Rebuild the ruin, mend defect;

Chemist to vamp old worlds with new,

Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue,

New-tint the plumage of the birds,

And slough decay from grazing herds,

Sweep ruins from the scarped mountain,

Cleanse the torrent at the fountain,

Purge alpine air by towns defiled,

Bring to fair mother fairer child,

Not less renew the heart and brain,

Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain,

Make the aged eye sun-clear,

To parting soul bring grandeur near.

Under gentle types, my Spring

Masks the might of Nature’s king,

An energy that searches thorough

From Chaos to the dawning morrow;

Into all our human plight,

The soul’s pilgrimage and flight;

In city or in solitude,

Step by step, lifts bad to good,

Without halting, without rest,

Lifting Better up to Best;

Planting seeds of knowledge pure,

Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure.

THE ADIRONDACS
A Journal

Dedicated to My Fellow-Travellers in August, 1858

Wise and polite, – and if I drew

Their several portraits, you would own

Chaucer had no such worthy crew,

Nor Boccace in Decameron.

We crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends,

Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks

Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach

The Adirondac lakes. At Martin’s Beach

We chose our boats; each man a boat and guide, –

Ten men, ten guides, our company all told.

Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac,

With skies of benediction, to Round Lake,

Where all the sacred mountains drew around us,

Taháwus, Seaward, MacIntyre, Baldhead,

And other Titans without muse or name.

Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on,

Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills,

And made our distance wider, boat from boat,

As each would hear the oracle alone.

By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid

Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets,

Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower,

Through scented banks of lilies white and gold,

Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day,

On through the Upper Saranac, and up

Père Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass

Winding through grassy shallows in and out,

Two creeping miles of rushes, pads, and sponge,

To Follansbee Water, and the Lake of Loons.

Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed,

Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge

Pondrous with beechen forest sloped the shore.

A pause and council: then, where near the head

On the east a bay makes inward to the land

Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank,

And in the twilight of the forest noon

Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard.

We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts,

Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof,

Then struck a light, and kindled the camp-fire.

The wood was sovran with centennial trees, –

Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir,

Linden and spruce. In strict society

Three conifers, white, pitch, and Norway pine,

Five-leaved, three-leaved, and two-leaved, grew thereby.

Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth,