| |
| NOT as when, in summer days, | |
| Wove illusive sunset haze | |
| Round the mountain, bald and grim; | |
| Watching at the rocking rim | |
| Of the cradled lake, whose isles | 5 |
| Are the toys at which it smiles,— | |
| And when day, but half awake, | |
| Saw the roe stoop to the lake, | |
| And its silver waters sip, | |
| With his image, lip to lip; | 10 |
| Listening close, with tremulous ear, | |
| To ten thousand warblers clear, | |
| Up the greenwood steep so far; | |
| Which was dew-drop, which was star, | |
| Glimmering near the gates ajar,— | 15 |
| What was bird-voice, what was psalm, | |
| Stealing through the radiant balm, | |
| Out the changeless, God-lit sphere, | |
| Sense said not, nor eye nor ear. | |
| Dash the canvas,—white for green; | 20 |
| Summer ’s gone,—a winter scene. | |
| |
| Owl’s Head wears its coil of snow, | |
| Memphremagog hides below; | |
| Crisp the air, with frost and sleet | |
| Folding, in the mountain dim, | 25 |
| As his wings the seraphim,— | |
| Twain his face and twain his feet. | |
| Mirroring waves no more declare | |
| Passing thought of sky and air. | |
| Moon, or stars, or bird, or cloud, | 30 |
| Nor to winds confess aloud, | |
| Conscience troubled, heart and head; | |
| Ice-incrusted, deep snow-spread, | |
| Nothing stirs a conscience dead. | |
| |
| On the fir-tree’s outstretched palms | 35 |
| Lie the bounteous angel alms; | |
| League on league of untrod white, | |
| Save the squirrel’s footmarks slight; | |
| And the red fox’s deeper trail, | |
| Where he roamed the moonlit vale; | 40 |
| Ay, and slant the frozen wave, | |
| Past the smuggler’s island cave; | |
| One great furrow, roughly ploughed, | |
| By a preying wolf-pack loud, | |
| Fierce and lean and devil-browed. | 45 |
| By their lair, ’neath Eagles’ Cliff, | |
| Oft the covetous white man’s skiff | |
| Chased and lost the birch canoe, | |
| When some rock-gate let it through, | |
| Bearing to the mountain’s bed. | 50 |
| Of his tribe the guardian red, | |
| Over a mysterious mine, | |
| Where the silver nuggets shine— | |
| Hidden still; there are who say, | |
| Guards his ghost the place, to-day. | 55 |
| |
| Deep within the solitude | |
| Of the winter-girded wood, | |
| Where no foot of man comes near, | |
| Is a herd of gentle deer. | |
| Six brave stags, with each a mate, | 60 |
| In a city of whose gate | |
| Spring, incoming, holds the key,— | |
| City walled with porphyry. | |
| Busy workers wrought betimes, | |
| Hearing naught of Christmas chimes, | 65 |
| Heeding naught of glad New Year, | |
| Daily, nightly, building here. | |
| Noiseless workers,—trowel’s fray, | |
| Chisel’s twang, nor mattock’s sway | |
| Tempted Echo from her haunt; | 70 |
| Scaffold high, nor ladder gaunt, | |
| Stayed them up, or aided down, | |
| While was reared that forest town. | |
| Silence, save when tone severe, | |
| As of tyrant overseer,— | 75 |
| Was it but the hoarse wind’s call? | |
| “Clouds and Cold and Snowflakes, all, | |
| Idlers, haste,—build, build your wall!” | |
| |
