Our foaming ale we drunk from hunters’ pans,

Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave

Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread;

All ate like abbots, and, if any missed

Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss

With hunters’ appetite and peals of mirth.

And Stillman, our guides’ guide, and Commodore,

Crusoe, Crusader, Pius Æneas, said aloud,

‘Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating

Food indigestible’: – then murmured some,

Others applauded him who spoke the truth.

Nor doubt but visitings of graver thought

Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday

’Mid all the hints and glories of the home.

For who can tell what sudden privacies

Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry

Of scholars furloughed from their tasks, and let

Into this Oreads’ fended Paradise,

As chapels in the city’s thoroughfares,

Whither gaunt Labor slips to wipe his brow,

And meditate a moment on Heaven’s rest.

Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke

To each apart, lifting her lovely shows

To spiritual lessons pointed home.

And as through dreams in watches of the night,

So through all creatures in their form and ways

Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant

Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense

Inviting to new knowledge, one with old.

Hark to that petulant chirp! what ails the warbler?

Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye.

Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird,

Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light,

Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky?

And presently the sky is changed; O world!

What pictures and what harmonies are thine!

The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene,

So like the soul of me, what if ’t were me?

A melancholy better than all mirth.

Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect,

Or at the foresight of obscurer years?

Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory,

Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty

Superior to all its gaudy skirts.

And, that no day of life may lack romance,

The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down

A private beam into each several heart.

Daily the bending skies solicit man,

The seasons chariot him from this exile,

The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair,

The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along,

Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights

Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home.

With a vermilion pencil mark the day

When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs

Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falls

Of loud Bog River, suddenly confront

Two of our mates returning with swift oars.

One held a printed journal waving high

Caught from a late-arriving traveller,

Big with great news, and shouted the report

For which the world had waited, now firm fact,

Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea,

And landed on our coast, and pulsating

With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries

From boat to boat, and to the echoes round,

Greet the glad miracle. Thought’s new-found path

Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways,

Match God’s equator with a zone of art,