48 ENGLISH WOODS : A CONTRAST. 



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 ur- 

 banity 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 na- 

 ture 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. 



