PART I

Summer on the lakes.

  Summer days of busy leisure,
  Long summer days of dear-bought pleasure,
  You have done your teaching well;
  Had the scholar means to tell
  How grew the vine of bitter-sweet,
  What made the path for truant feet,
  Winter nights would quickly pass,
  Gazing on the magic glass
  O’er which the new-world shadows pass. 
  But, in fault of wizard spell,
  Moderns their tale can only tell
  In dull words, with a poor reed
  Breaking at each time of need. 
  Yet those to whom a hint suffices
  Mottoes find for all devices,
  See the knights behind their shields,
  Through dried grasses, blooming fields.

* * * * *

  Some dried grass-tufts from the wide flowery field,
  A muscle-shell from the lone fairy shore,
  Some antlers from tall woods which never more
  To the wild deer a safe retreat can yield,
  An eagle’s feather which adorned a Brave,
  Well-nigh the last of his despairing band,—­
  For such slight gifts wilt thou extend thy hand
  When weary hours a brief refreshment crave? 
  I give you what I can, not what I would
  If my small drinking-cup would hold a flood,
  As Scandinavia sung those must contain
  With which, the giants gods may entertain;
  In our dwarf day we drain few drops, and soon must thirst again.

CHAPTER I.

Niagara.

Niagara, June 10, 1843.

Since you are to share with me such foot-notes as may be made on the pages of my life during this summer’s wanderings, I should not be quite silent as to this magnificent prologue to the, as yet, unknown drama.  Yet I, like others, have little to say, where the spectacle is, for once, great enough to fill the whole life, and supersede thought, giving us only its own presence.  “It is good to be here,” is the best, as the simplest, expression that occurs to the mind.

We have been here eight days, and I am quite willing to go away.  So great a sight soon satisfies, making us content with itself, and with what is less than itself.  Our desires, once realized, haunt us again less readily.  Having “lived one day,” we would depart, and become worthy to live another.

We have not been fortunate in weather, for there cannot be too much, or too warm sunlight for this scene, and the skies have been lowering, with cold, unkind winds.  My nerves, too much braced up by such an atmosphere, do not well bear the continual stress of sight and sound.  For here there is no escape from the weight of a perpetual creation; all other forms and motions come and go, the tide rises and recedes, the wind, at its mightiest, moves in gales and gusts, but here is really an incessant, an indefatigable motion.  Awake or asleep, there is no escape, still this rushing round you and through you.  It is in this way I have most felt the grandeur,—­somewhat eternal, if not infinite.