A DEEP, stern sound! the starting signal-roar! | |
| And up Champlain Burgoyne’s great squadron bore. | |
| In front, his savage ally’s bark canoes | |
| Flashing in all their bravery wild of hues, | |
| Their war-songs sounding and their paddles timed; | 5 |
| Next the bateaux, their rude, square shapes sublimed | |
| With pennon, sword, and bayonet, casting glow | |
| In pencilled pictures on the plain below; | |
| Last, the grand ships, by queenly Mary led, | |
| Where shines Burgoyne in pomp of gold and red; | 10 |
| And then, in line, St. George, Inflexible, | |
| And radeau Thunderer, dancing on the swell | |
| The glad wind made: how stately shone the scene! | |
| June in the forests each side smiling green! | |
| The graceful chestnut’s dark green dome was fraught | 15 |
| With golden tassels; ivory, seeming brought | |
| From winter lingering in the Indian Pass, | |
| Mantled the locust; as in April grass | |
| Rich dandelions burn, the basswood showed | |
| Its bells of yellow; while the dogwood glowed | 20 |
| In a white helmet thickly plumed atop; | |
| The earlier cherry let its sweet pearls drop | |
| With every breeze; the hemlock smiled with edge | |
| Fringed in fresh emerald; even the sword-like sedge, | |
| Sharp mid the snowy lily-goblets set | 25 |
| In the nooked shallows like a spangled net, | |
| Was jewelled with brown bloom. By curving point | |
| Where glittering ripples umber sands anoint | |
| With foamy silver, by deep crescent bays | |
| Sleeping beneath their veil of drowsy haze, | 30 |
| By watery coverts shimmering faint in film, | |
| Broad, rounded knolls one creamy, rosy realm | |
| Of laurel blossom with the kalmia-urns | |
| Dotted with red, the fleet, as sentient, turns | |
| The winding channel; in tall towers of white | 35 |
| The stately ships reflect the golden light | |
| Dazzling the lake; the huge bateaux ply deep | |
| Their laboring, dashing pathway; fronting, keep, | |
| With measured paddle-stabs, the light canoes | |
| Their gliding course; the doe, upstarting, views | 40 |
| And hides her fawn; the panther marks the scene | |
| And bears her cubs within the thicket’s screen; | |
| The wolf lifts sharpened ear and forward foot; | |
| Waddles the bear away with startled hoot | |
| As some sail sends a sudden flash of white | 45 |
| In the cove’s greenery; slow essaying flight, | |
| The loon rears, flapping, its checked, grazing wings, | |
| Till up it struggling flies and downward flings | |
| Its Indian whoop; the bluebird’s sapphire hue | |
| Kindles the shade; the pigeon’s softer blue | 50 |
| Breaks, swarming, out; the robin’s warble swells | |
| In crumply cadence from the skirting dells; | |
| And restless rings the bobolink’s bubbly note | |
| From the clear bell that tinkles in his throat. | |
| Thus stately, cheerily, moves the thronging fleet! | 55 |
| On the lake’s steel the blazing sunbeams beat; | |
| But now a blast comes blustering from a gorge; | |
| The white caps dance; it bends the tall St. George, | |
| And even the Thunderer tosses; the array | |
| Breaks up; canoe, bateau, grope doubtful way | 60 |
| Through the dim air; in spectral white, each sail | |
| Glances and shivers in the whistling gale; | |
| All the green paintings of point, bank, and tree | |
| Vanish in black and white, and all but see | |
| A close horizon where near islands lose | 65 |
| Their shapes, and distant ranks of forest fuse | |
| Into a mass; at length the blast flies off, | |
| Shallows stop rattling, and the hollow cough | |
| Of surges into caves makes gradual cease, | |
| Till on the squadron glides once more in sunny peace. | 70 |
| |
| So on some blue-gold day white clouds upfloat | |
| In shining throng, and next are dashed remote | |
| By a fierce wind, then join in peace again, | |
| And smoothly winnow o’er the heavenly plain; | |
| Or so some fleet of wild fowl on the lake, | 75 |
| Dipping and preening, quiet journey take, | |
| Till the sky drops an eagle circling low | |
| For the straight plunge; wild scattering to and fro, | |
| They seek the shed of bank, the cave of plants, | |
| Tunnel of stream, wherever lurk their haunts, | 80 |
| Until the baffled eagle seeks again | |
| His sky, and safety holds, once more, its reign. * * * * * | |
| On Lady Mary’s deck Burgoyne would stand | |
| Drinking the sights and sounds at either hand, | |
| Replete with beauty to his poet-heart, | 85 |
| Laughing to scorn man’s paltry works of Art: | |
| The grassy vista with its grazing deer; | |
| The lone loon oaring on its shy career; | |
| The withered pine-tree with its fish-hawk nest; | |
| The eagle-eyrie on some craggy crest; | 90 |
| The rich white lilies that wide shallows told; | |
| Their yellow sisters with their globes of gold | |
| At the stream’s mouth; the ever-changeful lake; | |
| Here a green gleaming, there a shadowy rake | |
| Of scudding air-breath; here a dazzling flash | 95 |
| Searing the eyeball, there a sudden dash | |
| Of purple from some cloud; a streak of white | |
| The wake of some scared duck avoiding sight. | |
| The dogwood, plumed with many a pearly gem, | |
| Was a bright queen with her rich diadem; | 100 |
| An oak with some crooked branch up pointing grand, | |
| A monarch with his sceptre in his hand; | |
| A rounded root a prostrate pine-tree rears | |
| A slumbering giant’s mighty shield appears; | |
| A long-drawn streak of cloud with pendent swell | 105 |
| Of hill, a beam with its suspended bell. | |
| In some gray ledge, high lifted up, he sees | |
| An ancient castle looking from its trees; | |
| Some mountain’s rugged outline shows the trace | |
| Of the odd profile of the human face; | 110 |
| A slender point tipped with its drinking deer | |
| Seems to his soldier eye a prostrate spear; | |
| In the near partridge-pinion’s rolling hum, | |
| He hears, with smiles, the beating of the drum; | |
| And in the thresher’s tones, with music rife, | 115 |
| The stirring flourish of the whistling fife; | |
| And thus his fancy roams, till twilight draws | |
| Around the fading scene its silver gauze. | |
| A golden, lazy summer afternoon! | |
| The air is fragrant with the scents of June,— | 120 |
| Wintergreen, sassafras, and juniper, | |
| Rich birch-breath, pungent mint and spicy fir | |
| And resinous cedar; on Carillon’s walls | |
| The sentry paces where cool shadow falls; | |
| His comrade sits, his musket on his knee, | 125 |
| Watching the speckling gnats convulsively | |
| Stitching the clear dark air that films some nook. | |
| He hears the dashing of the Horicon brook | |
| Loud at the west,—that curved and slender chain | |
| By which the Tassel hangs upon Champlain,— | 130 |
| It chimes within his ear like silver bells, | |
| And the sweet jangling only quiet tells; | |
| In front he sees the long and leafy points | |
| Curving the waters into elbow-joints | |
| Of bays; a crest beyond the old French lines, | 135 |
| Domes the flat woods; east, opposite, inclines | |
| Mount Independence, its sloped summit crowned | |
| With its star-fort, with battery breastplate bound, | |
| The floating bridge between, the massive boom | |
| And chain in front, and in the rearward room | 140 |
| A group of patriot craft; and sweeping thence | |
| The forest landscape’s green magnificence. | |
| Southward the lake a narrowed river bends | |
| With one proud summit where the brook suspends | |
| Horicon’s tassel to King Corlaer’s crown, | 145 |
| Close to Carillon’s dark embattled frown. | |
| |
