 Wood Notes I When the pine tosses its cones to the song of its waterfall tones, who speeds to the woodland walks? To birds and trees, who talks? Another of his leafy roam, there the poet is at home. He goes to the riverside, not hook nor line hath he. He stands in the meadows wide, nor gun nor scythe to see. Sure some God his eye enchants. What he knows nobody wants. In the wood he travels glad, without much fortune had. Being cally without bad. Knowledge this man prizes best seems fantastic to the rest. Pondering shadows, colors, clouds, grass-huts 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. Cover of all things alive, wonder at all he meets, wonder chiefly at himself, who can tell him what he is? Or how meet an elf coming the past eternities, too? And such I knew, a forest seer, a minstrel of the natural year, fortune teller of the vernal ideas, 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 its virgin bower, as if a sunbeam showed the place and tell its long-descended race. It seemed as if the breezes brought him. It seemed as if the sparrows taught him. And if by secret sign he knew where, in far fields, the orches grew. Many haps fall in the field, seldom seen by wistful eye. 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 woodcocks evening him. He found the tawny thrushes broods, and the shy hawk did wait for him. And others did at distance here, and guest, within the thicket's gloom, was shown to this philosopher, and that his bidding seemed to come. 3. In unplowed main he sought the lumberer's gang, where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang. He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon the all-seeing sun for ages hath not shown, 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 linea hang its twin-born heads, and blessed the monument of the man of flowers, which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers. He heard, when in the grove at intervals, would sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls. One crash, the death hymn of the perfect tree, declares the close of its green century. Below lies the plan 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. 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. Where the red morning touched him with its light. Three moons his great heart with a hermit made, so long he roved at will the boundless shade. The timid it concerns to ass their way, and fear that foe in caves and swamps may stray. 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. Four. Twas one of the charmid 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, or west no thunder fear. Amusing peasant, lowly great, beside the forest watersate. The rope-like pine-roots crosswise grow, composed the network of his throne. 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. He was the heart of all the scene. On him the sun looked more serene. To hill and cloud his face was known. It seemed the likeness of their own. They knew by secret sympathy the public child of earth and sky. You ask, he said, what guide me through trackless thickets led? Through thick-stemmed woodlands, rough and wide, I found the water's bed. The water-courses were my guide. I travelled grateful by their side, or through their channel dry. They led me through the thicket damp, through break and fern the beavers camp, through beds of granite cut my road, and their resistless friendship showed. The falling waters led me. The foodful waters fed me, and brought me to the lowest land, unerring to the ocean sand. The moss upon the forest bark was pole-star when the night was dark. The purple berries in the wood supplied me necessary food, for nature ever faithful is to such as trust her faithfulness. When the forest shall mislead me, when the night and morning lie, when sea and land refuse to feed me, twill be time enough to die. Then will yet my mother yield a pillow in her greenest field, nor the June flowers scorn to cover the clay of their departed lover. End of poem.