Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds. 
Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air
That circled freshly in their forest dress
Made them to boys again.  Happier that they
Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind,
At the first mounting of the giant stairs. 
No placard on these rocks warned to the polls,
No door-bell heralded a visitor,
No courier waits, no letter came or went,
Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold;
The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop,
The falling rain will spoil no holiday. 
We were made freemen of the forest laws,
All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends,
Essaying nothing she cannot perform.

In Adirondac lakes
At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded: 
Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make
His brief toilette:  at night, or in the rain,
He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn: 
A paddle in the right hand, or an oar,
And in the left, a gun, his needful arms. 
By turns we praised the stature of our guides,
Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill
To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp,
To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs
Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down: 
Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount,
And wit to trap or take him in his lair. 
Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent,
In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides;
Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired
Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve.

Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen!  No city airs or arts pass current here.  Your rank is all reversed; let men or cloth Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls:  They are the doctors of the wilderness, And we the low-prized laymen.  In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test Which few can put on with impunity.  What make you, master, fumbling at the oar?  Will you catch crabs?  Truth tries pretension here.  The sallow knows the basket-maker’s thumb; The oar, the guide’s.  Dare you accept the tasks He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes, Tell the sun’s time, determine the true north, Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods
To thread by night the nearest way to camp?

Ask you, how went the hours? 
All day we swept the lake, searched every cove,
North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay,
Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer,
Or whipping its rough surface for a trout;
Or, bathers, diving from the rock at noon;
Challenging Echo by our guns and cries;
Or listening to the laughter of the loon;
Or, in the evening twilight’s latest red,
Beholding the procession of the pines;
Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack,
In the boat’s bows, a silent night-hunter
Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds
Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist. 
Hark to that muffled roar! a tree in the woods
Is fallen:  but hush! it has not scared the buck
Who stands astonished at the meteor light,
Then turns to bound away,—­is it too late?