a pretty fall.” 
Not thinking, “Are we worthy?” What if all
The scornful landscape should turn round and say,
“This is a fool, and that a popinjay”? 
I often wonder what the Mountain thinks
Of French boots creaking o’er his breathless brinks, 130
Or how the Sun would scare the chattering crowd,
If some fine day he chanced to think aloud. 
I, who love Nature much as sinners can,
Love her where she most grandeur shows,—­in man: 
Here find I mountain, forest, cloud, and sun,
River and sea, and glows when day is done;
Nay, where she makes grotesques, and moulds in jest
The clown’s cheap clay, I find unfading zest. 
The natural instincts year by year retire,
As deer shrink northward from the settler’s fire, 140
And he who loves the wild game-flavor more
Than city-feasts, where every man’s a bore
To every other man, must seek it where
The steamer’s throb and railway’s iron blare
Have not yet startled with their punctual stir
The shy, wood-wandering brood of Character.

’There is a village, once the county town,
Through which the weekly mail rolled dustily down,
Where the courts sat, it may be, twice a year,
And the one tavern reeked with rustic cheer; 150
Cheeshogquesumscot erst, now Jethro hight,
Red-man and pale-face bore it equal spite. 
The railway ruined it, the natives say,
That passed unwisely fifteen miles away,
And made a drain to which, with steady ooze,
Filtered away law, stage-coach, trade, and news. 
The railway saved it:  so at least think those
Who love old ways, old houses, old repose. 
Of course the Tavern stayed:  its genial host
Thought not of flitting more than did the post 160
On which high-hung the fading signboard creaks,
Inscribed, “The Eagle Inn, by Ezra Weeks.”

’If in life’s journey you should ever find
An inn medicinal for body and mind,
’Tis sure to be some drowsy-looking house
Whose easy landlord has a bustling spouse: 
He, if he like you, will not long forego
Some bottle deep in cobwebbed dust laid low,
That, since the War we used to call the “Last,”
Has dozed and held its lang-syne memories fast:  170
From him exhales that Indian-summer air
Of hazy, lazy welcome everywhere,
While with her toil the napery is white,
The china dustless, the keen knife-blades bright,
Salt dry as sand, and bread that seems as though
’Twere rather sea-foam baked than vulgar dough.

’In our swift country, houses trim and white
Are pitched like tents, the lodging of a night;
Each on its bank of baked turf mounted high
Perches impatient o’er the roadside dry, 180
While the wronged landscape coldly stands aloof,
Refusing friendship with the upstart roof. 
Not so the Eagle; on a grass-green swell
That toward the south with sweet concessions fell
It dwelt retired, and half had grown to be