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On and away, their hasting feet
Make the morning proud and sweet;
Flowers they strew,—I catch the scent;
Or tone of silver instrument

Leaves on the wind melodious trace;

Yet I could never see their face.
On eastern hills I see their smokes,
Mixed with mist by distant lochs.
I met many travelers

Who the road had surely kept;

They saw not my fine revelers,

These had crossed them while they slept.
Some had heard their fair report,

In the country or the court.

Fleetest couriers alive

Never yet could once arrive,

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As they went or they returned,

At the house where these sojourned.

Sometimes their strong speed they slacken,

Though they are not overtaken;

In sleep their jubilant troop is near,—

I tuneful voices overhear;

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WOODNOTES.

1.

For this present, hard

Is the fortune of the bard,

Born out of time;

All his accomplishment,

From Nature's utmost treasure spent,
Booteth not him.

When the pine tosses its cones

To the song of its waterfall tones,

He speeds to the woodland walks.

To birds and trees he talks.
Cæsar of his leafy Rome,
There the poet is at home.
He goes to the river-side,—
Not hook nor line hath he;

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Pondering shadows, colors, clouds,
Grass-buds and caterpillar-shrouds,
Boughs on which the wild bees settle,
Tints that spot the violet's petal,
Why Nature loves the number five,
And why the star-form she repeats:
Lover of all things alive,

Wonderer at all he meets,
Wonderer chiefly at himself,-
Who can tell him what he is?

Or how meet in human elf
Coming and past eternities?

2.

And such I knew, a forest seer,
A minstrel of the natural year,
Foreteller of the vernal ides,

Wise harbinger of spheres and tides,
A lover true, who knew by heart
Each joy the mountain dales impart;
It seemed that Nature could not raise
A plant in any secret place,
In quaking bog, on snowy hill,
Beneath the grass that shades the rill,
Under the snow, between the rocks,
In damp fields known to bird and fox,
But he would come in the very hour
It opened in its virgin bower,
As if a sunbeam showed the place,
And tell its long-descended race.

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It seemed as if the breezes brought him;

It seemed as if the sparrows taught him;

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As if by secret sight he knew
Where, in far fields, the orchis grew.

Many haps fall in the field

Seldom seen by wishful eyes;
But all her shows did Nature yield,
To please and win this pilgrim wise.
He saw the partridge drum in the woods;
He heard the woodcock's evening hymn;
He found the tawny thrush's broods;
And the shy hawk did wait for him;
What others did at distance hear,

And guessed within the thicket's gloom,
Was showed to this philosopher,

And at his bidding seemed to come.

3.

In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers' gang
Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang;
He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone;
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.
He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,

The slight Linnæa hang its twin-born heads,

And blessed the monument of the man of flowers,

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Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern

bowers.

He heard, when in the grove, at intervals,

With sudden roar the aged pine tree falls,

One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree,
Declares the close of its green century.

Low lies the plant to whose creation went
Sweet influence from every element;

Whose living towers the years conspired to build,
Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild.

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Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed,
He roamed, content alike with man and beast.
Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;
There the red morning touched him with its light.
Three moons his great heart him a hermit made,
So long he roved at will the boundless shade.
The timid it concerns to ask their way,

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And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray, 100
To make no step until the event is known,
And ills to come as evils past bemoan.
Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps
To spy what danger on his pathway creeps;
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road,
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed.

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4.

'Twas one of the charmed days
When the genius of God doth flow,
The wind may alter twenty ways,

A tempest cannot blow;

It may blow north, it still is warm;

Or south, it still is clear;

Or east, it smells like a clover-farm;

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Or west, no thunder fear.

The musing peasant lowly great

Beside the forest water sate;

The rope-like pine roots crosswise grown
Composed the network of his throne;

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The wide lake, edged with sand and grass,
Was burnished to a floor of glass,
Painted with shadows green and proud
Of the tree and of the cloud,

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