44 FRESH FIELDS 



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 Linnaea 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, 



With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls, — 



One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree. 



Declares the close of its green century." 



Emerson's muse is urbane, but it is that wise 



urbanity that is at home in the woods as well as in 



the town, and can make a garden of a forest. 



" My garden is a forest ledge, 

 Which older forests bound ; 

 The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge. 

 Then plunge to depths profound." 



On the other hand, we have no pastoral poetry 

 in the English sense, because we have no pastoral 

 nature as overpowering as the English have. When 

 the muse of our poetry is not imitative, it often 

 has a piny, woodsy flavor, that is unknown in the 

 older literatures. The gentle muse of Longfellow, 

 so civil, so cultivated; yet how it delighted in all 

 legends and echoes and Arcadian dreams, that date 

 from the forest primeval. Thoreau was a wood- 

 genius — the spirit of some Indian poet or prophet, 

 graduated at Harvard College, but never losing his 

 taste for the wild. The shy, mystical genius of 

 Hawthorne was never more at home than when in 

 the woods. Read the forest-scenes in the " Scarlet 

 Letter." They are among the most suggestive in 

 the book. 



