of the year unless it was bottomed
on somle renains of Romian engineerilng.
Je su, fet-il, seignur et mestre
Et a bon d(roit le dey estre,
Qunant de la howe face cauce
Par un petit de geele:
.Master and lord I am, says he,
And of good right so ought to be,
Since I make canseys, safely crost,
Of miud, with just a pinch of frost.
But there is no recognition of Winter as the
best of outdoor company.
Even Emnerson, an open-air man, and a
bring,er of it, if ever any, confesses,
"The frost-king ties my fumbling feet,
Sings ill my ear, mry hand(s are stones,
Curdles the blood to the marble bones,
Tugs at the heartstrings, numbs the sense,
Aiid hems in life with narrowing fence." 
60  A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.
Winter was literally "the inverted year,'
as Thomson called hin; for such entertain
minents as could( be hadl must be got within
doors.  What cheerfilness there was in bru
mal v          erse wa s th at of Horace's dissolve frigi,s
li(qna super foco       large reponens, so pleasantly
associated with the cleverest scene in Roderick            Ranidonn. This is the tone of that poeii
of Walton's        friend Cotton, which won  the
praise  of               Words worth  -
"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 nortlh
Can neither storm nor starve us foiitk.
'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 inrrth and wit, 
A GOOD WORD FOR 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."
He finds his consolations, like Cotton, in the
house,   though m        ore 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 beanming tapers join
To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit
And hold high converse with the mighty dead."
Doctor Akensidcle, a man to be spoken of with
respect, follows Thomson.  With him, too,
"Winter desolates the year," and
" How pleasing wears the wintry night
Spent with the old illustrious dead!
While by the taper's trembling light 
2  A GOOD WORD FORt WINTER.
I seem those awful scenes to tread
Whlere 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 middlle with
an &c., well knowing that what follows is
but the comingi-roulnd again of what went
before, marching in a circle with the cheap
numierosity of a stage-armly.   In truth, it
is no wonder that the short days of that
cloudy northern climatte should have added
to winter a gloonl borrowed of the mind.
We  hardly know, till we have experienced
the contrast, how sensil)ly our winter is alleviated by the longer d(layli,lght and the pellucid atmosphere.  I once spent a winter in
Dresden, a southern climate compared with
En,gland(l, and really alnmost lost my respect
for the sun when I saw him groping amiong
the chimney-pots opposite my  windows as
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 occupatiolis that (dei-an(d fixedl incolies of uinbroken time.  This is why Milton said "that
his vein never happily flowed but from the
autumnal equinox to the vernal," though in
his twentieth year he had written, on the return of spring,
Fallor'! an et nobl)is recleunt in carmina vires
Ingeniumque mihi niunere veris adest?
Enr I? or do the powers of song return
To mne, and genius too, the gifts of Spring?
Goethe, so far as I remelmber, was the first
to notice the cheerfulness of snow in sunshine.  His  tarz-reise im [Finter 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
sing,ularly interesting and characteristic letters to Frau von  Stein, however, written
dTuring the journey, he says: "It is beautiful indeed; the miist 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 fromn the darkest molllents of dyspeptic solitaries compelled him against his
will to see in th(tt the one evil thing made
by a God whose goodness is over all his
works.  Cowper's two walks in the morning and noon of a winter's day are deli,ghtful, 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 youL walk along
with him.  You laugh with him at the grotesque shadow of your leg,s lengthened across
the snow by the just-risen sun.   I know
nothing that gives a purer feeling of outdoor exhilaration than the easy verses of this
escaped hypochondriac. But Cowper also
preferred his sheltered garden-walk to those
robuster joys, and bitterly acknowledged the
depressing influence of the darkened year. 
A GOO) WORD FOR WINTER.  65
In December, 1780, he writes: "At this
season of the year, an(i in this gloomy uncomfortable 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 dreadful Newton? Perhaps his poetry bears truer
witness to his habitual feeling,, for it is only
there that poets dlisenthral themselves of their
reserve and becomne 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
"But are not wholesome airs, thoughl unperfumed
By roses, and clear suIns, though scarcely felt,
And groves, if inharmonious, yet secure
From clamnor, 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 Enlgland now
Whlat England was, plain, hospitable kind,
Ald undebanched."
The conclusion shows, however, that he
was thinkiing,, mainly of fireside delights, not 
66 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.
of the blusterous companionship of nature.
This  appears  even  more  clearly in the
Fourth Book: —
"0 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 loving, a handy Latinisni (especially with elision
beauty added), any  more than Gray, any
mnore than Wordsworth, - on the sly. But
the member for Olney has the floor:
"0 Winter, ruler of the inverted year,
Thy scattered hair with sleet like ashes filled,
Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy chleeks
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 WOltD FOR WINTER.
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,
Shortenlling his journey between morn and noon,
And( hurryiiig him, impatient of his stay,
Down to the rosy west, but kindly still
Compersating his loss with added hours
Of social converse andl instructive ease,
Ai(l gathering at short notice, in one group,
The family dispersed, and fixing thought,
No, less dispersed by daylight and its cares.
I crown thee king of intiniate delights,
Fireside enjoyments, homneborn happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of Lundisturbed Retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening know."
I call this a good human bit of writing,
imag(inative, too,-not so flushed, not so
.... highfalulting (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 sulblimned, - but wholesome,
masculine, and strong in the simplicity of a
nind wholly occupied with its theme. To
67 
68 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.
me Cowper is still the best of our descriptive poets for every-day wear.  And what
unobtrusive skill he has! How he hei,ghtens, for example, your sense of winter-evening, seclusion, by the twanging horn of the
postman OIn 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 anything for a bit of nature pure and simple,
without quite so strong a flavor of W. W.?
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 modeluct are inextricably interfused. 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.  69
If I remember aright, Wor(sworth himself (except in his magn,ificent skating-scene
in the " Prelude ") has not miuch to say for
winter out of doors. I cannot recall any
picture  by  himi  of  a snow-storm.   The
reason miay possibly be  that in  the  Lake
Country evenii the winter storms bring rain
rather than snow.   He was thankful for the
Christmnas visits of Crabb Robinson, because
thiey "helped  him  through  the  winter."
His only hearty praise of winter is when, as
GDneral Feivrier, he defeats the French 
' Humanity, delighting to behold(
A fond reflection of her own decay,
Hath painted( Winter like a traveller old,
Propped onl a staff, a(nd, through the sullen day,
Iii hooded miantle, limping o'er the plain
As though his weakness weie disturbed by pain
Or, if a juster fancy should allow
An iundisputed synl)ol of command,
The chosen sceptre is a withered bough
Infirmly grasped withiii a witheredl hand.
These enblenis suit the helpless and forlorn;
But mighty Winter the device shlall scorn."
The Scottish poet Grahanie, in his "Sab,,t/L:  says manftlly: - 
70  A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.
"Now is the tinme
To visit Nature in her grand attire";
and hlie has one little picture which no other
poet has surpassed:
"High-ridged the whirled drift has almost reached
The powdered keystone of the clhurchyard porch:
Mute hangs the hooded bell; the tonlbs lie huried."
Even in outr own  climate, where  the  sLun
shows his winter face as long and as brightly
as in Central Italy, the seduction of the
chinney-corner is apt to predominate in the
mild over the severer satisfactions of mnuffled 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 Emnerson, perfect as a Greek
fragmient (d(espite the archaismi of a dissyllahic fire), which he has chosen for his epigraph, tell us, too, how the
"Houseimates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultlous prival(y of storm." 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 71
They aIre all in a tale. It is always the
tristis Hiemrns of Virgil.  Catch one of them
having, a kin-d word for old Barbe Fleurie,
unless he whines throughb some cranny, like
a be,ggar, to heighten their enijoyment while
they toast their  sl ipperedl toes.   I grant
there is a keen relish of contrast  about
the bickering, flame as it gives an emphasis
beyond Gherardo della Notte to loved faces,
or  kindles  the  gloomy gold  of  volumies
scarce less friendly, especially when a tempest is blundering roundL the house.  Wordsworth 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 boureoiee's:
"How touching, wlien, at nni(glit, sweep
Sniiow-nnuffled winlds, an(l all is (lark,
To hear, - and sink again to sleep! "
J. H., one of those choice poets who will
not tarnish their bright fancies by publication, alwav-ys insists onl a snow-storm.s e.sen
IV 
72 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.
tial to the true atmosphere of whist. Mrs.
Battles, in her fi.mous rule for the game, implies winter, ntud would( doubtless have added
tempest, if it could be had for the asking. For
a good solid read also, into the smiall hours,
there is niothing like that sense of safety
ag,ainst having  your  evening laid waste,
which Euroclydon brings, as he bellows
downii the chimney, making your fire gasp,
or rustles snow-flakes against the pane with
a sound miore soothing than silence.  Emnerson, as he is apt to do, not only hit the nail
on the head, but drove it honie, in that last
phrase of the "tumnultuous privacy."
But I would exchange this, and give soinething to boot, for the privilege of walking
out into the vast blur of a north-northeast
snow-stormr, and getting a strong draught on
the furnace within, by drawing the first furrows 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,
you get the heavy snow that gives a true 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.   73
Alpine slope to the bot,ughs of your evergreens, and traces a skeleton of your elmis iii
white; butt you must hlave plenty of north
in your gale if youl want those driving nettles
of frost that sting, the cheeks to a crimson
manlier than that of fire.  During, the great
storI) of two winters ago, the miost robustious
periwig,-pated fellow of late yeals, I waded
and floundered a couple of miles through the
whispering night, tand I)brotght home  that
feeling of expaInsion  we have after b)eing in
good company.   " Great thingis doeth He
which we cannot comprehend; for he saith
to the snow,' Be thou on the earth.'"
There is admirable snow scenery in Judd's
"Margaret," but some one  hlas confiscated
my copy of that admiral)le book, and, perhaps, Homer's picture of a snow-stormi is the
best yet in its large simplicity: —
"And as in winter-time, when Jove his cold sharp
javelins throws
Amongst us mortals, and is mnoved to white the
earth with snows,
The winds asleep, he freely pours till highest
prominients, 
74  A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.
Hill-tops, low nieadows, and the fields that crown
with most contents
The toils of mnien, seaports and shores, are hid,
and every place,
But flood(s, that fair snlow's tender flakes, as their
own brood, enmbrace."
Chapman, after all, though he makes very
free with him, comes nearer Homer than
anybody else. There is nothing in the original of that fair snow's tender flakes, but
neither Pope nor Cowper  couldL get out of
their heads the Psalmnist'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 nol)ly simple, while
Pope  is  simply nonsensical,  and Cowper
pretty.  If they must have prettiness, Martial would have supplied them with it in his
Densum tacitarum velluts aquaruni,
which is too pretty, tlhough I fear it would
have pleased Dr. Donne.    Etustathius of
Thessalonica calls snow v'8Sop Epa8Se,, woolly
water, which a poor old French poet, Godeau,
has amplified into this: - 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.   75
Lorsque la froidure inhurnainue
De leul verd ornement d(epouille les forets
Sous ilue neige epaisse il couvre les guerets,
Et la neige a pour eux la chaleutr de la laine.
In this, as in Pope's version of the passage in
Homner, 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 hunit up
what the poets have said about it, but to look
at the sweet miracle itself.
The preludings of Winter are as beautiful
as those of Spring. In a gray Decemiber
day, when, as the farmers say, it is too cold
to snow, his numnibed fingers will let fall
doLbtfully a few star-shape(d flakes, the snowdrops and anemones that harbinger his more
assured reign.  Noow, and now only, mnay be
seen, heaped on the horizoni's eastern edge,
those  "blu I)e  clou(ds"  from  forth  which
Shakespeare says that Mars "doth pluck the
masoned turrets."  Sometimes  also, when
the sunt is low, you will see a single cloud
trailing a flurry of snow along the southernl 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 mornling 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 mnere 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 been sweetly rounded as the
breasts of Aphrodite; what was unsightly
has been covered gently with a soft splendor,
as if, Cowley would have said, Nature had
cleverlv 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 swept by that inspired thumb of Phicdias'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 throug,h which it rushed torrent-like, the eye finds its bied irregularly
scooped like that of a brook in hard beachsand, or, in more sheltered spots, traced with
outlines like those left by the sliding edges
of the surf upon the shore.  The air, after
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 footprint of a cat; here a dog, has looked in on
you like an amnateur watchman to see if all is
right, sltumping clumtsily al)out in the mealy
treachery.  And look! before you were Lup
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 byv light borderers of
the sea.  The earliest autographs were as
frail as these.  Poseidon traced his lines, or
giant birds made their mark, on preadamite
sea-margins; and the thunder-gust left the
tear-stains of its sudden passion there; nay,
we have the signatures of delicatest fernleaves on the soft ooze of weons that dozed
away their dreamless leisure before consciousness 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 ornithorhlyncus, or much more
so than that of t(hese Bedotins of the snow (lesert?  Perhaps  it was only because  the
ripple an(l the raill-drop an(l the bird were
not thinking, of thenmselves, that they had
such luck.  Thle chances of immortality depend very much on that.  Howi often have
we not seen poor mortals, (lupes of a season's
notoriety, c'irniiig thieir i;lles onl seemling,solid rock of nierest beachl-sanl, vwhlose feeble
hold on meniory shall be washed avay by
the next wave of fickle oIiniion! Well, well,
honest Jacques, there are better things to be
found in the snowv than sermlons.
The snow that falls damp comies commonly
in larg,er flalkes from  windless skies, and is
the prettiest of all to watchl from undler cover.
This is the kind  Holnier ha(l in mind; and
Dante, who had never read him, compares
the dlilatate faltle, the flaring flakes, of his
fiery rain, to those of snow aimong the nmountains without wiold.  This sort of snowfall
has no10 lighIt 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 vig,orouLs exercise in all
weathers, was thinking of this drier deluge,
when he speaks of the " whirling drift," and
tells how
"Chanticleer
Shook off the powthery snlaw."
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 iii 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 criumble from its exquisite
pause.  After such a storim, 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 seems 
A GOOD WOIRD FOR WINTER. 81
precipitated light, and the dark current
down below gleamns as if with  an inward
lustre.  Dull of lmotion 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-stormn often turns to rain,
and, in our freakish climate, the wind will
whisk sometimes into the northwest so suddenly as to plate all the trees with crystal
before it has swept the sky clear of its last
cobweb of cloudl.  Ambrose  Philips, in a
poetical epistle from Copenha(gen to the Earl
of Dorset, describes this strange confectionery
of Nature,- for such, I am half ashamed to
say, it always seemns to nme, recalling the
"glorified sugar-candy" of Lamnb's first night
at the theatre.  It has an artificial air, altogether beneath the grand artist of the atmosphere, 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
vet liked her to be mighty fine, as Pepys 
82   A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.
would say, with a heightening of powder and
rou,e:
"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 nmyv 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 atonms flies,
The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends
And in a spangled shower the prospect ends." 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 83
It is not uniistrucetive to see how tolerable
iAmbrose 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 forest" are goodl, as truth always is after a fashion; but what shliall 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 has
been brought to his very door, and if there
are boys to be had (whose company beats all
other recipes for prolong,ing life) a middleaged Master of the Works will knock  the
years off his account and make the family
Bible seem a dealer in foolish fables, by a
few hours given heartily to this business.
First comes the Sisyphllean toil of rolling the
clamuly balls till they refilse to budgle farther.  Then, if you woul play the statuary,
they are piled one upon the other to the 
84 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.
proper height; or if your aiiu 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 comipanions meanwhile are
unconsciously learning lessons in aesthetics.
From the feeling of satisfaction with which
one squats on the damp floor of his exteinporized dwelling, I have been led to think
that the backwoodsman must get a sweeter
savor of self-reliance front the house his own
hands have built than Branante or Sansovino couldl ever give.  Perhaps the fort is
the best thing, for it calls out more masculine qualities and ad(s 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-highl ramparts
against a storm of nephews, his breast plastered with decorations like another Radetsky's.   How  well I recall the indonmitable
good-humor under fire of hinm 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 deathwolunld inl 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
cltumsy giants in it without longing to help.
It was a pretty fancy of the young Vermont
sculptor to make his first essay in this evanescent material. Was it a figure of Youth, I
wondcler?  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 mocklery-king of snow,
Stan(ding before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away inll wateI-(Irops!"
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
rondare of a hillside.  I have seen within a
miile of home effects of color as lovely as
any iridescence of the Silberliorn after sundown.  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 miay fairly make the sanme
boast as compared with the rest of the year.
Its still mnorningos  with  the  thelrmometer
near zero, put a pre-miu:m on walking.  There
is more sentimaent in traf, perhaps, and it is
itore elastic to the foot; its silenice, too, is
w-ellnigh as congenial with meditation as that
of fallen  i)ile-tassel; but for extilaration
there is nothing  like a stiff snow-crust that
creaks like a cricket at every step,       and c(n)imunicates its own sparkle  to the senses.
The air you drink is frapp,e all its grosser
particles precipitated, and the dregs of your 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 87
blood with them.  A  purer current mouniits
to the brain, courses sparkling  throug,h it,
and rinses it thorotug,hly of all dejected stuff.
There is nothiing left to breed an exhalation
of ill-humior or despondency.   They say that
this rarefied atlmosphere  has  lessened  the
capacity of our lungs.  Be it so.  Quart-pots
are for mtudtlier liquor than nectar.  To mne,
the city in winter is infinitely dreary,   the
sharp street-corners have such a chill in thenm,
an(l the snowv so soon loses its maidenhood
to b)ecome a mere d(rab, -"doing shameful
things," as Steele says of politicians, " without being ashame(l."  I pine for thle Quaker
tpurity  of  my  country  landscape.   I  am
s-)eaking, of course, of those winters that
are not ni,ggardly of snow, as ours too often
are, giving us a gravelly dust instead.  Nothiiig can  be unsig,hitlier than those piebald
fields where the coarse brown hid(le of Earth
shows  thlro(ugh   the  holes  of her  ragged
ernime.  But evenl when there is abuldi(lance
of sniow, I find as I grow oldler that there
are not so maniy good(I crusts as there use(l to
be. Wheni  I first observed this, I rashlly set 
88   A GOOD WOIRD FOIR WINTER.
it to the account of that general degeneracy
in nature (keepl)ing pace with the same melancholy phenomenon in man) which forces
itself upon the attention and into the philosophy of middle life.  But happening once to
be weighed, it occurred to nme that an arch
which woul(l bear fifty pounids could hardly
be blamed for giving way under more than
three times the weighlt. I have sometimes
thought that if theologians would renmenmber
this in their argiuments, and consider that the
man may slump through, with no fault of
his own, where the boy would have skimmed
the surface iii 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 following eagerly on a thlaw.  You will never find
him so cheerful. As he shrank away after
the last thaw, hlie built for himself the miost
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 WAINTER.  89
pleasing for their narrowness than those for
their grandeur.  What a cumning silversmith
is Frost!  The rarest workmanalship of Delli
or Genoa copies hiini but clumsily, as if the
fingeris of all other artists were thumbs.
Feriinw-ok and lacework and filigree in endless variety, and under it all the water tinkles like a distant guitar, or drums like a
tamb,)urine, or gurgles like the Tokay of an
anchoiite's dreami.  Beyond doubt there is a
fairy procession marching 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 nmay be had every winter, but he can do better than this, though
I have seen it but once in miy life. There
hadl been a thaw without wind or rain, making 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 FORt WINTElR.
was no perceptible current in the atmiospihere, the fog b)egan to attach itself in frosty
roots and filaments to the southern side of
every twig, and grass-stein.  The very posts
had poeiis traced upon  tlhem  by this dunib
iinstr-el.  Wherever the mioist seeds found
lodg,menit  grew an  inclh-(leep moss fine as
cobweb, a slender coral-reef; argentine, delicate, as of solme silent sea in the moon, such
as Agassiz diredges when hlie dreams.  The
frost, too, can wield a delicate graver, and
in  il'iney leaves  Piranesi far behind.   He
covers your window-pane with Alpine etchin,s, as if in nmemory of that sanctuary where
he finds shelter even in miidsummlier.
Now look down froni your hillsidle across
the valley. The trees are leafless, but this
is the season to stud(ly their anatomy, and did
you ever notice before how niuchl color there
is in the twi(s of many of them?  And the
sioke IlfromL those chimneys is so blue it
seemis like a feeder of the sky into which it
flows.  Winter refines it and gives it agreeable associations.   In  sunmer  it stuggests
cookery or the drudgery of steami-engines, 
A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 91
J)ut now  your faicy (if it can  forget for
a moment the dreary usurpation of stoves)
traces it down to the fireside and the brighteied faces of children.  Thoreau is the only
poet who has fitly sung it. The wood-cutter
rises before day andl
First in the dusky (lawn he sends abroad
His early scout, hlis emissary, smoke,
The earliest, latest pilgrim froml his roof,
To feel the frosty air;....
And, while he crouches still beside the hearth,
Nor musters courage to inbar the door,
It has gone down the glen with the light wind
And o'er thle plain unfurled its venturous wreath,
Draped the tree-tops, loitered upon the hill,
An(l warmsed the pinions of the early bird;
And now, perchance, high in the crispy air,
Has caughlt sight of the (lay o'er the earth's edge,
And greets its master's eye at hIis low door
As some refulgent cloud in the upper sky."
Here is very bad verse and very good
imagination.  He ha(d been reading, Wordswvorth, or be would not have ma(le tree-tops
an ianil)us.  In the AIoreturn of Virgil (or,
if not his, better than most of his) is a pretty
I)icture of a peasant kindling his wintermorning fire.  He rises 1)efore (ldaw-n, 
92  A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.
Sollicitaque mnant tenebras explorat inertes
Vestigatque focuni l,sus quenm denique sensit.
Parvulus exusto remanebat stipite fumius,
Et cinis obducte celahat lumina prunse.
Admovet his pronam submissa fronte lucernam,
Et producit acut stupas humore carentes,
Excitat et crebris languentem filatibus ignem;
Tand(lem concepto tenebrt futlgore recedunt,
Oppositaque manu lumen defendit ab aura.
Withl cautious hand hlie gropes the slutggish dark,
Tracking the hearth which, scorched, he feels erelolg.
In burnt-out logs a slender smloke 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 langui(l flame.
Before the gathering glow the shades recede,
And his lenit 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 flames.
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 the trunk of some hardwood tree with
an eye as keen as that of a French soldier
foiaging  for the pot-atu-feu  of  his mess.
Perhaps a bluejay shrills cah cah in his
corvine trebles, or a chickadee
"Shows feats of his gymnastic play,
Headl downward, clinging to the spray."
But both him and the snow-bird I love
l)etter to see, tiny fluffs of feathered life, as
they scurry about in a driving mnist 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, glidinig without tread,
An image with a halo round its head."
lBut this aureole is not peculiar to winter.
I have noticed it often in a summer mornin, when  the grass was heavy  with dew,
and even later in the day, when the dewless 
94 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER.
grass was still fresh enough to have a gleam
of its owvn.
For nmy own part I prefer a winter walk
that take in the nightfall and the intense
silence that erelong follows it.  The eveniing
lamnps 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 hamg, like twinkling winter lamps,
Amnong 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 sumnier-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 mi(cle 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 "' 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 upol  Harry Gill,
she has
"The cold, cold moon above her head";
and Coleridge speaks of
"The silent icicles,
Quietly gleaming to the quiet mooni. "
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.
"Anid, interrupting oft that eager game,
From under Esthliwaite's splitting fields of ice,
The pent-up air, struggling to free itself,
Gave out to meadow-grotunlds and hills a loud
Protracted yelling, like the noise of wolves
Howling ill troops along the Bothuic main."
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 Demogorgoie  were moaning inarticulately from under the earth.  Let us
get within doors, lest we hear it again, for
there is somethinig bodeful and uncanny
in it. 
I 
`1) ((  ~)  )
III~
"Presently our hunter came back." 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.  
CONTENTS.
Page
A  MOOSEHIEAD  JOURNAL.....   9
AT  SEA.........          75 
5~.-7~ 
ILLUSTRATIONS.
"Presently our hunters came back ".
"' Wahlil,'t ain't usliil,' said he ".
"We sat round and ate thankfully".
"He had begun upon a second bottle".
Fro Ptas   g ece.
Page
...  33
...     49
~.  55
.e  
~~~A J'
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
Addressed to the Edelmann Storg at the Bagni di
Lucca.
IHURSDAY,  11th  August.- I knew
as little yesterday of the interior of
- Maine as the least penetrating person
knows of the inside of that great social millstone 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 deal
Storg.  I had seen many lakes, ranging from
that of Virgil's Cumeeai to that of Scott's
Caledonian Lady; but Moosehead, within two
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 themselves ill my brain. The truth is, we think
lightly of Nature's penny shows, and estimate
what we see by the cost of the ticket.  Empedocles gave his life for a pit-eltrance to
Etna, and no doubt found his account in it.
Accordingly, the clean face of Cousin Bull is
imaged  patrolizingly ill Lake  George,  and
Loch Lomond glasses the hurried countenance
of Jonathan, diving deeper in the streams of
European association (and coming up drier)
than ally other maan.  Or is the cause of our
not caring to see what is equally within the
reach of all our neighbors to be sought ill 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 Comnmencemenlt dinner,- not that
it was better than the one which daily graced
the board of the public institution in which lihe
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 eleemiosynary fellow-commoners could eat it.  If 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
there are unhappy men  ewho 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
Inhlabitant.  You remember  lie charming irresolution of our dear Estliwaite, (like Macheath between his two doxies,) divided between
his theory that he is under thirty, and his pride
at being the only one of us who witnessed the
September gale and the rejoicings at the Peace?
Nineteen years ago I was wmalking through the
Franconia Notch, and stopped to chat with a
hermit, who fed with gradual logs the unwearied 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 miost
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.
"Dunno, - never see it."
Too young and too happy either to feel or
13 
14     A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
affect the Juvenalian  indifference, I was sin.
cerely astonished, and I expressed it.
The log,-compelling man attempted no justification, but after a little asked, " Come from
Bawsn?"
"Yes" (with peninsular pride).
"Goodle to see in the vycinity o' Bawsn."
"0  yes!" I said,  and I thought, - see
Boston and die! see the State Houses, old
and new, the caterpillar wooden bridges crawling with innumerable legs across thle flats of
Charles; see the Comnmon, -  largest  park,
doubtless, in the world, — with its files of trees
planlted as if by a drill-serg,eant, and then for
your nunc ditiilis!
"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 dlay for
nawthiu', childern half price, he never doos
see Nawthlin' pay, nawthlin' vally." 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
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 saw people upon
the Pincian wondering at tile Alchemnist sun,
as if hlie never burned the leaden clouds to
gold in sight of Charles Street.  I thought of
it when I found eyes first discovering at Mont
B3lanc hlow beautiful snow was.  As I walked
on, I said to myself, There is one exception,
wise hermit, -it is just these gratis pictures
which the poet puts in his shlow-box, and which
we all gladly pay Wordsworth and the rest for
a 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 myself?   Why  not, like Tancred, attempt my
own solution of the Mystery of the Orient, -
doubly mysterious when you begin the two
words with capitals? You know my way of
15 
16     A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
doing things, to let them simmer in my mind
gently for months, and at last do them impronip'u in a kind of desperation, driven by the
Eunmenides of unfulfilled purpose.   So, after
talking about Moosehead till nobody believed
me capable of going thither, I found myself at
the Eastern Railway station. The only event
of the journey hither (I am now at Waterville)
was a boy hlawlking exhilaratingly the last great
railroad smash,   thirteen lives lost, -  and no
doubt devoutly wishling there had been fifty.
This having a mercantile interest in horrors,
holding stock, as it were, in murder, misfortunie,
and pestilence, must have an odd effect on the
hmnani 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 iudelstanding.  If there ever be a plum in it, it
is Sinl 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.
broiled and peppered that I was more like a devilled kidniey tlhan anythling else I call think of.
10 P..-The civil landlord and lneat chlamber at thle " Elmwood House" were very grateful, and after tea I set forthl to explore the
town.  It has a good cllance of being pretty;
'ut, like most American towns, it is ill a hlobbledehoy age, growing yet, and one cainnot tell
whlat may hlappen.   A chlild withl great promise
of beauty is often spoiled by its second teetli.
Thlere is something agreeabl)le in the sense of
completeness which a walled town gives one.
It is entire, like a crystal, -a work  whlich
man  hlas succeeded in filnisling.  I think the
lihuman mind pines more or less where everything is new, and is better for a diet of stale
bread.   The number of Americans lwho visit
the Ol01(1 World is begiiningi to afford matter of
speculation to observant Europeans, and thle
deep inspirations withl whlich tlhey breathle tllhe
air of antiquity, as if their mental lungs hlad
been  starved  withl  too  thliin an atmosphere.
For imy own part, I never saw a house whlich
I thoughlt old enough to be torn down.   It is
too like that Scythlian fashion of knocking old
17 
18      A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
people on thle head.   I caimot help thinkiung
that the indefinable something which we  call
character is cunmulative, -that the influence
of thie same climate, scenery, and associations
for several generations is necessary to its gathering 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 faithl and opinions withi as much indifference as the house in which hle was born.
However, we need not bother:  Nature takes
care not to leave out of the great heart of society eithler of its two ventricles of hold-back
and go-ahead.
It seems as if every considerable American
town must have its one specimen of everything,, 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
vlwhich seems essential in edifices of this description.  Ulhaippily, they do not reachl 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, and 
A- MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
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 system 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 Mater
as a kind of counterpoise.  The Anglo-Saxon
race has accepted the primal curse as a blessing, has deified work, and 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 commended  mali's first disobedience as  a wise
measure of political economy.  But to return
to our college.  We  cannot have fine buildings till we are less in a liurrv.  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 lose our places
in the great train of life. Yet noble architec
19 
20     A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
tutre is one element of patriotism, and an emiiient  one of  culture, the filer portions of
which  are taken ill by  unconscious absorption
througlh the pores of the miLd from the stirrounding  atmosphlere.   I stuppose  we  must
wait, for we are a great bivotac as yet rather
than a nationi, -on  the marlch  from  the Atlaintie to the Pacific,- and pitch tents instead
of  buildinlg lHouses.  Our  very villages seem
to  be in motion, following westward the bewitchillg music of some Pied Piper of Hameliii.  We still feel the great push toward sulndown given to the peoples somewhvleire iii the
gray dawn of history.  The cliff-swallow alone
of all animiated nature emigrates eastward.
Friday,  12/t. -The  coach leaves  Waterville at five o'clock iii thle niorning, and one
must breakfast in the dark at a quarter past
four, because a train starts at twenty minutes
before five,-the passengers by both conveyances being pastured  gregariously.  So one
must be up at half past three.  The primary
geologicai formations contain no trace of man,
and it seems to me.that these eocenle periods
of the day are not fitted for sustailling the 
A MOOSEHEAD JO URNAL.
homan forms of life.  One of tile Fathers held
that the sUnl was created to be worslipped at
liis rising hy thle Gentiles.  The nmore reason
l liat Christians (except, perhaps, early Christians) should  abstaini from thlese heathenish
ceremonials.  As  one arriv1ing  by  an early
train is welcomed by a drowsy maid with the
sleep scarce brushed  out of her  hair, and
finds empty grates and p()lisllcd nilahogany, on
whose arid plains the  pioneers  of breakfast
have  not yet encaniped, so a persoin waked
thus unseasonal)ly is seJlt ilito the world before
his faculties are ul) and dressed to serve him.
It mlliglit have beci fol' tllis reason that my
stomach resented for several lhours a piece of
fried beefsteak which I forced ispon it, or,
more properly speaking, a piece of that leathern conveniency which in these  regiolls assumes  tie name.   You  will find it as hard
to believe, nfy dear Storg, as that quarrel of
the  Sorbonists, whether  oue should say e~o
asian or no, that the use of the gridiroii is
unknown  hereabout,  and  so  near  a  river
named after St. Lawrence, too!
To-day has been the lhJttest day of the sea 
22      A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
son, yet  our drive has not been unpleasant.
For a considerable distance  we followed the
course of the Sebtsticook River, a pretty
streamn with alternations of dark brown pools
and wine-colored rapids.   On eacht side of the
road the land had been clearted, and little onestory farm-houses were scattered at intervals.
But the stumops still held out ill most of tile
fields, and  the tang'led wilderness  closed i'l
behind, striped here and there witlt the slim
white trunks  of the elh.  As  yet only the
edges uf tie great forest have  1)eel nibbled
away.   Sometitnes a root-fence stretched  up
its bleaching antlers, like the trophies  of a
giant  huiiter.   Now  and  then the  houses
t hickuced into an unsocial-looking village, and
we drove up to the grocery to leave aud take
a mail-hag, stopping again presently to water
tlhe horses at some pallid little tavern, whose
o(11 redl-curtained eye (the bar-room) had been
p)ut out by the inexorable  thrust of Maine
L-tw.   Rad Sheustone travelled this road, he
would never have written that famous stanza
of his.  had Johnsoii, he would  never have
quioted it. *hey are to real inns as tile skull 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
of Yorick to his face. Where these villages
occurred at a distance from the river, it was
difficult to account for them. On the riverbank, a saw-mill or a tannery served as a logical premise, and saved them from total inconsequentiality.   As we  trailed along, at the
rate of about four miles an hour, it was discovered that one of our mail-bags was missing.
"Guess somebody'11 pick it up," said the
driver coolly: "'t ally rate, likely there's
iiotliin' 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 ifs
several ilvestigation as we went along.  Presently, snliffing, gently, lie remarked:  "'Pears
to me's thou,gh  I smelt suiithiii'.  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 hlie had
23 
24     A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
snatched a rail from the fenlce, 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 (Tityruslike, meditatillng over mny pipe) anld watch the
operations of thle fire-anni}ilator.  I could not
hell) contrasting the ready lhelpfulness of our
driver, all of vwhose wits were about him, current, and redeemable iii the specie of action on
emerngency, with an incident of travel in Italy,
where, under a sonmewhat similar stress of circumstanlces, our vettmrino hlad nothling for it
but to dash lis lhat on thle ground and call on
Salt' Antonio, the Italian tlercules.
There being four passelngers for the Lake,
a vehicle called a mud-wagonl  was  detailed
it Newport for our accommodation.   In this
we jolted and rattled along at a livelier pace
tlaei in thle coclhl.  As we got fitlier nortlh,
the country (especially the  llills) gave  evi dence of longer cultivation.  About the thriv ing town of Dexter we saw fine farms and
crops.   The  houses,  too, became  prettier;
lIop-vines were trained about the doors, and 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
hunig their clustering  thyrsi over  the  open
windows.   A  kind of wild rose (called  by
the country folk the primrose) and asters were
planted about the door-yards, and orchards,
coinimonly of natural fruit, added to the pleasant hlome-look.   But  everywhere  we  could
see that thlle war between the whlite mian and
the forest was still fierce, and that it would
be a long Iwhile yet before the axe was buried.
The haying beiiig over, fires blazed or snioul
dered against the stumps in the fields, and the
blue smoke widened slowly  upward through
the quiet August atmosphere.   It seeied to
me  that I could hear a sigh now and then
from  the immemorial  pines, as  tlhey stood
watching these caimp-fires of tlhe inexorable
invader.  Evening set in, and, as we cuclled
and crawled up the loing giravelly hills, I sometimes began to faincy tha,t NalLtre lchd forgotleii to make  the corresl)poii(iog descent  on
thlle other side.  But erelong we were r-ushing
down  at full speed; and, insl)ilred by  the
dactylic beat of the horses' hoofs, I essayed
to repeat  the  opening, lines of EvLngLeline.
At the momient I was begiiniiiig, we plunged
25 
26      A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
into a hollow, where the soft clay had been
overcome  by a road of ubhewa logs.  I got
thlrough one line to this corduroy accompaniiment, somewlhat as a country choir stretches
a short metre on the Procrustean rack of a longdrawn tune.  Thle result was like this:
"Thihis ihis thehe fohorest prihihimeheval; thehe
murhurmuring pihiles hahand thehe hehem    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  seveulty-two nliles in eighteen
hours. The tavern was totally extinguished.
The driver rapped upon the bar-roomn window,
and after a while we saw heat-liglitliings of Unsuccessful matchles followed by a low grumble
of vocal thunder, which I amn afraid took the
formi of imprecation.  Preselutly there was a
great success, and the steady blur of lilghted
tallow succeeded thle t'gitic brilliance of the
pine.  A hostler fumbled the door open, and
stood staring at but not seeilng us, with the 
A MIOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
sleep sticking out all over  himi.   We at last
contrived to launlch himn, more like an ilisensible missile thanl ai intelligent or intelligibei
being, at thle sluiihbeling landlord, who came
out wide-awake, and welcoimed us as so many
hlalf-d(llLtrs,-  twn-ety-five cents eacli for bed,
dilto  breakfaist.   O   Slheustone,  Slheistoine!
The only roost was in thlle garret, whlich  had
beell iiimade into a single rooni, and contaimed
eleven  double-beds,  ranged  alolng  the walls.
It was like sleeping, in a hospital.   However,
nice customs curtsy to eighlteen-hlour rides, and
we slept.
Sa I rd,y, 13th. -  This mornilig I performed
my toilet in the bar-room, where tlhere was an
abundant supply of water, and a halo of interested spectators.   After a sufficient breakfast,
we embarked on tlhe little steamer Alloosehlead,
and  were sooIL tlthrobbing ulp the lake.   Tihe
)boat,  it ap)peared, had been chartered by  a
party, tlis uot beitig one of her regulrtl  trips.
Accordingl,y  we  were  niuleted  in twice  the
usual fIee, the philosophy of wliicl4 I could not
understand.  HIowever, it always comies easier
to us to comprehend whly we receive tlhaii why
27 
28      A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
we pay. I dare say it was quite clear to the
captain.  Thlere were three or four clearings
on the western slore; but after passillg thlese,
thie lake became wholly primeval, and looked
to us as it did to the first adventurous Freinchman  who  paddled  across  it.  Sometimes a
cleared point would be p)ilk w-ithl the blossomimg willow-hierb, "a cleap and excellent sul)stitute" for heatllher, and, like all such, not
q'ite so good  -s the real thing.  Oni all sides
rose deep-blue mountains of remiarkably graceful outline, and more fortunate tlhan common
in thleir iiaimes.  There were the Big and Little
Squaw, the Spencer and Lily-bay Mountains.
It was debated whethler wesaw Kattahldiii or
not (perhlaps more  useful as am  intellectual
exercise tlhain the assured vision would have
l)eell), and presently Moullt Kineo rose abrul)tiy before us, itL shll)e lnot unlike the island
of Capri.  Mouitains are called great natural
features, anid whIy tliey slhould not retaiii their
ames loig einoiili for tlhem  also to becoime
naturalized, it is harld to say   WTiy should
every new surveyor reclhristen tlhem withl the
gubernatorial patron ymiics of the current 3year? 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
Tl)ey are geological noses, and, as they are
aqtiiliue or plug, indicate  terrestrial idiosynierasies.  A  cosmical pllvsiognomist,  after a
glauce at tleni, will drawv no vl,gue inference
as to the character of the country.   The word
iiose is no better tlalu ally otlher word; but
since thle organ hias got that linaie, it is convenienlt to keep it.  Suppose we  had to label
our facial prominences every season with tile
name of our provincial governor, how should
we like it?  If the old ioames 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 mounltaius after their discoverers, for Nature has a knack of throwing doublets, and somehow contrives it that discoverers
have good names.   Pike's Peak is a curious
hit inll this way. But these surveyors' iamines
have no natural stick in thlem.   Tlley remind
one of the epithets of poetasters, whiclh peel off
like a badly gummed  postage-stamp.   The
early settlers did better, and there is something, pleasant inll the sound of Graylock, Saddleback, and Great Haystack.
29 
30      A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
"I love those names
Wherewith the exiled farmer tames
Nature dowvn to coinpaiionship
With his  old wold's more homely mood,
And strives the sliiaggy wild to clip
With armlls of familiar habitude."
It is possible that Mount Marcy and Mount
Hitcllcock niay sound as well hereafter as Hellespont and  Pelopoinnesus, when the heroes,
their namiesakes, have become mythlic with antiquity. But that is to look forward a great
way.   I am  no fanatic for Indian nonie-eclature,-  the name of nmyv native district having
been Pigsgusset,- but let us at least agree
on names for ten years.
There were a couple of loggers onl board,
in red flaniel shirts, and with rifles.  lThey
were  the first I lhad seen, and I was interested
in their appearance.   They were  tall, well
knit men, straight as Robin Hood, and with a
quiet, self-c(iitained look that pleased me.  I
fell inito talk with one of thiem.
"Is there a good market for the farnmers
here in the woods   " I asked.
"None  better.  They  can sell what they 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
raise at their doors, and for the best of prices.
Thle limihberers want it all, and iiiore."
It nilst be a lonelv life.  Btut illei we all
have to pay more or less life for a liviug."
Well, it is lonesomie.   Shoutld ii't like it.
After all, thle best crop a,man- cai  raise is a
good ciol) of society.   We don't live inone too
long, anyhlow; and without society a fellow
could nl't tell iiior'n half the time whether lihe
was alive or not."
This speeclh gave me a glimpse into the life
of thle lunibeiers' camp.   It was plain that
thlere a inain would  soon find outt hlow muchl
alive he w\as,    tlieire lie could learn to estimate  his quality, weighed in the nicest selfadjusting, balance.   The best arm at thle axe
or the paddle, the surest eye for a road or for
the weak point of a jsc', the steadiest foot upon
the squirming, log, the most  persuasive voice
to the tugging  oxen, — all tlhese thingis  iare
rapidly settled, and so an aristocracy is evolved
fromi  this dem-ocracy of the woods,  for good
old  mother Nature  speaks  Saxon still, and
with  hler eithler Canninig or Kennini g  means
King.
31 
32      A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
A string of five loons was flying, back and
forthi ill long, irreigular zigzags, ultteting at
intervals their wild, treinulouts cry, wllici a-lways seems far away, like tlhe last faiiit pulse
of echo dyiiig aimong the hills, and wlicli is
one of thllose few sounds that, instead of disturbing solitude, only deepenl  and confirm it.
On our inlan-d ponds tlhey are usually seen in
pairs, and I asked if it were commoni to meet
five together.  MIy questionl 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.
"Wahll,'t ain't uslil," said he, " and it's
called a sigln o' rain comim', that is."
Do you think it will rain?
With  the caution of a veteran ai.spe.r, he
evaded a direct reply.   " Wahll, they da say
it's a sign o' rain comim'," said hlie.
I discovered afterward thlat my interlocutor
was Uiicle Zeb.   Formerly, every New  England town lad its representative uncle.   liHe
was not a pawnbroker, but sonie elderly man
who, for want of more defined family ties, had 
l                                                                        -
"'  al1,'t ain't ushlil,' said he."
I
t  
A MJOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
gradually assumed this avuncular relation to
the  community, inhabiting the border-land be
tween respectability and the almshouse, with
no re gular calling, but working at haying, woodsawing, whlitewashing, associated with the de
iaise of pigs and the ailments of cattle, and
possessing as nmuclh patriotism as might be ina
plied in a devoted attachment to "New EBgland " - with a good deal of sugar and very
little water in it.   Uncle Zeb was a good
specimen of this palicozoic class, extinct among
us for the most part, or surviving, like the
Dodo, in the Botany Bays of society. He was
ready to contribute (somewhat muddily) to all
general conversation; but his chief topics
were his boots and the'Roostick war. Upon
the lowlands and levels of ordinary palaver he
would make rapid and unlooked-for incursions;
but, provision failing, hlie would retreat to these
two fastnesses, whence it was impossible to
dislodge him, and to which he knew innumnerable passes and short cuts quite beyond the
conjecture of common woodcraft. His mind
opened naturally to these two subjects, like a
book to some favorite passage. As the ear ac.
35 
36      A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
customs itself to any sound recurrilng rg gtlaily,
such as thlie ticking of a clock, and, withiout a
conscious effort of attention, takles no impircssion fronr it whatever, so does the mind fied a
natural safeguard against, this pendulum species
of discourse, anid performs its duties in the parliamenit by an unconscious reflex action, like
the beating of the heart or the movement of
the lungs.  If talk seemed to be flagging, our
Ulnicle would put the heel of one boot upon the
toe of the other, to bring it witlhiii-i point-blank
range, anid say, " Wal-il, I stump the Devil him
self to make that'ere boot hurt'ly foot," leaving us in doubt whether it were the virtue of
the foot or its case which set at nought the
wiles of the adversary; or, looking up suddenly, he would exclaim, "Wahl, we eat soie
beans to the'Roostick war,  I tell you!"
Wlhen  his poor old clay was wet with gin,
his thoughts and words acquired a rank flavor
from it, as from too strong a fertilizer.  At
such times, too, his fancy commonly reverted
to a prehistoric period of his life, when he
singly had settled all the surrounding country,
subdued the Iijimls and other wild animals,
and named all the towns. 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
We talked of the winter-camps and the life
there.  " The best thing is," said our uncle,
to hear a log squeal tlhrt the snow.   Git a
good, cole, frosty i'ornini', in Febuary say, an'
take all' hitch the critters on to a log that'll
scale seven thiousan', an' it'11 squeal as pooty
as ai'tlhiii' tyo, ever learn, I tell you."
A pause.
Lessee,-  seen Cal Hutchius lately?"
"No."
Seems to me's though I hed n't seen Cal
sence thle'Roostick war.   Wahll," 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 observed that he never seemed really to get his
foot in,-  there was always a qualifying kind
o'.)  "Wall, 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 mnan, with a voice as clear and
strong as a northwest wind, aid a great laugi,
37 
58      A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
suitable to it. His table is neat and well supplied, and he waits upon it himself ill the good
old landlordly fashlion.   One may  be  much
better off here, to my thilking', than ill one of
those gigantic Columbaria which are foisted
upon  us patient Americans  for hotels, and
whlere one is packed away inll a pigeon-hole so
near the heavens that, if the comnet should flirt
its tail, (no unlikely thing inl the month of flies,)
one  would be in danger of beiiing brushed
away. Here one does not pay his dilurnal
three dollars for an undivided five-hunldredth
part of the pleasure of looking, at gilt gingerbread.  Here one's relations are witht the monarchi himself, and one is not obliged to wait
the slow leisure of those "attentive clerks
whose praises are stllng by thankful deadheads,
and to whom the slave who pays may feel as
niuch gratitude as might thrill the heart of a
brown-paper parcel toward  the express-man
who labels it and chuecks it under his counter.
Sn;cla,y, 141(h. - 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.
shiaggy woodman chleerily, as he shook the water out of his wide-awake, "if it don't look out
sharp, it'11 begin to rain afore it thinks on't."
The day was inostly spent within doors; but
I found good and intelligent society. We
should have to be shipwrecked on Juan Fernandez not to find men who knew nmore than
we.  In these travelling encounters one is
thrown upon his own resources, and is worth
just what hlie carries about him. The social
currellnv of home, the smooth-worn coin which
passes frieely among friends and neighlbors, is
of no account. We are thrown back upon the
old system of barter; and, even with savages,
we bring away only as much of the wild wealth
of the woods as we carry beads of thoughlt and
experience, strung one by one in painful years,
to pay for them with. A useful old jackknife
will buy more than the daintiest Louis Quinze
paper-folder fresh fronm Paris. Perhaps the
kind of intelligence one gets in these out-of-theway places is the best,- where one takes a
fresh man after breakfast instead of the damp
morning paper, and where the magnetic telegraph of human sympathy flashes swift news
from brain to brain.
39 
40.A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
MAleauwlhile, at a picell, to-nmorrow's weather
call be discussed.   Thle augury from the flight
of birds is favorable, -  the loons  no  longer
prophesyiiig rain.  The wind also is hauling
round to the riglt quarter, accordilng to some,
to t}e wrong, if we are  to  believe  others.
Eaclh maln has his private baromieter of hope,
the mercury ill whichl is more or less sensitive,
and thlie opillion vibrant with its rise or fall.
Aline has an index whliclh  can be moved mechanically.  I fixed it at selfahi, and resigned
myself.   I read an old volume of the PateltOffice Report onl Agriculture, anid stored away
a beautiful pile of facts and observations for
future use, whichl the current of occupation,
at its first freslhet, would sweep quietly off to
blank  oblivion.   Practical application is the
oilly mord,ant which will  set thinlgs iII t lle
memory.   Study,  without  it, is gymnastics,
and not \work, whichi alone will get intellectual
bread.  Onle learns m-nore metaphysics from a
single temptation thanl from all tlie philosophlers.  It is curious, thlough, how tyrannical
the habit of reading is, and what  shifts we
miake to escape thinking.  There  is no bore 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
we dread beiing left alone with so much as our
own millds.  I have seen a sensible man study
a stale newspaper ill a country tavern, and
husband it as he would an old shoe onl a raft
after shipwreck. Whiy not try a bit of hibernation? There are few brains that would not
be better for living on their own fat a little
while.' With these reflections,  I, notwithstanding, spent the afternoon over my Report.
If our own experience is of so little use to us,
what a dolt is hle who recommends to man or
nationl 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 Fathier Miller,
or you'11 get a singeing."  "Pooh, pooh,
father, I've been dipped in the new asbestos
preparation," and frozz! it is all over withli
young Hopeful.  How  many warnings have
been drawn from Pretoriai hands, and Janizaries, and Mamielukes, to mnake Napoleon III.
impossible in 18S51! I found nmyself thinking
thie same thoughts over again, when we walked
later on the beach  and picked up  pebbles.
The old time-oceanl throws upon its shores
41 
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 thie dull brown
bits of com   uol  stonle with which omt' 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 booit?
Existence on such sculpin terms,Their vulgar loves and hard-won worms,
What is it all but dross to me,
Whose 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 tearless fin
NiMight with the Zodiac's awful twain
Roomn for a third immortal gain 9
Better the crowd's unthinking plan,The hook, the jerk, the frying-pan!
O Death, thou ever roaming shark,
Ingulf me in eternal dark I" 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
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;
AYhile it recovered from the shock,
Our fish took shelter'neatli a rock:
This was an ancient lobster's house,
A lobster of prodigious coeis,
So old that barnacles had spread
Their white encampmnents o'er its head,
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.
Stiretchin  a hospitable claw,
At once," said he, "the point I saw;
yv dear young friend, your case I rue,
Your griet-great-graiidf'tther I knew;
He iwas a tried and tender friend
I lknow,- I ate him in the end:
In this vile sea a pilgriin long,
Still my sight's good, mniy memory strong;
The only sign that age is near
Is a slight deafness in this ear;
I understand voar case as well
As this my old familiar shell;
43 
44     A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
This sorrow's a new-ftiingled 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 Maessieurs Loiis Blanc and Co.
I say to all my sons and daughters,
Shun Red IReptblicai  lhot waters;
No lobster ever cast his lot
Among the reds, but went to pot:
Your trouble's in the jaw, you said?
Come, let mne just nip off your head,
And, when a new one comes, the pain
Will never trouble you again:
Nay, nay, fear naught:'t is natrec'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, mairketing that way,
Picked lup a fish without a head,
floating with belly up, stone dead.
MORAL.
Sharp are the teeth of ancient saws,
And sauce for goose is gander's sauce;
But perch's heads are n't loblster's claws. 
A MOOSEHFA.D JOU. NAL.
Jlo, dlay,  5l/h.   The  mnorainig  was  fine,
and we were called at follr o'clock.  At the
moment  my  door  was  knocked  at,  I was
niounting a giraffe withl that chlarming iizil adviirari which  cha,racterizes  dreams, to visit
Prester John.  Rat-la-tat-tat! upoll my door
and uponI the  hlorn gate of dreams also.  I
remarked  to my skowllegan  (the  Tatar for
giraffe -driver) that I was quite sure thle aniii)al had the rfaps, a comiiiioi  disease among
thqli, for I heard a queer knockilg noise inside him.  It is the sound of lhis joints, 0
TaLmbourgi! (an Oriental term of reverence,)
aiid proves him to be of the race of El Kei.rat.  ]Rat-ta-tct-too.! and I lost my dinner at
tli3 Prester's, emibarking for a voyage to the
Northwest  Carry  instead.   Never  use  the
word  canoe, mny dear Storg, if you wish to
retain  your  self-respect.  Birch is the term
amongl  us backwoodsmen.   I never knew it
till yesterday; but, like a true philosopher, I
niade it arpear as if I had been intimate with
it from childhood. The rapidity with which
tlle human mind levels itself to the standard
around it gives us the most pertinent waraing
45 
46      A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
as to the company we keep. It is as hard
for most characters to stay at their own average point in all companies, as for a thlerinoineter to say 65~ for twenty-four hours togethler.
I like this in our friend Johannes Tauius, that
hie carries everywhere and maintains his insular 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 equipoise of the birch by my awkwardness? that
I should have been prouder of a conmp)liment
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 tweity miles; but
we made it rather more by crossing and recrossing 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 salerat,s period
of the art, and his bread was of a brilliant yel. 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
low, like those cakes tinged with saffron, which
hold out so long against time and the flies in
little water-side shlops of seaport towns, -
diugy extremities of trade fit to moulder on
Lethe wharf.  His water was better, squeezea
out of ice-cold  granite in the  neighboring
mountains, and  sent  through  subterranean
duets to sparkle up by the door of the camp.
"There's niothin' so sweet an' hulsomne as
your real spring water," said Uncle Zeb, "git
it pure. Buit it's dreffle hard to git it that
ain't got stuntlin' the matter of it.  Snowwater'11 burn a man's inside out, -I larned
that to the'Roostick war, - and the snow
lays terrible long on some o' tlies'ere hills.
Me an' Eb Stiles was up old Kitahdl  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. I see it fuist, an'
took an' rammed a settinl'-pole; wahlil, it was
all o' twenty foot into't, an' could n't fin' no
bottom.   I dulnno as there's snow-water
enough in this to do no hurt. I don't somehow seem to think that real spring-water's so
plenty as it used to be." And Uncle Zeb, with
47 
48      A'MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
perhaps a little over-refinement of scrupulosity,
applied his lips to the Etliop ones of a bottle
of raw gin, with a kiss that drewi out its very
soul, - a b(sia that Secuniidtis  miglit  have
sung.  He must, have been a wonderfutl judge
of water, for hlie analyzed this, and detected its
latent snow simply by his eye, and without the
clumsy process of tasting.  I could not help
thikinilg that he had made the desert his dwelling-place chiefly in order to enjoy the ministrations of this one fair s)pirit urmolested.
We pushed on.  Little islands loomed trembling between  sky and water, like hanging
gardens. Gradually the filmy trees defined
themselves, the aerial enchantment lost its
potency, and we came ip with common prose
islands that had so late been magical and poetic.  The old story of the attained and unattained.  About noon we reachied the head of
the lake, and took possession of a deserted
monyen, 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 
;$i~) I
"We sat round and ate tlankfuLlly."
I, Y'.
k(4 \/'I?t\  
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
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 all men
to be saddled and bridled, till James Watt one
day happened to overhear it. One of our
guides shot three Canada grouse, and these
were turned slowly between the fire and a bit
of salt pork, which dropped fatness upon them
as it fried.  Althlougll sy fingers were certainly
not made before knives and forks, yet they
served as a convenient substitute for those
more ancient inventions.  We sat round, Turkfashion, and ate thankfully, while a party of
aborigines of the Mosquito tribe, who had
camped in the woilgen before we arrived, dined
upon us. I do not know wlhat the British
Protectorate of the Mosquiitoes amounts to;
hut, as I squatted there at the mercy of these
blood-thirsty savages, I no longer wondered
that the classic Everett had been stung into a
williingness 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 ihandy.  Frizzled pork goes wal, don't
it? Yes, an' sets wal, too," said Uncle Zeb,
51 
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  thlen broached a curious
dietetic theory: "The  reason  we  take  salt
pork along is cos it packs handy: you git the
greatest amount o' board in the smallest compass, — let alone  that it's more  nourishin'
than an'thini' else. It kind o' don't disgest
so quick, but stays by ye, anourishin' ye all
the while.
"A feller can live wal on frizzled pork an'
good spring-water, git it good. To the'Roostick war we did n't ask for nothin' better,
on'y  beans."    (Tilt,  tilt,  gurgle,  gurgle.)
Then,  with an apparent feeling of inconsistency, "But then, comie to git used to a partictular kind  o' spriing-water, an' it makes a
feller hard to suit.  Most all sorts o' water
taste kind o' insipid away from home. Now,
I've gut a spring to my place that's as sweet
wahll, it's as sweet as maple sap.   A feller
acts about water jest as hlie does about a pair
o' boots.   It's all onl it in gittin' wonted.
Now, theim boots," etc., etc.  (Guryle, guryle,
gquryle, smack./) 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
All this while lie was packing away the
remains of the pork and hard bread in two
large firkins.  This accomplished,  we re-embarked, 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 melanchloly, and which was
finished, and the rest of his voice apparently
jerked out of him in one sharp falsetto note,
by lhis tripping over the root of a tree. We
paddled a short distance up a brook which
came into the lake smootlhly through a little
meadow not far off.  We  soon reached the
Northwest  Carry, and our guide,  pointing
through the woods, said: " That's the Cannydy road. You can travel that clearn to
Kebeck, a hundred all' twenty mile," - a
privilege of which I respectfully declined to
avail myself.   The  offer, however, remains
otien to tile public. Thle Carry is called two
nmiles; 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,
53 
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 seventyfour 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' weighit, 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
slung the two provender firkins across his
shoulder, and trudged along, grumbling that
"lie never see secti a contrairy pair as them."
He had begun upon a second bottle of his
"particular  kind o' spriing-water," and, at
every rest, the gurgle of this peripatetic fountain might be heard, followed by a smack, a
fragment of mosaic song, or a confused clatter
with the cowhide boots, being an arbitrary
symbol, intended to represent the festive
dance.  Christian's pack gave  him  not half
so much trouble as the firkins gave Uncle
Zeb   It grew harder  and harder  to singl 
{(
~;
~
"He Jiad beg~in on a second bottle."  
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
them, and with every fresh gulp of the Batavian elixir, they got heavier. Or rather, the
truth was, that his hat grew heavier, in which
hlie was carryiling ou an extensive  manufacture 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 away vwent our ulncle, the satellite firkiils
accompanying faithfully  his headlong flight.
Did ever exiled monarchl or disgraced minister 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
give a gloss of volition to smaller stumblings
and gyrations, by exaggerating them into an
appearance of  playfidl  }urlesque.   But  the
present case was beyoiid anly such subterfuges.
He held a bed of justice where lie sat, and
then arose slowly, with a stern determiniation
of vengeance  stiffening every muscle  of his
face.  But  what would he select as the culprit?  "It's that cussed firkin," hlie mumbled
5 1, 
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 larned how to walk with a gedelman! "  And, seizing the unhappy scapegoat
by the bail, he hurled it into the forest. It
is a curious circumstance, that it was not the
firkia containing thie 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 Seboomok 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. Thle repose
was perfect. Another heaven hallowed and
deepened the polished lake, and through that
nether world the fish-hlawk'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.
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. thle drowsy forest was  steeped, giving out that wholesome
resinous perfume, almost the only warm odor
which it is rcficshingl to breathe.  The tame
hlaycocks in the midst of the wildness gave one
a pleasant reminiscence of home, like hearing
one's native tongue in a stra,nge country.
Presently our hunters came back, bringing
with  them  a tall, thin, active-looking i,man,
withl black eyes, that glanced unconsciously
on all sides, like one of those spots of sunlight
which a child dances up and down the street
withl a l-)it of looking-glass. Ttiis was M., the
captain of tlhe hlay-makers, a famous  riverdriver, and who was to have fifty men under
him  next winter.  I could  now understand
that sleepless vigilance of eye.  He had consented to take two of our party in his birchl to
search for moose. A quick, nervous, decided
man, he got them into the birch, and was off
instantly, without a superfluous word.  He evidently looked upon tlhem as hlie would upon a
59 
60     A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
couple of logs which lie was to deliver at a
certain place. Indeed, I doubt if life and the
world presented themselves to Napier himself
in a more logarithmic way.  His only thought
was to do the immediate duty well, and to pilot
his particular raft down the crooked streami of
life to the ocean beyond. Thie birch seemed to
feel him as ai inspiring soul, and slid away
straight and swift for the outlet of the pond.
As he disappeared under the overarching alders
of the brook, our two hunters could not repress a grave and measured applause. There
is never any extravagance amonig these woodmen; their eye, accustomed to reckoning the
number of feet which a tree will sec(le, is rapid
and close ill its guess of the amount of stuff in
a man.  It was lctaudari a l Ia(lato, however,
for they themselves were accounted good men
in a birchl.  I was amused, in talking wiithl
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 hlie's got some Injun in
him," although I knew very well that the 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
speaker had a thloroughl  contenlpt for  the
red-man, mentally and physically. Here was
mythology in a small way,- the same that
under more favorable auspices hatched Helen
out of an egg and gave Merliii all Incubus for
a father. I was pleased with all I saw of
At.  He was in his narrow sphere a true ava~
'vapcov, and the ragged edges of his old hat
seemed to become coronated as I looked at
him.  He impressed me as a man really educated, -that is, with his aptitudes drawn omt
and ready for use. He was A. M. and LL. D.
in Woods College, - Axe-mnaster and Doctor
of Logs. Are not our educations commonly
like a pile of books laid over a plant in a pot?
Th!e compressed nature struggles thlroiugh 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 moment we come nigh the great loadstone mountain of our proper destiny, out leap all our
carefiilly-driven bolts and nails, and we get
many a mouthful of good salt brine, and many
a buffet of the rough water of experience, before we secure the bare right to live.
61 
62     A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
We  now entered the outlet, a long-drawn
aisle of alder, on each 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 felide,
the cat-tribe, stealthy, silent, treacherous, and
preying by nighlt. 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.  Tile sun
sank behind its horizon of pines, whose pointed
summits notched the rosy wecst in an endless
black sierra.  At the same moment the golden 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
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 glowing 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, floating 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 twilight, 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
63 
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 ii't
you?" as one of us mighlt ask about a horse.
We did not explore the Malahlioodus far, but
left the other birch to thread its cedared solitudes, while we turned back to try our fortunes
in the larger stream.  We  paddled on about
four miles fartler, lingering now and then opposite the black mouth of a moose-path. The
incidents of our voyage were few, but quite as
exciting and profitable as the itemis of the newspapers.  A  stray log compensated very well
for the ordinary run of accidents, and the floating ca rk-iss of a moose which we met could
pass muster instead of a singular discovery oft
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 mioss, made
spectral bv 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 MOOSEHEA D JOURNAL.
other a bear.  I inclined to the bear, as mak iing the adventure nmore imposing.   A rifle was
fired at thle sound, whlichl begaii again with thle
most provoking illdifference, ere the echo, flar iig madly at first from slhore to shiore, died far
away ill a hoarse sigh.
Half past Eleven, P. M.    No  sign of a
moose yet. The birchli, it seems, was strained
at thle Carry, or the pitchl was softened as slhe
lay oi thle shore during divnner, and she leaks
a little.  If thlere be any virtue in the sitzbad,
I shall discover it.  If I cainnot extract green
cucumbers from the mnoon's rays, I get somethling quite as cool.  One of the guides shivers
so as to shake thle birclh.
Qaarter lo Twelve.   Later from the Freshets!- Thle water iii 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 grounld-floor of my trousers into the upper story of a breast-pocket.
MIeanliwhile, we are to sit immovable, - for
fear of fiighlitening, the moose, -- which indices cranmps.
Halfpast Twelve. —A crashing is heard on
65 
66     A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
the left bank. This is a moose in good earnest.  We are besought to hold our breaths,
if possible. My fingers so nlumb, I could not,
if I tried.   Crasyh! crash! again, and then a
plunge, followed by dead stillness.   "Swimmin' crik," whispers guide, suppressing all unnecessary 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 finished nme.  I fancy myself oine of those naked
pigs that seem rushing out of market-doors ill
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
hlas quietly spiked our batteries. The moose
goes crashing up the bank, and presently we
can hear it chewing its cud close by. So we
.. ~ ~ ~      Z v.    So  we.
lie in wait, freezing.
At one o'clock, I propose to land at a deserted 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.
Axe  ill hand, I go plunging through waistdeep weeds  dripping with  dew, haunted  by
an intense conviction that the gnawing sounud
we had heard was a bear, and a bear at least
eighteen hands high.  There is sonlething pokerishl about a deserted dwelling, even in broad
daylight  butt here in the obscure wood, and
the moon  filtering unwillingly  thlroungh  the
trees!  Well, I made  the  door at last, and
found the place packed fuller withl darkness
than it ever had been withi hay. Gradually I
was able to make thingis out a little, and began to hack frozenly at a log which I groped
out.  I was irelieved presently by one of the
guides. He cut at once into one of the uprights of the building till hle got some dry
splinters, and we soon had a fire like the burning of a whole wood-whlarf in our part of the
country.  My  companion went back to the
birchI, 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 chimney, and then cleared away a damp growth
t)f "pison-elder," to make a sleeping place.
Whien  the unsuccessful  hunters returned, I
67 
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 declared that hlie would like to stick it out all
night. However, hlie reconciled himself to the
fire, and, making oui beds of some "splits
which we poked froui the roof, we lay down
at half past two.  I, who  have  inherited a
habit of looking iuto every closet before I go
to bed, for fear of fire, had become iii 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 w-itlies that bound it
together being burned off, one of the sides fell
in without wakiug me.
Tuesday, 16th.-  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 hlaymakers' camp  ag,ain.  We  found them  just
getting breakfast.  We sat down  upon  the
deacon-seat before the fire blazing between the
bedroom and the salle a mian,ger, which were 
A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
simply two roofs of spruce-bark, sloping to the
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 togethler, these hospitable
woodmen forced us to sit down first, although
we resisted stoutly. Our breakfast consisted
of fresh bread, fried salt pork, stewed whortleberries, and tea. Our kind hosts refused to
take money for it, nor would M. accept anything 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 anything of hard external polishl, it had all the
dcleel)er grace which springs only from sincere
In4l1iliness.  I have rarely sat at a table d'hote
which  might not have taken a lesson from
them in essential courtesy.  I have never seen
a finer race of men. They have all the virtues
of the sailor, without that unsteady roll in the
gait with which the ocean proclaims itself quite
69 
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 thev be safe here?"
"As safe as they would be locked up in
your house at hiome."
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 Kinleo in time for dinner;
and in the afternoon, the weather being fine,
went up the mlountain.  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.
"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 spriug, and the lumbcrers want to look
about right lwhen they come back into the set tlements, so they buy somethin' ready-made
and heave ole bust-up into the bush." True
enoughi, thought I, this is the Ready-made Age.
It is quicker being covered than fitted.   So
sve all go to the slop-shlop and come out uni(ormned,  every  mothler's  son with  habits of
tllinkig and doing cut on one pattern, with
no special reference to his peculiar build.
Kineo  lises 1750 feet above the sea, and
750 above the lake.  The climb is very easy,
withI fine outlooks at every turn over lake
and forest.  Near the top is a spring of water,
which even Uiicle Zeb might have allowed to
be  wholesonae.   The  little  tin  dipper  was
scratched all over withl names, showing that
vanity, at least, is not put out of breath by the
ascent.  0 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,
71 
72     A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
alas! institutions are as clhangeable 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 Biograp)liical Dictionaries.   After all, these  inscriptions, whichi make us smile up here, are about
as valuable as the Assyriai oines whici   Hilicks
and Rawiliusonl read at cross-purposes.  Have
we not Smithls and Browns enough, that we
must ransack the ruins of Niimroud for more?
Near the sprilng we met a Bloomer!  It was
the first chronic one I  had ever seen.  It
struck me as a sensible costume for the occasion, and it will be the only wear in the Greek
Kalentds, when women believe that sense is all
equivalent for grace.
The forest primeval is best seen from the
top of a mountain.  It then impresses one by
it; 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-trunlks 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.
mere size is hardly an element of grandeur,
except in works of manl, - as tile Colosseum.
It is througll one or the other pole of vanlity
that men feel tlie sublime in mountains.   It is
either, How small great I am beside it! or,
Big, as you are, little I's soul will bold a dozen
of vou.  Thle true idea of a forest is not a selva
selv,,}ytict, but something humanized a little,
as we imagine the forest of Arden, with trees
standing at royal intervals, -a commonwealth,
and not a communilism.  To some moods, it is
cong,enial to look over endless leagues of unbroken savagery without a hint of mian.
Wednesday. -  This morning  fishled.  Telemacbus cau,lght a laker of thirteen pounds and
a hlalf, and I anl overgrown cusk, whiclh we
thlrew away, but whlichl  I found afterwards
Agassiz would have been glad of, for all is fishl
that comes to hlis net, from the fossil down.
The fishl, whenl caught, are straightway knocked
onl the hlead.  A lad who went with  us seeming to show anl over-zeal in this operation, we
remonstrated.   But lie gave a good, humaii
reason for it,,-    He no need to ha' gone and
been a filsh it' lie did ii't like it," - an excuse
73 
74      A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL.
which superior strength or cunning has always
found sufficient.  It was some comfort, ill this
case, to thilk that St. Jerome believed in a
linitationl of God's providence, and that it did
not extend to inanimate things or creatures
devoid of reason.
Thlus, my  dear Storg, I have finished my
Oriental adventures, and somewhlat, it must be
owned, in the diffuse Oriental mainner.   There
is very little about Moosehlead Lake in it, and
inot even the Latin name for moose, which I
might have obtained by sufficienlt research. If
1 had killed one, I would have given you his
name in that dead language.  I did not profess
to give you au account of the lake; but a journal, and, moreover,  ly journal, with a little
nature, a little huimain nature, ald 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 muchl water for tender throats
which cainnot take it neat. 
AT SEA. 
I             I 
\;\; ~i;;~KY\<\' 
I               ~
AT SEA.
HIE sea was meant to be looked at from
the slhore, as mnountains are from tlhe
plain.  Lucretius miade this discoveryv
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  sylilpathlize with those stout old Romans who despised 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 
AT  SEA.
trarch was the first choragus of that sentimental 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  Cliateaubriand.   But  for them,
Byron, whose real strength lay in his sincerity,
would never have talked about the " sea bounding 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'
calmn 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 breathling 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 tte-&-gte, has a way
of repeating lhimself, aii obtuseness to the ne
quid ninis, that is stupefying.  It reminds nme
of orgali-mnilisic and my good friend Sebastian
Bach.  A fugue or two will do very well; but
78 
a concert made up of nothing else is altogether
too epic for me.  There is nothing so desperately moniiotonous as the sea, and I nlo longer
wonder at the cruelty of pirates.  Faicy al
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 exciting as an election on shore!  The dampness
seems to strike into the wits as into the lucifermatches, 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 enoughi to leave a sense of suffocation 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, hlie was sure to get
no ill news from home. He should be canonized as the patron-saint of newspaper correspondents, being the only man who ever had
the very last autlhentic intelligence from everywhere.
79
AT SEA. 
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 pI)ack-thread. He has a kind of accidental hole in thie top of his head, through
which hlie pook-pooks the rest of creation, and
whlichi looks as if it had been made by the
chance thrust of a chestnut rail. He was our
first event.  Outr second was harpooning a
sunfish, which basked dozing on the lap of the
sea, lookiiug so much like the giant turtle of
an aldernian's dream, that I am persuaded he
would have made mock-turtle soup rather
thanii 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, tloulgh, has b)etter sights than these.
When we were up with the Azores, we began
to meet flyiug-fish and Portuguese men-ofwar 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
80 
AT SEA.
some two hundred feet beyond, take a fresh
flight of  perhaps  as  long.  How  Calderon
would hlave similized this pretty creature had
hlie ever  seen it!  How would lie have ruin him
up and downt the gamiut of sinile!  If a fish,
thetn a fishl with  wings; if a bird, then a bird
withl  fins; and  so on, keeping up the poor
slhuttle-cock of  a conceit  as  is hlis  wont.
Indeed, tle poor thling is the most killing bait
for a comparison, and I assure you I have
thiree or four in my inkstand; -but be calm,
they shlall stay thlere. Moore, whlo looked on
all nature as a kind of Gra(lis ad P(-rnassum,
a thesaurus of similitude, and spent his life in
a game  of Vihat is my  ltouglht like? with
hiniself, did the flying-fisli otn his way to Bermroda.  So I leave hiln in peace.
The most beautifutl lIini  I hlave seen at sea,
all the more so that I lhad never heard of it,
is the trail of a slhoal of fisli through the phospliorescent water.   It is like a fliglt of silver
rockets, or the streaming of northern lights
thlrougli that silent nethler heaven.   I thought
nothling  could go beyond that  rustling starfoam  which was churned  ulp by our shlip's
81 
AT SEA.
bowos, or those eddies and disks of dreamy
flanre that rose and wandered out of sight
behind us.
'T was fire our ship was plung,ing through,
Cold fire that o'er the quarter flew;
And wandering moons of idle flame
Grew full and waned, and went and canie,
Dappling with light the huge sea-snake
That slid behind us in the wake.
But there was soniething even more delicately
rare iii the apparition of the fish, as they
turned up in  gleanling  furrows  the latent
noonshine whlich  the ocean seemed to have
hoarded againiist these vacant interlunar nighlts.
111 the Mediterranean one day, as we were
lying becalmed, I observed the water freckled
with digily specks, which at last gathered to a
pinkish scum on the surface. Tile sea had
been so phosphorescent for some nights, that
when the Captain gave nme my bathl, by dousing me with buckets from the house on deck,
the spray flew off my head and shoulders in
sparks.  It occurred to me that this dirtylooking, scuml might be the luminous matter,
and I had a pailful dipped up to keep till after
82 
AT SEA.
dark. When I went to look at it after nightfall, it seemed at first perfectly dead; but
when  I slihook it, the whole broke out into
what I cali only liken to miilky flames, whose
lambent silence was strangely beautiful, and
startled me almost as actual projection mighiit an
alchemist.  I could not bear to be the death
of so much beauty; so I poured it all overboard 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 withl the waves.
These are all the woniders 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, in the
83 
AT SEA.
full sense of the word, till I was hlid up to
him one cloudless day on the broad buckler
of the ocean.  I suppose one  loight have the
same feeling in tile desert.  I rememlber gettillg soiietlliiug like it years  ago,  when I
climbed alone to the top of a moulltailn, and
lay ftace 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 Englan, d winter, too, when everything is gagged with snow,
as if some gigantic physical geogriaplier 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 nlothing short of full daylight can
give the supremest sense of solitude.  Darkness will not do so, for the imagination peoples it with more  shapes  than ever  were
poured fromn the frozen loinrs 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
84 
AT SEA.
fruitless furrows. It is otherwise with the
moon.   She "comforts  thle night," as Chlapmall finlely sass, and I always  found  her a
companionable creature.
In the oceain-lorizonl I took ultiring delight.
It is the true miagic-circle of expectation alnd
conjecture, -  almnost as good as a wishing-ring.
What will rise over that edge we sail towiard
daily and never overtakle?  A sail? an island?
the new shore of the Old World:?  Somethitg
rose every day, which I need not have gone so
far to see, but at whose levee I was a iuceli
more faithful courtier than on sliore.  A clou(dless sunrise ini mnid-oceaii is beyond comparisoll
for simple giandeur.   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 shlore, -  the
shivering fairy-jewehly of dew, the silver pointlace of sparkliiig hoar-frost, - but there is also
more complexity, more of the romantic.  The
one savors of the elder Edda, the other of the
Millnesingers.
And I thus floating, lonely elf,
A kind of planet by myself,
85 
AT  SEA.
The miists 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-mnoss droops and hears
The gurgling floo(l that nears and nears,
And then with tremulous content
Floats out each thankful filament,
So waited I until it came,
Cod's daily miracle, — O shame
That I had seen so many days
Unithankful, without wondering praise,
Not recking more this bliss of earth
Than the cheap fire that lighlts my hearth!
]iut now glad thoughts and holy pour
Into nmy heart, as once a year
'Po San Miiiiato's open door,
In long procession, chanting clear,
Thlrou,gh slopes of sun, through shadows hoar,
The coupled monks slowV-climlhing sing,
And like a gol(len censer swing
From rear to front, from front to rear
Their alternating bursts of praise,
86 
AT  SEA.
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 Montaigne in his tower, with nothing to do but to
review his own thoughts and contradict him.
self. I)ire, redire, et;ae contredire, will be the
sltaple of my journal till I see land.  I say nothing of such matters as the niotclagna bruna on
which Ulysses was wrecked; but since the sixteenith 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 Tanhatiser are the last ghlosts
of legend, that lingered almost till the Gallic
cock-crow of universal enlightenment and disillusion. The Public School has done for Imagination.  WhIat shlall 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,
87 
AT SEA.
and would fain believe that science has scotched,
not killed, hIini.  Nor is he to be lightly given
up, for, like the old Scandinavian snake, he
binds together for us the two henisphleres of
Past nid Present, of Belief and Science.  He
is the link which knits us seaboard Yaniikees
with our Norse progenitors, interpreting between 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
Linnu.
I feel an undefined respect for a man who
lias seen the sea-serpent.  He is to his brotherfishers what the poet is to his fellow-men.
Where they have seen nothing better than a
school of lhorse-mackerel, or the idle coils of
ocean around Half-way Rock, he has caught
autlhentic glimpses of the witlhdr(lawig mantlehlem  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 vertebra, long
88 
AT SEA.
before they stretch many a rood behinid Kimball's or Barnum's glass, reflected ill the shallow orbs of Mr. and Mrs. Public, whichl stare,
but  see not!   Wlhen  we read that Captaiin
Spalding, of tle pink-sterni Tlree Pollies, hlas
behleld him in ushing tlhrough the brine like an
infinite series of bewitched maclkerel-casks, we
feel that the mystery of old Ocean, at least,
hlas not yet been sounded, - thlat Faithl and
Awe survive there unevaporate.  I once veiltured the hlorse-miackerel theory  to  an old
fisherman,  browner  than a toincod.   "Hosmackril!"   he exclaimed indignantly, " liosmackril be-"  (here lie used a phrase commonly indicated in laical literature by the same
sign whichl serves for Doctorate in Divinity,)
"don't yer spose I know a  hlosmackril'?"
The intonation of that "I"  would hlave silenced Professor Monkbarns Owein witlh  his
provoking phora forever.  Whliat if one shlould
ask hiei if lIe knew a trilohite?
Thle fault of modern travellers is, that thley
see nothing out of sighlt.  They talk of eocelne
periods and tertiary formations, and tell us
how the world looked to the plesiosaur. They
89 
AT  SEA.
take science (or nescienice) 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 witniess tipon the stand, badgered
with geologist hammers and phials of acid.
Thlere  have  been  no travellers since  those
included in  Hlakluyt  and  Purchas,  except
Martin, perhaps, who saw an inch or two into
the invisible at the Orkneys.   We  have peripatetic lecturers, but no more travellers.
Travellers'  stories are no longelr proverbial.
We have picked nearly every apple (wormy or
otherwvise) 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 boiughi shadowing the interior
of Africa, but there is a Geriman Doctor at this
very moment pelting, at them with sticks aid
ston(s.  It may be only next week, anid these
too, bitten by geographers and geologists, will
be thrown away.
Analysis is carried into everything.  Even
Deity is subjected to ci —it,ic tests.   W   must
90 
AT SEA.
have exact knowledge, a cabinet stuck full of
facts pressed, dried, or preserved in spirits instead of the large, vague world our fathlers had.
With them science was poetry; with us, poetry
is science.  Our miodern Eden is a hortzs siccis.  Tourists defraud rather than enrich us.
They have not that sense of eesthetic proportion which characterized the eldelr traveller.
Earth is no longer the fine work of art it was,
for iiothig is left to the imagination.  Job
Hortop, arrived at the height of the Bermnudas,
thinks it full time to indulge us in a inerman.
Nay, there is a story told by Webster, in his
" Witchcraft," of a merman with a mitre, who,
onI beiug sent back to his watery diocese of finland, made what advances he could toward an
episcopal benediction by bowiug his head thlrice.
Doubtless he  had been consecrated  by  St.
Antony of Padua.  A dumb bishop would be
sometimes no unpleasant plhenomenon, by the
way. Sir Johnlll Hawkins is not satisfied with
telliug us about the merely sensual Canaries,
but is geneious euoughi to throw us in a haudful of  "certain flitting islands"  to  boot.
Henry Hawkes describes the visible Mexican
91 
AT SEA.
cities, and then is not so frugal but that he caD
give us a few invisible ones. Thus do these
generous ancieniit miariners 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 ancestors were works of fancy and imagination.
They read poems where we yawn over items.
Their world was  a huge wonder-hiornl, exhaustless as that which Thlor strove to drain.
Ours would scarce quench the small thirst of
a bee. No modern voyager brings back the
magical fouidation-stones of a Tempest.  No
Marco lPolo, 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 sauds and shores andi desert wildernesses."
It was easy enou,ghl to believe the story of
Dante, when two thirds of even the upper
92 
AT  SEA.
world were yet untraversed and unmapped.
With every step of the recent traveller our
inheritance of the wonderful is diminislhed.
Those beautifully pictured notes of the Possible are redeemed at a ruinous discount in the
hard and cumbrous colii of the actual.  Hlow
are we not defrauded and imupoverislied? Does
California vie with El Dorado? or are Bruce's
Abyssinian kings a set-off for Prester John?
A bird inll 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 catalogue  of Vulgar Errors?   Whiere are  the
fishes which nidificated in trees?  Where the
monopodes sheltering themselves from the sun
beneath their single umbrella-like foot,-  umbrella-like in everything but the fatal necessity
of being, borrowed?   Where  the  Acepliali,
with whom Herodotus, in a kind of ecstasy,
wound  up his climnax of men with abnormal
top-pieces?  Whlere the Roc whose eggs are
possibly boulders, needing no far-fetched theory of glacier or iceberg to account for them?
93 
AT SEA.
Whlere the tails of the men of Kent? Wlhere
the no legs of the bird of paradise?  Wilere
the Unicorn, withli that single horni of his, sovereigli against all iiianner of poisons?  Whlere
the Fountain of Youth'?  Wlhere that Tihessaliani spring, which, without cost to the Country, convicted and punished perjurers? Where
the Amazons of Orellana?  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 east 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 vouchsafed us a fine, inspiring print of the Maelstrom, answerable  to  the twenty-four mile
diameter of its suctionl.  Year by year, more
and  more  of the world gets  dsenceliaiited.
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
94 
AT  SEA.
thingi cut and dried, and the world may be put
togethler as easily as the fragnienlts of a dissected map.  The Mysterious bounds ilothing
11ow on the North, Southl, East, or West. We
lhave played Jack Horner with our earth, till
there is never a plum left inll it.
95  
~  
+ l~~~
p,
-
: 1:
I i 
. I 
THE FARMER'S BOY.
I.' -  
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 throughmy verse,
The roaring cataract, the snow-topt hill, 
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
O point these raptures! bid my bosom glow!
And lead my soul to ecstasies of praise
For all the blessings of niy inifant 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.
'Twas thus with Giles: meek, fatherless,
and poor:
6 
SPRING.
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      miains,
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 minds
7 
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 kept in view
And never lacked a job for Giles to do.
Fled now the sullen murmurs of the North,
The  splendid raimtent 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 silil)le flower, or creeps along
Tile mellowe(l soil; illl)ibin(g fai'irer hlies,
Or sweets from frequent showers and evenilng,
dews,
That summon from their sheds the slumber      ing ploughs,
8 
$
SPRING.
While health impregnates every breeze t
blows:
No wheels support the diving, pointed sha
No groaning ox is doomed to labor there
No helpmates teach the docile steed his r
(Alike unknown  the  ploughboy  and
goad);
But, unassisted through each toilsome day
With smiling brow the ploughman clea
his way,
Draws his fresh parallels, and, widening sl
Treads slow the heavy dale, or climbs the h
Strong, on the wind his busy followers pla
Where writhing earthworms meet the unw
come d(lay;
Till all is changed, and hill and level don
Assume a livery of sober brown
Again disturbed, when Giles with weary
strides
Fromn rigol,e to ridge the ponderous har
guides,
His heels deep sinking every step he goes
Till dirt adhesive loads his clouted shoes.
Welcome, green headland I firm beneath
feet;
9 
SPRING.
Welcome, the friendly bank's refreshing seat;
There, warll with toil, his panting horses
browse
Their shelterirng 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 nmould, 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;
. ~
-
10 
SPRING.
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 skulkii,ng gunner by surprise
Will scatter death amongst themi 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 front place to place,
And death shall terrify the pilfering race
In the miid air, while circling round and
round,
They call their lifeless comrades from the
ground;
With  quickening wing,,, and  notes of loud
alarm,
11 
SPRING.
Warn the whole flock to shuni 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,
O'erarched with oaks that formed fantastic
bowers,
Waving aloft their towering branches proud,
In borrowed tinges fiom 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 blackbirdl strove with emulation sweet,
And Echo answered from her close retreat,
The sporting white-throat, on some twig's end
borne,
12 
SPRING.
Pourled hymns  to freedom  and the rising
morn;
St-pt 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 bold(lly stalked along the road,
Whose gold andpuiple 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
ruln,
And shone a mirror to the rising sun,
ThuLs 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;
13 
14               SPRING.
To shun whose thefts'twas 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.
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;
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 manutre that drenching Winter made,
Which, piled near home, grows green with
nmany a weed,
A promis,d nutriment for Autumn's seed.
Forth comes the maid, and like the morning
smiles;
The mistress too, and followed close by Gile.~
A friendly tripod forms their humble seat,
15 
SPRING.
With  pails bright scoured,  and delicately
sweet.
Where shadowing elms obstruct the morning
ray,
Begiils 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,
Fromn 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 t(o
roam,
Till eve again recall them loaded home.
16 
SPRING.
And now the dairy claims her choicest care,
And hall' helr household find emnlioyvment
there:
Slow rolls the churn, its load of clogging
cream
At once foregoes its quality and name
From knotty particles first floating wide,
Congealing l)utter's dashed from side to side;
Streanms of new milk throtlugh flowing coolers
stray,
And sinow-white curd abounds, and whole       some whey.
Due north the unglazed windows, cold and
clear,
For warming sunb,amns are unwelcome here.
Brisk goes the work )eneath each busy hand,
And  Giles must trudgle, whoever gives com      mand;
A G(ibeonite that serves them anl by turns
He drains the pump, from  him  the fagot
burns
From hinm the noisy hogs demand their food;
While at his heels run many a chirping brood,
Or dlown his path in expectation stand,
With equal claims upon his strewing hand.
1 7 
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, 0
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
roomIs,
Midst poisonous smokes, and steams, and
rattling loomns:
Where Grandeur revels in unbounded stores,
Restraint, a slighted stranger at their doors 
Thou, like a whirlpool, drain'st the countries
round,
]ill London market, London price, resound 
SPRING.
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 Suffolk 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 7
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
tieads,
19 
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'ershe treads Love gladdens everv 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;
9n airy downs the idling shepherd lies,
And sees to-morrow in the marbled skies.
20 
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  flrze  nor stubborn
thorn,
The heath's rough produce, had their fleeces
torn;
Yet ever roving, ever seeking thee,
Enchanting spirit, dear Variety!
0 happy tenants, prisoners of a day!
Released to ease, to pleasure, and to play;
Indulgedl through every field by turns to
range,
And taste them all in one continual change.
For thotugh luxuriant their grassy food,
Sheep long confined but loathe the present
good:
Bleating arounrd the homeward gate they meet,
And starve, and pine, with plenty at their
feet.
Loosed from the winding lane, a joyful throng, 
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;
Roiund 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?
Ye who can smile, to wisdom no disgrace,
At the arch meaning of a kitten's face:
if spotless innocence, and infant mirth,
22 
SPRING.
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 theIn off again;
Or, if a gale with strength unusual blow,
Scattering the wild-brier roses into sniow,
Their little limbs increasing efforts try,
Like the torn flower the fair assemblage fly.
Ah, fallen rose! sad emblem of their doom;
23 
SPRING.
Frail as thyself, they perish as they bloom!
Thoug,h unoffendiig Innocence miiay plead,
Thoughl frantic ewes may niourn the sava,ge
deed,
Their shel)herd comes, ta messenger of b)loocd,
And (drives theni  bleating fromn their sports
and food.
Care loads his brow, and pity wrings his heart
For lo, the ntmurdering butcher, with his cart.
Deiiands the firstlings of his flock to die,
And makes a sport of life and liberty!
His gay companions Giles beholds no niore;
Closed are their eyes, their fleeces d(renche&
in gore
Nor can compassion, with her softest notes,
Withhold  the  knife that plunges  throtugh
their thlroats.
.)own, indignation! hence, ideas foul!
Away the shocking iimage from niy soul 
Let kind(lier visitants attend my way,
Beneath the apl)roaching, SLiummer's fervid ray;
N,or   thankless glooms obtrude, nor cares an       noy,
Wc\hlst the sweet them-ne is universal ios.
24 
I
I i
I
.1I -
':.tl,
I..-.
;.,II.,
.7;-I''
"I If,
,.         (, i          "  
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 beyon(l 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 yard the reeking haystack
rears;
a l~~~~~~~~~~~ 
SUMMER.
Or 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-imnproving 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 storminy Winter draws its full de       manids;
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 climl)s the sun, and darts his powerful
ravs,
Whitens the fiesh-drawn mould, and pierces
through
The cumbrous clods that tumble round the
plough.
28 
SUMM M ER. 
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, liing 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,
29 
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,
30 
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 swarmiing 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.
veye:-,
He gains the summit of a shivering blade, 
SUMM E R.
And flirts his filmy wings, and looks around,
Exulting in his distance firom the ground.
The tender speckled moth here dancing seen,
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,
3,> 
SUMME   R. 
Save when he wheels direct fromn shade to
li(ht
E'en then the songster a mere speck becamie,
Gliding, like fancy's bubbles in a dream,
The gazer sees; but, yielding to repose,
UnwN-ittingly his jaded eyelids close.
Delicious sleep! from  sleep who  could for       bear,
W\ith no more guilt than Giles, and no more
care?
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 sig,lit, 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 imorn      ing's round,
33 
SUMIMER.
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 plurmy top uprears.
No rake takes here what Heaven to all be       stows
Childlren of want, for you the bounty flows!
34 
SUMMER.
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,
comne;
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  uipeopled dwelling mourns its tenant
strayed
E'en the domestic laughing dairy-maid
Hies to the field, the general toil to share.
Meanwhile the farmer (tuits his elbow-chair,
His cool brick floor, his pitcher, and his ease,
And braves the sultry beams, and gladly sees
His gaites thrown open, and his team abroad,
35 
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
36 
SUMMER.
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,
Ajd ask the sovereign cordial, home-brewed
ale:
Beneath some sheltering heap of yellow corn
Rests the hooped keg, and friendly cooling
horn,
That mnocks alike the goblet's brittle framne,
Its costlier portions, and its nobler name.
To Mary first the brimming draught is given,
By toil made  welcome as the dews of heaven,
An(t never lip that pressed its homely edge
Hadl kinder blessings or a heartier pledge.
Of wholesome viand here a banquet smiles,
A commnon cheer for all; - e'en humble
Giles,
37 
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,
Vlihere, 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
Roar 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,
38 
SUMMER.
Thy 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,
I'he pail kick down; a piteous current flows.
Is't not enough  that plagues like these
molest?
Must still another foe annoy their rest?
He comes, the pest and terror of the yard,
His full-fledg,ed 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 boobl)y goose the unworthy strife enjoys,
And hails his prowess with redoubled noise.
Then back he stalks, of self-importance full,
39 
SUMMER.
Seizes the shaggy foretop of the bull,
Till, whirled aloft, hlie falls: a timely check,
Enough to dislocate his worthless neck:
For lo! of old hlie 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 mnan 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 welcomne pleasure to his bristly hide;
Gently he stoops, or, stretched at ease along,
Enjoys the insults of the gabbling throng,
That niarch exulting round his fallen head,
As humnan victors traimple on their dead.
Still Twilight, welcome!  Rest, how sweet
art thou!
Now eve o'erhangs the western cloud's thick
brow:
The ifar-stretched curtain of retiring light,
40 
SUMMER.                   41
With fiery treasures fraught; that on  the
sight
Flaslh  roml 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
horme,
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:
Tli- slow-winged storm along the troubled
skies
Spreads its dark course; the wind begins to
rise;
And full-leafed elins, his dwelling,'s shade by
day, 
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? 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, comnes with double
power;
Calm dreams of bliss bring on the morning sun,
For every barn is filled, and harvest done!
42 
SUMMER.
Now, ere sweet summer bids its long adieu,
A-_d 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,
'an give the philosophic mind delight;
No triumph please, while rage and death de      stroyv
Reflection sickens at the monstrous joy.
knd where the joy, if rightly understood,
Like cheerful praise for universal good?
The soul nor check nor doubtful anguish
knows,
B13ut free and pulre 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,
43 
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 sprighbtly joys imparts
To cheer the frame and elevate their hearts.
Here, flre:h and b)rown, 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 vear distinction lowsers its
crest
44 
SUMM ER. 
The master, servant, and the merry guest
Are equal all; anid round the happy ring
The reaper's eyes exulting glances fling,
And, warmed with gratitude, he quits his
place,
WVith 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 nluts, his conversation, and his ale.
Such were the days,- of days long past I
silng,
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
45 
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?
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
Tihe blameless hope, the cheering sweet pres      age
Of future comforts for declining age.
Can my sons share from this paternal hand
The profits with the labors of the land?
No, though indulgent Heaven its blessing
deigns,
46 
SUMMER.
Where's the small farm to suit my scanty
mleanis?
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 content with want can never dwell?
A barley loaf,'t is true, my table crowIls,
That, fast diminishing in lusty rounds,
Stops Nature's cravings; yet her sighswillflow
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 selfsane 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.
47 
SUMMER.
For oft the farmer, ere his heart approves,
Yields up the customii which he dearly loves
Refinement forces on him like a tide
Bold innovations down its current ridle,
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
famie:)
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 andl guilty iunrmurs free.
Let labor have its due; then peace is mine,
And never, never shall my heart repine."
48 
I
I
Pt  
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.
-AGAIN, 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 miorn,
The swineherd's halloo, or the huntsman's
horn.
No more the fields with scattered grain
supply 
52               ATUTUM.N.
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 smouldlering 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.
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
Then stop and listen for their fancied foe
The hindmnost 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,
53 
54               AUTU,-N.
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
Clow
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
SpIring
That rolliIIng Earth's unvarying course will
bring,
Who tills the ground looks on with mental
eye, 
AUTUMN. X
And sees next Sunmmner's sheaves and cloud      less sky;
And even nowv, whilst Nature's beauty dies,
Deposits seed(l, and bids new harvests rise;
Seed well prepared, and warmned 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
55 
5 6         AAUTUMN.
With strong exertion and with weary bones,
And knows no10 leisure; till tile distant chime
Of Sabbath b)ells he hears at sermnon-tinie,
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 bonlles of heroes
lie!
The rude inelegance of p6verty
Pteigns here alone: else why that roof of
straw'?
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.
]I}idst timely greetings village niews goes
round,
Of crops late shorn, or crops that deck the
ground;
Experienced ploubghien in the circle join;
While sturdy bovs, in feats of strength to
shine,
With pride elate, their young associates brave
To jump fiom hollow-sounding  grave  to
grave;
Then close consutlting,, each his talent lends
To plan fresh sports when tedious service ends.
Hither at times, with cheerfulness of souLl,
Sv eet village maids fronm neighboring hamilets
stroll,
That, like the light-heeled does o'er lawns
that rove, 
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 Agc
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 lan,guid 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;
58 
AUTUMN.
Now blithe she sung,, and gathered useless
flowers;
Now plucked a tender twig from everybough,
To whip the hovering demons from her brow.
Ill-fated maid! thy guiding spark is fled,
And lasting wretchedness awaits thy bedThy 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 midlnight meals in secrecy she takes,
Low mutttering 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 frolim 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 ni,ght-air her shivering limbs
assails
In dreams she moans, and fancied wrongs
bewails.
59 
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,
60 
AUTUMN.
One  short,  patlhetic, simple  word,-"O
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 an(l hurries out of sight.
Fair promised sunbeams of terrestrial bliss,
Health's gallant hopes,- and are ye sunk to
this?
For ill 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!
61 
AUTUMN.
0 Thou who bidd'st the vernal juices rise 
Thout, 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, diminish more and
more,
The dairy's pride; sweet Summier's flowing
store.
New cares succeed, and gentle duties press,
Where the fireside, a school of tenderness,
Revives 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!
62 
AUTUMN.
"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.
0, 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.
63 
AUTUMN.
On whitethorns towering, and the leafless rose,
A frost-nipt least in bri,ght 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 miarred, grown dull his hermit       ag'e.
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?
Here still she dwells, and here her votaries
stroll;
64 
AUTUMN.
But disappointed hope untunes the soul.
Restraints unifelt 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.
Thoughb ineffectual pity thine may be,
No wVealth, 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']1 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,
65 
~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 harminony 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
joy,
Where smiling Euston boasts her good Fitz       roy,
Lord of pure alms, and gifts that wide ex       tend;
The farmer's patron, and the poor man's
friend: 
AUTUMN.
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,
Range through the darkest coverts one by one;
Trace every spot; whilst down each noble
glade
That  g,uid(les the eye beneath a changeful
shade,
The loitering sportsman feels the instinctive
flame,
And checks his steed to mark the springing
game.
67 
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 lightsomrne, 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;
68 
AUTUMN.
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
fatme
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
woo(l,
Rekindling every joy with tenfold force,
Throug,h 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.
69 
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,
70 
AUTUMN.
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 dayli,ght slowly through the fog, breaks
way,
Fly wantonly abroad: but, ah, how soon
The shades of twilight follow hazy noon,
Shorteniing the busy day! -day that slides by
Amidst the unfinished toils of husbandry
Toils still each miorm 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 hoaryhead.
Then welcome, Cold; welcome, ye snowy
nights!
Heaven midst your rage shall mingle pure
delights,
71 
AUTUMN.
And confidence of hope the soul sustain,
While devastation swceps aloig the plain
Nor shall the child of poverty despair,
But bless the Power that rules the changing
year;
Assured- though horrors round his cottage
reirgn -
That  Spring will comae, and Nature  smile
again
72 
I? 
lkf
il
I
I
I
I
...                                 -i  
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.
ITH  kindred pleasures moved, and
cares opprest,
"- Sharing alike our weariness and rest;
Who lives the daily partner of our hours,
Throu,gh every change of heat, and frost, and
showers,
Partakes our cheerful mneals, partaking first
In mutual labor, and fati,,gue, and thirst
The kindly intercourse will ever prove
A bond of amity and social love. 
WINTER.
To more than mall 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 comiipassion'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 stormn-pinched cattle
lows,
No nourishment in frozen pastures grows
Yet frozen pastures every morn resound
With  fair abundance  thundering  to the
g,round.
For tl )ougth on hoary twigs no bud(s peep out,
And e'en the hardy brambles cease to sprout,
Beneath dread Winiter's level sheets of snow
The sweet nutritious turnip deigns to grow.
Till now imperious Want and wide-spread
Dearth
76 
WINTER.
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 thie 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 dclown the furrowed oak's broad southern
side
Streams of dissolving rimne no longer glide.
77 
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 hinm, with bed and nightly food sup      plied,
Throug,hout 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.
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 roug,h 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-wrotught 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;
79 
WINTEi&
There the long billet, forced at last to bend,
While gushing sap froths out at either end,
Throws  round  its  welcome  heat  -the
plollughman smiles,
And oft the joke runs hard ou sheepish Giles,
Who sits joint tenant of the corner-stool,
The converse sharing,, thouglhin duty's school;
For now attentively't is his to hear
Interrogations from the master's chair.
"Left ye your bleating charge, when day      li,ght 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 storim.
For, hark! it blows; a dark  and  dismal
night:
Heaven guide the traveller's fearful steps
arig,ht!
Now from the woods, mistrustful, and sharp       eyed,
The fox in silent darkness seems to glide,
Stealing around us, listening, as he goes,
80 
WINT, R.                 81
If chance the cock or stammering capon crows,
Or goose, or nodding d(luck, should darkliing,
cry,
As if apprised of lurking, dangier nigh:
Destruction waits them, Giles, if e'er you
fail
To bolt their doors ago,inst the (driving, gale.
Strewed you (still nlinldful of the unshelteredl
head)
Burdens of straw, the cattle's welcome bed?
Thine heart should feel, what thou ilayst
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, 
WINTER.
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,
While  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,
82 
WINTER.                   83
Present felicities in value rise.
Ilncreasi,ng 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,
WVhen the cheered heart forgets fatigues and
cares,
And drowsiness alone dominion bears.
Sweet then the ploughmanl'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, and ever thoughtful of his team,
Along the glittering sinow a feeble gleam
Shoots from his lantern, as he yawning goes
To add fresh comforts to their nibght's repose
Diffusing fragrance as their food he mnoves,
And pats the jolly sides of those he loves. 
WINTrER.
Thus full replenished, perfect ease possest,
From ninths till miorn alternate food and rest,
No rightful cheer withheld, no sleep debarred,
Their each day's labor brings its sure reward.
Yet when from plotugh or lumebering 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.
84 
WINTER.
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       i1llnld,
Their extra shilling in the rider's hand
Becomes his bitter scourge, -'t is he must feel
The double efforts of the lash and steel
Till when, up hill, the destined hill he gains,
And, tremibling 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 miud his native color hides:
Throug,h 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.
85 
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(l 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 i)id(ling dust, or miles of flinty ground.
Thus nightly robbed and injured day by
day,
His peacemeal murderers wear his life away.
What sayesr thoul, 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.
86 
WINTER.
Affectioni, to thy inemory 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 mid(night 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),
87 
WINTER.
And round the pastures or the fold will creep,
And, coward-like, attack the peaceful sheep.
Alone the wanton imischlief he pursues,
Alone in reeking blood his jaws imibrues
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 conimon foe,
A foe mnost 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 fulll-orbed moon salute his eyes,
And through the unbroken stillness of the
night
88 
WINTER.
Shed on his path her beams of cheering light.
With sauntering step he clinbs 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 mleasures, as they parting fly,
Which first will throw its shadow on the eye,
Passing the source of light, and thence away,
Succeeldedl 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 imniensely wide from east to west,
The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest.
These, to the ral)tutred nid(l, aloud proclaim
Their Mi(hty Shepherd('s everlasting name.
Whlilst thus the loiterer's utmost stretch of
soul
Climbs the still clouds, or passes those that roll,
89 
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.
"'T is not my crimes thou corn'st here to re       prove;
90 
WINTER.
No murders stain my soul, no perjured love;
If thou'rt indeed what here thou seem'st to
be,
Thv dreadful mission cannot reach to me.
By parents taught still to mistrust mine eyes,
Still to approach each object of surprise,
Lest Fancy's formfull visions should deceive
In moonlight paths, or glooms of ftlling eve,
This then's the moment whenrmy 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 Sumnmer's
bower,
Beneath whose trunk I've weathered many t
showei),
Stands singly down this solitary way,
But far beyond where now my footsteps stay.
'T is true, thus far I're come with heedless
haste;
No reckoning, kept, no passing objects traced.
And can I then have reached that verv tree?
Or is its reverend form assumed by thee?"
The happy thought alleviates his pain:
91 
WINTER.
He creeps another step; then stops again;
Till slowly, as his noiseless feet draw near,
Its perfect lineanients at once appear;
Its crown of shivering ivy whispering peace,
And its white bark that fronts the nioon's pale
face.
Now, whilst his blood mounts upward, now
he knows
The solid gain that from conviction flows
And streng,theiied 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 uLp 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-sid(led ewes,
Sutrrounding stillness tran(quillize his breast,
And shape the dreamins that wait his hours of
rest.
As when retreating tempests we behold,
Whose skirts at length the azure sky unfold,
92 
WINTER.
And full of nmurmurings and mingled wrath,
Slowly unshroud the sniliig face of earth,
Bringing the bosomn joy: so Wintelr flies!And see the source of life and light uprise!
A  heightening, arch o'er southern hills he
benlds,
Warm oni thie cheek the slantingbeam dlescends,
And gives the reeking mead(l a brighter hue,
And draws the modest primrose-btud to view.
Yet frosts succeed, and winds impetuous rush,
And hail-storms rattle through the budd(ling
bush
And night-fallen lambs require the shepherd's
care,
And teeming ewes, that still their burdens
bear
Beneath whose sides to-norrow's dawn may
see
The mnilk-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,
93 
WIN TER.
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 damin aloud
Calls, and runs wild amidst the unconscious
crowd:
And orphaned sucklings raise the piteous cry;
No wool to warni 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's doomed a while disguised to
range
(For fraud or force must work the wished-for
change);
For this his predecessor's skin he wears,
Till, cheated into tenderness and cares,
94 
WINTER. 
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, ill his small contracted round of cares,
Adjusts the practice of each hint he hears
For boys with emulation learn to Slow,
And( boast their pastures, and their healthful
show
Of well-g,rown lambs, the glory of the Spring;
And field to field in comnpetition 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
95 
96               WINTER.
By gazing neighbors, when along the road,
Or villag,e green, his curly coaited throng
Suspends the chloruts of the spinner's song;
When a(l miratioii's unaffecte( grace
Lisps from the tongue, and beams in every
face:
Delightfil moments! - sunshine, health, and
joy
Play round, and cheer the elevated boy!
"Another Spring! " his heart exultinTg 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! 
-..:  ~?