The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower.

‘Welcome!’ the wood god murmured through the leaves, –

‘Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.’

Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple-boughs,

Which o’erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire.

Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks,

Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor.

Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft

In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed,

Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux,

And greet unanimous the joyful change.

So fast will Nature acclimate her sons,

Though late returning to her pristine ways.

Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold;

And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned,

Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds.

Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air

That circled freshly in their forest dress

Made them to boys again. Happier that they

Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind,

At the first mounting of the giant stairs.

No placard on these rocks warned to the polls,

No door-bell heralded a visitor,

No courier waits, no letter came or went,

Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold;

The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop,

The falling rain will spoil no holiday.

We were made freemen of the forest laws,

All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends,

Essaying nothing she cannot perform.

In Adirondac lakes,

At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded:

Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make

His brief toilette: at night, or in the rain,

He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn:

A paddle in the right hand, or an oar,

And in the left, a gun, his needful arms.

By turns we praised the stature of our guides,

Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill

To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp,

To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs

Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down:

Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount,

And wit to trap or take him in his lair.

Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent,

In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides;

Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired

Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve.

Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen!

No city airs or arts pass current here.

Your rank is all reversed: let men of cloth

Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls:

They are the doctors of the wilderness,

And we the low-prized laymen.

In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test

Which few can put on with impunity.

What make you, master, fumbling at the oar?

Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretension here.

The sallow knows the basket-maker’s thumb;

The oar, the guide’s. Dare you accept the tasks

He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes,

Tell the sun’s time, determine the true north,

Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods

To thread by night the nearest way to camp?

Ask you, how went the hours?

All day we swept the lake, searched every cove,